Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
GENDERED SUBJECTIVITIES
AND
EVERYDAY LIVELIHOOD STRUGGLES IN TRANSITION
Place-based
based transformations in post-Soviet
post Soviet rural Tajikistan
Elodie Behzadi
(1053904)
2012
This dissertation is submitted as part of a MA degree in Environment and
Development at King’s College London
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
ABSTRACT
This dissertation seeks to resist the simplistic, economistic and capitalocentric
neo-liberal script of transition applied in post-socialist countries. In order to
reach this objective, it attempts to construct a place-based picture of transition
through women’s eyes, more than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Nurtured in feminist and post-colonial epistemologies and their dedication for
making visible subjugated knowlegdes, this research followed a grounded theory
approach for qualitative data generation. Ethnographic methods were adopted in
the rural village of Kaftarkhona in Tajikistan, and were complemented by
secondary data and interviews of the international community. Investigation of
men and women’s everyday livelihood struggles, and their conceptualization as
the site of negotiation of the discursive and material aspects of politico-economic
restructuring in transition, participated in capturing the complexity of placebased transformation. It revealed how gendered subjectivities shaped by
multiple and overlapping scripts of transition were performed, negotiated and
resisted through men and women’s everyday and diverse economies. These
everyday negotiations, in turn, lead to transformation paths that often
challenged the assumptions and binaries of the mainstream transition script, and
sometimes resisted the traditional paths defined by this script.
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 8
1 FROM TRANSITOLOGISTS TO FEMINISTS ........................................................................11
1.1
‘TRANSITOLOGY PARADIGM’, MAINSTREAM CRITIQUES AND EXCLUSIONS .......................... 11
1.1.1 ‘Transitology paradigm’................................................................................................................11
1.1.2 Mainstream critiques......................................................................................................................12
1.2
CRITICAL THEORIES OF TRANSITION AND ‘SMALL TRANSFORMATIONS’ ................................ 13
1.2.1 Complex and diverse transformations ....................................................................................13
1.2.2 New actors, new scales, and the ‘small transformations’ of the everyday .............14
1.2.3 ‘Everyday’ and ‘multicoloured economies’ of post-socialism .......................................15
1.3
TOWARDS A FEMINIST READING OF TRANSITION..................................................................... 16
1.3.1 The ‘morality’ of diverse economies .........................................................................................16
1.3.2 Power and subjectivity dynamics ..............................................................................................18
2 FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES, GROUNDED THEORY, POSITIONALITY ....................22
2.1
FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES ......................................................................................................... 22
2.2
GROUNDED THEORY IN A POST-STRUCTURAL/FEMINIST VEIN.............................................. 22
2.3
QUALITATIVE METHODS AT MULTIPLE SCALES ........................................................................ 23
2.4
NEGOTIATING THE RESEARCHER’S POSITIONALITY AND GIVING VOICE TO THE
RESEARCHED.................................................................................................................................. 25
3 TAJIKISTAN AND KAFTARKHONA IN TRANSITION.......................................................27
3.1
GENERAL INFORMATION .............................................................................................................. 27
3.2
WAR, PEACE, ISLAM AND POLITICAL TRANSITION IN TAJIKISTAN ........................................ 27
3.3
ECONOMIC TRANSITION IN TAJIKISTAN ..................................................................................... 28
3.4
KEY LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES IN TAJIKISTAN .......................................................................... 28
3.4.1 Migration..............................................................................................................................................28
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
3.4.2 Agriculture...........................................................................................................................................28
3.5
KAFTARKHONA IN TRANSITION .................................................................................................. 29
3.5.1 Context...................................................................................................................................................29
3.5.2 Agriculture in Kaftarkhona ........................................................................................................29
4 TAJIKISTANIS SCRIPTS OF TRANSITION AND EVERYDAY NEGOTIATIONS ..........31
4.1
THE MAINSTREAM TRANSITION SCRIPT, THE NEO-LIBERAL SUBJECT, AND ITS ‘OTHERS’ . 32
4.1.1 Neo-liberal Homo Oeconomicus versus Homo Sovieticus .............................................32
4.1.2 The gendered Homo Oeconomicus versus the traditional Muslim Tajikistani ....33
4.1.3 Binaries, exclusions, monocultures ..........................................................................................34
4.2
THE NATION-BUILDING SCRIPT AND THE TRADITIONAL MUSLIM TAJIKISTANI.................. 35
4.2.1 Nation-building discourse and politics of Islam.................................................................35
4.2.2 Operationalization of Islam and gender................................................................................36
4.2.3 Multiple feminities and masculinities .....................................................................................37
4.3
THE ‘SMALL TRANSFORMATIONS’ OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN KAFTARKHONA ............................. 38
4.3.1 Everyday narratives and performance of subjectivities .................................................38
4.3.2 The underside of the agrarian reform ....................................................................................39
4.3.3 Migration and subversion: de-victimizing women ...........................................................42
4.3.4 Khanechin: reworking of modernity and non-capitalist economies.........................43
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................46
APPENDIX 1 ......................................................................................................................................49
COPY OF ETHICS SCREENING FORM ........................................................................................................... 49
ETHICAL APPROVAL NOTIFICATION .......................................................................................................... 50
COPY OF THE SIGNATURE PAGE OF RISK ASSESSMENT ........................................................................... 51
APPENDIX 2: MATRIX OF INTERVIEWEES AND METHODS ..............................................52
REFERENCES .....................................................................................................................................54
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY
EBRD
European Bank of Reconstruction and Development
CIS
Community of Independent States
FAO
Food Agricultural Organization
IRP
Islamic Revival Party
UN
United Nations
UNIFEM
United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment
of Women
USAID
United States Agency for International Development
UTO
United Tajik Opposition
WFP
World Food Programme
Dekhan
Tajiki term for farm
Oxfam
Non Governmental Organization (aid and development charity)
Kelin
Tajiki term for daughter in law
Kolkhoze
Russian term for Soviet collective farm
Khanechin
Tajiki term for housewife
Sovkhoze
Russian term for Soviet state farm
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Apa Nadireh, my host in the
village of Kaftarkhona, Sajideh, Kheraban, Merengues, and the little Sahiebeh, for
letting me enter their world during the month of June 2012. Their hospitality,
humour and joie de vivre made this experience unforgettable.
I would also like to thank Sharockh and Fourough Behzadi for teaching me the
Persian language, as well as Simon Howard for his constant support throughout
this year.
I am also grateful to Haley Bowcock, Madina Aliberdieva and Mirzomurod
Samiev from Oxfam for giving me the possibility to carry out this research.
To Juliette Cleuziou and Lucia Direnberger, I want to express my gratitude for
sharing their interesting insights and discussions on gender and Tajikistan.
I would also like to thank my supervisor, Dr Kate McLean for her inspiring
lectures and precious advice.
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
INTRODUCTION
There is a fine line between the recognition of a ‘post-socialist difference’, and
essentialism and determinism in the study of post-Soviet countries (Stenning &
Hörschelmann 2008, p.312). Blaming historical traits cast as past Soviet legacies
to justify the failure of neo-liberalism in post-communist countries is one
example of such essentialism (Burawoy & Verdery 1999). By focusing on
difference, post-socialist research also tends to marginalize this body of
literature. Such marginalization prevents the wider post-development literature
and other critical bodies of literature from benefiting from the large quantity of
concepts and approaches developed in the study of post-socialist countries. More
particularly, post-socialist experiences often provide valuable material for
understanding the articulation of, and resistances to, the global neo-liberal
development project. By drawing on one specific experience of transition in postsocialism, this dissertation consequently attempts to reveal how the
universalistic neo-liberal development discourse can be challenged.
The last 40 years witnessed the emergence and consolidation of the global neoliberal development project that provides the rationale for transition. Neo-liberal
thinking supported a new hegemonic development model based on
individualism, market liberalism, the rejection of socialist ideology and the idea
that poverty could be eliminated through the trickle down of economic growth
(Peet & Hartwick 2009; Öniş & Şenses 2005). This discourse, known as the
Washington consensus, was widely promoted by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, and materialized as a set of neo-liberal
macroeconomic policy reforms. Structural adjustment policies, which first
appeared as a response to the Latin American crises in the 1980s, were then
widely set up to ensure the transition from a state-led economy to a market-led
economy and from authoritarianism to democracy (Peet & Hartwick 2009; Öniş
& Şenses 2005; Round 2008).
Transition became the orthodox term drawn from these countries’ experiences
of politico-economic reform. It encapsulated the vision of a self-organizing and
universally applicable democratic market society and the assumption that
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
economic reform governs the prospect of democracy (Bönker et al. 2002). With
the fall of the Soviet Union, former communist countries were incorporated into
the global neo-liberal development project and the term transition was used to
refer mainly to the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union (Round 2008). Simplistic cartographies of East and West and
communism and capitalism were replaced by the vision of a new world order, a
single global space where previous barriers to the spread of capitalism no longer
existed (Smith, F. M. 2001). The disintegration of communism and the collapse of
the Soviet Union, interpreted as the end of history (Fukuyama 1993), also
fuelled the idea of the naturalness of capitalism (Bhattacharyya 2005; Sassen
2007). The transition discourse, based on this universalistic modernist theory,
became the new hegemonic script through which former communist states could
be integrated into the neo-liberal development project (Smith, F. M. 2001).
This dissertation consequently emerged from a desire to challenge this
triumphant hegemonic script of neo-liberal development and its articulation in
transitional countries. It hence seeks to resist the simplistic, economistic and
capitalocentric assumptions the transition script relies on. To achieve this
objective it will attempt to build a place-based vision of transition through
women’s eyes, more than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. By
researching women and their everyday life in the rural village of Kaftarkhona in
Tajikistan, it will challenge the ‘vision from nowhere and everywhere’ (Harraway
1988, cited in Nagy Hesse-Biber 2007, p.9) the modernist transition script relies
on. In line with critical theories of post-socialism, it will thus participate in
opening the cognitive maps of transition in order to reveal new stories. By
engaging with femininist approaches, epistemologies, and theories, this
dissertation will also attempt to take these critical readings of transition further.
