Researching Central Asia

Front matter

Jasmin Dall’Agnola - Aijan Sharshenova Editors

Researching

Central Asia Navigating Positionality in the Field

Part I Epistemic and Methodological Uncertainty

2 Making Sense of Central Asia Sources of Epistemic CEPR cou. c i cebcs cle tebee tka sanssesGesnadees tibra hea Aziz Elmuradov

3 Pitfalls and Promise for Public Opinion Research in Central i: (ee re ea eee ce eee eee eer re eee Kasiet Ysmanova

4 ‘Swiping Right’—The Ethics of Using Tinder as a Recruitment Tool m be Field ake np neretai sneis ees eeedadeee dae EAAS Paolo Sorbello

Part II Beyond ‘Outsiders’ and ‘Locals’

5 The Power of a Multi-layered Identity in Central Asian Research 244464405 dcaes beads dweetsneesiaaasseorsdonns ines Gulzhanat Gafu

6 Being Afghani, French and not Soviet Along the Border Between Mélanie Sadozai

Alexa Kurmanov Part III Doing Research in Closed Contexts

Aijan Sharshenova viii Contents

Ruslan Norov

10 Performative Heterosexuality: A Gay Researcher Doing

Fieldwork in Central ASIa ¢ oo0scsdes casa leeskius be enede ces eeenee 87 Marius Honig

Jasmin Dall’ Agnola

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Jasmin Dall’Agnola is a postdoctoral Visiting Scholar at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations from Oxford Brookes University. Her research focuses on the relationship between technology, surveillance and governance in authoritarian societies. Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals, including Europe- Asia Studies, Religions, Central Asian Affairs, Surveillance & Society and Central Asian Survey. She is the Lead Editor of the book, Researching the Former Soviet Union: Stories From the Field (Routledge, 2023).

Aijan Sharshenova is a Bishkek-based political Analyst and a Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London and the European Neighbourhood Council in Brussels. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics awarded at the University of Leeds, UK. In addition to her academic background in international studies, she has worked at the UN and UNDP country offices in the Middle East. Her research interests include foreign policy, public diplomacy, democracy promotion, autocracy diffusion in Russia and Central Asia.

Contributors

Jasmin Dall’Agnola The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Aziz Elmuradov Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany Gulzhanat Gafu Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan

Marius Honig Iserlohn, Germany x Editors and Contributors

Alexa Kurmanov University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Ruslan Norov Stockholm, Sweden

Mélanie Sadozai George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA; INALCO/Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France

Aijan Sharshenova OSCE Academy Bishkek, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Paolo Sorbello Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venezia, Italy

Kasiet Ysmanova Central Asia Barometer, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Chapter 1 A) The Central Asian Research Setting: get An Introduction Jasmin Dall’ Agnola ® and Aijan Sharshenova®

Abstract Researching Central Asia can be interesting, entertaining, life-changing, traumatising and, at the very least, thought provoking. The way we, Central Asians and Central Asianists, experience the region differs, but it certainly impacts our lives in a multitude of small and not-so-small ways. In this chapter, the editors reflect on the reasons why the Central Asian research setting has become more popular, and what this means both for individual researchers and the study area in general. The need to systematise and structure the diverse experiences of insiders and outsiders, the attraction of the region against the background of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the ongoing discussions of Russian colonialism and decolonisation in Central Asia have all contributed to the urgency of this book.

