Awareness and perceptions of Islamic microfinance among microfinance clients in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

This study examines the level of awareness and sources of demand for Islamic microfinance among the clients of microfinance institutions in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The research question is whether the source of demand is based on religious beliefs or the assumption of interest-free Islamic-compliant products. The field research uses a sample of 150 clients of several conventional microfinance institutions in these two countries. Although many analysts still maintain that there is a demand for Islamic microfinance in many parts of the world, the current qualitative and quantitative research indicates no clear demand for these products in these two countries. The relevant question for future research is whether microfinance users will demand Islamic microfinance instruments.     

Political and social networks in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan: ‘clan’, region and beyond

A major debate among scholars studying Central Asian societies concerns the structure of social and political networks in the region. Still unresolved is the issue of whether to define such networks in terms of ‘clans’, ‘regionalism’, or personal networks. This article, based on data collected during fieldwork in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, attempts to understand these social and political networks. It suggests that networks are very complex. The networks in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan draw on various loyalties including ties of family, friendship, work, education, and patron-client relationships. They are neither purely regional nor purely clan-based. Personal networks, factions, and self-interest play important roles. At the elite level, networks more closely resemble patron-client networks, which may or may not include regional or kinship ties. Among ordinary people, such ties tend to be based on localism, kinship, and/or patronage relationships.     

Gender and the academic profession in contemporary Tajikistan: challenges and opportunities expressed by women who remain

This article attempts to describe the deleterious impact of higher educational changes affecting female faculty members working in Tajik universities in the post-Soviet era. Over the past two decades, the social and economic position women gained during Soviet times has significantly eroded, bringing enormous challenges to education and higher education access, completion and staffing. The demographic and cultural marginalization of women here has negatively impacted university teaching opportunities and the status of women faculty members. Ethnographic interviews – along with relevant secondary data – reveal that despite various official gender-equity policies announced by the state, female participation issues remain prominent in the university. Our interviewees also report continued difficulty entering higher faculty ranks and leadership positions in university. However, significant numbers of women are still to be found there, and they report a workable compromise between being professional educators and trying to navigate a local culture that is becoming more ‘traditional’.     

Disruption and decline: the gendered consequences of civil war and political transition for education in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

The sweeping political transition from the Soviet Union to independence in Tajikistan was accompanied by a devastating civil war. Social, economic, and demographic change followed. This research examines a critical indicator of human welfare and stability at the micro- and macro-levels: educational attainment and mobility. Using the 2007 Tajik Living Standards Survey, I compare cohorts educated before, during, and after the civil war. I examine the impact of the war and the political transition on educational attainment and mobility. The findings suggest that the consequences of civil war and political transition in Tajikistan were gendered: boys’ attainment was disrupted when they lived in a conflict-affected area and were 16-to-17 years old when the war began; girls’ attainment decline was more widespread. This research contributes to our understanding of the long-term consequences of political events on human capital accumulation over the life course.     

Agrarian adaptations in Tajikistan: land reform,water and law

In Central Asia, agriculture and water management have ranked as the two most important economic activities in this arid environment. These activities gained even more prominence during the Soviet era as planners expanded irrigation into previously marginal land that bolstered their vision that the best land be allocated exclusively for cotton production. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan has enacted laws meant to expand and clarify land use categories to meet the dual targets of expanding food production within the country while maintaining as much land as possible in cotton production – their economic mainstay. To this end, the Tajik government instituted five categories of land tenure. Though comprehensive, these new dispositions merely mask a continuation of top-down agrarian decision making implemented during the Soviet period. Consequently, this change has created new problems for farm labourers as they struggle to adapt to post-Soviet life and negotiate with the new bureaucracy in the face of ‘de-modernization’ and the loss of jobs, wages, and in many cases, access to productive land. This research demonstrates that the means by which the Tajik government expanded food production has contributed to agricultural problems apparent at the time of independence.     