Drawing on the ‘relational thinking’ (Marchand & Runyan 2000; Nagar et al.
2002) characteristic of feminist approaches, it will investigate women’s
transition at the intersection between the material, the cultural and the
discursive, embedded in place, and at different scales. Because gendered
livelihood struggles encompass the material and the ideological aspects that are
shaped and shape politico-economic restructuring (Oberhauser et al. 2004), this
9
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
dissertation will particularly focus on men and women’s everyday livelihood
practices in transition. The following question will thus be investigated:
How do men and women, through their everyday livelihood struggles,
negotiate the discursive and material aspects of politico-economic
restructuring in transition?
The first part of the dissertation will investigate the literature that informed my
analysis of place-based transformation in Tajikistan and shaped this research
question. The second part will then present how feminist epistemologies
informed the strategy adopted for my analysis of transition in the village of
Kaftarkhona and reveal the research strategy adopted. The third part will
provide elements of history and context to situate the historical, politicoeconomic and geographical milieu where the research took place. Finally, the
fourth part will display the results of my research in Tajikistan and show how a
place-based analysis of transition inspired by feminist approaches can provide a
more nuanced and thorough understanding of the transition process.
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Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
1 FROM TRANSITOLOGISTS TO FEMINISTS
The following chapter will engage with the literature that informed the critical
perspective on transition developed in this dissertation. It will first investigate
the theoretical foundations of the mainstream transition script and reveal its
exclusions and absences. It will then explore some critical theories of transition
and show how they contributed to challenge the closure of the mainstream
transition script by reintegrating into the analysis of transition a series of places
and/or actors that had been eluded. However, an engagement with the specific
feminist political economy literature on diverse economies and the rich body of
feminist research on power and subjectivity dynamics will also attempt to take
these critical theories further. Such theoretical approaches I will argue, can build
a more nuanced and refined reading of the complexity of place-based
transformations in transition.
1.1 ‘Transitology
exclusions
paradigm’,
mainstream
critiques
and
1.1.1 ‘Transitology paradigm’
The mainstream transition script, referred to by Buravoy and Verdery (1999,
p.36) as the ‘transitology paradigm’ shaped a neo-liberal conventional transition
recipe. Radical reform, also called shock therapy, was built as a one-size fits all
model by transition’s main theorists like Jeffrey Sachs, Andrei Shleifer, or Robert
Vishny (Sachs 1996; Lipton et al. 1990; Shleifer & Vishny 1998). These
economists saw in a neo-liberal fashion, destruction as the vehicle for genisis
(Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p.2) and the brutal collapse of the Soviet system as an
opportunity for the market to spontaneously create a new world (Lipton et al.
1990; Sachs 1996; Thye Woo et al. 1997; Shleifer & Vishny 1998). Measured
through macro-economic indicators monitored by the EBRD (EBRD 1999; 2006),
the transition process was supposed to lead through a series of end points from a
pre-capitalist obsolete state to an idealized capitalist and democratic state
(Lipton et al. 1990). Fuelled by the idea that capitalist modernization is a
necessary condition for political freedom, this recipe was also applied to post-
11
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
war contexts where the integration into a ‘neo-liberal peace-building’ process
was supported by international organizations (Heathershaw 2009, p.51).
This universalistic transition script articulates a mode of thinking that relies on
the same constricted vision that shaped the global neo-liberal development
project. Functioning as a ‘narrative(s) of evictions’ (Sassen 2007, p.82), this
discourse is
based on ‘key exclusions’ (Nagar et al 2002, p.260) and
‘monococultures’ legitimized by the rationality of Enlightenment thinking
(Buenaventura de Santos 2004, cited in Gibson-Graham 2005a, p.5). Economies
and polities of transition states are supposed to be incorporated into a global
capitalist space (Smith, F. M. 2001) where the local, its actors, and specificities
are all neglected (Bönker et al. 2002). Systemic politico-economic change is also
pictured in a narrow teleological way as a one-way process of change from an
unyielding and backward socialist past, represented by the obsolete Homo
Sovieticus, to a promising state of liberal democracy and capitalism (Pickles &
Smith 1998; Burawoy & Verdery 1999; True 2000).
1.1.2 Mainstream critiques
Promises of transitologists were rapidly confronted by the materiality of
transition and the unprecedented social and economic decline encountered in
post-communist countries (Burawoy & Verdery 1999; Bönker et al. 2002).
Critiques flourished through the work of authors who investigated these social
costs of transition (Milanovic 1998). Although they participated in bringing
people back in the analysis of transition, these mainstream critiques were often
interpreted as failing to instigate a real paradigm shift (Öniş & Şenses 2005).
Conventional theorists answered by normalizing what was labelled structural
adjustment crisis as the social price to pay for an efficient economy (J.D Sachs
1996). When the social costs of transition were persistent, they were associated,
in a teleological fashion, with cultural barriers or past legacies of socialism
(Lipton et al. 1990; Aslund 1995; Sachs 1996 ; Thye Woo et al. 1997). Finally,
even when recognized as the result of radical reform by gradualist like Stiglitz
(2002), these critiques lead to a post-Washington consensus that was often
12
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
described as a consolidation of the neo-liberal paradigm with some institutional
ingredients (Öniş & Şenses 2005; Burawoy & Verdery 1999).
Besides failing to instigate a concrete paradigm shift, mainstream critiques of
transition can also be seen to function in the same narrow discursive field as the
discourse they resist. Within this discourse, localities are represented as
subsumed to larger scales and people are portrayed as submitted to the forces of
neo-liberal transition. These critiques, as the mainstream critiques of
globalization addressed by Gibson-Graham (2001), fuel the hegemony of
capitalist transition by using a language of domination. In post-Soviet Central
Asia and Tajikistan; these critiques raise the deconstruction of state welfare
policies, female unemployment, failing wages and rising prices as the causes of
women’s greater vulnerability (Falkingham 2000; Falkingham & Baschieri 2004;
2005; Hämmerle 2008; Kasymova 2008; Kanji 2002). Using the same
comparison True (2000) used in her exploration of Eastern Europe women in
transition, such simplistic representations can be seen as creating the category of
the victimized Central Asian woman, just like the third world woman that
Chandra Mohanty (1988) has criticized in western scholarship.
1.2 Critical theories of transition and ‘small transformations’1
1.2.1 Complex and diverse transformations
For critical theorists, simplistic scripts shape the understanding of the reality by
normalizing the experienced of neo-liberal transition (Ibid). By deconstructing
the main discourse of transition, these theories seek to challenge the
‘undertheorized understanding of change in post-communism’ and build new
understandings of transition for a radical political economy of transition (Pickles
& Smith 1998, p.7). This dissertation, by engaging with these critical theories of
transition, will attempt to participate to this project.
Making visible the diversity and complexity of forms of transition is one of the
first objectives of these radical approaches. Simple investigations of the
1
(Akos Rona-Tas, 1997 cited in Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p.1)
13
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
divergent economic and political paths taken by transition countries, depending
on their politico-economic, socio-cultural, and geographical particularities can
explain why authors often favour the use of the term transformation to the
simplistic term transition (Offe 1996; Myant & Drahokoupil 2011; Pickles &
Smith 1998; Smith, F. M. 2001; Round 2008). The disorder of ethno-national
movements that escalated into a Civil War in Tajikistan, and the setting up of
autocratic regimes as in most post-Soviet Central Asia both countermine the
assumption that democratic regimes would naturally emerge from neo-liberal
transition (Heathershaw 2009). Added to general failure of the neo-liberal
project, these complex stories of transition all challenge the simplistic accounts
of transition (Smith, F. M. 2001).
1.2.2 New actors, new scales, and the ‘small transformations’ of the
everyday
Building a radical political economy of transition also implies the ‘expansion of
the conceptual maps of transition to counter the closure of dominant discourses’
(Pickles & Smith 1998, p.7) and the power of these ideas to shape the policy
agendas of transition countries. A large number of critical analysts have
consequently developed an understanding that builds on multidisciplinary
approaches and seeks to retrieve the silences of the mainstream transition
script. Actors or subjects usually overlooked are for instance given a voice
through Humphrey (2002)‘s ethnographies of post-socialism and her exploration
of transition through the eyes of the unemployed, the migrants, the homeless or
the refugees of transition.
Recovering in the analysis of transition, the national scale beyond simplistic
accounts of the level of democratization and privatization, also contribute to
challenge the vision of transition economies and polities being incorporated in a
one economic and politic global space. Critical political scientists revealed for
instance how, rather than constituting a hollow in the process of politicoeconomic change, the nation in transition is a place where national identities are
reworked to shape the transformation process (Snyder 1993; Unwin 1998).
Unwin (1998) showed how the emergence of a new national identity in Estonia
14
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
in transition constituted a response to the globalized liberal democracy and freemarket script applied in the country.
Other scales overlooked by the economistic literature on transition were also
explored by some critical theorists who raised the necessity to focus on the
‘small transformations’ of the everyday as part of the process of transition (Akos
Rona-Tas, 1997 cited in Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p.1). These stories challenge
the conventional conceptualization of transition at a macro-scale, and reveal how
‘social change have also come from inside and below’ (Humphrey 2002, p.xviii).
Rooted in the everyday, anthropological and ethnographic methods are used to
uncover these transformations and reveal their complexity and meaning
(Burawoy & Verdery 1999; Humphrey 2002; Buyandelgeriyn 2008). Localities,
by being reintegrated and analyzed are hence not seen as merely passive sites,
victim of broader structural forces, but are conceptualized as active in the
process of shaping their own transformation process (Burawoy & Verdery
1999).
