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Fashioning the nation: Gender and politics of dress in contemporary Kyrgyzstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Mohira Suyarkulova
Mohira Suyarkulova*
Affiliation:
Central Asian Studies Institute, American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic
*
∗Email: suyarkulova_m@auca.kg
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Abstract

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This article investigates gendered nationalist ideologies and their attendant myths and narratives in present-day Kyrgyzstan through an investigation of clothing items and practices. Clothes “speak volumes,” revealing tensions between gendered narratives of nationhood and various interpretations of what “proper” Kyrgyz femininities and masculinities should be. Clothing thus becomes both a sign and a site of the politics of identity, inscribing power relations and individual strategies of Kyrgyz men and women onto their bodies. Individual clothing choices and strategies take place within the general context of discursive struggles over what authentic and appropriate representations of Kyrgyzness should be. Thus, such clothing items as ak kalpak (conical felt hats) and the practice of Muslim women covering their head (hijab) acquire social and political meanings that stand for wider processes of identity contestations in the country.

Keywords

dressKyrgyzstangendernationalismdiscourse
Type
Special Section: Gender and Nation in Post Soviet Central Asia
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 247 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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