ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES ON FEMALE PEACEMAKING IN CUSTOMARY CONTEXTS IN CENTRAL EURASIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61841/px0czz30Keywords:
female peacemaking, customary contexts, relationality, Georgia, KyrgyzstanAbstract
This article is interested in how, why and to what extent women contribute to peacemaking in customary contexts in Central Eurasia. Using the concept and methodology of Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR), an interdisciplinary and inter-regional team conducted iterative ethnographic and pilot participatory explorations in fives villages in Georgia’s Dusheti region, in an urban Uzbek community in Osh, among women traders in Osh bazaars, and in Kyrgyzstan’s Kara-Suu region. Between 2023 and 2025 a social anthropologist from Georgia and a political scientist from Kyrgyzstan, both of whom spoke local languages, knew the respective customary orders and worked onsite, conducted between 40 and 45 site visits each and regularly discussed their findings with a peace researcher from Germany and an international and interdisciplinary advisory board. Analyzing the ethnographic data via EPR categories (worldviews, everyday practices, institutions, issues of power, social change) and considering maternal thinking, care ethics, relationality and intersectionality, this article shows that many women engage in situated peacemaking through silencing, coping, female relationalities, conflict prevention, mediation, solidarity and self-organization. However, it also demonstrates how many women are confronted with intersecting issues of power and wider processes of social change. Beyond romanticization, this article helps make sense of the ambivalent result in which customary social orders legitimize patriarchy and hierarchies while, in principle, also providing respected spaces for female peace agency. These results contribute to post-liberal peace studies that tend to silence multiple axes of difference in traditional and Indigenous peacemaking and could profit from embracing the difference of peace(s).
Downloads
References
Abu-Lughod, Leila. 2002. "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological
Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others." American Anthropologist 104 (3):
-790.
Ahearn, Laura M. 2001. "Language and agency." Annual Review of Anthropology 30
(1): 109-137.
Aronoff, Myron and Jan Kubik 2012. Anthropology and Political Science: A
Convergent Approach. New York: Berghahn.
Artmeladze, Nino. 2022. “Rotsa Mshoblis Koneba Bichs Rcheba” [Georgian: When
the Parent’s Property Goes to the Boy]. https://batumelebi.netgazeti.ge/news/445745/
(accessed 4 September 2025).
Autesserre, Séverine. 2017. “International Peacebuilding and Local Success:
Assumptions and Effectiveness.” International Studies Review 19 (1): 114–132.
Bargués-Pedreny, Pol, and Xavier Mathieu. 2018. “Beyond Silence, Obstacle and
Stigma: Revisiting the ‘Problem’ of Difference in Peacebuilding.” Journal of
Intervention and Statebuilding 12 (3): 283–299.
Bargués-Pedreny, Pol. 2020. ‘Resilience Is “Always More” than Our Practices: Limits,
Critiques, and Skepticism about International Intervention’, Contemporary Security
Policy 41 (2): 263–286.
Behr, Hartmut. 2018. “Peace-in-difference: A Phenomenological Approach to Peace
through Difference.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 12 (3): 335–351.
Beyer, Judith and Peter Finke. 2019. “Practices of traditionalization in Central Asia.”
Central Asian Survey 38 (3): 310-328.
Beyer, Judith, and Felix Gierke. 2015. “Practicing Harmony Ideology. Ethnographic
Reflections on Community and Coercion.” Common Knowledge 21 (2): 196–235.
Boulding, Elise. 2000. Cultures of Peace. The Hidden Side of History. Syracuse:
University Press.
Bräuchler, Birgit, and Philipp Naucke. 2017. “Peacebuilding and Conceptualizations
of the Local.” Social Anthropology 25 (4): 422–436.
Brigg, Morgan. 2016. “Relational Peacebuilding: Promise beyond Crisis”, in
Peacebuilding beyond Crisis: Rethinking Paradigms and Practices of Transnational
Cooperation, edited by Tobias Debiel, Thomas Held and Ulrich Schneckener, 56–69.
New York: Routledge.
Brigg, Morgan, and Polly O. Walker. 2022. “Indigenous Approaches to Peace.” In The
Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, edited by Oliver P. Richmond,
and Gezim Visoka, 594–600. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brunner, Claudia. 2021. “Conceptualizing Epistemic Violence: An Interdisciplinary
Assemblage for IR.” International Politics Reviews 9: 193–212.
Byulegenova, Bibigul et al. 2024. “Nepotism in Post-Soviet States: The Quantitative
Assessment on Socio-Demographic Factors and the Corruption Perceptions Index.”
Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 11 (1): 96-118.
Collins, Patricia, Hill. 2019. The difference that power makes: Intersectionality and
participatory democracy. In The Palgrave handbook of intersectionality in public
policy, 167-192. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Crenshaw, Kimberle W. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 1: 139-167.
Darchiashvili, Mariam. 2025. “Everyday Peace Formation from Below in Rural
Georgia”. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (online first): 1–21.
Geertz, Clifford. 2008. Thick description. Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture.
London: Routledge.
Ismailbekova, Aksana and Nick Megoran. 2020. "Peace in the Family is the Basis of
Peace in the Country: How Women Contribute to Local Peace in Southern
Kyrgyzstan." Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 14 (4): 483-500.
Ismailbekova, Aksana. 2024. “Tandem politics and kusturizatsia: Power and money in
contemporary Kyrgyzstan.” Anthropology today 40 (6): 11-14.
Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender & Society 2 (3): 274-
Kiknadze, Zurab. 1996. “The Cross and His People, Part 4”, in Georgian Mythology.