1.2.3 ‘Everyday’ and ‘multicoloured economies’ of post-socialism
Investigation of the ‘everyday’ (Humphrey 2002), or ‘multicoloured economies’ of
postsocialism (Smith & Stenning 2006, p.193) is a way to investigate these ‘small
transformations’ (Akos Rona-Tas, 1997 cited in Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p.1).
Everyday livelihood struggles are, through these conceptualizations, raised as
inherently economic, but also political, cultural, and embedded in a variety of
non-economic practices (Buravoy & Verdery 1999). In that sense, they go
beyond the economistic conceptualizations of livelihoods, and are theorized as
the site where purely economic interventions like privatization or liberalization
meet everyday life and sometimes resistance (Burawoy & Verdery 1999). These
resistances are often enacted by the diversity of alternative routes that appear
out of the traditional ways defined by the transition script, ‘between the formal
and the informal, the legal and the illegal, and the capitalist and the non capitalist’
(Smith et al. 2008, p.306)..
Simplistic teleological scripts of transition are thus resisted through these
conceptualizations that reveal how the process of transformation often emerges
15
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
out of the intersection of the old and the new (Pickles & Smith 1998; Burawoy &
Verdery 1999). Woodruf (1999) for instance showed how the spread of barter
relations in Russia is not only a legacy of the past, but is a consequence of the
disruption of the monetary system in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Widespread increase of household food production, the burgeoning of the
informal economy, theft, corruption and the mafia in transition are similarly all
seen as ‘ways in which individuals with differential power are able to mobilise
existing social, political, and economic resources to find a pathway through the
maelstrom of transition’ (Pickles & Smith 1998, p.8).
1.3 Towards a feminist reading of transition
This dissertation will consequently engage with these critical theories and their
concern, also shared by feminist researchers, for rupturing meta-narratives and
making visible situated knowledge. It will particularly draw on critical
conceptualizations of the ‘everyday economies’ (Humphrey 2002)
of post-
socialism and their focus on how alternative routes to the mainstream are found
through these livelihood struggles. Through an engagement with two specific
femininst/post-structural set of theories, it will however attempt to take these
critical understandings of transition further.
1.3.1 The ‘morality’ of diverse economies
From everyday economies to diverse economies
Making visible the diverse everyday economies of postsocialism can be included
into the broader post-developmentalist project of ‘building a language of
economic difference’ to open new futures (Gibson-Graham 2008, p.614). This
diverse economies project, which aims to resist the capitalocentrism of most of
the economic discourse, emerged from a feminist critique of capitalism through
the work of Gibson-Graham (1996). Diverse economies research seeks to make
visible and credible the heterogeneity of non-capitalist economies marginalized
by predominant discourses, and raise these economies as alternatives to
capitalism (Gibson-Graham 2006; 2005b; 2008). Besides offering a theoretical
framework of analysis, engagement of the literature on the ‘multicouloured
16
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
economies’ of post-socialism with the literature on diverse economies can, as
Smith et Stenning (2006, p.193), mention, extend the purpose of critical theories
to the discursive resistance to capitalocentric accounts of transition.
The value of diverse economies
Engagement with the most recent developments of this body of research, can
also refine the reading of the ‘multicouloured economies’ of post-socialism (Ibid).
Fruitful debates between sceptics and believers on the conceptualization of
diverse
economies
as
alternatives
to
capitalism
challenged
existing
conceptualizations (Fickey 2011). Critiques question the celebratory, romantic
and utopian perceptions that raised all diverse economies as alternatives,
regardless of alterity itself (Amin et al 2003 cited in Fickey 2011). As Smith and
Stenning (2006) mention, echoing the arguments of a large number of critiques
(Samers 2005; Jonas 2010), acknowledgment that diverse economies can be the
site of oppressive relations eschews the conceptualization of alternatives as
systematically liberatory.
By questioning these conceptualizations, these critiques invite investigation of
the ‘morality’ (Smith & Stenning 2006, p.206) of diverse economies in terms of
resistance to the traditional capitalist development paths. Research on the
intersection between diverse economies and differential power relationships is
one of the major developments that emerged from these debates (Fickey 2011)
and one of the first steps into this exercise of valuation (Smith & Stenning 2006).
The work of Oberhauser (2005) in Appalachia and South Africa for instance,
made visible how alternative economies were embedded in complex gender
relations and could sometimes reveal challenges to patriarchal relations. The
present dissertation will consequently attempt to draw on this emerging work to
investigate the power relations embedded in the diverse economies of postsocialism.
Re-feminising diverse economies
Although diverse economies were theorized as an extension of the feminist
strategies of counting in and adding on to the economy (Cameron & Gibson17
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Graham 2003), going back to earlier or parallel feminist research can also enrich
their understanding. Valuation of the morality of diverse economies can be
supported by concepts developed by feminist researchers through their focus on
the entanglement of power relations. Authors like Chant (1997) for instance
revealed how households, widely conceptualized as the main site of livelihood
practices, were neither harmonious nor immutable, but were fluid, diverse and
often the site of reproduction and negotiation of gendered power relations.
Invitation by Smith and Stenning (2006) to investigate household multiple
geographies and intra-households dynamics for a better understanding of
diverse economies of post-socialism implicitly draws on these feminist
conceptualizations. Additionally, feminist researchers who investigated the
relations between gender and work also uncovered the ways work was socially
constructed around power relations at the intersection of gender, age, class and
ethnicity (England & Lawson 2005). They also revealed how certain types of
work like carework, reproductive work, and other demonetized activities tied to
the home were often spatially constrained (Hanson and Pratt, 1995) and
ideologically constructed as feminized ‘non-work’ (England & Lawson 2005,
p.80).
1.3.2 Power and subjectivity dynamics
Discourses, subjectivities and formation of power relations
Feminist expansions of post-structural theories on power and subjectivity can
also further the understanding of the morality of diverse economies by providing
tools to decipher power, its formation, negotiations, and resistances. The
subject/or subjectivity for Foucault, is not the centred, self-bounded individual
drawn by Enlightenment thinking but is multiple and an ‘epiphenomenon of
discourse’ (Foucault 1977, 1978 cited in McDowell & Sharp 1999, p.267).
Discourses shape people’s view of themselves ‘seep into the grain of individuals,
reaches right to their bodies, permeate their gestures, their postures, what they say
and how they learn to live with other people’ (Nast & Pile 1998, 213). For Lemke
(2002, p.60), who applies these theories to the neo-liberal discourse, neoliberalism govern individuals by being a ‘political project that endeavours to
create a social reality that it suggests already exists’. Similarly for Seifert (2009,
18
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
p.34-35), who analyzes this neo-liberal governmentality in post war societies, this
discourse constructs the ‘neo-liberally domesticated and disciplined freedom’ and
the ‘neo-liberal Homo Oeconomicus’ necessary to its project.
This dissertation will draw on these post-structural theories to investigate the
neo-liberal script of transition and the process of formation of the neo-liberal
subject in Tajikistan, but it will also go further by investigating the gendered
components of these discourses. As Seifert (Ibid) it will attempt to reveal how
diverse gendered subjectivities are shaped through the intersection between the
neo-liberal script and the often-competing gendered discourses on nation
building. Research on transitional countries specifically added to the critical
theories of transition by uncovering how discourse of reconstruction of the
nation-state in fragmented post-communist countries was a predominant site of
reformulation of gendered identities (Sharp 1996; Kandiyoti 2007; Smith, F. M.
2001).
Kandiyoti (2007), in her analysis of post-communist Uzbekistan, went even
further by investigating how gendered identities are not only formed by national
discourses but can also be mobilized within a political strategy that
operationalizes gender in the service of new geo-political goals. Direnberger
(2011b)
similarly
revealed
how,
in
transitional
Tajikistan,
gendered
representations were operationalized by the nation-building discourse of the
president in order to legitimate its power in a context of political crisis. These
gendered representations in turn, shape an essentialized predominant feminity
revolving around the image of the ‘zan-modar’ (mother-woman) (Direnberger
2011a; 2011b), repository of traditions and norms, and responsible for
engendering the great men of the nation.
Negotiations and resistances
Although many researhers investigated the formation of gendered subjectivities,
researchers like Smith (2001) who explored the possibility for their negotiation
or subversion are still rare. Understanding how resistances are formed, although
often critiqued for a tendency for romanticization, is yet central to decipher
power relations (Abu-Lughod 1990). Feminist theoretical developments of
19
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
subjectivity participated in these ‘diagnostics of power’ (Abu-Lughod 1990, p.41),
by retrieving the agency usually denied to the traditional subject drawn by poststructuralist thinking (Gilmore 2003). Davies’ (1989, cited in Gilmore 2003)
theorization, for instance emphasizes the diverse subjectivities constituted by
multiple and sometimes competing discourses.
By negotiating these
subjectivities, people position themselves in multiple ways that are ‘both in
concert with and in opposition to the ways in which others choose to position them’
(Ibid, P106). Similarly, in her development of the concept of ‘performativity’,
Butler (1988; 1990) opens spaces for resistance. Gender is perceived as socially
constructed through various discourses that are performed through a series of
acts repeated and ritualized through the body (Ibid). Because performance
leaves room for an incorrect copy, it also opens space for subversion (Ibid).
Feminist have also revealed the importance of acknowledging the role of
everyday practices in the constitution of subjectivities (Gilmore 2003). Authors
like De Lauretis (1984) or Alcoff’s (1988) emphasis on everyday habits, practices
and events as imbued in meaning, justify the necessity to investigate the
simultaneous role of the material and the discursive. Subjectivity in that sense
can be seen as the ‘product and process of practices’ rather than only formed by
discourses (Probyn 2005, p.293). De Lauretis (1988, cited in Probyn 2005,
p.293) use of the cinematic terms ‘space-off’ to describe aspects of these
everyday practices that escape the frame of dominant discourses shows how
these daily practices can also be the site for subversion.
