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5 books match the query 'Tajikistan'
Bridging State and Civil Society
Informal Organizations in Tajik/Afghan BadakhshanSuzanne Levi-Sanchez
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Bridging State and Civil Society provides an in-depth study of parts of Central Asia and Afghanistan that remain marginalized from the larger region. As such, the people have developed distinct ways of governing and surviving, sometimes in spite of the state and in part because of informal organizations. Suzanne Levi-Sanchez provides eight case studies, each an independent look at a particular informal organization, but each also part of a larger picture that helps the reader understand the importance and key role that informal organizations play for civil society and the state. Each case explores how informal organizations operate and investigates their structures and interactions with official state institutions, civil society, familial networks, and development organizations. As such, each chapter explores the concepts through a different lens while asking a deceptively simple question: What is the relationship between informal organizations and the state?
Control and Subversion
Gender Relations in TajikistanColette Harris
Pluto Press, 2004
Control and Subversion investigates the relationship of gender to the inner workings of social control, such as exposing ways in which Tajik society threatens men’s masculinity, thereby bringing them to force family members into conformity, irrespective of the suffering this may cause. It examines how masculine and feminine gender characteristics influence personal relationships and explores gender relations at their most intimate – from the secret musings of adolescent girls, through the painful experiences of young men, to the trauma of sexual initiation. Although largely concentrating on contemporary life, the book also discusses historical materials and Soviet influence on Tajik society. Control and Subversion is essential reading for anyone interested in Central Asia, Muslim societies, the lives of Muslim women, or gender in a Muslim context.
Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan
Benjamin Gatling
University of Wisconsin Press, 2018
Gatling demonstrates how Sufis transcend the oppressive religious politics of contemporary Tajikistan by using these forms to inhabit multiple times: the paradoxical present, the Persian sacred past, and the Soviet era. In a world consumed with the supposed political dangers of Islam, Gatling shows the intricate, ground-level ways that Muslim expressive culture intersects with authoritarian politics, not as artful forms of resistance but rather as a means to shape Sufi experiences of the present.
Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan
Locating the Good LifeElena Borisova
University College London, 2024
Tajikistan is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. Moving beyond economistic push-pull narratives about post-Soviet migration, Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan foregrounds the experiences of those who “stay put” in the sending society and struggle to reproduce their moral communities. In this first book-length ethnography of migration in Tajikistan, Elena Borisova examines the role of mobility through historical and cultural ideas about the good life. She demonstrates how mobility becomes entwined with people’s efforts to become good, moral, and modern subjects. Addressing the complex relationship between the economic, imaginative, and moral aspects of (im)mobility, Borisova shows that mass migration from Tajikistan is as much a project of navigating ethical personhood as it is a quest for economic resources.
This book is a beautifully crafted ethnographic account that reveals how transnational regimes and structures of mobility, citizenship, and histories map out in the intimate spheres of the body, the person, and the family. It is a major contribution to contemporary migration research, which is mostly centered on Europe and North America, and to the field of Central Asian studies. Highly readable, it will be of interest to researchers of migration, (im)mobility and citizenship, and to scholars of all disciplines working on Central Asia.
Postcards from Stanland
Journeys in Central AsiaDavid H. Mould
Ohio University Press, 2015
Central Asia has long stood at the crossroads of history. It was the staging ground for the armies of the Mongol Empire, for the nineteenth-century struggle between the Russian and British empires, and for the NATO campaign in Afghanistan. Today, multinationals and nations compete for the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea and for control of the pipelines. Yet “Stanland” is still, to many, a terra incognita, a geographical blank.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, academic and journalist David Mould’s career took him to the region on Fulbright Fellowships and contracts as a media trainer and consultant for UNESCO and USAID, among others. In Postcards from Stanland, he takes readers along with him on his encounters with the people, landscapes, and customs of the diverse countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—he came to love. He talks with teachers, students, politicians, environmental activists, bloggers, cab drivers, merchants, Peace Corps volunteers, and more.
Until now, few books for a nonspecialist readership have been written on the region, and while Mould brings his own considerable expertise to bear on his account—for example, he is one of the few scholars to have conducted research on post-Soviet media in the region—the book is above all a tapestry of place and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the post-Soviet world.