Domesticating Youth: Youth Bulges and their Socio-political Implications in Tajikistan

By Sophie Roche

Most of the Muslim societies of the world have entered a demographic transition from high to low fertility, and this process is accompanied by an increase in youth vis-à-vis other age groups. Political scientists and historians have debated whether such a “youth bulge” increases the potential for conflict or whether it represents a chance to accumulate wealth and push forward social and technological developments. This book introduces the discussion about youth bulge into social anthropology using Tajikistan, a post-Soviet country that experienced civil war in the 1990s, which is in the middle of such a demographic transition. Sophie Roche develops a social anthropological approach to analyze demographic and political dynamics, and suggests a new way of thinking about social change in youth bulge societies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781782382638

Sophie Roche

Sophie Roche is currently leading the junior research group “The Demographic Turn in the Junction of Cultures” at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at the University of Heidelberg. She worked at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany and received her PhD from this University Halle-Wittenberg. She then joined the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin in 2010 with a project on jihad in text and context, an ethnographic approach. She has extensive ethnographic experiences in Tajikistan and in Russia among Migrants for Central Asia. 

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Domesticating Youth

Integration and Conflict Studies

Published in Association with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale

Series Editor: Günther Schlee, Director of the Department of Integration and Conflict at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Editorial Board: Brian Donahoe (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), John Eidson (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Peter Finke (University of Zurich), Joachim Görlich (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Bettina Mann (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Stephen Reyna (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Assisted by: Cornelia Schnepel and Viktoria Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

The objective of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is to advance anthropological fieldwork and enhance theory building. ‘Integration’ and ‘conflict’, the central themes of this series, are major concerns of the contemporary social sciences and of significant interest to the general public. They have also been among the main research areas of the institute since its foundation. Bringing together international experts, Integration and Conflict Studies includes both monographs and edited volumes, and offers a forum for studies that contribute to a better understanding of processes of identification and inter-group relations.

Volume 1

How Enemies are Made: Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts

Günther Schlee

Volume 2

Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa – Vol.I: Ethiopia and Kenya

Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson

Volume 3

Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa – Vol.II: Sudan, Uganda and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands

Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson

Volume 4

Playing Different Games: The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia

Dereje Feyissa

Volume 5

Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Forms of Property in Animals

Edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee

Volume 6

Irish/ness is All Around Us: Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland

Olaf Zenker

Volume 7

Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processes

Peter Finke

Volume 8

Domesticating Youth: The Youth Bulge and its Socio-Political Implications in Tajikstan

Sophie Roche

Volume 9

Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia

Jacqueline Knörr

Volume 10

Friendship, Descent and Alliance in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by Martine Guichard, Tilo Grätz and Youssouf Diallo

Volume 11

Masks and Staffs: Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields

Michaela Pelican

Volume 12

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective

Edited by Jacqueline Knörr and Christoph Kohl

Volume 13

Staying at Home: Identities, Memories and Social Networks of Kazakhstani Germans

Rita Sanders

Volume 14

‘City of the Future’: Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana

Mateusz Laszczkowski

Domesticating Youth

Youth Bulges and their Socio-political Implications in Tajikistan

Sophie Roche

Published in 2014 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2014, 2016 Sophie Roche

First paperback edition published in 2016

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roche, Sophie.

Domesticating youth: youth bulges and their socio-political implications in Tajikistan / Sophie Roche.

pages cm. -- (Integration and conflict studies; volume 8)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-78238-262-1 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-78533-212-8 (paperback) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-263-8 (ebook)

1. Youth--Tajikistan. 2. Youth--Tajikistan--Social conditions. 3. Age distribution (Demography)--Tajikistan. I. Title.

 HQ799.T3R63 2014

 305.23509586--dc23

2013042952

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78238-262-1 hardback

ISBN: 978-1-78533-212-8 paperback

ISBN: 978-1-78238-263-8 ebook

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Foreword, Günther Schlee

Acknowledgements

Notes on Transliteration and Usage

Introduction: Youth (Bulges) and Conflict

1 Placing the Field Sites in Their Context: A Demographic History

2 ‘Why Didn’t You Take a Side?’: The Emergence of Youth Categories, Institutions and Groups

