Svetlana Jacquesson

Reforming pastoral land use: from clan and custom to self-government and tradition

The question of pastoral land use in colonial Central Asia is set against the goals and assumptions of present-day laws and regulations in Kyrgyzstan. In order to highlight the main choices of the colonial administration and their consequences on the local level the analysis is focused on three dyads: territorial divisions versus clan divisions, ownership versus administration and administration versus self-government. By pointing out that the colonial reforms on nomads were mainly driven by the phantoms of ‘clans’ and ‘custom’, this article argues that certain misconceptions of nomadism are characteristic of any modernization programmes, be they those of colonial Russia or those that are currently being implemented. In Kyrgyzstan the recently introduced ‘grazing committees’ as the main actors in the management and control of pastures perpetuate the myths of self-government and tradition among nomads. In conclusion the article advances the thesis that the reliance on ‘custom’ and ‘tradition’ and the dismissal of real social relations of pastoral land use are among the most important reasons for the failure of pastoral land reforms in the past and in the present.

From clan narratives to clan politics

This essay focuses on clan narratives as cultural tools in a particular sociocultural setting where mass literacy meets mass media. It shows how the interactions between different producers of clan narratives – the news media, the academic establishment and an intellectualist movement for the recovery of Kyrgyz history and culture – have resulted in a profound reshaping of the content of clan genealogies, of the claims of their compilers and, more significantly, of the ways various social actors relate to clan identities. Based on these analyses, it is argued that social representations and social practices related to genealogy and clans have undergone significant changes over the last 15 years, and that the production and consumption of clan narratives have played a crucial role in this transformation.

The Time of Dishonour: Land and Murder under Colonial Rule in the Tian Shan

Abstract In this article I try to uncover the reasons for false accusations of murder, instigated murders, and staged murders among the Tian Shan Kyrgyz under Russian colonial rule. Towards this end, I read, contrapuntally, field data, ethnohistorical accounts, colonial statutory laws, and colonial ethnography. I argue that colonial interventions—namely, the hybrid adjudication of murders, the newly designed system of self-government, and the imposition of an arbitrary land-rights regime—correlated in unexpected ways and triggered instigated and staged murders and false accusations of murder as an extreme recourse in defence of land-use rights. I conclude by relating the particular legal setting of Russian colonial rule to its representation as “the time of dishonour.” Dans cet article j’essaie d’elucider les fausses accusations de meurtre, les meurtres premedites et les meurtres simules attestes parmi les Kirghiz du Tian Shan a l’epoque colonial. A cette fin, j’analyse des recits ethno-historiques, les lois statutaires coloniales et les ecrits des ethnographes coloniaux. Je soutiens que des interventions coloniales, telles le jugement hybride des meurtres, le systeme d’auto-gouvernance nouvellement introduit et la gestion ambigue de la terre, se combinent de facon inattendue pour produire les meurtres bizarres comme ultime remede aux injustices terriennes. Dans les conclusions, je relie l’environnement legal de la domination coloniale a sa representation comme “le temps de deshonneur.”