Diverse economies, because they are part of these everyday practices, can
consequently be the site for negotiation of subjectivities formed by diverse
discourses. By making visible the formation of the subjectivities and their
everyday negotiations, this dissertation will hence draw on wider feminist
political researchers theorizations of the personal as political, and of the
everyday as a site of politics (Staeheli 2004; Nelson & Seager 2005; Nagy HesseBiber 2007; Longhurst 2005). Investigation of the multiple scales through which
subjects are shaped or resisted and the interrelation between these different
scales finally adds to the simultaneous analysis of the discursive and the material
embedded in place. Through this relational thinking characteristic of feminist
20
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
analyses of politico-economic restructuring (Marchand & Runyan 2000; Nagar et
al. 2002) and this engagement with the gendered dynamics of subjection, this
research will consequently seek to build a more nuanced and thorough vision of
transition.
21
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
2 FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES, GROUNDED THEORY,
POSITIONALITY
2.1 Feminist epistemologies
The preceding chapter revealed how challenging the simplistic, economistic, and
capitalocentric accounts of transition required a deconstruction of the way this
predominant knowledge was built. Nurtured in feminist and post-colonial
epistemologies and their focus on uncovering ‘subjugated knowledge’ (Harraway
1988, cited in Nagy Hesse-Biber 2007, p.15), this dissertation consequently seeks
to resist the ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak 1988, p.24) of the Western modernist
transition script. To resist the destruction of local and embodied knowledge by
these meta-narratives, it attempts to make visible women’s perception of their
own transformation in times of politico-economic restructuring. In that sense it
contends the ‘God’s trick’ of the modernist approach that informed the
mainstream script of transition and that articulates a ‘mode of seeing that
pretends to offer a vision that is from everywhere and nowhere, equally and fully’
(Harraway 1988, cited in Nagy Hesse-Biber 2007, p.9). Rather, it seeks to build
‘situated knowledges’ which rely on a vision of knowledge as constructed, but
also ‘partial, situated, (…) and relational’ (Ibid)..
2.2 Grounded theory in a post-structural/feminist vein
It is informed by these feminist epistemologies, complemented by preliminary
readings on transition, economic restructuring and gender, that a first objective
was developed. Unravelling the transition process through women’s eyes and
investigating impacts of this transition on men and women’s livelihoods was my
first purpose when I flew to Tajikistan to spend the month of June 2012. But it is
also with the conviction that grounding these readings into the ‘lived doingness of
social life’ (Clarke 2012, p.391) would open diverse and sometimes contradictory
analytical paths that I started my research. Away from its earlier
conceptualizations in the work of Glauser and Strauss (1992 cited in Charmaz
2003; Keddy et al. 1996) critiqued for its positivism, a grounded theory approach
for qualitative inquiry, inspired by its most recent engagements with poststructural/feminist epistemologies was adopted (Charmaz 2003).
22
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
A qualitative methodology was deemed suited to the objective of deciphering the
complexity of place-based transformations through women’s eyes. Such an
approach allows the researcher through conversations and interactions to learn
‘how the world is understood and experienced from another perspective’ and to
‘understand the richness and complexity of human experience’ (Delyser et al. 2010,
p.79). Data were created following the idea that ‘what is to be studied emerges
from the analytic process over time rather than being designated a priori’ (Clarke
2012, p.390). An inductive approach of back and forth between data collection,
coding, literature and analysis was also applied (Charmaz 2008; Keddy et al.
1996). By remaining open to partiality, situatedness and multiple readings of the
same issue, a grounded theory approach helped to untangle the puzzles
encountered in my daily research (Clarke 2012) and to decipher the messiness
characteristic of all social issues (Law 2004).
2.3 Qualitative methods at multiple scales
A mix of qualitative methods3 was developed at different scales. After several
days in the capital, Oxfam introduced me to my host family with whom I spent 20
days in the rural village of Kaftarkhona. Ethnographic methods in the form of
participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus groups and
group discussions were used. The personal involvement in people’s everyday life
that ethnographic methods entail, gave an insight into the way people interpret
their world (Hoggart et al. 2002). I was introduced into men and women’s
everyday life in ways that allowed me to start to understand its complexity and
richness. This took the form of sharing a room with the adolescent of the family
(13 years old), following my host at the clinic where she was working, and
learning how to cook the bread and harvest wheat. My constant presence in
these different settings was also an opportunity to enter into multiple
spontaneous off-record encounters where frontiers between researchers and
researched were blurred, and where I often found myself in the situation of
being the researched.
3
See matrix of methods in appendix 2
23
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
The 22 interviews carried out with women initially focused on life histories,
perceptions of politico-economic change, gendered livelihood strategies and
intra-household relationships. Because designed as semi-structured interviews,
these encounters also remained opened for interviewees to engage with
different themes (Hoggart et al. 2002). Although these interviews were first
carried out accompanied by my host, many of the later encounters were engaged
on my own. My host’s age and respectability appeared sometimes as a barrier to
confidence for younger women. This barrier also later informed my research by
revealing relations of power amongst women in the village, and the policing of
younger female’s discourse by the older generation.
Three focus groups were also organized by spontaneously gathering women
working in the fields and opening discussions on politico-economic
transformations, livelihood strategies, and gendered differences. This ‘socially
embedded’ (Delyser et al 2010, p.194) method offered the possibility to reduce
the ‘abruptness’ (Ibid, p.204) of data formation through a dynamic process of
construction of knowledge with the participants. The dynamics noted in these
focus groups also allowed me to capture the existence of a form of ‘group
identity’ (Delyser et al 2010, p.195) of women working in the cotton fields versus
other social groups in the village (mainly head of farms).
Ambivalent and contradictory narratives that emerged through the process of
research on agricultural change since the fall of the Soviet Union lead me to seek
for new and diverse sources of knowledge. Additionally to the methods already
displayed, male head of farms, and the head of the woman farm constituted by
Oxfam to support vulnerable women were also interviewed. A group discussion
with women working in this farm was also lead to understand the changes
brought in their life since their involvement in the farm.
This place-based knowledge was also complemented by interviews with Oxfam
managers, the director of a cotton processing company, and 4 profesionals from
international organizations involved with the agrarian reform and gender. These
last interviews allowed me to understand the contradictions between the placebased knowledge constructed in the village and the vision of international
24
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
organizations articulated at the national level. Analysis of secondary data from
international organizations and journals complemented this knowledge. Finally,
discussions with researchers in Dushanbe and the interviewing of a researcher
on gender and politics helped me to further my understanding of the politics of
transition in Tajikistan.
2.4 Negotiating the researcher’s positionality and giving voice
to the researched
Interviewing this wide range of actors was instigated with the objective of
unravelling the process of transition through women’s eyes. I followed this
objective aware of the limitations inherent to research and the difficulty to give
voice to the researched. Barriers imposed by my own positionality, by the power
dynamics that constitute intersubjective encounters, and by the inherently
partial nature of knowledge construction, were taken into account (Delyser et al.
2010).
Under the eyes of Tajikistanis men and women of the village of Kaftarkhona, I
became aware of the fluidity of my own identities. As in many research
situations, I was economically advantaged comparatively to the researched
(Hoggart et al. 2002). Nonetheless, as an unmarried woman, born in Iran, raised
in France, speaking Farsi as a second language, studying in England, looking
Tajik and wearing a Tajik name, the messiness of my position often offered the
choice for the researched to choose how they preferred to identify me.
Sometimes our differences were questioned and investigated especially in terms
of women’s life, rights, or poverty. Often too, the cultural proximity with Iran was
raised as a reason to consider ‘us’ versus Western women.
This specific ‘social location’ (Alcoff 1991, p.7) vis-à-vis the researched was
limiting at some sites whilst enabling at others. A certain number of unsuccessful
attempts to carry out private interviews with young migrants made me realize
that my proximity with the Tajik culture was submitting me to the
inappropriateness of private encounters with young males. On other aspects
however, my positionality allowed me to reach more depth.
Language
differences between the Farsi and the Tajiki, that I had conceived to be a barrier
25
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
prior to the research, happened to be particularly enriching. Discussions on the
meaning of words enabled me to better capture the sense given by women on
certain preconceived terms. A woman for instance, assuming that she was using
a Russian world that I could not understand, explained to me what she meant by
the term democracy. As MacLean (2012) noted, language differences can be the
opportunity for dialogue and lead to the deconstruction of hegemonic terms and
the grounding of theory into the everyday life of the researched. This in turn can
participate in the process of giving voice to the researched.
26
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
3 TAJIKISTAN AND KAFTARKHONA IN TRANSITION
3.1 General information
With 53% of the population living below the poverty line in 2009, Tajikistan is
the poorest country of the CIS and of Central Asia (World Bank 2011). This
mountainous landlocked country of 143,100 sq km is also the smallest country of
Central Asia, and has only 6.52% of arable land. Culturally, the Tajik people have
Persian origins, and despite the widespread use of Russian, the Tajik (a Persian
dialect) remains the official language of the 7,768,385 Tajikistanis (79.9% Tajik,
15.3% Uzbeks, 1.1% Russian, 1.1% Kirghiz, and 2.6% of other ethnic groups) (US
Department of State 2012). 85% of the Tajikistanis were also identified as Sunni
Muslims (Ibid).
3.2 War, peace, Islam and political transition in Tajikistan
After independence in 1991, the country entered into a civil war that caused
more than 50,000 deaths (Heathershaw 2009, p.21). Perceived as a battle of
regional/ethnic solidarity groups consolidated by Soviet policies, the conflict was
also often interpreted as a battle of ideologies between reformist democrats
espousing agendas of national revival and political Islam, versus the
conservatory party elites (Heathershaw 2009). Formed in 1990, the IRP (Islamic
Renaissance Party), which promotes a moderate Islam, became the most
significant opposition party and the core of the UTO (United Tajik Opposition)
that opposed the government during the war. After 5 years of conflict, the 1997
peace agreement established the basis for the power-sharing between the
government (mainly constituted of former elites gathered around the president
Emomali Rahmon) and the UTO represented by the IRP (Ibid).
