Ghosts of a different present: spectres of possibility in the lives of older Kyrgyz Muslims

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Central Asian Affairs, 2018

Scholars of Central Asia often view religion and ethno-national identity as being linked: “to be Kyrgyz (or Uzbek, Kazakh, etc.) is to be Muslim.” The specific ways in which the relationship between ethno-national identity and religion is constructed and understood, however, have not been adequately researched. “Being Muslim” is not merely an ethnic marker: it can imply a range of different, perhaps even competing, theologies with different relationships to national identity. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan in 2014, this article investigates the question of what it means to be Kyrgyz and to be Muslim by undertaking a comparative analysis of two Islamic discourses: Kyrgyz ethno-national traditionalism and the normative Maturidi Hanafism promoted by the Kyrgyz state and the religious authorities. What emerges is a portrait of a complex and variegated religious landscape, one in which the meaning of being Kyrgyz and Muslim is continually questioned and renegotiated.

2013

I shall begin by paying respect to the place Jack Goody accords the 'Near East' in his long argument against historical readings which pit the West against the East in Eurasia. Over the years Goody has written anthropological histories of the longue duree concerning institutions, technologies and substances but never wavered in his central opposition to this dichotomy. His output has been daunting. Yet arguments for fundamental difference flourish anew in institutional economics and history. I shall briefly describe both these ideological revivals and the formidable methodological difficulties that history of such a longue duree entails even for Goody. I shall then turn to what is not spoken about in present debates: recent agrarian history, and legal and administrative history, in the glaring light of the present.

Futures, 2005

When the future of Muslims is discussed [4], whether by mullah, political leader, or believer, most tend to resort to the historical memory of the time of the rightly guided caliphs, when the Prophet's principles of moral leadership and shura (deep consultation with the believers) were practiced. It is this pasta living prophet with a geographically bounded state-that remains the vision of the future for many Muslims. In this sense, one can paradoxically argue that Christians were more fortunate that Jesus did not succeed (during his time) in creating a Christian state [1]. The fact that a utopian Christian state never existed allowed room for ideas of future state systems, a notion of progress, and a movement toward a better future. Of course, the religious dimension of this has become the search for the savior-the return of Christ. But by and large, it has been capital coupled with technology in the context of freedom of the individual that has been the driving force in the West. For Muslims, the past attainment of a perfect or near perfect Islamic state and society may not have been the blessing it is often assumed to have been. Social and political 'progress' has focused on returning to the ideal-perfect era. As well, social and technological innovations have become limited as many muslims have tended to make the fundamental error of 'misplaced concretism'. That is, the details of the earlier epoch are re-engineered-the strong warrior male leader, the hijab for women, the battle of good and evil, tribal politics, and other particulars of 7th century life. This period is taken out of history and decontextualized. Instead of focusing on a productive future, concrete dimensions of the past are re-imagined. They are brought back and used as tools for social