Keywords Central Asia - Research Methods - Ethics - Decolonization - Positionality

The idea for this volume emerged during a post-COVID-19 lunch gathering in a coffee shop in Bishkek. While exchanging anecdotes about conducting research in and on Central Asia, we both noticed that there were realms of literature on fieldwork in Central Asia (Heathershaw & Mullojonov, 2020; Koch, 2013; Lottholz, 2018; Thibault, 2021; Wood, 2023), but the image they painted of their field did not always mirror our experiences. Of the handful of scholars who have written openly about the unique obstacles that the Central Asian research setting presents to researchers, the advice they gave was only partially applicable in our cases. Previous scholarship has highlighted that field research is an area not yet comprehensively addressed in conversations on diversity and equity in the academic and non-academic profession

J. Dall’ Agnola (EI) The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: jasmin.dallagnola@ gwu.edu

A. Sharshenova OSCE Academy Bishkek, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan e-mail: a.sharshenova@ osce-academy.net

© The Author(s) 2024 1 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova (eds.), Researching Central Asia,

2 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova within Central Asia (Collins et al., 2023; Janenova, 2019; Kudaibergenova, 2019; Marat & Aisarina, 2021; Suyarkulova, 2019). It is the intersectionality of various categories of differences—age, gender, race, sexuality, education, class, parental status and religious practices that not only “shape researchers’ [and practitioners’ ] access to the field but also how they are received by their informants and the local society” (Dall Agnola, 2023a, 12). A researcher’s positionality results in different expectations, risks and dilemmas in the field.

While we have learned from, and draw on the recent literature, it still consists largely of individual experiences, placed side by side rather than in conversation with each other. Through the medium of first-hand accounts of field research in and on Central Asia, this edited volume seeks to address this gap in the literature. It discusses the discrepancies between textbook advice and the reality in the field observed by both non- and local scholars and practitioners in Central Asia. As such, the chapters present an honest and reflective selection of accounts of the authors’ personal experience in the Central Asian research setting. Moreover, the scope of this book is not only situated in the range of geographical countries under analysis (e.g. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), but also the contributors represent various disciplines in the industry (e.g. journalism, opinion polling, NGOs), social sciences (e.g. anthropology, political science, education), genders, nationalities, and are affiliated with numerous institutions in different parts of the world. By featuring an even greater variety of academic and non-academic voices, this volume therefore fills an important gap in the literature on fieldwork and knowledge production in and on Central Asia.

A second trigger for writing the book is the growing number of Russophone researchers who, due to the inaccessibility of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine following the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory in February 2022, are drawn to the (former) Russian-speaking countries of Central Asia that are now considered to be more ‘accessible’ and ‘safe’. Both assumptions are uninformed and highly problematic. Access to the different Central Asian countries is anything but straightforward and varies depending on the researcher and practitioner’s positionality, as the personal reflections in this book demonstrate. Furthermore, Russophone scholars’ presumption that the Central Asian research setting is ‘safe’ is deceptive. Scholars and their collaborators, whether local or non-local, suspected of government critique can be monitored, arrested, intimidated and forced out of the country, as the contributions in this edited volume highlight. Moreover, we agree with Marat and Kassymbekova (2023, 10) that “decolonising Central Asian studies involves decentring Russia in understanding the area”. Central Asia may share “a history of Russian occupation”, but we should stop studying the region through a Russian lens. The personal stories presented in this volume outline some of the unique ethical, structural and methodological obstacles that scholars and practitioners from various social and institutional backgrounds face when conducting research in and on Central Asia, obstacles which are often not encountered in other countries formerly occupied by Soviet Russia.

A final consideration for writing this book is the on-going discussion among Central Asian experts around the need to decolonise the knowledge production in and on Central Asia. As is openly and honestly revealed in this collection through personal

1 The Central Asian Research Setting: An Introduction 3 stories, research in the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, can involve several unexpected dangers and risks for both research participants and fieldworkers. The pitfalls and risks scholars face vary depending on their positionality in the field. Yet, researchers’ identities and relations to the field are a bit more varied than the stereotypical dichotomy of westerners and locals for whom the field is their “home”, “battlefield” and “livelihood” (Kudaibergenova, 2019) would suggest. We appreciate where our authors are living and working, but their identities and lived experiences are a little bit more complex than their passports and institutional affiliations suggest. Half of our authors were born and raised in Central Asia and the other half has spent a significant amount of time living and conducting research in and on the region. And again, others are locals, but a different kind of “local”. The fact that some of our contributors are now affiliated to an institution outside of their home country reflects not only the difficulty of undertaking research into sensitive or taboo topics for academics in authoritarian contexts (Glasius et al., 2018), but also the political economy of academia and academic migration flows more widely (Burlyuk & Rahbari, 2023). This in itself reveals something about local researchers’ knowledge production and lived experiences in the Central Asian research context. Finally, we are convinced that to diversify and enhance the scholarship on fieldwork and positionality in the region, we need contributions from both local and non-local researchers—with discussion of the wider politics of allyship within academia.