3 ‘Siblings Are as Different as the Five Fingers of a Hand’: The Developmental Cycle of Domestic Groups and Siblingship

4 ‘The Gift of Youth’: Workers, Religious Actors and Migrants

5 ‘The Only Thing in Life that Makes You Feel Like a King’: Marriage as an Indicator of Social and Demographic Change

6 ‘Youth Are Our Future’: Categories, Groups and the State

Conclusion: The Dynamics of Youth Bulges as a Question of Domestication

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Figures and Tables

Figures

I.1 Life phases according to Goldstein

I.2 An age pyramid

I.3 Life phases according to Roche

I.4 Lebenstreppe

1.1 Map of Tajikistan

1.2 Ahad’s family (Shahrituz)

1.3 Total fertility rate (TFR) for ever-married women for three-year periods, 1982 to 2005 (Shahrituz)

1.4 Relative percentages of age cohorts for three time periods, men and women (Sharituz, Sharigul, Sasik Bulak)

3.1 Average number of children of eldest, middle and youngest sons (Shahrituz)

4.1 Percentage of migrants in the male population (Shahrigul)

5.1 Number of marriages, both sexes (Shahrituz, Shahrigul and Sasik Bulak)

5.2 Number of divorces, both sexes, including cessation of marriage due to the death of a partner (Shahrituz, Shahrigul and Sasik Bulak)

5.3 Age at first marriage for women, relative percentages (Shahrituz)

5.4 Age at first marriage for men, relative percentages (Shahrituz)

5.5 Age at first marriage for women, relative percentages (Shahrigul)

5.6 Age at first marriage for men, relative percentages (Shahrigul)

5.7 Age at first marriage for women, relative percentages (Sasik Bulak)

5.8 Age at first marriage for men, relative percentages (Sasik Bulak)

A.1 Number of pupils in class one, Kyrgyz and Tajik classes

A.2 Marital age-specific fertility rates for 1990, 1998, 2006 (Shahrituz)

A.3 Marital age-specific fertility rates for 1990, 1998, 2006 (Sasik Bulak)

Tables

1.1 Crude birth, death and growth rates (Shahrituz)

1.2 Percentage of youth according to different age groupings (Shahrituz, Shahrigul, Sasik Bulak)

1.3 Number of deaths during the civil war (Shahrituz, Shahrigul, Sasik Bulak)

3.1 Number of years between marriage and moving out of the parental home

4.1 Cohort-specific percentages of men who opted for migration (Shahrigul)

6.1 State definitions and symbols of youth

A.1 Parity of women under 47 years of age (Shahrituz)

A.2 Dependency ratio (Shahrituz)

Foreword

The Construction of Life Phases and Some Facts of Life

Günther Schlee

In all sorts of statistics, including demographic ones, social constructs and ‘givens’ that resist being constructed and deconstructed interpenetrate. Hard-core constructivists would always claim that statistics do not reflect numbers but create them. In fact both processes are at work. Statistics make us observe things we would not otherwise have observed – or, at least, we would not have counted and calculated them as averages, such as pets per household or per capita beer consumption. But statistical calculations of such frequencies for these units might appear artificial to many. When it comes to pets, we normally do not add canaries to dogs. Nor do we think about the many households without any pets; and we may forget to ask how household splitting – the tendency of more and more people to live alone or in twos rather than in larger units – influences the average number of pets per household. When we think of beer consumption, we do not have old ladies and little babies in mind, who are included in nationwide statistics, but the prototypical beer drinker, the (more or less) adult male. How much less beer we drink if we include all the babies who drink no beer at all in calculating our average consumption! Such thoughts rarely occur to us, unless we are already familiar with statistics.