The Anthropology of East Europe Review, 2014

Until the end of the 1980s, the vision of the now for the Kyrgyz pastoralists was elaborated in the framework of an omnipresent state. The running of herds over mountain pastures was organized by state entities (kolkhozes and sovkhozes) and the great majority of animals were effectively state-owned. The state system maintained roads and vehicles for livestock transport, the provision of veterinary services, and the marketing of wool and meat, as well as the provision for the other needs of Kyrgyz pastoralists' livelihoods. Today, the pastoral landscape is scattered with the ruins of large livestock shelters, the doors and roofs of which have been pilfered for the needs of a much more small-scale, privately organized economy. As ownership of livestock and machinery passed to private hands in the mid-1990s, there was initially a catastrophic collapse of livestock herding as a basis of livelihood for most herders. As communities sought to reconstruct their future in the absence of the reliable state, their sense of belonging shifted from state entities to traditional concepts of relatedness remembered from their primordial past. Yet while the initial privatization was organized on the premise that collectivities based on extended kinship would replace the state organization, this proved unworkable in many ways. Such collectivities then fragmented and livelihoods became organized around families in the narrower sense. Thus, in a twenty year period, Kyrgyz herders have shifted from relying on the state organization of their lives, to an unstable primordial kinship, and now to a new set of orienting principles which hinge on complex assessments of what can assure the future. In this paper, based on fieldwork in Narïn Province, we will examine how these transformations have taken place in pastoral livelihoods, as well as the challenges that have emerged in this environment of rapidly changing belonging in relation to livelihoods, kinship and the state. A sense of belonging is commonly thought of as being forged from common historical experiences and enduring kinds of closeness in the present. What this description misses is the way in which claims to-and feelings of-belonging are also oriented towards a future. The lack of future, as Pierre Bourdieu has noted, is perhaps the most painful of wants. (Bourdieu 2000: 221) If the desirable future seems blurred, if there is no sense of purpose in life, no imaginable path towards an achievable future, then action itself loses its meaning. We argue that people's sense of belongings and desirable futures are mutually constitutive. This relationship has largely been neglected in the social sciences in favor of studying belonging in relation to the past. The ethnographies in this collection; however, demonstrate that people actively operate on their sense of fragility and fixity, opportunity and insecurity to make livable futures and co-existences. In this special issue, Féaux de la Croix describes, for example, how a Kyrgyz dam worker chose to educate his children entirely in Russian in the late Soviet era. We focus on ideas of belonging in conjunction with imaginations of-and attempts to build-desirable futures in Kyrgyzstan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which offered not only pragmatic guarantees of future welfare, but also a vision of utopia to work towards, Kyrgyzstani citizens were forced to recast their pasts and futures. What are the practical and conceptual tools through which a livable future is articulated and worked upon? Since the upsurge in inter-ethnic violence in 2010, what changes in such orientations can be traced? And how can we explore, ethnographically, the ways in which imaginations of the Anthropology of East Europe Review 32(2) Fall 2014 1

Impermanence. Exploring Continuous Change Across Cultures, edited by Haidy Geismar, Ton Otto and Cameron David Warner, 2022

Part 1 Living with and against impermanence 2. Heavy curtains and deep sleep within darkness 25 Tsering Woeser 3. Disinheriting social death: towards an ethnographic theory of impermanence 28 Carole McGranahan 4. Atheist endings: imagining having been in contemporary Kyrgyzstan 47 Maria Louw 5. Encountering impermanence, making change: a case study of attachment and alcoholism in Thailand 65 Julia Cassaniti 6. Holding on and letting go: Tanzanian Indians' responses to impermanence 83

Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009

When Mukadas Kadirova changed her mode of dress as an act of religious devotion, she and her family – the self-proclaimed (former) epitome of modern, Soviet citizenry – were confronted with conflicting normative systems. Was Mukadas still a modern woman? Was the family? And what was modernity anyway, they asked: socialist ideals, capitalist consumption, or pious women fashionably tying their headscarves? This paper, based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, examines Mukadas's religious transformation; her attempts to map this alteration onto the shifting discursive and material realities of the post-Soviet period; and her play with variant notions of modernity. Mukadas's struggle ultimately shows that while modernity is often characterized by a linear, forward-looking gaze, experiences of modernity are not always marked by this progressive ‘onward’ sense. Modernity can be simultaneously past, present, and future.When Mukadas Kadirova changed her mode of dress as an act of religious devotion, she and her family – the self-proclaimed (former) epitome of modern, Soviet citizenry – were confronted with conflicting normative systems. Was Mukadas still a modern woman? Was the family? And what was modernity anyway, they asked: socialist ideals, capitalist consumption, or pious women fashionably tying their headscarves? This paper, based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, examines Mukadas's religious transformation; her attempts to map this alteration onto the shifting discursive and material realities of the post-Soviet period; and her play with variant notions of modernity. Mukadas's struggle ultimately shows that while modernity is often characterized by a linear, forward-looking gaze, experiences of modernity are not always marked by this progressive ‘onward’ sense. Modernity can be simultaneously past, present, and future.RésuméQuand Mukadas Kadirova a changé de tenue vestimentaire pour manifester sa dévotion religieuse, elle-même et sa famille, incarnation autoproclamée (mais révolue) de la citoyenneté soviétique moderne, se sont trouvées face à un conflit de leurs systèmes normatifs. Mukadas était-elle encore une femme moderne ? Sa famille était-elle moderne ? Et pour commencer, qu’est-ce que la modernité : les idéaux socialistes, le consumérisme capitaliste ou des femmes pieuses qui nouent coquettement leur foulard ? Basé sur quatorze mois de travail de terrain au Kirghizstan, l’article examine la transformation religieuse de Mukadas, ses tentatives d’ajuster ce changement aux réalités discursives et matérielles mouvantes de l’ère postsoviétique, et son maniement de différentes notions de la modernité. Le dilemme de Mukadas montre, en fin de compte, que bien que la modernité soit souvent présentée comme un regard projeté vers l’avant, elle n’est pas toujours marquée, en réalité, par cette impression progressive de « marche en avant ». La modernité peut tout à la fois être le passé, le présent et l’avenir.Quand Mukadas Kadirova a changé de tenue vestimentaire pour manifester sa dévotion religieuse, elle-même et sa famille, incarnation autoproclamée (mais révolue) de la citoyenneté soviétique moderne, se sont trouvées face à un conflit de leurs systèmes normatifs. Mukadas était-elle encore une femme moderne ? Sa famille était-elle moderne ? Et pour commencer, qu’est-ce que la modernité : les idéaux socialistes, le consumérisme capitaliste ou des femmes pieuses qui nouent coquettement leur foulard ? Basé sur quatorze mois de travail de terrain au Kirghizstan, l’article examine la transformation religieuse de Mukadas, ses tentatives d’ajuster ce changement aux réalités discursives et matérielles mouvantes de l’ère postsoviétique, et son maniement de différentes notions de la modernité. Le dilemme de Mukadas montre, en fin de compte, que bien que la modernité soit souvent présentée comme un regard projeté vers l’avant, elle n’est pas toujours marquée, en réalité, par cette impression progressive de « marche en avant ». La modernité peut tout à la fois être le passé, le présent et l’avenir.

Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2016

In History Making in Central and Northern Eurasia, edited by Svetlana Jacquesson, pp. 100-121.

Social Anthropology, 2006

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020

Religious Inquiries, 2015

This article is an anthropological examination and analysis of a Dersim-based mythical story, focusing on its meaning and function in belief and the practice of daily life. Within this scope, the Dizgun Bawa myth, revolving around a central sacred figure, is broached and analyzed here as a text comprising a basis for the construction of collective discourses giving way to socially functional meanings and forms of behavior. This mythical story serves as a vehicle for a discussion of its repercussions over history, contemporary discourse, and daily life. Discussions in the article also center upon a stateless society's effort to protect itself from the central state and its forces, the construction of the discourse of this effort, and its function in its implementation. With the hermeneutic and anthropological method pursued here, the ultimate aim of the article is to approach the effects of the story's content over the identity, personality, and eco-politics of the society in question.

-54 J. Legal Pluralism & Unofficial L., 2006

This article focuses on the political uses of Islam in the Kyrgyzstani Fergana Valley, through case studies of the main Kyrgyzstani Uzbek theologians based in the city of Karu-Suu, who appear to be core actors in re-Islamization, and propagators of Saudi- style Salafi Islam. The article first argues that religious debates and postures concern- ing the relationship to secular power are inscribed in patronage and personal clientelist networks as well as local power struggles. Then it discusses the reactivation of a reli- gious utopia that challenges the existing political and financial order through a local rhetoric on establishing an idealized caliphate, conveying a message not only of social justice but also of economic transparency and free trade.

In this article I suggest that in the Soviet period Central Asians cultivated and conceptualized Islam as an episteme. They did this by reaching beyond alienating (and often ephemeral) categories offered to them by the state. I argue that the constitution of an Islamic culture was made possible, among other things, by Central Asians’ encounters with the past, most notably with what they perceived as an Islamic past. We observe the curious phenomenon of Central Asians’ continuous interaction with the Islamic historical sites that escaped the bulldozers of the Soviet campaigns of religious repression. For some, encounters with the past might be accidental. For many others, the exploration of the past represented a purposive, self-conscious, and reiterated emotional act. I show that Central Asians in the Soviet period—even if at school they were taught little about, and were usually offered a distorted vision of, the Islamic history of their region—were still able to access their past through the surviving architectural presence of Islam. Monumental sites, however, were not enough for Muslims to understand the past and use it to construct their own identity. Such artifacts acquired meaning through an interpretive framework provided by Sufi narratives about saints and their miracles. Therefore, shrines represented for Central Asia a collective memory space, i.e., a place in which the past was preserved for mobilization in the present through narrative.