Book review: fragile conviction: changing ideological landscapes in urban Kyrgyzstan by Mathijs Pelkmans

In Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan, Mathijs Pelkmans offers an ethnography of everyday life in a former mining town in southern Kyrgyzstan that focuses on the epistemic and existential crises experienced following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how this has led to ephemeral faith in different ideologies and religions within the country. Rooted in the author’s deep understanding of Kyrgyz society, this is a complex, well-structured and nuanced text, finds Julia Sinitsky.