Abstract:

Since the end of the Civil war, the ruling elite of Tajikistan has shown a strong endeavor to recast tradition and to endorse the “sound family” with “healthy nation” building (Roche 2016). The laws on ritual expenditure (2007 and 2017) epitomize the State tendency to interfere in family and social affairs of the citizens. Yet it is not the only case: laws on appropriate clothing, on parental responsibility, on the naming of children, or the ban on certain marriages, also partake in the same effort to submit families to national building.

In this presentation I will present how official narratives define what a "good family" created by marriage is – healthy (solimi), united (tifoqi), and based on love (mukhabbat). However, at the same time, marriage as people celebrate it in the country is problematic in the eye of the state: marriages are often arranged, mostly within close networks of kin and neighbors, performed through expensive rituals. As such they may be seen as an obstacle to national building (and the right tradition), on the one hand, and to the rooting of the authoritarian state (tightly controlling family planning), on the other. How do these two definitions of marriage coexist in the country? How these sometimes antagonist understanding of marriage appear throughout the rituals? How do the rituals enable us to understand how far the state controls marriage performance in the country? To answer these questions, I will focus particularly on how “love” is being used both by the government and the families to promote their own vision of what a good marriage is.