The peace agreement however failed to set up a liberal democratic peacebuilding process as envisioned by international institutions (Heathershaw
2009). Power-sharing was not respected, opposition was gradually dismantled
and the president Rahmon consolidated its power through constitutional
reforms and the establishment of an authoritarian, undemocratic regime
(Heathershaw 2009; Olimova & Tolipov 2011). This lead in turn to what is
27
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
perceived as an ‘acute crisis of legitimacy’ for the government (Olimova & Tolipov
2011, p.5).
3.3 Economic transition in Tajikistan
The peace treaty of 1997 in Tajikistan also introduced the World Bank and IMF
transition recipe to Tajikistan in the form of stabilization reform and an
Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (S. Olimova et al. 2006). Formal
rates of economic development evidenced by rises in GNI per capita were often
raised as the evidence of neo-liberal policies success (S. Olimova et al. 2006).
Nevertheless, 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan still remains
one of the poorest countries in the world, and long term economic and social
development is still a main concern (Falkingham 2000; Falkingham & Baschieri
2004; Heathershaw 2009).
3.4 Key Livelihood strategies in Tajikistan
3.4.1 Migration
Migration has become a ‘way of life’ (Ibid, p.122) in Tajikistan where 60% of the
households count at least one male migrant (Kharimov & Mahmadbekov 2009,
p.19). Since 1997, outmigration mainly revolves around the seasonal labour
migration of unskilled males to Russia (Olimova & Bosc 2003). Remittances,
mainly spent on consumer goods (Ibid; Eggenberg 2011) constitute 31% of the
country’s GNP (the highest proportion in the world) (World Bank 2012). Social
impacts of labour migration reveal a growing number of women headed
households often perceived as more vulnerable (Olimova & Bosc 2003)
Feminization of agriculture is also seen as the main consequence of labour
migration and is evidenced throughout the country(Ibid).
3.4.2 Agriculture
Under Soviet rule, agriculture in Tajikistan was dominated by the production of
cotton, for the central system (Porteous 2003; Spoor 2004).
This period
consolidated a dual agriculture system with inefficient kolkhoze/sovkoze (mainly
situated in the southern plains of the country) and productive subsistence
28
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
agriculture in household plots (Eggenberg 2011). Since independence, a liberal
agrarian reform based on land privatization, decollectivisation and the
establishment of a market-led agriculture was supported by international
organizations (FAO 2011; World Bank 2011).
Although land is still the property of the state, land use rights were privatized.
Each former kolkhoze worker was given a share that can be claimed at the
regional administrative level to constitute a ‘dekhan’ farm. This share can be
used in exchange of the payment of a tax. Individual dekhan farms (one share)
can be formed as well as family dekhan farms through the gathering of several
shares (Porteous 2003). Formation of family dekhan farms along crop
diversification are the backbone of the reform (FAO 2011). Despite the reform,
increase in agricultural output growth since 1997 in Tajikistan is mainly
associated to individual farms and household plots farming for subsistence
agriculture (Eggenberg 2011; Porteous 2003)
3.5 Kaftarkhona in transition
3.5.1 Context
The village of Kaftarkhona is a former kolkhoze mainly populated by Tajiks, and
situtated in the Southern plains of the Kathlon province, at 15 km of the city of
Kulob. Under Soviet rule, each family was given a house and an adjacent
household plot (between 0.05 to 0.15 ha) (Oxfam 2011). The village is thus
spatially constituted around these houses and the former kolkhoze fields are
only separated from the houses by a tarmac road that leads to the city. The
village gathers, 245 households, and 2103 people (Oxfam 2011). The village
school, formerly attached to the kolkhoze, is attended by all the children between
the age of 6 to 18; and a few students are sent to university each year.
Additionally, a health centre (also set up under Soviet rule) provides basic care
and maternity services.
3.5.2 Agriculture in Kaftarkhona
Dismantlement of the kolkhoze lead to the split into shares in 1999 (Int.28). The
34 dekhan farms formed are constituted by a small number of individual dekhan
29
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
farm (mainly producing wheat for subsistence) and a majority of the so-called
‘family’ dekhan farms (Int.28; PO). Mostly growing cotton to be sold to
processing companies, these farms also started to diversify to produce potatoes,
onions, garlic and other crops for the market (Int.28). A female dekhan farm was
also constituted by Oxfam to support a small number of vulnerable households in
the village (Int.01; Int.28; Int.25). Subsistence agriculture in the household plot
remains the main source of food for most villagers (even those who received
salaries from other activities) and was often complemented by the ownership of
a few animals (goats, cows, sheep and/or chicken).
30
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
4 TAJIKISTANIS SCRIPTS OF TRANSITION AND
EVERYDAY NEGOTIATIONS
This chapter will attempt to illustrate how the investigation of place-based
transformations can challenge the traditional simplistic, economistic and
capitalocentric mainstream transition script. To reach this objective, it will
investigate how men and women, through their everyday livelihood struggles in
the village of Kaftarkhona, negotiate the discursive and material aspects of
politico-economic restructuring in transitional Tajikistan.
The three related
questions will be addressed:
(i)
What are the key political economic discourses in transitional
Tajikistan and how are they gendered?
(ii)
How do the subjectivities formed through the various discourses in
transition intersect with the materiality of politico-economic
restructuring to impact men and women’s everyday life?
(iii)
What can the exploration of men and women’s everyday diverse
economies bring to the understanding of transition?
I will first deconstruct the mainstream script of transition through the example
of the liberal agrarian reform accounts given by the international community.
This deconstruction will uncover the process of normalization of the neo-liberal
subject and reveal the simplistic binaries this process relies on. Analysis of
gendered discourses of transition in the context of nation building in Tajikistan
will then challenge this mainstream script. It will show how the traditional
gendered subject cast as the other of transition is actually formed by the process
of transition. Finally, investigation of the way the diverse and sometimes
contradictory subjectivities constructed by these transition discourses are
performed through the everyday or diverse economies of postsocialism will also
rupture the binaries of the mainstream transition script. It will reveal how ‘small
transformations’ (Akos Rona-Tas, 1997 cited in Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p.1)
can shape the process of transition in multiple ways that are sometimes far from
31
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
the mainstream transition script, and even often resist the traditional paths
defined by this mainstream script.
4.1 The mainstream transition script, the neo-liberal subject,
and its ‘others’
4.1.1 Neo-liberal Homo Oeconomicus versus Homo Sovieticus
Professionals from international organizations familiar with the agrarian reform
articulated a discourse that functions in the same realm as the mainstream
transition script. This discourse relied on the same vision of an ideal neo-liberal
subject, individualistic and responsive to economic incentives, whose
‘neoliberally domesticated and disciplined freedom’ (Seifert 2009, p.35) is
indispensable in a context of state demise. Government Resolution 111, Freedom
to farm, which constitutes the foundation of the reform was celebrated by a
professional of the FAO
‘Now, people will have to chose their crops, manage things by themselves, sell to
anyone they want, anywhere; this is freedom to farm’ (Int.32).
As mentioned by Seifert (2009), the emphasis , by insisting on this freedom, is on
changing mentalities to make people adaptable to the conditions they encounter
by introducing the norms of liberal market-oriented governance. Market-led
growth, land ownership, and constitution of small family dekhan farms were also
claimed from FAO and USAID interviewees as the solution to increase
productivity, and simultaneously ensure environmental sustainability (Int.32;
Int.33).
This modern ‘neo-liberal Homo Oeconomicus’ (Seifert 2009, p.35), was also
systematically opposed to a Homo Sovieticus cast as inferior and backward. Past
Soviet legacies were defined, in a teleological fashion, as a barrier to transition to
a modern capitalist agriculture (Int.32; Int.33). Corruption was raised as ‘a bad
habit inherited form the communist period’ that prevented the agrarian reform
from being entirely successful (Int.32). Focus on people’s difficulty to think for
themselves (Int.30; Int32; Int33; Int34;) also confirmed this idea illustrated by
this quote from a rural livelihoods consultant’s report:
32
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
‘Much of the rural population is stuck in Soviet-style thinking and are
waiting for the next factory to open to improve their lives. Entrepreneurship
and business development is not at the forefront of people’s comfort zone’
(Tyroler 2011, p.6)
4.1.2 The gendered Homo Oeconomicus versus the traditional Muslim
Tajikistani
Besides being blamed on past Soviet legacies, agrarian reform’s complexity and
incapacity to reach women was often linked to other cultural barriers. As the
USAID interviewee in charge of a commercial agriculture project mentioned:
‘The countries circumstances make it difficult to find entrepreneurs in
general and female entrepreneurs in particular, female head of dekhan or
head of businesses are very rare’ (Int.33).
A retreat to more traditional gendered hierarchies was interpreted by most of
the interviewees as a consequence of a natural revival of cultural specificities
and Islamic religious traditions since the fall of the Soviet Union (Int.01, Int.30,
Int.32, Int.33, Int.24).
‘The Soviet Union was 70 years and then it was over (…) When the Soviet
influence based on the idea that everyone was equal and everyone was an
active citizen went away, what existed before re-emerged and people went
back to the idea of women as a wife, a mother or a kind of attendant for
their mother in law’. (Int.30 – Deputy Director of WFP)
This narrative echoes what Heathershaw (2009, p.43) refers to as the discursive
construction, through Western eyes, of Central Asia as a place where the ‘perils of
re-traditionalization’ are associated with the threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism,
resurgent nationalism and re-awakened tribalism’.
Women were also systematically in interviews of profesionals of international
organizations or NGO workers (Int.30; Int.01; Int.Inf.01), described as the victims
of tradition, Islam, their husband or their mother in law. Vulnerable women
headed households, stigmatized divorcees, women banned from work by their
33
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
husband, or working ‘like slaves’ (Int.01) for their mother in law (Int.01;
Int.Inf01;Int.30) were all representations used to shape the image of the poor
Tajikistani woman in transition. This victimization, already noted by Direnberger
( 2011b) in the country, is also in line with the mainstream critiques of transition
that cast women as submitted to the destructive forces of neo-liberalism
(Falkingham 2000; Kasymova 2008; Kanji 2002).
