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In the first part of this thesis, I present my methodological and epistemological positioning and my theoretical argument on post-liberal statebuilding in Central Asia. In Chapter II, I review debates in peace and conflict studies as to their methodological and epistemological shortcomings, which I try to address. I provide an outline of the critique which critical peacebuilding scholarship, despite its valuable critique of the hegemony of the ‘liberal peace’, faced for failing to substantially engage with the societies subject to ‘liberal peace’

interventions, and for not grasping the systemic nature of peace- and statebuilding interventions as a tool of stabilisation of an inherently unequal and exclusionary capitalist-imperial order. Next, I survey the reception of sociological and ethnographic/anthropological approaches in peace and conflict studies and show how these syntheses reproduce, contra the assumption of critical peacebuilding scholarship, the exclusion of voices of the ‘intervened upon’ as well as the academic-scientific approach of the field. In then show how, based on recent contributions in practice theory, participatory and activist research, it is possible to overcome these limitations by forging a practice-based and cooperative approach to inquiry.

Chapter III presents the analytical framework and theoretical contributions to peace, conflict and intervention studies. I start by situating the framework in debates on the concept of post-liberalism, emphasising the key idea being that the global shift from liberal to post- liberal forms of governance and statebuilding has brought about a gravitation of social life towards entrenched governmentality (rather than emancipation). As a counter-part to governmentality, I develop the concept of decoloniality as a form of being, knowing and acting which allows more critical and fundamental reflection than concepts like ‘emancipation’ and its underlying Enlightenment episteme that informs most peace, conflict and intervention research. Furthermore, I introduce the social imaginary, which I understand to be a vehicle structuring statebuilding processes by linking discourses and practices in the empirical realm with understandings and ideational frameworks situated in the metaphysical realm. To set a basis for the empirical analysis, I review literature on community security and show how studying processes and practices in this domain can foreground critical insights into post-liberal forms of peace- and statebuilding and social ordering.

Chapter IV is the first of four analytical chapters on processes of statebuilding in Kyrgyzstan and is based on a review of academic literature and journalistic material that help to identify the key imaginaries and discourses of statebuilding in this country. After giving a

brief overview of Kyrgyzstan’s history since independence from the Soviet Union, I present the three imaginaries of statebuilding and their constitutive discourses (four per imaginary) which emanate from my analysis. First, I show how a Western ‘liberal peace’ imaginary is rooted both in the concept of ‘imaginary West’, (Yurchak 2006), and in teleological notions of capitalist liberal-democratic modernity and ‘liberal peace’. Next is the imaginary of ‘politics of sovereignty’ (based on Gullette and Heathershaw 2015): I discuss how actors may be compelled to assert the sovereignty and independence of their country and its people (variously defined) through discourses such as the ‘bad West’ and ethno-national belonging, while discourses of Soviet modernity and anti-colonialism/imperialism present less confrontational and violence- prone materialisations. Finally, I show how an imaginary of ‘tradition and culture’ links understandings of social order with ancestral traditions, historical heritage and spirituality, which foreground forms of communal life and social resilience that can both affirm and challenge modern forms of social organisation and ‘politics of sovereignty’.

In chapter V, I introduce the reader into the context of community security and local government in Kyrgyzstan and present my analysis of the work of Local Crime Prevention Centres (LCPCs) in southern Kyrgyzstan. I begin with a brief overview of the changes that the country underwent since the Soviet period: given the ‘new’ ‘market realities’ people found themselves struggling with since the 1990s, some of the Soviet era social and administrative institutions substantially ceased to exist, but were also often sustained by the tireless efforts of few ‘responsible’ and capable individuals. Local Crime Prevention Centres, created by a 2008 law, are bodies tasked with the coordination of the Soviet and ‘traditional’ socio-institutional architecture, ideally with the help of international funding. Based on a cooperative research into the activities of LCPCs, I show how these make crucial contributions to community life and public security. I also show how the changes, dialogue and ‘boundary work’ brought about by LCPCs are highly conditional on local administrations’ and other actors’ cooperation and

might, if the latter are lacking, take on an unsustainable and performative character, as in the case of peacebuilding based on the Soviet idea of ‘people’s friendship’. In the final section, I discuss how LCPCs’ practices and discourses are often positioned cooperatively vis-à-vis ‘liberal peace’ actors and drawing on corresponding human rights and democratic framings, but, simultaneously, often enact a ‘politics of sovereignty’ that super-ordinates state security interests over post-conflict justice and trans-communal outreach.