Aid and transition from a war economy to an oligarchy in post-war Tajikistan

Exclusion and violence persist in post-conflict states, despite international assistance aimed at the demilitarization of politics. Through a field-based study of Tajikistan, this paper argues that aid focuses on economic liberalization, not the implementation of peace agreements, in the initial stage of post-war transition. Such an organization of aid empowers a particular group of elites who have privileged access to state assets at the time of civil war settlement, allowing them to establish institutional frameworks that will consolidate their personal and monopolistic control of resources. This leads to the collapse of power-sharing arrangements, as the incumbent regime seeks to remove wartime commanders and opposition leaders from the administrative apparatus. In Tajikistan, the incumbent regime has also prosecuted many of these former allies and opponents on account of corruption through state agencies established with donor assistance. Aid thus institutionalized exclusion and sustains patterns of violence along civil war divisions, rather than transforming wartime power structures.     

The impact of remittances and equivalence scales on poverty in Tajikistan

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of remittances from labour migrants on welfare, as well as the impact of the use of equivalence scales on poverty, in Tajikistan. The magnitude of remittances sent back is fairly well known from official statistics (e.g. the amount of remittances is regularly monitored by the balance of payment at the Central Bank). In 2009 a change in the flow of money from abroad occurred, and volumes dropped, but it was unknown to what extent; its impact on poverty is still officially unknown. This paper describes a project aimed at conducting a survey to investigate this impact. It would not be possible to do this kind of analysis with a traditional sample survey, since it would generate only a small selection of migrant households. Instead, the new Migration, Remittances and Poverty Survey was used, which was conducted by the Tajik State Statistical Office in August 2010 using an adaptive sampling design from a set of enumeration areas selected mainly from the 2009 Integrated Household Budget Survey (IHBS) and showing households with remittances. To evaluate the impact of equivalence scales on poverty measures, new scales have been estimated on the basis of consumption expenditure from the 2009 IHBS.     

Family resources,sitting at home and democratic choice: investigating determinants of educational attainment in post-Soviet Tajikistan

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, school enrolment, attendance and attainment rates fell across the region. In Tajikistan, there has been a decrease in average completion rates for basic, secondary and higher education, as well as a growing gender gap because girls are much less likely than boys to finish all levels of schooling. Past work on educational stratification in the region has demonstrated similar trends, but not sought to explain the processes generating these patterns. Scholars of educational participation suggest that a variety of family, community and macro-structural factors influence educational attainment. This paper broadens our understanding of the processes generating the decline in educational attainment and widening gender gap by analysing interviews conducted with parents, teachers and university students living in Tajikistan in 2006–2007. Respondents overwhelmingly attribute the drop in educational rates to increased poverty and its effects on family resources. The large decrease in girls' attainment is rationalized by citing cultural norms dictating that they will only become housewives, ‘sitting at home’, and do not need further education. Others point to changes in educational policy as a reason for lower attainment rates because parents and children are now able to choose whether or not to continue studies in the new democratic society.     

Education for Child Labour: Evaluating the National Child Labour Policy in West Bengal,India

Transitioning child labourers from work to education is a key component of global efforts to eliminate child labour. In India, the National Child Labour Project is the central programme aimed at achieving this goal. This paper examines the operation of the project in the state of West Bengal using original survey data collected in 2008. The survey reveals a number of promising findings, including high rates of provision of both midday meals and free learning materials to students, as well as evidence of adequate schooling quality and availability. However, areas of concern were also identified, including irregularities in stipend payments to parents of child labourers who send their children to school and inadequate provision of free health services to children who attend school rather than work. These operational short-comings revealed by the survey reduce the incentive and ability parents have to send their children to school rather than work and, accordingly, undermine the effectiveness of the project.     