Following a liberal feminist framework, the discourse on agrarian reform also
suggests that women will be liberated through the rejection of traditional norms
and their development as ‘independent, individual, enterprising and self-sufficient’
liberal subjects (Seifert 2009, p.32). Women are invited to regain their ‘economic
security and rights’ through the land reform (Djusaeva 2012, p.2). Claims for
gender equality are also expressed through the use of traditional western
international human rights treaties (Ibid). Access to information and services are
finally advanced as one of the most important component for a gender sensitive
reform by interviewees from the FAO and UN Women (Int.32; Int.34). By raising
awareness and knowledge, women will be able to ‘take informed decisions about
their lives, gain self-reliance and be empowered.’ (Djusaeva 2012, p.3)
4.1.3 Binaries, exclusions, monocultures
The agrarian reform script was shaped by the same binaries and monocultures
(Buenaventura de Santos cited in Gibson-Graham 2005a) as neo-liberal thinking.
The Homo Sovieticus and the traditional Muslim Tajikisitani are both cast as
backward, inferior, and underdeveloped comparatively to the neo-liberal subject.
Past Soviet legacies (like corruption, or lack of autonomy) are seen as elements
of the past rather than being reshaped by present time. Socio-cultural elements
are also presented as external to the economy or as hindering economic
processes. Finally, the c economy is represented as the site of the superior
‘capitalist productivity and efficiency’ and neglects other forms of non-capitalist
economies (Ibid, p.5). These binaries of Economy versus Society, Modernity
versus Tradition, Capitalist versus non-capitalist, Soviet versus post-Soviet, and
Victimized women versus Empowered women all participate in shaping a
simplistic and exclusionary transition script in Tajikistan.
34
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
4.2 The nation-building script and the traditional Muslim
Tajikistani
4.2.1 Nation-building discourse and politics of Islam
Research revealed that discursive aspects of politico-economic restructuring in
transition were not limited to the simple articulation of the neo-liberal transition
script at the national level. Multiple discourses also emerged in the specific geopolitical, economical, and cultural milieu of post-conflict, and transitional
Tajikistan. These multiple overlapping discourses in transition, as already
demonstrated by feminist researchers (Seifert 2009; Sharp 1996; Kandiyoti
2007; Smith, F. M. 2001, Direnberger 2011a-b) mobilize gendered identities, and
shape diverse and sometimes contradictory subjectivities (Davies 1989, cited in
Gilmore, 2003).
In Tajikistan, the main discourse in transition in the aftermath of the fall of the
Soviet Union, and its subsequent Civil War is oriented towards the project of
peace-building, and its corollary processes of reconstruction of a national
identity in a fragmented society (Heathershaw 2009; Direnberger 2011b). In a
fragile context of underlying oppositions and government crisis of legitimacy4
(Olimova & Tolipov 2011 p.5), constitution of a common identity however goes
beyond a simple return to Tajik roots. In the midst of the power struggle
between political Islam and the current government, Islam became a central
component of the nation-building process, and its meaning has been, in the
reinvention of the Tajikistani identity, constantly re-negotiated by the state.
Following Kandiyoti’s (2007, p.601) analysis of post-Soviet Uzbekistan, retraditionalization can be thus interpreted in Tajikistan as the ‘redeployment of a
form of cultural authenticity in the service of new ideological goals’. This in turn
challenges the predominant narrative of re-islamization/re-traditionalization by
showing how re-traditionalization of Tajikistan is not the other of transition but
is shaped by the politics of transition
4 See chapter 3
35
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
4.2.2 Operationalization of Islam and gender
Evidence of Emomali Rahmon’s attempt to operationalize Islam can be found in
his discourses and political acts. Besides strengthening his authoritative power5,
the president tried to deify his cult using the local traditions of Islam (Olimova &
Tolipov 2011). He also tried to deactivate the process of politicization of Islam by
legally adopting in 2009 the moderate, traditional and apolitical Hanafi school
(Ibid). To the recurrent arrests, and closing of mosques6 can also be added a
series of practical measures where gender became a predominant terrain of
struggle. The ban for women and children in 2004 from entering mosques was
justified by the president by referring to the Islamic past (Olimova & Tolipov
2011) - ‘More than a thousand years of Islam's history (…) says that it is preferred
that women pray in solitude (..), at home’ (President Emomali Rahmon in IRIN
2004). Headscarves were also banned in official institutions and since 2007
many female students were expelled for wearing the hijab (Int 30).
Responses from the IRP to this oppression focus on the ‘breach to women’s rights’
(Hikmatullo Sayfullozda, head of IRP, in IRIN 2004) constituted by these bans.
‘If a woman aspires to religious knowledge where except the mosque can
she get it? (…) Islam does not discriminate one sex against the other. Both
sexes have the right to follow the rules of Islam’ (Ibid)
It is tradition and not Islam, that is presented as the main issue (Direnberger
2011b), and re-traditionalization as a consequence of the control over political
Islam. As a partisan of the IRP interviewed noted:
‘People’s belief is based on a partial and traditional knowledge - If people
knew what was written in the Koran, they would also know how Islam
5 See chapter 3
6 In 2005-2008, many unregistered mosques were closed down and prayer rooms were demolished (Saodat
Olimova & Tolipov 2011)
36
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
favours women’s rights. People follow traditional rules, and women
themselves believe in them… But how can they know if they cannot receive
Islamic education and if they cannot go the mosque?’ (Int.01).
Attempts to control Islam through the rebranding of traditional Islam as
Tajikistani and the practical, oppressive barriers to the spread of Political Islam,
can consequently be seen to be the causes of the emergence of more radical and
conservative forms of religiosity (Saodat Olimova & Tolipov 2011). This in turn
reveals how the traditional Tajikistani Muslim cast as the other of the process of
transition is shaped by transition.
4.2.3 Multiple feminities and masculinities
As Davies (1989 cited in Gilmore, 2003) already mentioned, diverse
subjectivities are consequently constituted by multiple and sometimes
competing discourses. The traditional subjectivity shaped by the nation-building
discourse in transition is on one hand reinforced by the use, uncovered by
Direnberger (2011), of essentialized gendered representations in the president
discourse. One the other hand, this traditional subjectivity also contrasts with
the adoption at the national level of the mainstream liberal and western feminist
script.
The flourishing of decrees and laws on gender equality, women’s
enrolment into higher education, or women’s representation in state bodies are
all used as evidence of the president’s dedication to women’s cause (Sharifzoda
et al. 2011)
More complex than the simple neo-liberal subject drawn by the mainstream
discourse of transition, men and women’s subjectivities are consequently fluid,
changing and multiple (Foucault, 1977,1978 cited in McDovell and Sharp, 1999).
Diverse feminities and masculinities are constituted by overlapping discourses
in transition. Women are alternatively traditional Tajikistani Muslims subjects,
acting as the repository of traditions, mother of the nation; or self-enterprising,
independent and autonomous.
Men, reciprocally, must comply with their
traditional duties, must release themselves from the image of the Homo
Sovieticus and conform to the image of the neo-liberal subject, as well as they
37
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
must represent the greatness of the nation engendered by women (Direnberger
2011).
4.3 The ‘small transformations’ of everyday life in Kaftarkhona
4.3.1 Everyday narratives and performance of subjectivities
The multiple, ambivalent and sometimes contradictory gendered subjectivities
also intersect with the materiality of politico-economic restructuring to be
performed, negotiated or resisted through people’s everyday life. Employment
losses, increases in food costs, dismantling of the kolkhoze, suppression of its
associated fixed wages, and increase in tuitions fees for university were all
mentioned by women as the most important material hardships since the fall of
the Soviet Union (FG.01; FG.02; FG.03; GD). Re-inscription of the transition
scripts into women’s narratives first reveals how subjectivities shaped by
discourses are performed (Butler 1988; 1990) to build people’s view of
themselves and of their environment.
Freedom to be Muslim and freedom to be Tajikistani
Women who remembered the Soviet times all mentioned the freedom gained to
express religiosity in public. ‘It is much better now… we’ve always been Muslim,
but now we do not have to hide to prey’ (Int.05). Self-identifying as a Muslim was
also the first elements raised when interviewees introduced themselves. This
pride in associating Islam with the Tajikistani identity can be interpreted as the
evidence of how the endorsement of Islam in the discourse on nation building
infiltrated people’s consciousness. Ignorance of women of the political reasons
behind the control on access to the mosque, and their assumption that the ban
was related to Islamic law also reveals the dynamics of subjection to transition
discourses.
‘Now, we’re free, everyone has to take care of oneself; this is democracy’
Freedom to express one’s religiosity but also freedom to chose the path of one’s
life or to work following one’s schedule became a recurrent topic of discussion
during interviews. Often, older women who remembered the Soviet times
focused on these new freedoms of expression. Whilst sometimes celebrated, the
38
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
ambiguities related to these freedoms were also clearly identified – ‘Now we have
more freedom, but we also have to work for ourselves, find food for ourselves,
otherwise you cannot make it ‘ (Int.23). At several instances, the link between
democracy and this flipside freedom was noted. ‘Now we’re free, everyone has to
take care of oneself, this is democracy’ (Int.20) said one interviewee. These
perceptions of change all evidence how the discourse of neo-liberal transition
creates the ‘neo-liberally disciplined freedom’ (Seifert 2009, p.35) necessary to its
project.
Men are more impacted than women
Lack of employment, viewed as the most important hardship since the fall of the
Soviet Union, was also perceived as mostly impacting men (FG.01; FG.02; FG.03).
