Paper long abstract:

“Altyn Asyr” bazaar in Ashgabat, attracts thousands of visitors. Local residents and foreign tourists rush to explore the richness of the country’s largest market. National crafts, whose demand stimulates the production of a wide variety of consumer goods, from embroideries to carpets to jewelry and clothing, constitute a significant proportion of the bazaar’s diversity. By exploring the links between the demand for and consumption of handicrafts within the space of the Ashgabat bazaar, by analyzing interactions between Turkmen artisans and consumers, as well as international guests, this paper explores how the high demand for handicrafts is driven by traditional rituals and practices, how handicrafts represent a livelihood and daily consumption practice, and how handicrafts linked to traditional rituals give room to everyday narratives of Turkmen identity, how they express “banal nationalism”.

As Michael Billig states “the term banal nationalism is introduced to cover ideological habits which enable established nations of the West to be reproduced.” Some nationhood signs are not recognized as such by the population because they are “so familiar, so continual.” In Turkmenistan national crafts seem to be the main reminders of national belonging. Carpets, embroidery, dresses and jewelry make individuals bearers and creators of national narratives, and make the Turkmen nation ‘flagged’ .

The majority of publications on post-Soviet Central Asia focus on states’ narratives, created and disseminated by official authorities and academia. Based on historical or even mythological past, these narratives are devoted to raise national awareness and to legitimize and consolidate state power. A limited number of papers explore the role of handicrafts in unofficial narratives in Central Asia, analyze crafts as a source of identity and livelihood, discuss the role of textile heritage in nation building and cultural identity, or examine artisanal products within the context of new market environment. Although there are academic papers on Turkmen handicrafts themselves, no research is devoted to handicrafts as a source of national identity. This paper aims to fill the gap by focusing on handicrafts presented through the space of the Turkmen market and traditional rituals and practices.

This research is based on visits to the Altyn Asyr bazaar in Ashgabat in August 2013, October 2017, and April-May 2018. I apply a combination of qualitative methods to analyze Turkmen handicrafts and social practices in Ashgabat. This includes interviews and conversations with bazaar sellers and customers, Turkmen citizens and international visitors, and participant observations within and beyond the bazaar. It is based on statistical data on social-economic indicators from the State Committee on Statistics of Turkmenistan together with data on international tourism from World Bank and IndexMundi.

Paper long abstract:

Uyghurs’ handicrafts in Xinjiang have a long history, which has artistic and social influences both from China proper and the neighboring Central Asian countries. Based on anthropological research in early 2018 in Qumol (Hami) and Kashgar, this paper investigates how Uyghur craft people negotiate the meanings of their skills under global and China’s national discourses of intangible cultural heritage. The division between tangible and intangible cultural heritage is itself problematic (Herzfeld 2014), most traditional Uyghur handicraft have material form, such as embroidery and pottery, however they all fall into category of intangible heritage. While the family history of the craftship is important in terms of preserving the skills, the actual manual process of sewing and pottery-making materialize the techniques and make the actual handicraft possible. In fact, in Uyghur language, the boundary between tangible and intangible cultural heritage is ambiguous. Gheyriy maddiy medeniyet mirasliri means intangible cultural heritage, whereas gheyriy means “not”, it could also implies “strange”, that is to say the category of such distinction is problematic. Since the international discourse of preserving cultural heritage localized in China, starting from early 2000s, Uyghur handicrafts are gradually classified as intangible cultural heritage of various administrative levels, including county, city, provincial, national and world rank. The classification procedure itself is a process of negotiation among Uyghur artisans, professional artists and experts, cadres of local cultural bureau, and China’s National Cultural Department. Thus, the individual Uyghur artisan has been threated within the web of knowledge production. To be identified as intangible cultural heritage, the handicraft integrates with the local government and carries responsibility of promoting the official economic and social tasks. Some local party secretary and employees of local cultural bureau complain that the skillful craft people often do not wish to train apprentices, which is required by the local government to facilitate farmers with skills and create employment opportunities. The crafts people have never publicly denied their role of facilitating with the authority’s goal of elevating poverty, however, they do see the handicraft as a private skills and a family business, therefore reluctant to share with others.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I focus on national dress and national heritage as a dominant state discourse in Central Asian states and societies in order to test how these powerful images shape gendered roles, identities and representations. Women and their bodies are at the centre of the national imagination where the long national dress serves as the strongest visualisation of national identity and where it competes with images of Islamic radicalization or globalized fashion at the same time. The idea of the national dress is brought back to represent the authentic national culture and true heritage that was lost during continuous colonial rule in the region. The production of national dresses for women became a profitable business all over Central Asia where in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan it mainly occupies high end of production and luxurious brands, in Uzbekistan it became a mass production and in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan where national dresses are obligatory dress code for women working in public sector, the dress economy is sporadic and informal. I use ethnographic data and interviews to deconstruct the contemporary notion of heritage, culture and power where the national dress embodies all three but women who produce and wear the national dress are engaged in constant reconceptualization of these three major themes. What is contemporary understanding of heritage and national memory when ‘grandma-style’ or ‘nineteenth-century traditional’ dresses made from Dubai fabric enter shiny globalised shopping malls in Ashgabat, Dushanbe, Astana or where traditional Central Asian fabric, ikat, is reproduced locally to have patters of Captain America, Mickey Mouse and Scream? The paper critically engages with the understanding of contemporary culture and memory, heritage and power as well as powerful role of women who determine these concepts through their everyday consumption and fashion.