So, the units we include in our count are a matter of choice and plausibility, and many of these units are not simply there but have to be agreed on. To give just one more example: There are no ‘lower-income families’ unless we have a definition of the family and a way of deciding which kind of income to call low; and, even if we do, such categories may misdirect our perceptions. Would members of a rural family with a low monetary income but a large vegetable garden and lots of rabbits (not as pets but for food) agree that they are poor, as such a categorization implies?

I am fully aware that statistics about household pets, preferably broken down by species and other categories, can be of great interest to pet shops and animal-feed producers – and that the marketing branches of big breweries have good use for figures on per capita beer consumption in nation-to-nation comparison. Also statistics about poverty are important, even if they can be misleading. I merely want to point out that these examples reflect a way of looking at things that is unfamiliar to those without an earlier exposure to statistics. The categories that are used here are constructs. They are products of a whole series of choices made about definitions.

These elements of construction, however, do not lead to arbitrary findings that are subject only to the will of the investigator. Once we have agreed on meaningful categories, and if we have designed our investigation procedures carefully enough, numbers come in that are beyond our control and cannot be deconstructed. The real world in which we live and to which we have to relate imposes itself on us. The statistics may, then, reflect numbers that are real enough to hurt us. For example, we (in the post-industrial world) may find out with the help of demographic statistics that the high living standard that we pay for by not investing in enough children to replace our own numbers cannot be maintained when we are old, because there are not enough people who pay taxes, contribute to our pension funds and work where these pension funds have been invested. Once we make this discovery, we could still redefine some categories and apply some cosmetic touches to our statistics; but sooner or later we would bump up against some hard facts that can neither be deconstructed nor dreamt away.

Sophie Roche is a demographically minded anthropologist (a far too rare species – many anthropologists abhor numbers). Her work beautifully illustrates the interplay of social construction and hard facts (which may result from earlier social construction or may simply be there). Her theoretical point of departure is the ‘youth bulge’ in Tajikistan. It may, therefore, be appropriate if my introductory comments start with ‘youth’ and other phases of life.

In the last century, life expectancy in the developed world has increased dramatically. Joshua R. Goldstein has discussed what this means for life phases.¹ Does an increase in life expectancy from 70 years to 80 years mean 10 more years of senility? We hope not. What we hope for is a longer middle phase of life: healthy, active adulthood. Some people call that youth: they want to look and to feel young for a longer period of time. They may have forgotten how it actually felt to be young. In fact, the age of physical puberty has decreased dramatically, as life expectancy has increased. If, according to our definition, a girl’s childhood ends with the first menses, then a reduction in the average age for this event from 16 to 11 would mean the loss of roughly a third of childhood.

There are two basic possibilities. First, the increase of life expectancy results in the proportional lengthening of all life phases, as if a rubber band with sections in different colours was stretched (the case a => b in Figure I.1). This model, obviously, does not describe the reality to which we have just referred. And, second, the increase in life expectancy affects different life phases in different ways. Some expand with the overall gain of time, but others may even shrink (the case a => c in Figure I.1).

Figure I.1: Life phases according to Goldstein.

If, in our post-industrial world, characterized by an overall increase in life expectancy, the absolute and relative length of various life phases may change, then it is also possible that life expectancy is stable or decreasing. Our present situation is just a good starting point for thinking about life phases: a rapidly increasing life expectancy must affect all life phases somehow, since the length of a life is the sum of the length of its various phases. But, in principle, there is nothing special about our present situation. That life phases can be stretched, and that they can shrink, holds true for demographic situations with stable, growing or shrinking life expectancy alike.

The question of how to define a life phase is not an easy one, and people answer it in different ways. In other words, there is cultural variation. The apparent lengthening or shortening of life phases is affected by cultural definitions to no lesser extent than by observable physical events such as birth, menstruation, growth of a moustache, parturition or menopause. Very often, life phases are defined without reference to physical maturation or loss of a faculty. The entry into full legal adult status takes place years after sexual maturity and the end of longitudinal growth. In Germany, in my youth, it was legally fixed at the age of 21; now it is 18, irrespective of whether people actually have matured faster or not.

