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Their Handrahan evidence should be thrown out it was a study of USAID policy in Kyrgyzstan and it only interviewed 2 USAID officials Corrin 03 Gendering Ethnicity: Implications for Democracy Assistance. By Lori Handrahan. London: Routledge, 2002, 262 pp., $85.00 (cloth). DOI: 10.1177/0891243203255629 In assessing the relation of gendered ethnicity to U.S. democracy assistance in Kyrgyzstan, Lori Handrahan considers how gender analysis is implicit in ethnic questions. Handrahan examines whyWestern theoretical understandings of how ethnicity is defined, is created, and operates fail to consider gender. This is also true of democracy studies, so that current US democracy assistance, as demonstrated by the case of Kyrgyzstan has failed to include both gender and ethnicity within its understandings of how societies transit to democracy and, therefore, howthe US may assist this process (p. 2). As promoted byWestern governments, democracy is viewed as the best means of preventing conflict and of promoting peace, global stability, and economic development. The Kyrgyz case was selected as a laboratory by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to prove its success in democracy assistance. Despite USAID reports of success in democracy programming, the U.S. General Accounting Office has expressed strong criticism over USAIDslack of success in providing democracy assistance, particularly with its failure to adequately incorporate gender issues. Kyrgyzstan is ethnically complex, has salient gender divisions, and remains the largest per capita U.S. assistance program in Central Asia.With more than 52 ethnic groups and 3 BOOK REVIEWS 789 Downloaded from gas.sagepub.com at KANSAS STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on February 11, 2012 significant cross-border ethnic communities, Kyrgyzstan is highly prone to conflict. Ethnic questions appear to have significant gender components that are obscured due to gender mainstreaming within both the academy and the development sector. The author uses feminist and gender theory to deconstruct and then reconstruct more complex understandings of the relevance of gender to analyses of the impact of democracy assistance on socio-political processes in ethnically structured communities. She considers four aspects: gender as more important than ethnicity to womens self-identification; mens greater identification with ethnicity and official identities, such as citizenship, than with gender; the different meanings and significance attached to gender by women and men; and womens significant involvement in associations of civil society, while men dominate in official political realms. Handrahan believes that the implications of these results for democracy assistance should fundamentally alter how donors understand ethnic conflict and civil society, especially in relation to the development processes. Handrahan also uses gender analysis as a methodological frame to support field research on howethnicity and democracy assistance, inclusive of gender differences, are perceived by people in Kyrgyzstan. The author is scrupulous in her methodology and implementation of the field research that complements and tests her theoretical arguments. However, the short time frame of three months, coupled with several small samples, makes some of the data thin. The interview survey of rural people in the marketplace using interpreters provides a stronger database than the sample of two community nongovernmental organization (NGO) leaders drawn from a possible 60 responses. Furthermore, the fact that the latter survey on donor response received only two answers from USAID staff suggests that USAID remains an agency suffering from low staff morale and high paranoia, resulting in a closed shop mentality and reputation (p. 158). Arguing that these two responses carry weight due to the high position of the respondents (p. 196) needs further support from the author. Nevertheless, Handrahan is able to argue from her analyses that female gender identity is central to and subject to male ethnic violence. Rejecting male-made ethnic boundaries in favor of gender (female) identity, women are able to reject ethnic conflict. Using a transversal approach and taking Cockburns (1998) study into consideration, the author illustrates how it is through a recognition of the gendered nature of civil society that ethnicity becomes salient for democracy assistance (p. 47). Finally, Handrahan argues that Due to the donor communitys reluctance to apply a GAD [gender and development] analysis to theNGOprofile inKyrgyzstan, the nascent reputation ofwomen as serious players in democratic development risks being ruined in the drive for quantitative over qualitative development indicators. (P. 85) As the female-led NGO sector operates within male-dominated political space and must respond to male-dominated U.S. democracy assistance donors, the unequal position of women severely limits their ability to support gender-sensitive policies and to advance political leadership and human rights for women. This focused study provides much critical analysis of interest to scholars, policy makers, and activists concerned with issues of gendered ethnicity in relation to democracy assistance. Topicality They dont meet and explode limits their solvency author EXPLICITLY intends for support dialogue on gendered processes of democratization to be an expansion of US current difinitions of civil society to include development AND for dialogue on questions of IDENTITY and MEANING independent of CITIZENSHIP Corrin in a book review of Handrahan in 03 Corrin 03 Gendering Ethnicity: Implications for Democracy Assistance. By Lori Handrahan. London: Routledge, 2002, 262 pp., $85.00 (cloth). DOI: 10.1177/0891243203255629The author uses feminist and gender theory to deconstruct and then reconstruct more complex understandings of the relevance of gender to analyses of the impact of democracy assistance on socio-political processes in ethnically structured communities. She considers four aspects: gender as more important than ethnicity to womens self-identification; mens greater identification with ethnicity and official identities, such as citizenship, than with gender; the different meanings and significance attached to gender by women and men; and womens significant involvement in associations of civil society, while men dominate in official political realms. Handrahan believes that the

K-State <Author Name> Summer 2011 <File Name>

implications of these results for democracy assistance should fundamentally alter how donors understand ethnic conflict and civil society, especially in relation to the development processes. Handrahan also uses gender analysis as a methodological frame to support field research on how ethnicity and democracy assistance, inclusive of gender differences, are perceived by people in Kyrgyzstan.