The book is composed of 10 in-depth case studies from the Central Asian region. Some chapters are based on contributors’ research experiences in a single Central Asian country, while others are comparative and cut across the region. Each chapter deals with a different topic related to their work in the region. While documenting this subject, the authors engage with their positionality and intersectional identity and offer useful guidance for other scholars and practitioners researching the region. The volume consists of three thematic sections. In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we present the three key themes that emerged from the various personal stories in this volume.

Epistemic and Methodological Uncertainty

Section one (Epistemic and Methodological Uncertainty) presents personal accounts that seek to problematise and reconceptualise the epistemology and methodology researchers use to study Central Asia. As such, the authors propose useful tips and recommendations for companies and scholars that plan to conduct research in and on the region. In his opening chapter, Aziz Elmuradov discusses the role of academic positionality in the context of fast-evolving Central Asian scholarship. He argues that a sense of epistemic uncertainty is a concomitant effect of academic positionality and that it may arise at the cross-roads of various cognitive and affective modes and

4 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova templates. In Chapter three, Kasiet Ysmanova outlines the methodological and political uncertainty local opinion polling companies are confronted with when collecting public opinion data across the region. She argues that Central Asian authorities’ censorship of survey research is another significant impediment to local scholarship and as such, to hearing Central Asian voices. She finds that the use of phone polls can help survey companies to circumvent respondents’ self-censorship and desirability biases in an authoritarian context. However, it is not only opinion polling centres that increasingly rely on digital technologies to recruit interview participants, as Paolo Sorbello’s account in chapter four suggests. Zooming in on how social media and dating platforms can facilitate participant recruitment in Central Asia, he discusses how Tinder helped him to recruit women working in Kazakhstan’s oil sector, who under less informal circumstances would not have agreed to talk to him. Sorbello concludes that the use of ‘unconventional apps’, such as Tinder, for recruiting sources for research is a possibility that can and should be exploited in contexts where informal contacts are more customary.

Beyond ‘Outsiders’ and ‘Locals’

When reflecting on their fieldwork experiences, scholars tend to fall into thinking in terms of a stereotypical dichotomy: western researchers, who go to visit them, the local scholars, in their field (Glasius et al., 2018). The personal stories in the second part of this volume (Beyond ‘Outsiders’ and ‘Locals’) challenge this stereotypical dichotomy. They show that ‘locals’ are not invariably ‘rooted’ to and Westerners are not invariably ‘detached’ from the soil of the field. In Chapter five, Gulzhanat Gafu reflects on how her studies abroad influenced the way in which she researches her home country’s higher education system, in her case Kazakhstan. Her personal story shows that it is not solely Western researchers, but also local scholars’ class and institutional privileges that influence their access to the field. As such, she refashions our understanding of what it means to be a local to the region where someone conducts research, and who is also a western-educated “inbetweener” (Milligan, 2016, 248). While Gafu’s institutional affiliation marked her out as a ‘privileged’ outsider, Mélanie Sadozai, ostensibly a ‘westerner’ with her French passport, was identified by her respondents along the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan as an insider thanks to her Afghani roots. In Chapter six, Sadozai shows how her personal ties to Badakhshan facilitated deep and rich reflections from her interviewees and marked her out not ‘just as a foreigner’. For some scholars, it is not only their passport, but also their physical appearance that makes them an outsider in the eyes of their interlocutors. This is something, Alexa Kurmanov, a black queer scholar researching Kyrgyzstan knows too well. Yet, Kurmanov is not only an outsider in her field side, but also in her home country, the United States. In her chapter (chapter seven), she discusses the ways her black non-binary body becomes fatigued at the intersections of blackness and sexuality in the context of contemporary Kyrgyzstan and her home country. She finds that academic institutions in the United States are

1 The Central Asian Research Setting: An Introduction 5 still failing to identify ‘Black fatigue’ as an outcome of mundane encounters in fieldwork and Western academia more generally.