Jennifer Johnson-Hanks describes how several changes occur simultaneously to mark the transition of a young American male from youth to adulthood:

When a U.S. boy turns 18 . . . he becomes eligible for the draft and responsible for his own debts. He is newly authorized to vote and run for office. He typically graduates from high school and moves away from his parents’ home for the first time. Although his transition to adulthood is neither complete nor uncontested, the coordinated interventions of school, bank, family, and state largely succeed in making this temporal coincidence of major life transitions feel intuitively natural. (Johnson-Hanks 2002: 865)

But the coincidence of different changes marking the transition to adulthood is, as Johnson-Hanks makes clear, an institutional artefact. The different changes have been made to coincide. In the Vietnam War, many young Americans fought and died, for their country it was claimed, before they had reached the age required for the right to vote. This was perceived as an inconsistency, and the voting age was lowered to coincide with the age of eligibility for the draft.

Johnson-Hanks then goes on to describe the absence, among the Beti of southern Cameroon, of this synchronicity of events marking the entry into a life phase or the exit from it. Sex, childbirth and the different forms and stages of marriage take place at different ages and even in different order. What is more, the timing of any one of these events has little influence on the timing of the others. The same person can, therefore, be a girl from one point of view and a woman from another; and persons can and do revert from the status of a woman to that of a girl.

Against this broader background, let us now turn to the work of Sophie Roche, which shows the interplay of demographic, cultural and political factors in the production of ‘youth’ in Tajikistan. The youth bulge in post-civil war Tajikistan is a deformity of the age pyramid. A stable or growing population is represented by an age pyramid with a regular conical shape, but in Tajikistan there is a protrusion less than halfway up the pyramid. There are an unusually high number of ‘youths’ in relation both to older adults and to children.

In the secondary literature, ‘youth bulges’ have been discussed as a problem. There are too many young people in proportion to the societal positions and the economic resources that they will take over from their seniors. There is unemployment and social tension. Youths are of fighting age. There is violence.

Having gone through a gruesome civil war, Tajikistan has seen much violence. And it does have a youth bulge. This is the starting point for Sophie Roche. What is the relationship between the two? Jumping to the end of the book, we find her answer. She does not reject the hypothesis of a link between youth bulges and political violence, but she argues that this link is not deterministic: ‘There is no revolution if young people do not want it to happen, and there can be a huge youth bulge without any unrest’. This means that other variables come in, and these may be broadly classified as cultural. ‘[Y]outh bulges are a useful analytical tool’, writes Roche, ‘if analysed within a cultural context’.

Culture comes into play if we consider ‘youth’ in light of systems of classifying ourselves and our fellow humans – and in the light of resulting social identities. Viewed in this way, ‘youths’ can be seen to behave just like any other category used for social identification. Ethnic identifications may widen to include remote linguistic relatives with whom only older, perhaps merely putative relations exist; or they may shrink to include only people who share a long list of rigidly defined features. Religious groups open up to court potential converts; and they shrink in periods of purification or rigidification, during which only strict adherents to a complex set of rules are regarded as members. ‘Youth’ does the same: it widens and shrinks and thus behaves like a perfectly normal social identity. (See Figure I.3, where in diagram d the second phase, ‘youth’, following ‘childhood’, lengthens, whereas in diagram e ‘youth’ shrinks and the third phase, ‘adulthood’, lengthens.)

Figure I.2: An age pyramid.

This example of an age pyramid is from my research among the Rendille camel-herding nomads of northern Kenya in the 1970s. In this case, the bulges and dents are due to the age-set system. Rendille men do not set the date of their first marriage individually; rather, they all marry at the same point in a fourteen-year cycle. A normal age-set pyramid (without such effects) of a pre-modern farming or herding society would look like a perfect pyramid, becoming increasingly narrow toward the top. In this diagram, the symbols lined up in each row represent individuals of varying status, such as first wife, second wife or uncircumcised (Schlee 1979).

