Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Peter Finke
(University of Zurich)
Cynthia Werner (Texas A&M University)
Send message to Convenors
- Theme:
- ANT
- Location:
- Posvar 3431
- Start time:
- 26 October, 2018 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Long Abstract:
As the rest of Central Asia and other parts of the Soviet Union, Kazakstan has experienced a process of fundamental economic and social transformation since the country gained independence. After a series of dramatic crises, which lasted for most of the 1990s, more recent years have seen a constant up and down of the local economy, fuelled be the booms that came along with the growing revenues from oil and gas extraction. This enabled trickle-down effects that benefited many of the people in the region but also set in motion a process of rapid social change and stratification.
This panel will take up the general theme by looking at one particular region, namely the south-eastern part of Kazakstan, also referred to as Zheti-Suw, or Land of the Seven Rivers. Representing a rather privileged part of the country due to its fertile soils and the closeness to national and global trade routes, the region offers an apt insight into more general processes. Being based on original empirical fieldwork, the papers in the panel will investigate the economic and social changes going on by looking at a range of related topics such as rural economy, trade and urbanisation as well as the new role that kinship and ethnicity play in this picture. Key questions to be tackled are thus: Who are the winners and losers in this transformation process? What kind of social networks are relevant for that? How is success in life publicly expressed? What strategies do people apply to adapt to the new institutional frameworks?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Zarina Mukanova (Palacky University of Olomouc)
Paper long abstract:
After the collapse of the Soviet Union Kazakhstan faced the challenge of embarking on new nation-building politics. Part of this politics was an invitation to the worldwide Kazakh diaspora to join their 'ancestral homeland'. Those ethnic Kazakhs who followed the invitation were assigned a kind of intermediate status of "oralman", or "returnee", after they moved to Kazakhstan. The majority of oralman in South Eastern Kazakhstan are from China and Mongolia. In this paper I am investigating new marriage strategies among oralman as well as difference between the statuses of local women and those from Mongolia and China that come along with this. As the oralman faced numerous difficulties integrating to the local society, one way to adapt into the new environment was by building up new marriage strategies, such as cross-affinal marriages ("karsy kuda"). Marriage takes place preferentially within the same group of oralman in order to tighten existing networks. These new strategies allowed practicing endogamy while at the same time still avoiding marrying within seven generations as this would be considered incest. This paper questions with whom do different groups of Kazakhs, oralman and local, prefer to build an alliance through marriage and with whom they don't. Do they expand their marriage choice, and if so why? What role do woman play role in marriage decisions? To what degree are marriages arranged and by whom?
Dinara Abildenova (Social anthropology and cultural studies)
Paper long abstract:
Kazakhs are known for practicing exogamous marriages. One central aspect in this type of marriage system is that it demonstrates the importance of affinal relationship. Before the socialist period, most marriages were by matchmaking, where the decision on whom to marry was predominantly made by parents. During the Soviet Union and nowadays, parental influence in the selection process has decreased. But despite that the matchmaking ceremony, called "qudalyq" in Kazakh, remains an important part of the whole marriage process and has even increased, as it is also a means to express the social status and economic standing of the families involved. Generally, "qudalyq" can be considered as the beginning of an affinal relationship, which starts from the meeting of close kins from the bride and groom's sides. In this paper, I attempt to show the changes in social organization and the simultaneous stratification by examining the selection of delegates to the "qudalyq" and thereby also looking closer at the ceremony itself.
Verena La Mela (University of Heidelberg)
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on economic strategies and the composition of social networks of female Uighur traders and merchants in southeastern Kazakhstan. The field site, Zharkent, is a mid-sized trading town close to the Chinese border and is populated mostly by Uighurs. The area around the Kazakhstan-China border is currently opening up and undergoing tremendous infrastructural development, which means that Zharkent is in the middle of an important economic corridor that links the People`s Republic of China, Central Asia and Europe. Against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union, I argue that female Uighur traders` and merchants' economic strategies are in the process of adapting to the changing infrastructure and political situation. Regarding economic strategies, I stress the importance of social networks. Who is involved in trade and business? What are patterns of support? Where are these networks located? In contrast to the common scholarly assumption that kinship is less important for Uighurs than is identification through place, I argue that kinship ties are important for how these Uighur women conceive of their trade and business networks, and so are significant for how they identify themselves and others.
The paper is based on a year of ethnographic field work in Zharkent, involving participant observation, in-depth interviews and a quantitative questionnaire.
Tabea Rohner (University of Zurich)
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will present some preliminary findings of my PhD research, which looks at different economic activities in South-eastern Kazakhstan, particularly subsistence practices such as gardening and dacha cultivation through an ethnographic lens. Although I conceive of these practices as an important part of strategies of individuals and households to complement their - in many cases unstable - cash incomes, I will equally highlight aspects which go beyond their narrow economic value.
Gardens and dachas are legendary sites, where a wide range of different activities take place, ethnic and other identities are negotiated and around which local and translocal discourses crystallize. They are sites where people spend time with relatives and friends, show off their physical capacity despite advanced age and obtain presents and barter items, above all the widely cherished local apple variety. On the level of discourse, the practice of producing food on small, private plots is framed by certain people as a guarantee for access to natural and healthy food, which is contrasted with products gained from local large-scale farming and with import products from nearby China, when conditions of production are impenetrable to many people and somehow frightening. Against this background, engaging in or refraining from gardening or dacha work can tell something about a person's or a social group's attitude towards broader economic and other social changes, for instance agricultural and trade liberalization, which are gathering speed.
In this paper, I will talk about some of these aspects of the local subsistence food production and try to locate them within the town's trajectory from a flourishing so-called single industry town during Soviet times to a place of hardship in the 1990's and early 2000's to an unknown future seen with both hope and anxiety by local people.