-ideologies in KG and TJ are soviet legacy
-no distinction between citizen and ethnicity
Analysis was rather basic. She definitely writes better than speaks (in terms of lecturing).
It was more interesting to see very old struggle between Soviet vs. West battle on the floor, when Nur Omarov, self-proclaimed Kyrgyz political scientist basically criticized every aspect of the her presentation and the whole lecture turned into a talk show.
There she is, in case you were wondering how she looks:
9 comments:
Dear bishkek-presentation,
I also appreciate your comemnent.
With all my due respect for you, I cannot fulfill your request. This is my personal blog and I post what I want, including the picture, which I made myself.
Thank you for raising this issue on yet another "tabloid researcher". I've read some of her comments for Jamestown, and I am stunned that they pass it for an analysis... It is just compilation and translation of Russian-language news into English... I hope, very much, that there will be other solid and competent analysts on Central Asia apart from Erica Marat...I am happy that Nur Omarvo challenged her shallow analysis.
Well, I believe most of the so-called Central Asian scholar "exercise" a monopoly in some analytical institutions of the West. Though I have never met Erica Marat I have been following her publications. The previous comment was right on stating that her most articles are compilation and translations from russian-language sources which can not be presented by local experts due to lack of knowledge of appropriate English. (Actually some Central Asian local analysts who acquire some knowledge of English do the smae here on the ground. Being fluent in English, french and Russian, I have been very frequent witness of such "plagiarism". unfortunately, it causes only repetition of known facts.) As for speaking ability of Erica Marat, i am very surprized!!! As far as I know from our common friend she has been living in the US for a sufficient length of time. Moroever as far as I learned her mother Anara Tabyshalieva is also kinda "expert" in SAIS CACI, and her dad works for WorldBank in Washington DC. I dare to predict this is a real reason of her being a "tabloid researcher" and if she writes English well, most of us are aware how it works: works are edited and corrected by hired editors. Despite all these factors which prompted negative impression of Erica Marat, I think she is a hard worker if to consider her pace at producing different kinds of papers, releases, articles, etc. We shall then praise her for her productivity if certainly they were produced by herself (without help of her well-experienced mom)these are all only assumptions basedon details from relying sources. I hope there will be more experts on Central Asia who do a real analysis and contribute to regional development, but just do not inform western agencies of developments in the region relying on press and internet sources.. Good luck to all..
She got a PhD from "the Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen". No offence but it's like getting a PhD from the Limpopo University? What I'm trying to say that apparently the entry level to this kind of dogdy universities is very low and the viva I presume is not vigorous. This in turn leads to the emergence of such bill-board half-done PhD as Erica Marat.
but what annoyes me is a sense of arrogance she has (as if she holds all the truth available in the world on central asia). moreover, the tragedy is that these types of scholars represent and misrepresent central asian scholarship due to their english writing skills. another tragedy is the western audience which listens to her presentations in conferences with awe - with their jaws wide and low - discovering great knolwedge or misrepresentation of it....
These posts on this blog are somewhat of a mystery to me. Here you are, a bunch of guys on a blog, sharing random and mainly negative thoughts and speculations about a young woman from your own country who has been able to succeed in what you guys probably only dreamed you would - and posts that have no connection with reality. Don't you even realize that your jealousy is reeking through your postings? You can't imagine how it happened that she managed to get accepted as an analyst in rather prestigious western institutions and someone that people listen to, and you did not. So you have to try to demean her university, although Bremen is pretty well-ranked in Europe, and you try to conjure things like her mother writes her articles for her, without even noticing that her articles are a lot more serious than her mother's? Come on, guys, you're really making fools out of yourselves. Get a life.
She works for Voice of America. Journalist-Freedom-Fighters often make not very sound researchers but that get good soundbites on the press. A bit like Rebecca MacKinnon when speaking about the Chinese Internet.
@ August 26, 2009
One needs no ulterior motives to find fault with Ms. Marat's work as a scholar and researcher -- only a critical and analytical eye. Recently some Western observers have looked to her to analyze and explain the June 2010 events in southern Kyrgyzstan. And consistent with the criticisms lodged by the other commenters below, Ms. Marat's analysis has been dominated by shallow retellings of Kyrgyz and Russian news stories. Anyone familiar with the current state of journalism in Kyrgyzstan should immediately see the dangers in such a practice. Since June Kyrgyz media reports have been increasingly nationalistic in their treatment of the pogroms - simply aiming to downplay Kyrgyz responsibility/involvement in the killings, despite what neutral international observers report. In recent articles, Ms. Marat shamelessly recycles this dangerous viewpoint, with little to offer in the way of deep, principled, unbiased analysis.
I agree with the other commenters who wish that the Western policy community would see Ms. Marat for the sophomoric grad school analyst that she is.
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