Judith Beyer

Constitutional Faith Law and Hope in Revolutionary Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT This article investigates the interrelation between law and hope in the context of constitutional change in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon ethnographic and textual data, it is shown that the constitution has acquired particular discursive importance in Kyrgyzstan each time the foundations of the state have been severely challenged or shattered. Paying particular attention to three major political conflicts, the article demonstrates how, in the aftermath of each, speeches, performances, presentations and conversations were infused with ‘constitutional faith’, binding together the political elite and ordinary citizens in an expression of their general hope that constitutional change could bring about a better future. I view constitutional faith as a practice of hope that allows people to actively engage with their being-in-the-world, particularly in times of crisis. In the aftermath of large-scale political conflict, with which I am concerned here, it can become a faith-based mode of conflict resolution.

Revitalisation, invention and continued existence of the Kyrgyz aksakal courts : Listening to pluralistic accounts of history

Abstract This article investigates conceptions of history as perceived and theoretically embodied in terms such as revitalisation, invention, and continued vitality. These terms have been predominantly used for post-colonial and post-socialist societies. The article argues that these terms and the concepts behind them do not explain and elucidate the meaning of history for society and its members, but rather camouflage it. The case of the Kyrgyz courts of elders (Kyrg. aksakaldar sotu) serves as an example of how various local and foreign actors perceive the historical development of this institution and why several versions of its history exist. The aksakal court has so far been presented as being either a customary legal institution which has been revitalized after independence, or as being an invention of the former Kyrgyz president, or as having never ceased to exist, despite the abolition of customary law during the Soviet era. Anthropological fieldwork being carried out in two villages in the northern part of the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, however, has led to a more comprehensive historical understanding of aksakals and aksakal courts. It has turned out that villagers not only named different time periods when being asked about the origin of the aksakal courts, but also made use of more than one historical account, depending on the situation and the questions asked. The article, therefore, argues for a pluralistic conception of history and for investigation of the meaning attached to it rather than its fitting into one of a number of scientific categories.

Settling descent: place making and genealogy in Talas, Kyrgyzstan

This article explores how the inhabitants of two villages in northern Kyrgyzstan relate to one another and to their environment in terms of both place and genealogy. By performing relatedness, people make claims upon a physical landscape, while their relationships are simultaneously shaped by perceptions of the particular place they live in. The term ‘settling descent’ evokes this dialectic, in which people ‘settle’ descent in a literal sense in rituals, statues, objects and the stories they tell about the past and the present. The often-repeated academic opposition of ‘identity through kinship’ vs. ‘identity through locality’ is resolved by showing how both are aspects of the same historical process. The paper draws on oral histories of key informants, ethnographic case studies and classical as well as recent literature on kinship, place, post-socialism and the anthropology of Central Asia.

Practicing Harmony Ideology: Ethnographic Reflections on Community and Coercion

Twenty-five years ago, drawing on her fieldwork among the Zapotec, the legal anthropologist Laura Nader proposed the term harmony ideology to characterize postcolonial systems of justice. She found outward social harmony to be the result of coercion, as people were denied access to legal means and were forced either into alternative dispute resolution or into autocoercion, in which marginalized people presented unity to outsiders to avoid state interference. This proposition constitutes a relevant advance in relation to previous approaches to conflict and harmony in the social sciences, but it falls short by failing to account for indigenous notions of and demands for harmony. Ethnographic data from rural Kyrgyzstan and the South Omo region of Ethiopia indicate that there are models of harmony active at various social levels and that harmony is a genuine concern of communities. Demands for harmony are performatively integrated into social practices. The authors argue that, rather than searching for a scale of sociality where harmony might be “organic,” it is necessary to critically assess proclamations of and demands for harmony as means of coercion even within small communities. A focus on social practice in such places reveals that the experience of community partly derives from acts of collectively condemning and sanctioning deviance.

Ordering ideals: accomplishing well-being in a Kyrgyz cooperative of elders

In May 2005, after a tumultuous parliamentary election campaign had led to factionalism among the village population, village elders in northern Kyrgyzstan formed the cooperative Yiman Nuru (Light of Faith). The institution, which is headed by the local imam, was set up with the explicit aim to restore harmony and unity among all villagers. This article deals with how people in rural Kyrgyzstan try to achieve a state of well-being for themselves. Specifically, it analyses a chart the elders created upon forming the cooperative, in which they order their social and economic practices, their moral duties and responsibilities vis-à-vis other villagers, as well as their relationship with state actors, along the lines of three moral concepts: harmony, unity, and moral conduct. This chart provides a unique opportunity to probe into peoples reflexivity and their own ways of reasoning about the meaning of well-being.

Informal order and the state in Afghanistan

larly in Central Asian studies, is a major omission which weakens the contribution of the book. It would be interesting to consider the similarities between the Badakhshani borderlands and those of a more studied Central Asian region, the Ferghana Valley. Madeleine Reeves (2014), Nick Megoran (2017) and Christine Bichsel (2009) have each made major contributions on this locale, and some aspects of what they observe are echoed, apparently unwittingly, in Levi-Sanchez’s work. Certainly, her book would have benefitted from the comparisons. Equally, the literature on Tajikistan over the last 10 years is almost entirely disregarded. How do the book’s findings on warlords relate to Jesse Driscoll’s (2015) important arguments regarding their bottom-up incorporation into the Tajik state, or Larry Markowitz’s (2013) on the significance of lootable resources in explaining why political violence takes place in regions like Khorog but not all of Tajikistan? Filippo De Danielli’s (2014) work on drug trafficking through Tajikistan is surely some of the closest to Levi-Sanchez’s, but it is also left untouched. The Afghan-Central Asian Borderland is an original and fascinating ethnography which raises many more questions than it answers. Its contribution to our field would be much clearer had the author engaged with the work of her fellow scholars in academia as well as her informants in the field.

INTRODUCTION: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.

Peace by Other Means:: Symposium on the Role of Ethnography and the Humanities in the Understanding, Prevention, and Resolution of Enmity Part 3

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.

Peace by Other Means

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.

Finding the law in Myanmar

The law is difficult to find in Myanmar and the legal system is not accessible or transparent to its citizens. This article looks at some of the issues plaguing the country.