Doing Research in Closed Contexts

The final part of this volume (Doing Research in Closed Contexts) homes in on the survival strategies employed by both local and non-local Central Asian scholars when conducting fieldwork in the more closely monitored societies of Central Asia (Dall’Agnola, 2023b). In reflecting on their research experiences in a field under authoritarianism, they offer insights for other researchers on how to maximise their own physical safety and mental well-being prior to, during and after fieldwork. In her piece, Chapter eight, Aijan Sharshenova discusses the intangible fear of every Central Asian political scientist, mainly being prosecuted for writing critically about politics in an increasingly political tense environment. In her contribution, Aijan focusses on tangible threats and intangible fears experienced by political scientists, observers, commenters and others, who have to walk a fine line between doing their job in an open and honest manner, and keeping themselves and their families safe. Likewise, in being honest and transparent about his experiences with the secret service in his former Central Asian home country, Ruslan Norov’s personal account in Chapter nine details how state monitoring can not only affect local scholars’ knowledge production but can also force them to leave their country out of fear of being jailed and prosecuted for being a Western spy. Both Sharshenova and Norov’s accounts emphasise that state shadowing of local academics and practitioners does not necessarily stop when the research project comes to an end. Central Asian governments are known for monitoring both the offline and online realms by means of digital technologies (Dall’ Agnola, 2023b).

Likewise, foreign fieldworkers can be the target of wiretapping and malware, and find their own and their respondents’ privacy and anonymity intruded upon (Dall’ Agnola, 2023b). As such, digital surveillance has becomes a permanent feature of both local and Western scholars’ life due to their long-lasting involvement in the region. Especially LGBTQ + researchers are forced to silence their sexuality in both their off- and online presence to protect themselves from physical and mental harm, as the personal account of Marius Honig demonstrates. In Chapter ten, he reflects on the limited choices available to LGBTQ + researchers to protect themselves and the limitations of performing a heterosexual male identity in the Central Asian research context. Finally, digital technologies can also be used by respondents to monitor and harass scholars on the Internet and social media long after they have left the field. In her closing chapter, Jasmin Dall’ Agnola discusses the implications of unwanted sexual advances and cyberstalking on women scholars’ personal and professional life. She argues that some Central Asian men continued their unwanted advances online through the Internet long after she had returned to her home country. Dall’ Agnola’s story illustrates the harmful influence that interlocutors (and especially local men) can have on female fieldworkers. In critically reflecting about both the

6 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova level of sexual harassment and violence against women in Switzerland and Central Asia, Dall’ Agnola asks us to not forget that violence against women is a problem both in the Central Asian and Western context.

Concluding Remarks

Given the rich detail and insightful reflections in this volume, it is our hope that this book will contribute to improving the practice of fieldwork and other research activities in Central Asia, by laying bare some of the dilemmas and trade-offs scholars and practitioners may (or may not) encounter when conducting research in and on the region. Not every researcher will experience the same ethical, personal or methodological challenges as those outlined here. Still, the chapters offer insights into how those concerned adapted when facing adversity and unforeseen dilemmas. We hope this will aid other researchers in thinking about how they might also approach, cope with and even avoid similar situations. As such, we hope that this book will be a useful teaching tool in pre-fieldwork courses.

