Deniz Kandiyoti is Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is the author of Concubines, Sisters and Citizens: Identities and Social Transformation (1997 in Turkish ) the editor of Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (2002), Gendering the Middle East (1996) , Women, Islam and the State (1991) and numerous articles on gender, Islam, development and state policies. She is the founding Chair of the Center of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus (2001-2004) at SOAS and editor of the journal Central Asian Survey.

Recent articles

War and mismanagement have produced a breakdown of trust, decency and reciprocity in Afghan society. Gender activism needs to be understood in that context, and not be tempted by crude cultural determinism.

The massacre in eastern Uzbekistan is rooted in the impact of the country’s post-Soviet economic collapse on its citizens. Deniz Kandiyoti, drawing on her Fergana valley fieldwork in the late 1990s, maps the road to tragedy.

(This article was first published on 20 May 2005)

Werner Schiffauer’s intimate study of the politics of a Turkish Islamic community in Germany was part of the Europe and Islam series of talks. At London’s Goethe Institute in July, Werner Schiffauer and Deniz Kandiyoti discussed with the audience the prospects for ‘reformation’ in Islam, the relation between citizenship and diaspora politics in Germany and Britain, and the consequences for democracy of educational and generational change in Muslim communities.