In chapter VI, I analyse a recent initiative that sought to promote peace and tolerance among youth in Osh and other cities: ‘Territorial Youth Councils’ (TYCs) were founded as a body for communal outreach in the aftermath of violent clashes in and around Osh and other cities in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. After reviewing its institutional history, I discuss how the Osh mayor’s administration (meriia) adopted this institution into its own structure in order to promote peace, tolerance and security through contributions of local youth. My empirical analysis gives insight into the range of activities geared towards this goal, specifically how they reproduce ‘people’s friendship’ and traditionalist discourses on social order while allowing for opinions and forms of expression situated in the Western ‘liberal peace’ imaginary. I further show how both TYCs promote ideas of self-help, self-improvement, and self-realisation that resonate with concepts of entrepreneurial subjecthood and individual responsibilisation. While TYCs thus seem to be limited to more momentous and pragmatic ways of tackling the problems and challenges of youth in Kyrgyzstan, I show that other initiatives are underway which try to voice more fundamental concerns in the national arena. In conclusion, I discuss how the different approaches and activities of young activists draw on the imaginaries and discourses of statebuilding in ways that approximate decoloniality, but rarely significantly enough to pose an alternative to overarching trajectories of neo-liberal market governmentality in southern Kyrgyzstan.

In the final empirical chapter VII, I examine the work of the Civic Union ‘For Reforms and Result’, a national level NGO network which promotes an alternative approach to police reform both through national level lobbying and work in local communities. In a first step, I conceptualise the organisation’s emergence and its aim of promoting human security against the usually paramount agenda of national security. Second, I review the activists’ confrontations and exchanges with the Ministry of Interior Affairs (MIA), presidential administration and different Inter-Governmental Organisations and INGOs from a sociological perspective to indicate the ‘boundary work’ done and barriers faced by the activists. In the third section, I present my field work from community security working groups to analyse the cooperative security approach promoted by the organisation, which espouses the idea that security is most effectively produced in a joint effort of local government/administration, law enforcement, civil society and population. Despite its significant contribution, cooperative security exhibits important limits in that community security working groups tend to not take into account the complex nature of security threats and often define problems and associated actors or groups in a way that essentialises, and possibly excludes, different individuals or groups within a community. In concluding this chapter, I show how the examined community security practices, if not combined with more holistic and national level policy making, are liable to give rise to trajectories of post-conflict governmentality and how the persistent hampering of more fundamental national level reform presents a materialisation of post-liberal statebuilding.

In the Conclusion, I first summarise the key findings from the three empirical chapters and map the different community security practices within the framework of imaginaries of statebuilding. Next, I return to the initial research objectives and discuss how the thesis has addressed them, namely the question about imaginaries of statebuilding, the way they shape – and become reproduced and shaped by – community security practices, how specific ‘local

actors’ reproduce and challenge post-liberal statebuilding trajectories and, finally, how the latter entrench governmentality effects of this trend or indicate possibilities of working towards decoloniality. I link the latter two points back into the discussion on post-liberalism and its implications for re-thinking established concepts of democracy, authoritarianism and knowledge/facticity. I also show how my practice-based, dialogical research approach is useful in uncovering and tracing the processes of construction, contestation and change in post-liberal statebuilding processes, and what steps can be taken in future research to generate substantive insights into peace, conflict and intervention in Central Asia and beyond.