Blood Ties and the Native Son

Aksana Ismailbekova is an affiliated researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

• Foreword: On Native Sons, Fake Brothers, and Big Men / Peter FinkeAcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationList of AcronymsIntroduction: The Native Son and Blood Ties1. Kinship and Patronage in Kyrgyz History2. Scales of Rahim's Kinship: Zooming In and Zooming Out3. "Renewing the Bone": Kinship Categories, Practices and Patronage Networks in Bulak Village 4. The Irony of the Circle of Trust: The Dynamics and Mechanism of Patronage on the Private Farm5. Patronage and Poetics of Democracy6. The Return of the Native Son: The Symbolic Construction of the Election Day7. Rahim's Victory Feast: Political Patronage and Kinship in SolidarityConcluding words: Native son, Democratisation, and Poetics of PatronageGlossary of Local TermsBibliographyIndex

"This book is an important contribution to a growing literature on Central Asian politics and society, and by complicating dominant narratives about the dangers of weak state institutions, Ismailbekova has much to offer to the broader research project on democratisation and clientelism."—Europe-Asia Studies