Thus, life phases may join other domains of social identification in the comparative framework provided by other previously published books in this series, which deal, for example, with the variable logic of Anywaa and Nuer ethnic identification (Dereje Feyissa 2011) and with changing identifications and alliances in Northeast Africa (Schlee and Watson 2009a, 2009b).

Figure I.3: Life phases according to Roche.

The social forces behind this widening and shrinking of categorical boundaries are inclusion and exclusion, which are strongly affected by the interests of various groups of actors. In the introductory, historical part of her book, Roche takes us back, for example, to the 1920s and the establishment of Soviet rule in Tajikistan. For that, a vanguard of young people was needed to fight ‘tradition’ and ‘feudalism’ – or whatever the reigning negative stereotypes were. As was the case throughout the Soviet Union, the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, was established and helped ‘to collectivize youth under a common ideology, turning them into a group that could be moulded under a specific youth concept’. The definition of ‘youth’ changed in this context, not only in terms of ideological load and political expectations, but also technically. The Komsomol was found so useful that the age limit for membership was pushed up to 28, so that more members (and perhaps more mature ones) could be included.

A youth organization, serving as a political vanguard, has ambivalent effects on the agency of young people. On the one hand, it is an enabling structure that enhances their agency as long as their activities promote state ideology. Here, youth is a mobilizing concept. Young people are told that they are progressive and the agents of change, and they unite under the banner of a youth organization. On the other hand, youth organizations help to keep youths under control. Here we can distinguish two types of control: control by inclusion and control by exclusion. Members are subject to the discipline of the organization and the indoctrination and the collective expectations they experience within it. Others are disciplined by exclusion. Roche gives the example of a young man whose family was thought to be too religious and who was therefore not admitted into the Komsomol. In terms of Anthony Giddens’ (1979) distinction between enabling and limiting structures, we can identify a limitation of agency here. Youth activities inside and outside such an organization are monitored and closely directed by its representatives.

Not only in the Komsomol but in many other cases around the globe, ‘youth’ has been used propagandistically as a mobilizing concept with a basically inclusive appeal, and Roche is aware of these parallels. She mentions the Young Turks and the Young Bukharians. Of course, it is important to distinguish between a broad category of youth, which comprises a relatively large number of young people, and youth as a social or political force. To become a political force, ‘young people need to collectivize, crystallize, and form groups around ideologies or identities’. Often, youth movements do not comprise an age bracket but a cohort, the members of which age from year to year, as we all do. When I met them, the surviving members of the Somali Youth League, formed in opposition to British colonialism, could certainly no longer be described as young.

Mobilization or political control are not the only factors affecting the definition of youth. A look at the resource base is helpful for identifying other important variables. As long as one is a ‘youth’, one is not expected to marry or to reproduce. Instead, one is expected to contribute to the maintenance of one’s parents and the upbringing of one’s younger siblings. Therefore, with a low or shrinking resource base, one would expect a high or rising age of marriage and an increasingly comprehensive youth category. ‘The fewer the resources, the larger is the youth category in local constructions’, writes Roche. From an individual perspective, this simply means that it takes longer to save for one’s marriage.

More examples of the two points we have discussed so far – namely, the shrinking and widening of concepts of ‘youth’, and the control emanating from such classifications – are provided in those parts of Roche’s theoretically inspired empirical study that deal with the present post-civil war period. At this point, however, the keyword ‘control’ may lead us to one of her central concepts, perhaps the most central, as it has found its way into the title of the book. ‘Domestication’ is used literally to refer to the way in which someone is made part of the house (Latin domus) – that is, the ascription of a role in the household and in the domestic reproductive cycle. Nevertheless, this word also carries the connotation of taming, as in the domestication of wild animals. The extension of the phase of life referred to with the term ‘youth’, or local equivalents, keeps young men, to whom youthful roles are ascribed, from marrying and having a household of their own. Marriage and having a household of one’s own is, then, the reward for a long period of preparation, postponement, subordination and patience. The agencies that achieve this domestication are not exclusively domestic. Because of the status difference between parents and children, and the respect due to elders, parents tend to know relatively little about their children. The teahouse (choykhona) is a domesticating agency at the village level because it is there that status differences among generations are played out. One even has to look at the international level to identify forces of domestication. Russia domesticates the many young Tajik men who go there as labour migrants. In Russia, they mature to self-sufficiency, a prerequisite for future household heads. Russia also provides them with the financial means for being respectful sons who support their parents in the present and, ideally, save for their own households and for the often crippling expenses of marriage (‘conspicuous consumption’) in the future.

