February 2008

Noor O’Neill Borbieva

Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow

University of Notre Dame

"Religious Practice and the Development Sector in the Kyrgyz Republic"

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
12:30 pm - C103 Hesburgh Center

Abstract

From grant programs that promote religious tolerance to exchange programs that send religious leaders to the United States, the United States is deeply involved in religious life in the Kyrgyz Republic. It has several motives for getting involved. First, it sees this involvement as consistent with its support of what I call the democracy complex, a collection of ideologies associated with the west, such as democracy, capitalism, and human rights. Second, this involvement has a political motive, which is creating ties with local religious leaders, especially Muslim leaders, and promoting an image of the United States as a diverse and tolerant society. By fostering a generation of moderate Muslim leaders with pro-American sympathies, United States leaders hope to nurture a compelling and visible alternative to the extremist Islam that is popular in many regions of the country.

My paper will be an ethnographic look at how the American development sector positions itself vis-à-vis religious groups in the Kyrgyz Republic. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in the Kyrgyz Republic (2003–05), I will describe American support to new Protestant groups and to moderate Islamic leaders. I will show how the US government’s aggressive dedication to secularism and freedom of conscience often conflicts with local convictions about faith and development. This analysis of the political and ideological subtexts informing US involvement in Kyrgyz religious life will add to important conversations about the politics of secularism and about transnational religious movements.

Biography

Noor O’Neill Borbieva is an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion, post-socialist studies, and Islamic studies. Her research focuses on the conflict that arises when foreigners bring new ideologies into local communities in the Kyrgyz Republic. She is a Kellogg visiting fellow for the spring and fall semesters of 2008.

Borbieva’s project, “Development in the Kyrgyz Republic: Exchange, Communal Networks, and the Foreign Presence,” is based on fieldwork she did in the Kyrgyz Republic (2003–05). In a series of articles, she will examine the impact of nation building on women’s roles and religious practice, competing interpretations of the secular/religious binary, and encounters between the international development sector and Central Asian communities.

Borbieva is the recipient of a Harvard University Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship, a Fulbright Student Fellowship, and two Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships to study Uzbek. She holds a PhD from Harvard University.