Practices of Traditionalization in Central Asia

Judith Beyer specializes in political and legal anthropology. She conducts long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) and Southeast Asia (Myanmar) and increasingly in Europe. Her research focuses on the anthropology of law, the anthropology of the state, and theories of sociality and social order. Her current thematic interests are: the concept of community, common sense, statelessness, existential anthropology and ethnomethodology. She is the author of "The force of custom. Law and the ordering of everyday life in Kyrgyzstan" (2016) and co-editor of "Ethnographies of the state in Central Asia. Performing politics" (together with Madeleine Reeves and Johan Rasanayagam; 2014). Her second monograph problematizes the category of 'community,' drawing on case studies among Muslims and Hindus in urban Myanmar. Peter Finke specializes in economic anthropology, political economy and post-socialist transformations. He has worked on pastoral nomadism, identity, cognitive anthropology, and norms and ideologies in Mongolia and Central Asia where he carried out extensive field research. He is the author of two books: "Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processes" (2014) and "Nomaden im Transformationsprozess. Kasachen in der post-sozialistischen Mongolei" (2004).

Introduction: Practices of traditionalization in Central Asia Judith Beyer and Peter Finke 1. Women of protest, men of applause: political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan Judith Beyer and Aijarkyn Kojobekova 2. Traditionalization, or the making of a reputation: women, weddings and expenditure in Tajikistan Juliette Cleuziou 3. The body global and the body traditional: a digital ethnography of Instagram and nationalism in Kazakhstan and Russia Diana T. Kudaibergenova 4. The veterans’ gala: the use of tradition in an industrial labour conflict in contemporary Kazakhstan Tommaso Trevisani 5. Appropriating and contesting ‘traditional Islam’: Central Asian students at the Russian Islamic University in Tatarstan Dominik Müller 6. Traditionalization as a response to state-induced development in rural Tibetan areas of Qinghai, PRC Jarmila Ptackova