Furthermore, the personal stories presented in this collection demonstrate that we need more honest reflections on potentially uncomfortable and sensitive themes that are too little discussed, let alone written about in the academic and professional realm: researchers’ fears, insecurities and mistakes during fieldwork, the mental impact it has on the researcher, and the possibility of coming home with little in the way of publishable findings. We hope that the reflections in this book will invite further academic discussion about researchers’ unspoken challenges and issues when conducting research in the region. Finally, beyond the academy, we expect some personal accounts in this book to make useful readings for policymakers, civil society practitioners, businesspeople or journalists who find themselves in the Central Asian research setting or dealing with Central Asian state authorities.

Burlyuk, O., & Rahbari, L. (2023). Migrant academics’ narratives of precarity and resilience in Europe. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.033 1

Collins, N., Sharplin, E., & Burkhanov, A. (2023). Challenges for political science research ethics in autocracies: A case study of Central Asia. Political Studies Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1478929923 1153074.

Dall’ Agnola, J. (2023a). The challenges of fieldwork in post-soviet societies. In J. Dall’ Agnola, A. Edwards, & M. Howlett (Eds.), Researching in the former soviet union. stories from the field (pp. 1-16). BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9781003144168-1.

Dall’ Agnola, J. (2023b). Fieldwork under surveillance: A research note. Surveillance & Society, 21(2), https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v2112.16455

Glasius, M., de Lange, M., Bartman, J., Dalmasso, E., Lv, A., Del Sordi, A., Michaelsen, M., & Ruijgrok, K. (2018). Research, ethics and risk in the authoritarian field. Palgrave Macmillan.

1 The Central Asian Research Setting: An Introduction 7

Heathershaw, J., & Mullojonov, P. (2020). The politics and ethics of fieldwork in post-conflict environments: The dilemmas of a vocational approach. In B. Bliesemann de Guevara & M. Bøås (Eds.), Doing fieldwork in areas of international intervention: A guide to research in violent and closed contexts (pp. 93-112). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/978 15292069 13.007

Koch, N. (2013). Introduction—Field methods in ‘closed contexts’: Undertaking research in authoritarian states and places. Area, 45(4), 390-395. https://doi.org/10.111 1/area. 12044

Janenova, S. (2019). The boundaries of research in an authoritarian state. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1—8. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069 19876469

Kudaibergenova, D. (2019, October 7). When your field is also your home: Introducing feminist subjectivities in Central Asia. openDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/when-your-field-also-your-home-introducing-feminist-subjectivities-central-asia/

Lottholz, P. (2018). Researcher safety in peace, conflict and security studies in Central Asia and beyond: Making sense and finding new ways forward. Security Praxis (pp. 1-7).

Marat, E., & Aisarina, Z. (2021, January 8). Towards a more equal field in Central Asia research. openDemocracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/towards-more-equal-fieldcentral-asia-research/

Marat, E., & Kassymbekova, B. (2023). Reclaiming the narrative: Decolonising Central Asian studies for a more inclusive understanding. APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter, 33(1), 9-12. https://www.comparativepoliticsnewsletter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/APSA-CP_ May_2023.pdf

Milligan, L. (2016). Insider-Outsider-Inbetweener? Researcher positioning, participative methods and cross-cultural educational research. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 46(2), 235-250. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2014.928510

Suyarkulova, M. (2019, October 10). A view from the margins: Alienation and accountability in Central Asian studies. openDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/view-marginsalienation-and-accountability-central-asian-studies/

Thibault, H. (2021). ‘Are you married?’ : Gender and faith in political ethnographic research. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 50(3), 395-416. https://doi.org/10.1177/089 1241620986852

Wood, C. (2023). Listening and its limits: Reflections on fieldwork in/on Kyrgyzstan. In J. Dall’ Agnola, A. Edwards, & M. Howlett (Eds.), Researching in the former soviet union. stories from the field (pp. 111-127). BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. https://doi.org/10.4324/978 1003144 168-10

Jasmin Dall’Agnola is a postdoctoral Visiting Scholar at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from Oxford Brookes University. Her research focuses on the relationship between technology, surveillance and governance in authoritarian societies. Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals, including Europe-Asia Studies, Central Asian Affairs, Central Asian Survey and Surveillance & Society. She is the Lead Editor of the book, Researching the Former Soviet Union: Stories From the Field (Routledge, 2023).

