ANOR Central Asian Studies

Living through imperial border disputes resulting in the separation of many communities and families, Pamiris find themselves surrounded by rupture, both in memory and contemporary situations in this transborder mountainous region, divided since 1895 by British and Russian imperial border demarcation. This monograph, drawing from ethnographic interviews with Pamiris from Gorno-Badakhshon Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), Tajikistan collected between 2021 and 2023, investigates how Pamiris continue to respond to rupture, using memories of past ruptures to position themselves within their own cartography of Pamir. For some, rupture takes the form of (im)mobility and a fear of coming too close to the border, while others turn to creativity to make sense of the ruptures around them. Through oral narrations and material artefacts, Pamiris learn, feel, and recreate a Pamiri cultural identity which provides continuity in times of rupture, helping younger generations to experience the interconnection of the lifeworld in which they find themselves and, ultimately, imagining Pamir through emotion and memory.
This monograph challenges the anthropological assumption that ruptures represent breaks in continuity, arguing that materiality provides continuity in times of instability, with cultural heritage giving Pamiris a way to position themselves in the uncertain present by way of the material turn. In this way, this monograph attempts to draft a Pamiri history of rupture, challenging assumptions of global continuity and relocating historical narratives of the past century to Pamir by presenting Pamiri perspectives on rupture and examining how people remember and respond to times of redirection, uncertainty, and instability. In doing so, this monograph strengthens the growing focus in historical studies on non-elite, marginalised perspectives, for example in the fields of Oral History, Salvage Ethnography, as well as the larger historical debates in the field of Subaltern Studies, ultimately drafting a history of Pamir from a regional perspective. The regional is understood here both spatially and temporally as an overarching perspective, whereby, in contrast to global approaches to space and time, the regional represents part of an inward-outward approach which is distinctive of the New Area Studies. The regional is therefore understood as a perspective which, while existing in relation but not necessarily tied to the geography of Pamir, for example Pamiris living in diaspora in Russia or North America, is in this case a Pamiri experience of being-in-the-world. Drawing from the experiences of Pamiri people articulated using Pamir languages, this book locates such shifts in temporality on a community level, examining how rupture has affected interconnection and understandings of space and time. By shifting to a regional scale, experiences from preconceived peripheries like Pamir are brought to the forefront, highlighting at times the subjectivity of rupture and challenging the concept of the global epoch for the fact that, when you live far from the political centres of nation states or at the vague edges of the mandala, their ruptures lose the relevance a global epoch demands.

This book explores how to locate the sources which influenced the political, social, and ideological stance of a famous Turkestani Jadid thinker, writer, journalist and scholar, ‘Abdurra’uf Fitrat (1886-1938), thus also putting in perspective some overall intellectual trends in Turkestan, especially in Bukhara in the early 1910s. Based on Fitrat’s early publications the book discusses what intellectual milieu it was that shaped his worldview in the early 1910s, a worldview that could be designated as a first attempt at “freedom and sovereignty through Islam”. A thorough review of these publications also brings greater clarity to the issue of Fitrat‘s ethnical identity, which sheds light on how he related to the worldwide community of Muslims and how he positioned himself towards political unity of the Muslim World.
Furthermore, by scrutinizing Fitrat’s intellectual legacy of 1910-1915, this book highlights some of the origins of Jadidism in Turkestan and places Turkestani Jadidism in the context of worldwide Muslim reformism at the turn of the 20th century.

Die Nachkriegsgeschichte des sowjetischen Zentralasiens und deren Städte ist bisher nur wenig erforscht. Gerade in jener Zeit veränderten Industrialisierung und Wohnungsbauprogramme nachhaltig die urbanen Räume der Region. Doch die Vorstellung einer radikalen Modernisierung sowjetischer Städte greift zu kurz, denn lokale Prozesse, private Interessen und Handlungsspielräume für unterschiedliche Akteure waren ebenso Teil des städtebaulichen Geschehens.
Am Beispiel des privaten Hausbaus in Samarkand der 50er- und 60er-Jahre und mit Hilfe von Zeitzeugenerinnerungen und Archivdokumenten untersucht die Arbeit die legalen wie illegalen Formen dieser Baupraxis, ihre Bedeutung bei der Bewältigung der Wohnungskrise sowie ihre weitreichenden Folgen für die Struktur der Stadt. Sowjetische Stadtplanung erscheint hier als Spannungsfeld von Interessenskonflikten, Aushandlungsprozessen und Kompromissen zwischen Bürokratie, Politik und einzelnen Akteuren.
Die Arbeit zeigt die Grenzen des sowjetischen Modernisierungsprojektes und eröffnet damit neue Perspektiven für die historische Stadtforschung der ehemaligen Sowjetunion und speziell für Zentralasien.

Die ethnologische Studie beschreibt die Situation junger tadschikischer Arbeitsmigranten, die aufgrund ökonomischer und sozialer Beschränkungen in Tadschikistan den Migrationsweg nach Russland einschlagen. "Nach Moskau gehen" bedeutet, mit allen Konsequenzen Arbeitsmigrant zu werden. Die damit implizierten Erwartungen an den jungen Mann und seine tatsächlichen Erfahrungen in Russland machen die Bewältigung des Migrationslebens zu einer Herausforderung, die über seine persönliche und soziale Reifung sowie seinen Status in der Familie entscheidet.