Mapping the Mismatch - Bride Abduction in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan and the Disconnect Between Local Realities and Aid Organization Framing

Abstract: Bride abduction in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is a human rights and gender equality issue that continues to exist despite national and international efforts to end it. This bachelor thesis explores Kyrgyz bride abduction as a mismatch or disconnect between local realities and top- down aid practice. It pursues this aim in three steps using a qualitative mixed-methods approach. Firstly, the thesis conducts a literature review of key academic articles to identify and discuss local functions of bride abduction. Secondly, it uses a discourse analysis of website entries by international aid organizations to understand how these organizations frame bride abduction online. For these first two steps, local functions and framing build the theoretical framework. The third step compares the results of the literature review and the discourse analysis, using the theoretical concepts of complexity and decoupling to discuss them in relation to each other. During this final step, the thesis outlines in how far, if so, the observed mismatch between local realities and aid organization framing of bride abduction exists. The thesis finds that local functions of bride abduction are complex and that framing by international aid organizations fails to recognize this complexity. It establishes a disconnect between local realities of bride abduction and aid organization framing. However, this mismatch cannot be conceptualized as a decoupling as per Meyer’s World Society Theory, as further research would be needed.