ABSTRACT
This landmark book provides a comprehensive anthropological introduction to contemporary Central Asia. Established and emerging scholars of the region critically interrogate the idea of a ‘Central Asian World’ at the intersection of post-Soviet, Persianate, East and South Asian worlds. Encompassing chapters on life between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang, this volume situates the social, political, economic, ecological and ritual diversity of Central Asia in historical context. The book ethnographically explores key areas such as the growth of Islamic finance, the remaking of urban and sacred spaces, as well as decolonising and queering approaches to Central Asia. The volume’s discussion of More-than-Human Worlds, Everyday Economies, Material Culture, Migration and Statehood engages core analytical concerns such as globalisation, inequality and postcolonialism. Far more than a survey of a ‘world region’, the volume illuminates how people in Central Asia make a life at the intersection of diverse cross-cutting currents and flows of knowledge. In so doing, it stakes out the contribution of an anthropology of and from Central Asia to broader debates within contemporary anthropology.
This is an essential reference for anthropologists as well as for scholars from other disciplines with a focus on Central Asia.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|95 pages
Reverberating Legacies
chapter Chapter Two|18 pages
Ethnogenesis Through the Lens of Soviet Ethnography
chapter Chapter Five|14 pages
Struggling to interpret Islam in Central Asia
chapter Chapter Six|14 pages
Decolonizing ‘the field' in the anthropology of Central Asia
part II|92 pages
Solidarity and Struggle
chapter Chapter Nine|14 pages
The Dvor and urban communities
chapter Chapter Ten|15 pages
Fighting back
chapter Chapter Twelve|15 pages
Daughters as Ojiza
part III|62 pages
Care and Interdependence
chapter Chapter fourteen|13 pages
Theorizing Central Asian neighbourhoods as social interdependence, state encounter, and narrative
chapter Chapter Fifteen|15 pages
Life and death in the margins
chapter Chapter Sixteen|16 pages
Bargaining over care and control
chapter Chapter Seventeen|14 pages
Outsourcing domestic care
part IV|82 pages
Navigating the State
chapter Chapter Eighteen|15 pages
Ethnicising infrastructure
chapter Chapter Nineteen|18 pages
Language choices, future imaginaries, and the lived hierarchy of languages in post-industrial Tajikistan
chapter Chapter Twenty-one|16 pages
Before the law
part V|57 pages
Persons, Healing, and More-than-Human Worlds
chapter Chapter Twenty-five|13 pages
Drunkenness and authority between animal and human worlds
chapter Chapter Twenty-six|14 pages
Healing with spirits
part VI|56 pages
Ethical Repertoires
chapter Chapter Twenty-seven|13 pages
Legal pluralism in Central Asia
chapter Chapter Twenty-nine|12 pages
Mobile livelihoods of Kyrgyz Tablighi Jamaat
chapter Chapter Thirty|17 pages
The value of a dead miner
part VII|81 pages
Everyday Moral Economies
chapter Chapter Thirty-one|17 pages
Who Owns the (good) land?
chapter Chapter Thiry-three|15 pages
Small-scale gold mining communities in Kyrgyzstan
part VIII|59 pages
Mobility and Migration
chapter Chapter Thirty-six|13 pages
The money of home
chapter Chapter Thirty-seven|17 pages
Gendered worlds and cosmopolitan lives
part IX|95 pages
Material Culture, Performance and Skill
chapter Chapter Forty-one|20 pages
In the blood and through the spirit
chapter Chapter Forty-two|16 pages
The differentiated authenticities of Rishton pottery in Uzbekistan
chapter Chapter Forty-five|15 pages
The Uyghur twelve muqam and the performance of traditional literature
part X|60 pages
Sacred Worlds