Gefördert von DAAD-UCA (German Academic Exchange Service & University of Central Asia)

1. Arbeitstitel: Between Development, Soviet Science and Traditional Healing: An Ethnography of Childhood and Health in Kyrgyzstan

2. Projektbetreuer: Prof. Dr. Roland Hardenberg, Prof. Dr. Gabriele Alex

3. Laufzeit: 10/11-09/14

4. Projektbeschreibung: My research deals with the question how childhood and child health are understood in Kyrgyzstan. This project is based on my MSc dissertation which examined the concept of child well-being cross-culturally. LeVine and New (2008) note that most studies on child development have been dedicated to children in North America, Europe and other Western countries, which form only 10 percent of all children in the world. I chose Kyrgyzstan not only because it is a non-Western country, but also because of its historical background and cultural diversity. The ideas Kyrgyz people hold about child health are highly diverse, hybrid and even contradictory. Enormous cultural, political and economic changes occurred within the last one and half centuries that have affected people's philosophy of child development and child health. This philosophy includes “shamanic” practices mixed with popular Islam, Soviet medical science, demodernization and the revival of traditional healing practices in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Key questions that I want to consider are: (i) What do Kyrgyz family members understand by a child and who is responsible for children's well-being? (ii) What do local and international institutions understand by child health? And how do they estimate Kyrgyz traditional knowledge and practices in terms of raising a child? (iii) If the concept of child health is different among the aforementioned agents, then what challenges the development of child health in Kyrgyzstan and what effect does this discrepancy have on child development?