‘This is because of the Niqah, the rule of marriage according to Islam’ said a
woman in a focus group to explain gendered impacts - ‘men must go out and
work,
whilst
women
can
still
stay
at
home
and
be
‘khanechin’9
(housewife)’(FG.04). In times of economic hardship, women in Kaftarkhona can
thus still retrench around their traditional roles whilst it remains ‘men’s duty to
feed their wife and their children’ (FG 04). Men who fail to comply with their
obligations might hence breach with the predominant Tajikistani masculinity,
also supported by the the self-enterprising neo-liberal subject.
4.3.2 The underside of the agrarian reform
Multiple subjectivities are thus performed at the local level and re-inscribed into
men and women’s narratives. However, as mentioned by Davies (1989 cited in
Glimore 2003), the diversity of these subjectivities leaves space for multiple
negotiations. These everyday negotiations also intersect with the material
aspects of everyday life (DeLauretis 1984; Alcoff 1988) and more particularly the
materiality of politico-economic restructuring. Diverse or everyday economies
that emerge from these negotiations often take multiple paths that, although cast
as the other of transition, can be perceived as its underside.
9 See list of abbreviations and glossary
39
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Land steeling and corruption: Homo oeconomicus versus Homo Sovieticus?
Research revealed that the process of dekhan farm constitution in Kaftarkhona
did not follow the idealized vision of the agrarian reform based on neo-liberal
subjects gathering their individual interests by joining their shares10. Rather, a
process of land stealing, corruption was set up by well-connected and selfenterprising men (Int.24; Int.26; Int.27). Head of dekhan farms in the village
were found to be one link in a larger chain of exploitation constituted at the top
by large cotton processing companies integrated into international markets
(Int.29); and at the other end, exploited women.
Most interviews revealed that women in dekhan farms were essentially working
for free11, with no awareness of owning a share, and mainly because of their
dependency on cotton sticks for fuel. The existence of a system of land steeling
was confirmed through discussion with the head of Oxfam’s female dekhan farm
(Int.25; GD) - ‘Oxfam opened our eyes, we would have never known that our shares
had been stolen if the NGO had not helped us to claim our land back’ (Int.25). What
appears as a system of exploitation was described by the head of traditional
dekhan farms as a win-win process where shares were claimed to be coming
from aware family members or neighbours who lacked capacity or interest to
farm their land (Int.24; Int.26; Int.27). Corruption was also described to be
widespread in the process of land taking and land keeping by these wellconnected men. As the head of one of the village largest dekhan farm noted: ‘it’s
not difficult’ (to avoid government’s drawback12) ‘there is one man who comes to
visit once in a while, he just taps on his shirt pocket, I slide in a note, and he goes
away.’ (Int.26).
10 See chapter 3
11 Women work 10 hours a day from October to April in the flieds and only receive a very small amount of
money for each harvest (4 times a year) pro rata the number of kilos of cotton gathered.
12 See 10
40
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
This process can be analysed, as one of the ways well-connected men carve out
their livelihoods in the ‘maelstrom of transition’ (Pickles & Smith 1998, p.8)
Conceptualization of this diverse economy as alternative to capitalist transition
would overlook the system of exploitation this process relies on. However,
because it challenges the simplistic assumptions of the neo-liberal script of
transition, it can also be perceived as a form of resistance and/or alternative to
this mainstream script. Neither entirely Homo Oeconomicus, nor homo
Sovieticus, men respond to the pressures of their environment by negotiating
their different subjectivities and by shaping their own transformation.
Feminization of agriculture: Economy versus Society?
Made possible by the opening of the markets and a disjointed agrarian reform,
this system of exploitation also lead to the ‘feminization’ in meaning of
agricultural work (England & Lawson 2005, p.80). With the fall of the Soviet
Union, agriculture was transformed from the core activity of the village
providing secure employment and wages with the kolkhoze, into a low wage,
insecure, and downgraded activity. ‘Itchi’ (nothing), was the answer given by
most of dekhan workers when the question ‘what do you do for a living?’ was
asked. Demonetizing of agricultural work lead to its association with feminine
housework and consequently with ‘non-work’ (England & Lawson 2005, p.80).
Men who worked in the dekhan were also perceived as emasculated, incapable of
complying with their male role and lacking the capacity to engage with any other
activity (Int.Inf.02, PO).
Feminization in meaning of agriculture also lead to the actual feminization of
agricultural work in Kaftarkhona, also reflected in wider processes of change in
the country13. Walking in the fields surrounding the village is enough to notice
the absence of male labourers (PO). Unsuitable for men who are expected to
follow the predominant traditional image of family provider, agriculture is
deserted by the male population - ‘There is no money to make in the dekhan’ was
the answer given to justify male’s absence in the field (FG.01, FG.02, F.03). In
13 See chapter 3
41
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
parallel, dekhan work, because spatially restricted to the village and feminized in
meaning, circumvents the traditional ban to work imposed by some men on their
wives. This ban based on an interpretation of the Koran, focuses on the necessity
to protect women from other males gaze (FG.03).
Feminization of agricultural work in meaning and practice reveals how work is
not only economic but is also embedded in a variety of non-economic practices.
It also raises concerns on the future of agriculture in Kaftarkhona, confirmed by
the young generation’s aspirations. Whilst young educated women wish to leave
the village, break their ties with the household and the fields, and the life of their
parents; men, since their youngest age, get ready to migrate to Russia to become
construction workers or business men (Int.14; Int22; Int.Inf.02, PO). This social
fabric of agricultural work consequently countermines the economistic
assumptions of the agrarian reform. It ruptures the binary of Economy versus
Society it relies on and reveals that it might take more than privatizing land to
get people back into the fields.
4.3.3 Migration and subversion: de-victimizing women
This concern on the future of agriculture is also confirmed by male labour
migration in the village of Kaftarkhona. Perceived as a response to employment
losses and low wages in agriculture (FG01; FG.02; FG.03), migration is also an
opportunity made possible by economic restructuring. In Kaftarkhona, like in
most of the country since the 1990s, migration can be seen as a ‘way of life’
(Olimova & Bosc 2003 p.60), where the materiality of restructuring intersects
with gendered subjectivities to inform the decision and terms of migration.
Traditionally tied to the household space, women in Kaftarkhona are not
expected to migrate and supposed to stay with their family in law during their
husband’s absence. In parallel, following their traditional duties of provider of
the family, men often chose the lack of comfort of leaving their household rather
than feeling threatened in their masculinity. By engaging with migration, they
also comply with their liberal subjectivity as self-enterprising, mobile and even
cosmopolitan men travelling to Russia (PO).
42
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Although the hardships lived by migrant’s wives sometimes conformed to the
image of the victimized Tajikistani woman in transition; male migration was also
sometimes the opportunity for women to challenge their traditional roles. ‘I am
the one who does everything now; I work in the dekhan, in the garden, I take care
of the children, I repair the house’ (Int.03). Added to stories of abandoned women
and second wives (Int.12; Int.04), increased workload was presented as the most
important hardships of migrant’s wife (Int.03; Int.04; Int.12 FG.03).
Nevertheless, subtle and covert resistances were also found to emerge from
these everyday difficulties - ‘I do not say it anymore to my husband because when I
do, he tells me that it is not true, but I know that I’ve done a lot during his absence,
and that I became stronger’ said a migrant wife (FG.03). Overt challenges were
also noted through stories of migrant’s wives who asked for the divorce. ‘I do not
want to get married again, I do not need it if it is to reproduce what I already lived’
said a 23-years old divorcee, victim of ill treatments from her family in law
(Int.08). Another woman whose husband had taken a second wife and was not
sending remittances anymore, was herself getting ready to migrate despite
traditional gendered barriers (Int. 12).
These stories all evidence how women subjectivities can be negotiated and
transformed through their experience as migrant’s wives. They hence challenge
the traditional caricatures of the mainstream transition script that cast women
as the victims of politico-economic restructuring. Rather, they retrieve women’s
agency in shaping their own transformation process in ways that are sometimes
alien to the mainstream.
4.3.4 Khanechin: reworking of modernity and non-capitalist economies
Association in the mainstream of the large number of khanechin(housewife) to a
re-traditionalization linked to re-islamization of the Tajik culture overlooks the
role played by economic change in this retrenchment towards home. Women
can, like in the case of some migrant’s wives can resist economic change and the
demonetization of work in the dekhan by becoming ‘khanechin’. ‘I do not have to
work outside now, I have enough not to ’ (Int..05) mentioned a migrant’s wife
whose status and comfort had considerably increased with the remittances sent
43
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
by her husband. Older women were often found to be these khanechin by choice
who were old enough to retire from their previous duties and control the work
of their kelins (daughters in law) (PO). In parallel, these kelins were often pushed
to become khanechin because of the simultaneous impact of a traditional
patrilocal family structure and the rises in costs of education. Because women
are expected to live with their in laws when they get married, families often
prefer investing in men’s education who will in the future contribute to the
household income (FG.03)
Reliance on kelins’ work for survival can also be perceived as one of the
consequences of economic restructuring and a form of reworking of modernity.
With the dismantlement of the kolkhoze, the closure of the kindergarten, and
rises in food prices; subsistence agriculture and caring activities became central
to household’s survival strategies. The use by older women of their kelins, and
what can be seen as a kind of reinforced patrilocality, can be interpreted as the
way these older women negotiate with the material aspects of politico-economic
restructuring at the same time as they use tradition for their own purpose.
The term khanechin who literally means ‘who sits at home’ can also be
misleading given the diversity of activities these women engage with. Half
entrepreneurs, half khanechin, many women negotiate their liberal and
traditional subjectivites by entering into activities at the frontier between the
formal and the informal and the capitalist and the non capitalist. Women for
instance often kept their spatial ties to the home whilst working in informal
activities like petty trading or sewing (Int.18; Int.19; Int.09; Int.22; FG.01; FG.02;
FG.03). These activities were often bringing the largest income within the
household and were recognized as empowering (Int.22; Int.18). A small shop
owner, although conforming in discourse to her traditional role by emphazsizing
men’s superiority, also noted: ‘My husband does not work, I am the one who got
the idea to set up this shop, and I am the one who is ruling it because I am better at
talking to people and at making business’ (Int.18).