The capacity to aspire: young persons and gender–age relations in southern Tajikistan and North India

ABSTRACT

Rather than studying young men's career- and/or economic-based aspirations, this article explores the obstacles that hinder youths of both sexes in gerontocratic southern Tajikistan and North India from developing the capacity to make their own life choices. Focusing mainly on the selection of marital partner and largely on women, I explore the narratives of those who have never even dreamed of a good life, of others who have dreamed but been unable to actualize their dreams, of a few who have started to plan the way forward, and of a tiny number who actually managed to achieve their aspirations, teasing out the influences that facilitate this. I suggest that even educated youths with some control over their public lives are constricted by their family relations and that it requires quite specific support to defy one’s family, which can create significant vulnerabilities in settings with no other safety net.     

Traditionalization,or the making of a reputation: women,weddings and expenditure in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show how traditionalization is enforced by women in Tajikistan in the realm of marriage, focusing on the economic dimension of life cycle rituals: ritual expenditure and gift-giving. It shows that from women’s points of view, performing ceremonial competition may itself be a resource to recover their reputation, for example when a matrimonial rupture has harmed it. Focusing on single mothers, it demonstrates how practices of traditionalization performed by women can be directed at addressing gender constraints and stereotypes, such as the normative relation between marriage and femininity, and how they may also secure women’s separate sphere of competence and relative financial autonomy.     

Bandits,warlords, national heroes: interpretations of the Basmachi movement in Tajikistan

The history of the Basmachi movement has occupied a prominent place in the construction of a collective past in Soviet and post-Soviet Tajikistan. This article traces the evolution of its representations in the dominant narrative from the 1950s to the present day. It argues that official discourse in contemporary Tajikistan situates the Basmachis in the mould of a national struggle against Turkic oppression, rather than portraying them, in the manner of earlier prevalent models, as part of a class-based or anti-colonialist resistance. Among many public counter-narratives, the one focusing on the local appeal of the Basmachi leaders has the greatest potential to challenge the government-sponsored reading of Tajikistan's past and thus the image of a unified nation it seeks to support.     

(Over)determining social disorder: Tajikistan and the economic collapse of perestroika

This article analyses the rise of social unrest in the Tajik SSR in 1990–1991 from the perspective of the republic’s place within the broader Soviet economy and the collapse of that economy over the course of perestroika (1985–1991). Countering standard narratives of glasnost, democratization and nationalism in Tajikistan, it demonstrates that a close reading of the historical record points to sharp economic downturn as the most plausible immediate cause of the social disorder that came to engulf the Tajik SSR in the final years of the USSR and led to the Tajik Civil War of the 1990s.     

Gender and ethnicity in the Soviet Muslim peripheries: a feminist postcolonial geography of women’s work in the Tajik SSR (1950–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the articulation and experience of Soviet gendered ideology regarding work in the Tajik SSR, one of the Muslim Soviet peripheries, during the post-war period ending with Perestroika. Central Asian women’s work was used for economic purposes, as well as being a key driver for fulfilling the ideological objective of emancipating Central Asian women from religion and tradition. Through a feminist postcolonial geography approach, attentive to questions of discourse and material lived experiences, this article explores the ways in which gender and ethnicity were co-produced by Soviet ideology. Analysis of scientific publications produced by Tajikistani female researchers, and of women’s magazines from the 1950s, is contrasted with ethnographic data on workers from various collective farms and semi-urban places, including ‘work heroines’ (peshqadam). Our findings illustrate the hybrid nature of the Soviet regime, advancing theoretical debates on the use of postcolonial theory in Soviet Central Asia.     

Everyday disasters,stagnation and the normalcy of non-development: Roghun Dam,a flood,and campaigns of forced taxation in southern Tajikistan

This article conducts a comparative analysis of a catastrophic flood that hit the Kulob region of southern Tajikistan in 2010, and the government of Tajikistan's campaign to gather money to build the Roghun dam and hydropower station. It advances the notion of ‘everyday disasters’ in order to explain the imprecise boundaries between major catastrophic events and more mundane dimensions of the everyday as experienced by residents of Kulob. The article seeks to shed light, firstly, on the processes that underpin both Kulob residents’ experiences of stagnation and the normalization of non-development, and, secondly, on the ways in which Kulob residents joke and ‘do’ cunning/cheating whilst dealing with disastrous events in order to cultivate an everydayness that is worth living.     

