OBIYA Chika

obiya cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Research Departments・Position

Social Coexistence・Associate Professor

Area

Modern History of Central Asia, Central Asian Area Studies

Research Interests / Keywords

・Aspects of Soviet-Socialist Modernization in Central Asia
・Nationalism in Uzbekistan
・History of Compilation and Database Building of Turkistan Collection (Turkestanskii sbornik)


Overview

In recent years I have been interested in questions of Islam and gender, especially in discourses and images about Islamic veil in Uzbekistan, which I examined in today’s context, then back to the past in Soviet and Imperial Russia’s contexts. These researches give me an idea that there are historical continuation and reproduction of so-called colonial dichotomy that made women’s veil a marker indicating Others for exclusion or indicating “bad” custom and culture, and that we can find the very old, but also new problems in the context of Islam gender and family in today’s Central Asia.

Through this, I came to notice that these questions in Central Asia rise in the arena where post-socialist transformation, Islamic revivalism and political authoritarianism interplay, and it requires rethinking about modernity in today’s context.

In such a perspective, I organize a research unit at CIRAS entitled “Gender, Family and Modernity in Post-socialist Muslim World” (2017-2018FY) to compare cases including other ex-socialist Muslim regions. Further in this project, I intend to discuss some common topics such as veil question or migrant question between ex-socialist and non-socialist regions, which is coming true in collaboration with B01 group of Grant-in-Aid Scientific Research for Innovated Areas “Relational Studies on Global Crisis.”

Research funds

Type Theme Period
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) Cross-Regional Study of Public Morality, Violence and Ruling Authority in Modern Muslim Society 2018 – 2020
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a proposed research area) Norms and Identity 2016 – 2020
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a proposed research area) Establishing a New Paradigm of Social/ Human Sciences based on Relational Studies: in order to Overcome Contemporary Global Crises 2016 – 2020