The spread of subsistence agriculture and the use of barter (commonly called
dad-o-gerift) also evidences the diversity of non-capitalist economies that are
44
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
formed in people’s home. Retrenchement on household food production,
identified in Tajikistan as more productive than agriculture in the dekhan
(Eggenberg 2011)and the increased use of barter since the fall of the Soviet
Union (FG.01; FG.03, Int.Inf, Int.03; Int.11) both appear as ways people use the
old to shape the new (Pickles & Smith 1998). . In a situation of decreased wages
in the kolkhoze, quasi impossibility to sell food on the market because of the
competition of dekhan farmers (FG.03); the care, the economy of regard, and all
these forms of non capitalist economies practiced by women become a way to
resist the materiality of restructuring (Pickles & Smith 1998; Burawoy & Verdery
1999). These activities, usually overlooked by the mainstream are also the site
where people negotiate their different subjectivities, in ways that also challenge
the simplistic scripts of transition.
45
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
CONCLUSION
This dissertation aimed to challenge the hegemonic neo-liberal development
script and its articulation in transitional countries. In order to resist its
simplistic, economistic, and capitalocentric assumptions, it attempted to build a
picture of transition, through women’s eyes in the rural village of Kaftarkhona.
Investigation of men and women’s everyday negotiations of the discursive and
material aspects of politico-economic restructuring, revealed different stories
that contributed to rupture the classical binaries that the transition script relies
upon. The diverse economies that people engaged with were also found to be the
site of these everyday negotiations and the place where small transformations
could emerge.
Analysis of multiple discourses in transition revealed how the formation of the
gendered neo-liberal subject was just one of the multiple subjectivities that
emerged in transition. Other discourses participated in shaping other
subjectivities, sometimes contradictory. The discourse on nation building in
transition, and its intersection with the politics of Islam was for instance found to
be the site of formation of traditional feminities and masculinities. Revealing
these multiple subjectivities showed how what was cast as the other of the
process of transition was, in fact, partly formed by the transition process.
These discourses in transition were also re-inscribed in women’s everyday
narratives, and their perception of change in the village of Kaftarkhona.
However, diverse subjectivities were also negotiated through diverse economies
and their interaction with the materiality of restructuring. Often going in messy
directions, these negotiations contributed to shape transformation paths that
can be seen as resistances to the traditional mainstream script, because they
challenge the binaries of the mainstream transition script. Investigation of how
some men in the village of Kaftarkhona took advantage of a disjointed agrarian
reform to set up a system of exploitation revealed how some well-connected
men, half Homo Oeconomicus, half Homo Sovieticus, negotiated their different
subjectivities and the opportunity opened by agrarian reform to find their own
46
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
transformation paths. This system of exploitation, rather than being interpreted
as the other of transition, can in turn be seen as its underside.
Feminization of agriculture in meaning and in practice was also found to be, in
the village of Kaftarkhona, the result of the way people negotiated their different
subjectivities and the materiality of restructuring in transition. Traditional roles
and subjectivities appeared to be crucial in the gendered division of work.
Uncovering the changing meaning of agricultural work also revealed how
economic practices were intertwined with non-economic practices.
Male migration and its impact on migrant’s wives were also investigated.
Contrary to the assumption of the mainstream transition script, which cast all
women-headed households as victims, the diversity of experiences of migration
was uncovered. As the male-headed household can be a site of oppression, the
experience of male migration was also found to be an opportunity for women to
enter diverse, covert and overt resistances to oppressive relations and
traditional gendered norms.
Finally, investigation of the position of khanechin revealed how this position was
often more a reworking of modernity than a natural retrenchment towards
traditional roles. Investigation of the diversity of economies women engage with
as khanechin also contributed to revalue housework and reveal the increasing
value of non-capitalist economies in transition.
By uncovering the different gendered power relations embedded in these
diverse economies of post-socialism, this dissertation also contributes to two
other main bodies of knowledge. First, exploration of the dynamics of subjection,
from their formation through their everyday negotiations can participate in the
feminist objective of entangling relations of power, and revealing, away from
grand discourses of elites, how the everyday can be a site of politics. Second, this
dissertation also contributes to the rare body of knowledge that attempts to
value diverse economies in terms of resistance to the mainstream neo-liberal
development paths. By revealing the different power relations embedded in
these everyday and diverse economies, this dissertation can be perceived as a
47
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
first step into the investigation of the ‘morality ‘(Smith & Stenning 2006, p.206)
of diverse economies.
48
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Appendix 1
Copy of Ethics screening form
49
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Ethical approval notification
Dear Elodie,
KCL/11-12_920 - ‘Gender and food security- How to build resilience?’
4.3.5
I am pleased to inform you that full approval for your project has been granted by the
Geography, Gerontology Research Ethics Panel. Any specific conditions of approval
are laid out at the end of this email which should be followed in addition to the standard
terms and conditions of approval:
o Ethical approval is granted for a period of one year from 21st May 2012. You will not
receive a reminder that your approval is about to lapse so it is your responsibility to
apply for an extension prior to the project lapsing if you need one (see below for
instructions).
o You should report any untoward events or unforeseen ethical problems arising from
the project to the panel Chairman within a week of the occurrence. Information about
the panel may be accessed at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/ethics/applicants/sshl/panels/
o If you wish to change your project or request an extension of approval you will need to
submit a new application with an attachment indicating the changes you want to make
(a proforma document to help you with this is available at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/research/support/ethics/applications/modifications.aspx
o All research should be conducted in accordance with the King’s College London
Guidelines on Good Practice in Academic Research available at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/college/policyzone/index.php?id=247
If you require signed confirmation of your approval please forward this email to [email protected]
indicating why it is required and the address you would like it to be sent to.
Please would you also note that we may, for the purposes of audit, contact you from time to
time to ascertain the status of your research.
We wish you every success with this work.
Yours sincerely
50
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Copy of the signature page of risk assessment
51
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Appendix 2: Matrix of interviewees and methods
Table of methods
Interview
Position
Location
Date
Interview 1 (Int.01)
Livelihoods
coordinator Oxfam
Kulob
Interview 2 (Int.02)
Interview 3 (Int.03)
Interview 4 (Int.04)
Interview 5 (Int.05)
Interview 6 (Int.06)
Interview 7 (Int.07)
Interview 8 (Int.08)
Interview 9 (Int.09)
Interview 10 (Int.10)
Interview 11 (Int.11)
Interview 12 (Int.12)
Interview 13 (Int.13)
Interview 14 (Int.14)
Interview 15 (Int.15)
Interview 16 (Int.16)
Interview 17 (Int.17)
Interview 18 (Int.18)
Interview 19 (Int.19)
Interview 20 (Int.20)
Interview 21 (Int.21)
Interview 22 (Int.22)
Interview 23 (Int.23)
Interview 24 (Int.24)
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Woman villager
Interview head of
dekhan farm
Interview head of
dekhan farm (Oxfam
women dekhan farm)
Interview head of
dekhan farm
Interview head of
dekhan farm
Interview with head of
the
village
organization and one
of the officer of the
organization
Director of cotton
processing company
Deputy Director WFP
Tajikistan
Researcher on gender
and politics
National institutional
specialist FAO
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
Kaftarkhona
2.07.2012
and
21.07.2012
4.07.2012
5.07.2012
6.07.2012
8.07.2012
8.07.2012
9.07.2012
10.07.2012
11.07.2012
11.07.2012
11.07.2012
13.07.2012
13.07.2012
14.07.2012
14.07.2012
15.07.2012
15.07.2012
17.07.2012
17.07.2012
18.07.2012
18.07.2012
19.07.2012
19.07.2012
12.07.2012
Kaftarkhona
13.07.2012
Kaftarkhona
16.07.2012
Kaftarkhona
16.07.2012
Kaftarkhona
7 .07.2012 &
8.07.2012 &
18.07.2012
Kulob
20.07.2012
Dushanbe
26.07.2012
Dushanbe
26.07.2012
Dushanbe
26.07.2012
Interview 25 (Int.24)
Interview 26 (Int.26)
Interview 27 (Int.27)
Interview 28 (Int.28)
Interview 29 (Int.29)
Interview 30 (Int.30)
Interview 31 (Int.31)
Interview 32 (Int.32)
52
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
Interview
Position
Location
Date
Interview 33 (Int.33)
Deputy chief reporty
agriculture USAID
National project
coordinator UNIFEM
Dushanbe
27.07.2012
Dushanbe
27.06.2012
Interview 34 (Int.34)
Focus groups and group discussions
Focus
Group
& Position and number Themes
Group Discussion
of participants
Date
Focus Group 01 (FG.01)
9.07.2012
Focus Group 02 (FG.02)
Focus Group 03 (FG.03)
Group discussion (GD)
Dekhan farm workers Restructuring
(women)
–
6 Coping strategies
participants
Gendered division
of work
Dekhan farm workers Restructuring
(women)
7 Coping strategies
participants
Gendered division
of work
Dekhan farm workers
(women) and selling
household production
on the market - 7
participants
‘Oxfam woman dekhan’ Hisory,
workers – 3 participants Specificities and
impacts of the
creation of the
Oxfam
women
dekhan farm
10.07.2012
20.07.2012
14.07.2012
Informal interviews
Informal interview
(Int.Inf.01)
Informal interview
(Int.Inf.01)
1 Oxfam livelihood managers
2 My host in the village of Kaftarkhona
Participant observation
Stayed with one family in the village of Kaftarkhona from the 3.07.2012 to the
21.07.2012. Assisted and participated to everyday life activities.
53
Gendered subjectivities and everyday livelihood struggles in transition
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