Roche’s analysis of domestication leads straight back to her main argument about youth bulges, namely that the youth bulge hypothesis requires further differentiation. Viewing youth bulges in strictly demographic terms may cause one to assume that one young man equals another – that differences are merely quantitative. Roche’s case material, which is too rich to be summarized here, convinces us with compelling force, however, that young men are not interchangeable. Within the family, birth order plays a major role. Oldest sons are providers for their parents and younger siblings. In most cases, they are labour migrants and send money home. In contrast, the youngest son usually inherits the house of the parents and cares for them in their old age. The chances for receiving more than a rudimentary formal education are best for middle sons, who seem to have the most options in life. Middle sons are also potential recruits of pressure groups, militias and gangs. This, however, should not lead us to the premature conclusion that, being ‘surplus’ or somehow ‘superfluous’, they may be regarded, primarily, as conflict potential. Rather, they must be seen as part of a group and as elements of a group strategy. ‘Siblings . . . are the strongest social unit and ensure a family’s social security through diversification’.

The strongest image for the complementary relationship among brothers or, rather, among the different roles accorded to them by order of birth is the Tajik saying that ‘brothers are different like the fingers of one hand’ – which Roche uses to illustrate diversification as a family strategy. Whether or not youth bulges become a problem and lead to political disruption, depends, as she clearly demonstrates, not only on absolute numbers but on the many different ways in which youths can be integrated into larger wholes, the roles provided for them and the opportunities given to them.

Roche’s study shows, among other things, that different values are attached to different phases of life. According to a widespread idea, the early phases represent an upward progression that culminates in full maturity and high status, while the latter phases are visualized as a downward movement, as in the late nineteenth-century illustration reproduced below (Figure I.4). In contrast to this folk view, Roche shows that the curve taken by this upward and downward movement is subject to historical changes in the values attached to different phases of life; and she shows that the length of each phase is subject to variation (which would result in strange stairs with steps of unequal height and width).

For a broader review of variation in the social construction of life phases (Lebensaltern), one might consult the volume edited by Martin Kohli and Georg Elwert (1990). East African age-grading systems of the gada type represent an extremely rigid ordering of life phases.² These proceed according to cycles of years (multiples of seven in one case and eight in another) that mark the passage of new groups into age-sets endowed with social and reproductive rights and charged with military, political or ritual duties. Age-grading systems of the gada type contrast vividly not only with equivalent institutions in Western society but also with those of the neighbouring Nilotes, where the initiation of new age-sets does not follow a rigid order but is subject to social pressures (Müller-Dempf 2008). The idea of an upward and downward movement, as represented in the image of the bridge (Figure I.4), is alien to all these age-grading systems. They are pervaded by a gerontocratic spirit, and social status increases, at least ideally, with each upward movement from one age-grade to the next. Due to the collective nature of age-set promotion rituals, the room for individual re-affiliation to life phases (‘I am as young as I feel!’) is very limited in such a cultural environment. Thus, Sophie Roche’s fine study inserts itself into a broad field of possible comparisons.

Figure I.4: Lebenstreppe (© bpk – Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte)

Notes

1. For recent work on life phases, see Lee and Goldstein (2003), Vaupel and Loichinger (2006) and Goldstein (2011).

2. Recent research on gada systems at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology has been carried out by Andrea Nicolas, Ambaye Ogato and Günther Schlee.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help of numerous people. First of all I would like to thank the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and its director Günther Schlee for their support for this study. Having chosen to explore a subject that is not well established within social anthropology, I was very appreciative of Professor Schlee’s guidance and openness. Amid the unique and generous atmosphere of the Institute, it was my good fortune not only to have benefited considerably from many colleagues, but also from the help of librarians, secretaries, technicians and student assistants. I would also like to express my profound gratitude to Ildikó Bellér-Hann, who provided insightful comments and advice, and to Laura Bernardi, who showed enthusiastic interest in the topic and the region, and encouraged me to engage in demographic anthropology.