Governance and order-making in Central Asia: from illiberalism to post-liberalism?

ABSTRACT

This forum brings together five different angles on the question as to whether and how political regimes and forms of order-making can and should be researched through the concept of ‘illiberalism’. The discussion engages critically with this and associated concepts, such as ‘illiberal peace’ and ‘authoritarian conflict management’, which have been developed out of the Central Asian / Eurasian context and discussed in their wider global ramifications and, within the framing of ‘illiberal peace’, explored in various contexts in and beyond Central Asia. While further assessing the relevance and implications of this approach, this forum also attempts to think beyond ‘illiberalism’ by introducing and discussing the idea of ‘post-liberalism’. This way, the authors engage in an exchange that serves to probe both concepts and to determine their strengths and limitations when it comes to analysing and understanding politics and societal processes in Central Asia.     

东北亚油气合作的现实选择:来自中国在中亚的成功经验

东北亚和中亚地区凭借丰富的油气资源,在世界能源版图中的地位日渐上升。近年来,中亚地区油气合作发展迅速,但是在资源总量上更具优势的东北亚油气合作之路却充满曲折。在地区性统一能源市场形成之前,政府间多边协调机制仍然是东北亚油气合作的现实选择。中国在互利双赢的理念指导下,以良好的政治互信为基础,以油气运输管线为纽带,通过以双边合作为主、双边合作带动多边合作的方式,循序渐进地稳步推进了与中亚国家的油气合作。因此,中国在推动地区油气合作方面积累了一定的成功经验,提高了驾驭复杂局面的能力,理应在推进东北亚油气合作方面发挥更积极的作用。     

Environmental migrations in Central Asia: a multifaceted approach to the issue

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, studies are considering Central Asia a ‘hot spot’ of climate change and a region prone to environmental migrations. Growing aridity and the shrinking of glaciers may have important impacts on food security, health, human security and infrastructure in the region and compel people to move. Drawing on the literature on environmental issues in Central Asia and on interviews conducted in the Kuhistoni-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, this article provides a literature survey on environmental migrations in the region and positions Central Asia in the current debates within the broad environmental migrations literature. The article shows that environmental issues can stand out as an important push factor for out-migration in Central Asia, highlights the important role of the Soviet heritage of environmental management as well as of post-Soviet socio-economic transformations in understanding these issues, and discusses possible adaptation strategies.     

The puzzle of manual harvest in Uzbekistan: economics,status and labour in the Khrushchev era

Uzbekistan has attracted international criticism for its use of child labour, defined as labour performed by youth under the Soviet legal limit of 16, to harvest cotton by hand. This article argues that manual labour, mostly performed by low-status children and women, became entrenched in Central Asian agriculture during the 1950s, and investigates the possible reasons for its persistence in the face of global trends to the contrary. The timing is a puzzle, because the 1950s were when mechanization of agriculture became a global development goal. The USSR participated in the mechanization trend. To understand better the roots of rural labour patterns in the Khrushchev period, we must consider how economic incentives and disincentives, gender relations, demographics, and state policy worked together.     

Shifting Tides of Informal Worker Resistance in Mexico: A Domestic Work-Construction Contrast

Informal workers in Mexico, the majority of the country's workforce, have organised to demand rights, but with varying results. In this article, we contrast recent organising by Mexico's domestic workers and informal construction workers. Household worker movements have succeeded in institutionalising significant new organisations and raising public awareness. Construction workers, despite earlier militant counterexamples, have remained trapped by corporatist structures, and their organising capacity has atrophied. We place these outcomes in the context of the overall decline of labour, suggesting conclusions for the limits and possibilities of contemporary Mexican labour mobilisation.