Marianne Kamp

Gender ideals and income realities: Discourses about labor and gender in Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan, the 1990s brought significant and sometimes drastic change in employment and income security and in earning opportunities. In focus groups conducted in 1996 and 1997 with citizens of Uzbekistan from various ethnicities, regions and social classes, it was within the context of discussion of work and income that the idea of “transition” came through most clearly: life was once normal, and will be normal again sometime, but meanwhile nothing is certain. In these focus groups there was a pervasive sense that “the transition” is an aberration; this was expressed most succinctly in criticisms of those women who transgressed gender norms in order to earn an income in the “shuttle” trade. Mukaramma Yusupova, an entrepreneur who was interviewed among Uzbekistan’s oral history respondents for this project, expressed themes that had echoes in focus groups transcripts: that the transition opened opportunities for both men and women, and that the transition had influence on gender roles, but that there was an underlying stability in gender perceptions and expectations. Yusupova, who was trained to work in and manage a sewing and embroidery factory in the late 1970s, stayed home with children, sewing privately to supplement her husband’s disability payments. After 1991, when it became possible to begin one’s own business, Yusupova built up her own sewing enterprise. In 1997, she employed 43 people, including her husband. Yusupova told her interviewer,

Pilgrimage and Performance: Uzbek Women and the Imagining of Uzbekistan in the 1920s

In August 1924, Anabibi Safaeva set off from her home city of Khiva, which was then the capital of the Xorezm Peoples Republic, to study in Tashkent, which was the administrative center of the Turkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Safaeva traveled with some 160 students in a convoy of three boats down the Amu River toward the Aral Sea. However, misfortune befell Safaeva: her boat was attacked by basmachi s, a bandit or rebel gang. 1 The basmachi s killed all twenty-two of the men in Safaevas group and carried off the women as captives. By the time that Safaeva was rescued, more than two months later, there was no longer a Xorezm Peoples Republic or a Turkistan Republic; instead, Safaevas Khivan home was now in Uzbekistan, and Tashkent, the goal of her academic pilgrimage, had become the capital of Uzbekistan.

Where did the Mullahs Go? Oral Histories from Rural Uzbekistan

Oral histories with elderly collective farmers in Uzbekistan, who recalled the establishment of their collective farms in the 1930s, depict the closing of village mosques and the disappearance of many rural mullahs. Anti-religious policies focused on Islamic institutions and paid functionaries; however, mullahs were left in many villages, and they continued to lead Islamic practices clandestinely. Religious leaders who had never been closely tied to Islamic institutions, such as otins (women religious leaders) were not targeted for arrest and removal. Our respondents remembered times when it was difficult to engage in any practice of Islam publicly, but they emphasized that nonetheless, community members fulfilled the ritual that they deemed most essential: the funeral prayer.

Recollections of collectivization in Uzbekistan: Stalinism and local activism

ABSTRACT Collectivization of agriculture in Uzbekistan demanded the efforts of many local agitators who called on Uzbek dehqons to join kolkhozes, and who stimulated a local version of class warfare. In oral history interviews with those who experienced mass collectivization’s first moments, we find both the brutality of change imposed from above and a social transformation led by local Uzbek activists. We argue that Uzbek agitators allowed many dehqons to identify with this project to change rural land ownership, and that their offers of tangible benefits, such as advance payments for cotton crops and distribution of food, provided strong incentives for joining. Class rhetoric was important as activists divided the poor from the kulak and used threats of dekulakization, as well as incentives, to promote rapid collectivization.

Author-critic forum

This author-critic forum originated as a panel discussion of anthropologist Johan Rasanayagams new book at the annual meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society at the University of Wisconsin...

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia Nick Megoran a , Colette Harris b , Sevara Sharapova c , Marianne Kamp d , Janet Townsend e , Nina Bagdasarova f & Madina Tlostanova g a Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK b School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK c International Womens Fund ‘Sharq Ayoli’, Tashkent, Uzbekistan d Department of History, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA e Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK f American University in Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan g Department of Philosophy, Russian Presidential Academy of Public Administration, Moscow, Russia

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia:Gender epistemologies and Eurasian borderlands, by Madina Tlostanova, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 9780230108424, xx + 240 pp., 6 illustrations. (Comparative Feminist Studies Series, series editor Chandra Talpade Mohanty).

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia Nick Megoran a , Colette Harris b , Sevara Sharapova c , Marianne Kamp d , Janet Townsend e , Nina Bagdasarova f & Madina Tlostanova g a Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK b School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK c International Womens Fund ‘Sharq Ayoli’, Tashkent, Uzbekistan d Department of History, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA e Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK f American University in Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan g Department of Philosophy, Russian Presidential Academy of Public Administration, Moscow, Russia

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia: , by Madina Tlostanova, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 9780230108424, xx + 240 pp., 6 illustrations. (Comparative Feminist Studies Series, series editor Chandra Talpade Mohanty).

Author–critic forum: decolonial theory and gender research in Central Asia Nick Megoran a , Colette Harris b , Sevara Sharapova c , Marianne Kamp d , Janet Townsend e , Nina Bagdasarova f & Madina Tlostanova g a Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK b School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK c International Womens Fund ‘Sharq Ayoli’, Tashkent, Uzbekistan d Department of History, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA e Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK f American University in Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan g Department of Philosophy, Russian Presidential Academy of Public Administration, Moscow, Russia