Mostowlansky, Till (2013). "The State Starts from the Family": Peace and Harmony in Tajikistan's Eastern Pamirs. Central Asian survey, 32(4), pp. 462-474. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 10.1080/02634937.2013.864839
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Based on anthropological fieldwork between 2008 and 2011, this article focuses on how people in Tajikistan's eastern Pamirs conceptualize well-being through the establishment of peace and harmony. An exploration of the interactional use of the terms ‘peace’ and ‘harmony’ in Kyrgyz and Tajik (tynchtyk, yntymak, tinji, and vahdat) makes manifest that the meanings of these terms are connected to the fields of ‘family’, ‘leadership’, and ‘state’. Basing their reasoning on the officially promoted analogy between family and state, people in the eastern Pamirs distinguish between social spaces that are related to well-being and those that are not. As a factor of distinction, and crucial to the establishment of peace and harmony, the moral quality of leadership plays an important role. Positive experiences of such leadership as balanced and morally pure are mainly identified and witnessed within families and neighbourhoods and only occasionally in state institutions. This discrepancy raises the question of where to locate boundaries between good and bad, moral and immoral, harmonious and conflictual. Thus, this article contributes not only to the study of local concepts of well-being in Central Asia but also to the study of local concepts of ‘ill-being’ which challenge them.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute for the Science of Religion |
UniBE Contributor: |
Mostowlansky, Till |
Subjects: |
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology |
ISSN: |
0263-4937 |
Publisher: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Till Mostowlansky |
Date Deposited: |
14 Apr 2014 15:17 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 14:32 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1080/02634937.2013.864839 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/49167 |
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