Transactions of the Gelati Academy of Sciences, Series of Folklore and Mythology, 1.
Kutaisi: Gelati Academy of Sciences.
Kluczewska, Karolina and Laura Luciani. 2025. "Framing feminism in Eurasia:
bottom-up strategies of depoliticisation and repoliticisation." European Journal of
Politics and Gender, 1-25.
Korosteleva, Elena A. and Irina Petrova. 2022. “What makes communities resilient in
times of complexity and change?” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 35 (2):
-157.
Kreikemeyer, Anna. 2025. ‘The Marginalization of Traditional and Indigenous
Peacemaking in the Post-liberal Debate’, Journal of intervention and Statebuilding,
(2), pp. 161-181.
Kreikemeyer, Anna, Mariam Darchiashvili and Arzuu Sheranova. 2026. “Societal
peacemaking in customary contexts in Central Eurasia”, Peacebuilding, online first,
-14.
Kubik, Jan. 2009. “Ethnography of Politics: Foundations, applications, prospects”, in:
Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Politics, edited by
Edward Schatz, 25-52. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lazic, Svetlana and Elena B. Stavrevska. 2024. “Peace in Plural: Towards Decolonial
and Feminist Approaches to Peace.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 18 (4):
-385.
Ledeneva, Alena, ed. 2018. The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. Understanding
Social and Cultural Complexity. London: UCL Press.
Lederach, John Paul. 1997. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided
Societies. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Levada, Yuri. 2004. “The Problem of Trust in Russian Public Opinion”, in Trust and
Democratic Transition in Post-Communist Europe, edited by Irina Markova, 157-172.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, David. 2016. “Central Asia: Contested Peace”, in The Palgrave Handbook of
Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace, edited by Sandra Pogodda, Oliver
P. Richmond, and Jasmin Ramovic, 387-397. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mac Ginty, Roger. 2014. “Everyday Peace: Bottom-up and Local Agency in ConflictAffected Societies.” Security Dialogue 45 (6): 548–564.
Mannergren Selimovic, Johanna. 2020. "Gendered silences in post-conflict societies:
a typology." Peacebuilding 8 (1): 1-15.
Millar, Gearoid. 2014. “Disaggregating hybridity: Why hybrid institutions do not
produce predictable experiences of peace.” Journal of Peace Research 51 (4): 501-
Millar, Gearoid. 2018. Ethnographic Peace Research: Approaches and Tensions.
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Millar, Gearoid. 2020. “Preserving the everyday: Pre-political agency in peacebuilding
theory.” Cooperation and Conflict 55 (3): 310-325.
Mostowlansky, Till. 2013. “The state starts from the family: Peace and Harmony in the
Eastern Pamirs.” Central Asian Survey 32 (4): 462–474.
Motlafi, Nompumelo. 2021. "Silencing and Voicing the Subaltern," in Routledge
Handbook of Feminist Peace Research, edited by Tarja Väyrynen, Swati Parashar,
Elise Féron, and Catia Confortini, 178-186, London: Routledge.
Petersen, Tove. 2021. “Feminist care ethics: contributions to peace theory”, in
Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research, edited by Tarja Väyrynen, Swati
Parashar, Elise Féron, and Catia Confortini, 28-39, London: Routledge.
Pia, Emily. 2013. “Narrative therapy and peacebuilding.” Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding 7 (4): 476-491.
Richmond, Oliver. 2011. A Post-Liberal Peace. London: Routledge.
Robinson, Fiona. 2011. The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security.
Philadelphia Temple University Press.
Ruddick, Sara. 1990. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. New York:
Ballantine Books.
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance:
Yale University Press.
Sheranova Arzuu. 2020. “Chernaya kassa (Kyrgyzstan)“. Global In-formality Project,
available at: https://www.informality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chernaya_kassa_(Kyrgyzstan) (accessed 29
January 2026).
Sheranova, Arzuu. 2026. ‘Ethnographic Studies of Everyday Situated Peace between
Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh Bazaars and Workplaces’. Central Asian Affairs.
Sneath, David. 1993. “Social relations, networks and social organisation in postsocialist rural Mongolia.” Nomadic Peoples, 193–207.
Söderström, Johanna, Åkebo, Malin and Jarstad, Anna K. 2021. „Friends, fellows,
and foes: A new framework for studying relational peace.” International Studies
Review 23 (3): 484-508.
Stephan-Emmrich, Manja and Philip Schröder. 2018. Mobilities, Boundaries, and
Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Trans-locality beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus,
Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
Tuhiway Smith, Linda. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples. London: Zed Books.
United Nations Women. 2025.Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en (accessed
January 2026).
Väyrynen, Tarya. 2019. "Mundane peace and the politics of vulnerability: a nonsolid
feminist research agenda." Peacebuilding 7 (2): 146-159.
Wedeen, Lisa. 2010. “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science.” Annual
Review of Political Science 13: 255-272.
Ziemer, Ulrike. 2020. "Introduction: Women’s Everyday Lives in the South Caucasus,"
in Women's Everyday Lives in War and Peace in the South Caucasus, edited by Ulrike
Ziemer, 1-19. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Ziemer, U. and Roberts, Sean P. 2024. "Populist political masculinities, gender
equality, and norm contestation in Armenia and Georgia." International Feminist
Journal of Politics 26 (4): 788-811.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. Anna Kreikemeyer, Mariam Darchiashvili, Arzuu Sheranova (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation .
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
How to Cite
Plaudit
