Navigating the safety implications of doing research and being researched in Kyrgyzstan: cooperation, networks and framing

Bekmurzaev, Nurbek; Lottholz, Philipp; Meyer, Josua P.

doi:10.4324/9780429024023-12

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Going through the bureaucracy of higher education institutions would take longer time and might have safety implications for a local scholar. Getting access to data in Central Asia is highly challenging for researchers, and might attract attention from national security bodies (Bekmurzaev et al, 2018; Gentile, 2013; Koch, 2013). Collecting data directly from each selected institutions’ web-site would more accurately represent the quality of their MPA programmes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Administration Academies in Central Asia: ‘Government puppets’ or independent seats of learning?

Janenova¹

2019

Teaching Public Administration

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This article provides a critical analysis of the development of public administration education in the context of five post-Soviet, transitional, and authoritarian Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan from early independence to the present time (1991–2019). The study is based on a review of Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes offered by Public Administration Academies in each of these five Central Asian countries, a focus group with local academics, extensive secondary data analysis, and critical reflections of a local scholar with six years of MPA teaching experience in a Kazakhstani university. This article highlights context-specific challenges in design and implementation of the MPA programmes in Central Asia. These challenges include the: ambiguous role of Public Administration Academies; programme design; pedagogical issues; and weak research capacity. It is argued that the MPA programmes in Central Asia often provide an example of ‘mimicry’ of European/North American programmes with peculiar features of their local context. Public Administration Academies in Central Asia are highly politicised and strongly controlled by authoritarian governments. This study will be of particular interest not only to public administration scholars from all post-Soviet countries which share the Soviet legacy and socio-economic challenges, but also for scholars teaching in other authoritarian contexts.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Administration Academies in Central Asia: ‘Government puppets’ or independent seats of learning?

Janenova¹

2019

Teaching Public Administration

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“…The third covert research technique refers to the abovementioned 'flexible' approach of framing and communicating the goals and outputs of one's research depending on the audience. As argued by Bekmurzaev et al (2018), framing one's research in a particular manner is important to secure and maintain access to the people and sites in question. The fact that this often implies disclosure of only selective information on a given research project vis-a-vis research participants requires critical reflection about the possible implications of this information asymmetry.…”

Section: Commonly Acceptable Covert Research Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To face these challenges, researchers often feel pushed to settle for 'groundbreaking', and not rarely 'sensitive' research topics, adopting certain angles and data collection techniques to obtain field data. In the specific case of Central Asian studies, Bekmurzaev et al (2018) observe a tendency to use framings that are 'politically provocative, if not exerting epistemic violence upon research subjects' (see also Reeves, 2005Reeves, , 2014. This might be caused by a scarcity of research funding allocated for research on this region by Western funding bodies and universities.…”

Section: Western and Western-centric Knowledge Production Pushing Into Covertnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But reproducing dominant Western-centric narratives also exhibits them to the aforementioned problems of access and safety. Furthermore, given that Western universities are generally preoccupied with managing or minimizing risk during fieldwork through standard insurance frameworks (see Bekmurzaev et al, 2018), but are rarely actively helping researchers to reflect on and appropriately prepare for their fieldwork, the latter are often forced to navigate fieldwork challenges on their own and might feel pressured to make use of covert techniques. Below we demonstrate how these constraints have materialized in Central Asian studies.…”

Section: Western and Western-centric Knowledge Production Pushing Into Covertnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recognizing the never quite absent: de facto usage, ethical issues, and applications of covert research in difficult research contexts

Kluczewska

Lottholz

2021

Qualitative Research

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This article scrutinizes and reconceptualizes covert research in social science. Surveying recent literature about this research method, we reflect on the ethical and safety implications stemming from the widespread, even if well-intended, lack of transparency characterizing many research projects, especially ones conducted in difficult research contexts. While the standard definition of covert research holds that researchers deliberately do not declare to research subjects that academic research is taking place, we argue that the remoteness of Western academia from most researched contexts often a priori renders field research at least partially covert, irrespective of the researcher’s intentions. This is because its aims, utility, and expected outputs are hard to understand for research participants unrelated to academia. We illustrate this argument by analyzing our own fieldwork experiences in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to critically reflect on the de facto use of covert techniques by social researchers.

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“…In authoritarian regimes, the possibility of repressions also fosters self-censorship within the mass media and in social media (Alexanyan et al, 2012; Bekmurzaev, Lottholz, & Meyer, 2018; Malthaner, 2014; Roberts, 2013; Shklovski & Valtysson, 2012). Accordingly, all forms of content and discourse analysis might include self-censored and actually censored forms of expression.…”

Section: Problems Of Data Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transparency and quality assessment of research data in post-Soviet area studies: The potential of an interactive online platform

Heinrich

Herrmann

Pleines

2019

Journal of Eurasian Studies

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The social sciences are increasingly addressing the quality of research data and debating ways to improve data transparency, that is, the availability of original research data to corroborate claims made in academic publications. This article offers a systematic discussion of related problems and challenges with the example of post-Soviet area studies. It goes on to examine ways to improve data transparency. Although the Internet has a huge potential for linking research with resulting publications and underlying data as well as for organizing a collective discussion around the research, current data repositories do not truly go beyond basic upload and download functions for datasets. With the example of the Discuss Data project, this article gives an overview of more elaborated features that can easily be implemented to improve the visibility and quality assessment of data collections. Finally, it discusses ethical concerns about data transparency related to privacy protection and copyrights.

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Navigating the safety implications of doing research and being researched in Kyrgyzstan: cooperation, networks and framing

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Public Administration Academies in Central Asia: ‘Government puppets’ or independent seats of learning?

Public Administration Academies in Central Asia: ‘Government puppets’ or independent seats of learning?

Recognizing the never quite absent: de facto usage, ethical issues, and applications of covert research in difficult research contexts

Transparency and quality assessment of research data in post-Soviet area studies: The potential of an interactive online platform

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