BORN KYRGYZ, RAISED AS RUSSIANS AND BURIED AS ARABS

This book introduces readers to an ethnography about children in post-Soviet
Kyrgyzstan and the values associated with their upbringing from local people’s own
points of view. The author, who conducted her research in Kochkor, a village in northern
Kyrgyzstan, approaches the topic of children and their childhood through the prism of
‘healthy growth’. In the local context, ideas about healthy growth of children are not
limited to their physical, mental or emotional development; it also includes bringing
up ‘culturally educated’ members of society with proper moral values, as well as the
conduct of culturally determined health-related and life-cycle rituals. Discourses on the
healthy development of children are presented through the voices of the people of
Kochkor about Kyrgyz cultural practices, the increasing role of Islam, modernity and
globalisation in Kyrgyzstan and how these dynamics have changed their perceptions of
children and their childhoods. Therefore, this book can also be seen as an ethnographic
study of the social changes in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan that are shaping and re-shaping
the values, worldviews and daily practices of local people.