Aijan Sharshenova is a Bishkek-based political Analyst and a Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London and the European Neighbourhood Council in Brussels. She holds a PhD in Politics awarded at the University of Leeds, UK. In addition to her academic background in international studies, she has worked at the UN and UNDP country offices in the Middle East. Her research interests include foreign policy, public diplomacy, democracy promotion, autocracy diffusion in Russia and Central Asia.

8 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova

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Part I Epistemic and Methodological Uncertainty

Chapter 2 A) Making Sense of Central Asia Sources ciecie; of Epistemic Uncertainty Aziz Elmuradov®

Abstract Central Asia is in flux, and so are the perspectives and angles of intellectual inquiry, as are the modes of and approaches to the scientific investigation of the region. This paper sets out to discuss the role of academic positionality essential to this flux—caught between modernity and tradition—and reflects on one of its striking effects, epistemic ambiguity. In light of knowledge-related turns in the social sciences, notably, the epistemological twists and turns entailed in postmodernist, postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist critique, the study of academic positionality and its implications in the Central Asian context is a worthwhile pursuit.

Keywords Central Asia - Epistemic uncertainty + Tradition - Local epistemologies - Decolonial critique - Geopolitics of knowledge

In bringing to the fore the topic of academic positionality in Central Asia, the editors of this volume have undertaken a worthwhile, exciting, and timely endeavor. There are a great many reasons in view of which inquiring into academic positionality in Central Asia may be deemed worthwhile and timely—the ontological and epistemological twists and turns of our times, the enduring relevance in research of wider identity issues, and the slow but growing scholarly recognition of individual, personal, and gendered subjectivities faced by local and foreign intellectuals, not to mention the complex moral dilemmas and ethical issues, linguistic barriers, and methodological challenges that researchers face. Academic positionality entails “ethical, personal and methodological dimensions” and is the “intersectionality of various categories of differences” that inform research (Dall’ Agnola, 2023, 12). In this contribution, I will share my impression of wandering through some of this rocky terrain, struggling to map out my way across instances of epistemic uncertainty, ambiguity, and anxiety.

A. Elmuradov (EI) Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: aziz.elmuradov @uni-bielefeld.de

© The Author(s) 2024 11 J. Dall’ Agnola and A. Sharshenova (eds.), Researching Central Asia,

12 A. Elmuradov

My account, although predicated on subjective judgement and observation, draws on critical literature and unfolds in a narrative style along two broad lines. First, I hold that “tradition,” as slippery and confusing as this notion often is, underlies the conditions of knowledge production in Central Asia. Second, that “modernity,” an equally confusing and slippery notion, invariably looms large in the background while informing and, in fact, permeating and penetrating our quest for intellectual inquiry on Central Asia in significant ways. In this account, I relate to “tradition” and “modernity” in the sense of postcolonial and decolonial critique, as a background matrix of contesting social reality—conditions of epistemic emergence—against the backdrop of which meaning-making takes place. In linking “tradition” and “modernity” in such loose terms, what I aim to do is not to engage in in-depth definitional or theoretical elaboration of these concepts, but to try to carve out a suitable niche for the reconstruction of an underlying emergent condition that I think pertains, for the lack of a better term, to a sense of epistemic anxiety on behalf of a scholar navigating their positionality in/on Central Asia.

