Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway

234 Pages·2017·90.25 MB·English

by  Till Mostowlansky

CENTRAL ASIAN STUDIES / ANTHROPOLOGY M
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“Azan on the Moon is a landmark contribution to the anthropology of modernity. S
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Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Mostowlansky’s subtle analysis of
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the aft erlives of Soviet developmentalism along the Pamir Highway shows how W
‘modernity’ itself becomes a central fi gure through which Pamiris navigate eco- L
nomic change, religious reform, and political marginalization at the turn of the A A Z A N
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millennium.” — Madeleine Reeves, University of Manchester
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“Places that we consider remote and disconnected look diff erent to those who live
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in them. Skillfully drawing on life and road trips in the Pamirs, Azan on the Moon
is an inviting book that off ers us an enchanting ethnography. Th ere are numerous
O N T H E
lessons here for scholars working at other intersections of mobility, culture, geo-
politics, and nature.” — James D. Sidaway, National University of Singapore M O O N
AZAN ON THE MOON is an in-depth anthropological study of peo-
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ple’s lives along the Pamir Highway in eastern Tajikistan. Constructed in
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the 1930s in rugged high-altitude terrain, the road fundamentally altered
the material and social fabric of this former Soviet outpost on the border A
with Afghanistan and China. Th e highway initially brought sentiments of
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disconnection and hardship, followed by Soviet modernization and devel-

opment, and ultimately a sense of distinction from bordering countries and
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urban centers that continues to this day. N

Based on extensive fi eldwork and through an analysis of construc- T
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tion, mobility, technology, media, development, Islam, and the state, Till E ENTANGLING MODERNIT Y

Mostowlansky shows how ideas of modernity are both challenged and re- M
inforced in contemporary Tajikistan. In the wake of China’s rise in Central ALONG TAJIKISTAN’S
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Asia, people along the Pamir Highway strive to reconcile a modern future
with a modern past. Weaving together the road, a population, and a region, O PAMIR HIGHWAY
Azan on the Moon presents a rich ethnography of global connections.
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Ph Till Mostowlansky is a postdoctoral fellow at the Hong
o
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b Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at
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ro the University of Hong Kong and a research associate at the
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B Universities of Bern and Sussex.
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la
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de TILL MOSTOWL ANSK Y
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CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT P
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University of Pittsburgh Press T
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6443-8 T
ISBN 10: 0-8229-6443-0
www.upress.pitt.edu S
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Cover art: Photomontage incorporating photos by Bernd Hrdy.
Cover design by Alex Wolfe R
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H
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AZAN ON THE MOON
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CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT SERIES
Douglas Northrop, Editor
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AZAN ON THE MOON
ENTANGLING MODERNITY
ALONG TAJIKISTAN’S
PAMIR HIGHWAY
TILL MOSTOWLANSKY
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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Small portions of chapter 1 and 5 appeared in earlier form in “The Road Not
Taken: Enabling and Limiting Mobility in the Eastern Pamirs,” Internationales
Asienforum / International Quarterly for Asian Studies 45, nos. 1–2 (2014):
153–70.
Small portions of chapter 2 appeared in earlier form in “Paving the Way:
Isma’ili Genealogy and Mobility along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway,” Journal
of Persianate Studies 4 (2011): 171–88, and in “Making Kyrgyz Spaces: Local
History as Spatial Practice in Murghab (Tajikistan),” Central Asian Survey 31,
no. 3 (2012): 251–64.
Small portions of chapter 3 appeared in earlier form in “Humanitari-
anism Across Mountain Valleys: ‘Shia Aid’ and Development Encounters
in Northern Pakistan and Eastern Tajikistan,” in Mapping Transition in the
Pamirs: Changing Human-Environmental Landscapes, edited by Hermann
Kreutzmann and Teiji Watanabe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), 229–44.
Small portions of chapter 5 appeared in earlier form in “‘The State Starts
from the Family’: Peace and Harmony in Tajikistan’s Eastern Pamirs,” Cen-
tral Asian Survey 32, no. 4 (2013): 462–74.
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
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Manufactured in the United States of America
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Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6443-8
ISBN 10: 0-8229-6443-0
Cover art: Photomontage incorporating photos by Bernd Hrdy
Cover design by Alex Wolfe
© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized copying or sharing of this material is a violation of copyright law, as stated in your user agreement.
For Brook and the paradise birds of Murghab.
© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Note on People, Places, and Languages xiii
Prologue: The Moon and the Highway xvii
Introduction: Traveling into Thin Air 1
PART I. Modern Places
Chapter 1. Modernity and the Road 19
Chapter 2. Making Murghab 36
PART II. Sites of Engagement
Chapter 3. Nasha–Vasha: Ours and Yours 69
Chapter 4. Muslims on the Roof of the World 90
Chapter 5. The Golden Gate of Tajikistan 118
Epilogue 148
Notes 155
References 173
Index 205
© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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© 2017 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
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NOTE ON PEOPLE, PLACES,
AND LANGUAGES
The names given for all my interlocutors who appear in this book are
pseudonyms. I have, however, used real names for well-known public fig-
ures. The names of places are real, too. Where they exist, I used the En-
glish version of place names. In all other cases, I applied versions that are
officially used in the respective local contexts.
The way I address my anonymized interlocutors in this book corre-
sponds to the concrete interactional contexts that I encountered during
my fieldwork. In an environment in which several languages meet (Kyr-
gyz, Pamir languages, Russian, Tajik), there was not one clearly defined
way to address people of different ages, gender, and ethnicities. The use
of first names was common in conversations about third persons. As a
result, I use first names to refer to most of my interlocutors. Yet when ad-
dressing a person directly I attempted to employ the correct pronouns for
elder people (siz in Kyrgyz, vy in Russian, shumo in Tajik) and for those
younger than myself (sen in Kyrgyz, ty in Russian, tu in Tajik). An excep-
tion is Kudaibergen, an elderly man whom I usually called Ata, which
means “Father” in Kyrgyz.
Many quotations have been translated directly from recorded conver-
sations. With the permission of my interlocutors, I made extensive use
of my recording device. In this regard, I had the chance to record con-
versations during events such as memorial feasts, road trips, and family
dinners. Switching between different languages in the course of one con-
versation is a common phenomenon along the Pamir Highway, where a
speaker’s language preference can change depending on first language,
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