I am also indebted to the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. In 2007 I attended introductory courses offered by the European Doctoral School of Demography, where I learned techniques both for modelling population data, and, with the knowledgeable assistance of several researchers, for handling small quantities of data. During my stay in Rostock, I discovered the value of the statistical analysis of ethnographic material and the intriguing possibilities it offers for understanding population through its demographic processes.

I was the very fortunate recipient of a three year contract at the Max Planck Institute and a grant from the graduate school’s ‘Society and Culture in Motion’ programme. I especially profited from this opportunity due to the school’s intellectual environment and the generous support of Professor Ralf Elger, who agreed to read and comment on my work at several stages. I am also grateful to the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, which kindly granted me time to work on the book and thus completing the long path of scientific production.

Likewise, I must gratefully acknowledge the helpful and critical interest of many colleagues and friends during various phases, whose questions and discussions sharpened the text considerably. Although, unfortunately, I cannot name all of them here, I would like to mention Barno Aripova, my teacher and dear relative who helped me at various stages with the translations; Stéphane Dudoignon, who shared with me his expansive knowledge of the Bukharan period; Madeleine Reeves, with whom I had inspiring discussions and who kindly edited the demographic appendix; Thomas Zitelmann, one of the great conflict researchers, who allowed me to present my work at his colloquium in Berlin, from which I benefited tremendously; Payam Faroughi, for his comments and regular updates on the current situation in Tajikistan; Sergei Abashin, with whom I discussed the Tajik kinship system; and Paul Tyler, who edited the manuscript, making it agreeable to read. I also owe special thanks to Hartmut Lang, who helped me with statistical operations, and to Aksana Ismailbekova, with whom I not only discussed many topics but from whom I received welcome encouragement at various stages.

Without doubt, I owe my greatest thanks to the people in Tajikistan, who trusted me and helped me to realize this project. My assistant was able to overcome many prejudices that existed between urban and rural people and thus become well integrated into the male community of different villages, providing me with many helpful contacts. Further, without the families who allowed me to stay in their homes and with whom I developed cherished friendship ties, research would have been impossible. The communities supported my research, integrated me into their lives, and even protected me against the unpredictable members of the secret service. My deep gratitude to all those wonderful people can hardly be expressed in words. For reason of security I cannot name them here, yet their words, ideas, habits and thoughts have shaped this study.

Finally, my family has offered continuous emotional support, encouragement, love and phenomenal patience. Special thanks go to my sister, Marie Roche, who not only supported me emotionally but also read and commented on the chapters several times. Last but not least I would like to thank my son, Nasim, for helping to keep me motivated. With his wonderful laughter and inexhaustible energy he eased the work considerably, and during our stay in Tajikistan it was thanks to him that we were welcomed so warmly in every community and left the country having made many valuable friends.

Notes on Transliteration and Usage

Transliteration is a problem in Central Asian scholarship, mainly due to the language policies of the past. In the pre-Soviet era, most Central Asian languages were written in Arabic script. In the course of Sovietization, however, many of these languages began to be transcribed using the Latin and/or Cyrillic script, due to which some terms that were commonly used in several Central Asian republics acquired a distinct written form. For an excellent and detailed description of this development of the Tajik language, I would suggest Rzehak’s (2001) book on the creation of a standardized Tajik language at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although there was a kind of standardized Tajik language already in existence at that time, people often continued to write in their own local dialects, which resulted in multiple written variants of numerous common terms – for example, the word for ‘mosque’ might be written as masjid, mazjid, maschid or mazchid, and ‘mullah’ as mullo, molla and so on. In my study, however, I have endeavoured to maintain regional specificities when applying certain terms (such as mujohid, mullo).