Sources of Epistemic Uncertainty

It seems that underlying the topic of academic positionality is a peculiar unresolved dilemma: it is an empowering merit and at the same time, a potential pitfall. On the one hand, scholars of areas, studies, and sociologists of knowledge are perfectly aware that academic positionality implies some sort of social positionality, that it entails some sort of normative basis, for example, incorporation of local, native, and unfamiliar voices, and their broader representation in order for social sciences to be truly social. The prevailing conventional wisdom seems to have its roots in the idea, and righteously, that it is through the acknowledgment and appreciation of subjectivities, the silenced or the excluded or the oppressed, that knowledge is acquired and validated. On the other hand, scholars of areas studies and sociologists of knowledge are also aware that they depend on preconceived ideas, interpretative frameworks, sophisticated vantage points, analytical tools, and methodologies in order to “explore” their subject matters and contexts. The process of “exploring” the new is then often informed by presumptions and preconceptions, persistent understandings, and established practices that aim to see meaning within clear-cut paradigms and intelligible frameworks. After all, no one would deny that scholars are also human beings and that, as such, they are ultimately embedded in normative values of this or that cultural milieu, social circle, academic community or society, and their conceptual constructs are, in fact, often intelligible within the established intellectual frameworks in which they are used. It is also true that it is often the case that there are significant discrepancies between textbook advice and the reality of the field (Dall’ Agnola, 2023). Conditioned by such circumstances, how can we hope to operate in novel terrain with a sense, more or less, of intellectual integrity and certainty? How can we lay claim to valid knowledge, let alone “truth,’ when we seem

2 Making Sense of Central Asia Sources of Epistemic Uncertainty 13 to occupy an ambiguous position of being within knowledge, yet simultaneously outside of it?

Multiple streams of critical thought are mindful of the crucial role of epistemic frameworks in asserting, legitimising, and reinforcing structurally privileged modes of knowledge. In particular, postcolonial and decolonial thought and feminist scholarship are acutely aware of the epistemic problems along such dimensions as culture, gender, religion, class, social status, age, and ability, and in terms of whether a researcher is an “insider” or an “outsider,” “foreign” or “local” (Dall’ Agnola, 2023). Moreover, that “epistemologies of ignorance” follows from our “‘situatedness as knowers,” or “specific aspects of group identities,’ or that “oppressive systems produce ignorance” is also well known (Alcoff, 2007, 40; Haraway, 1988, 581). Ultimately, such considerations are insinuated with an implicit concern over power, and its use and abuse; and therefore, they are intimately linked with an idea of imminent conflict and violence. What is also implicit in these considerations is a concern over knowledge as power. What kind of epistemic consequences follow from examining the wider implications of knowledge as power? An intellectual is then all too often faced with a self-posed question of the degree to which they are, in fact, knowledgeable, or even worse, whether or they are engaged in “epistemic violence?” Once aware, we understand that epistemic violence may be deeply embedded in our knowledge as well as in the ways through which we strive toward knowledge.

What I strive to pin down here, with apparent difficulty, is a sense of ambivalence, perhaps the futility of scholarly detachment, of non-knowing, of being caught up between various intellectual matrices of knowledge. To demarcate more precisely, it is perhaps useful to describe the phenomenon I am addressing here as an epistemic dilemma, or sociostructurally conditioned epistemic ambivalence. What we know is often shaped by our “social location,’ or “locus of enunciation” (Grosfoguel, 2007, 213). We always speak from a particular location in the power structures and the problem of social location goes in tandem with academic location. As a social scientist, one is expected to provide, on the one hand, the best possible account of their subject matter (which is usually a complicated embedded social phenomena) as well as, on the other hand, to present a critique and at times even provide proposals, albeit often implicitly and with a certain normative stance, as to how to modify and improve social constellations in reasonable ways. In doing so, one seeks to push forward an informed, impartial, and reasonable position. From this ostensibly impartial position stem optics (of disembodied knowledge) through which local and provincial knowledge is routinely dismissed due to privileging hegemonic epistemic practices. This circumstance arouses a sense of epistemic anxiety over “the geopolitical and body-political location of the subject that speaks” (Grosfoguel, 2007, 213) and poses crucial questions such as “can the subaltern speak?” (Spivak, 1988).