For purposes of readability, I have not separated the genitive -i and the vowel -u (and), typically written at the end of the word following a dash, as is done in more linguistic-oriented works. For those who are interested in the linguistic aspects, it is sufficient to know that in most cases if a word ends with an -i and followed by another term, it is probably a genitive denominator of the noun. For plural nouns, I have retained the singular forms in Tajik, with the addition of a pluralizing -s, as is common in English. In the case of common words, I have used the spelling provided in the Standard Tajik–English Dictionary (Randall and Olson 2000). For transliterations, I have used the system suggested by Edward Allworth in Nationalities of the Soviet East (Allworth 1971). Well-known Arab and Persian words have been simplified into their common English spellings (such as Koran, mullah). I have retained spellings when quoting from various texts. Unless otherwise indicated, interviews and quotations from the literature are translated from Tajik. In a few cases, however, I have used Russian quotations (mainly from the published literature) and terms in accordance with the International Scholarly System – one of the simplest transcription systems for Russian, based on the GOST and ISO systems. Although there are some inconsistencies in my use of transliteration, these reflect not only scholarly problems but also the flexible nature of language. I am responsible for all translations in this study. All terms marked with * can be found in the glossary at the end of the book.

Introduction

Youth (Bulges) and Conflict

On 8 April 2011 I received a call from Dushanbe. A young colleague excitedly told me that he was on the way to a demonstration in front of Barki Tojik, headquarters of the state energy supplier, to protest at its inability to provide a reliable service. He intended to watch from afar at first, and only join in after gauging the state’s reaction. The flash mob that eventually took place, involving about thirty young people from Dushanbe, lasted no more than twenty minutes and my colleague had no time to join in. The participants carried posters with words of mourning (in Russian). They lit candles and laid flowers at the main entrance in a ‘symbolical funeral for the Tajik energy system’.¹ Thanks to the presence of a couple of journalists, this flash mob – the first of its kind in Tajikistan, according to the news report – was brought to the attention of the international press.

The young men who participated knew each other well, and belong to a group of well-educated urban youth who prefer communication in Russian to Tajik. They criticize the regime and its politics, not only concerning energy but also education, labour and the economy. Usually they do not appear collectively, yet they share many ideas and frustrations in personal communication and on internet platforms. My colleague, for instance, had been handed a note about the planned event at Barki Tojik, but he also spends a good deal of his day moving among internet cafés to participate in virtual discussions. The young activists are all known to the government, which keeps a close watch on them, and some are regular visitors to the offices of the secret police (formerly the KGB). Under such circumstances, participation in the flash mob took courage, and those in it wondered what might happen if others chose to join them in a spontaneous protest. While the activity in the end was too brief and small to attract the masses or security officers, it nonetheless alarmed the regime. These young men believe themselves to be the vanguards of a movement towards democracy for Tajikistan, but they have yet to connect with the great majority of the deprived countrymen they claim to represent.

Similarly critical of the regime, but drawing upon a different source of influence, is Eshon Nuriddinjon, one of the most popular religious authorities, who has caught the ear of large groups of young people. In 2010 it was not uncommon to hear his recorded sermons playing from the mobile phones of Tajiks in Tajikistan and in Russia as they lay idle from lack of work. For almost a decade religious practices had become a central topic to many young people. On Fridays the mosques were packed, often causing roads and even neighbourhoods to be closed to traffic because of the crowds. In villages the small mosques erected during the perestroika period (1986–1991) were being replaced by cathedral-like mosques that still failed to accommodate the masses of the faithful.

The mosque headed by Eshon Nuriddinjon held several thousand young men who arrived from distant villages and towns. While some saw this as a normalization of religious life in post-Soviet Tajikistan, the regime was very concerned by these large religious gatherings. Thus it came as no surprise that at the peak of this enthusiasm for Islam, the state passed a law restricting youth participation in live religious events. At the sight of these large congregations of young believers, the state