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A feminist view of a remote part of the world
I like to read books about countries I know little about, so I got hold of this one because I had never read an entire book about Tajikistan and the choices are few. I realized beforehand that the focus would be on women’s lives rather than on the whole society. Still, I found the general content very interesting. Tajikistan had enjoyed a secure if poor existence for many years under the USSR. When that nation broke up, Tajikistan was plunged into severe economic decline and civil war. The author arrived not long after the war had stopped. While opportunities for women had never been very wide, the economic collapse narrowed them even further and men in large numbers had to emigrate to Russia for employment. Working with a health project, Harris was able to talk in Russian and a growing knowledge of Tajik to many women who revealed their lives to her. Despite a heavily academic introduction, the rest of the book is an intimate view of the dilemmas of Tajik women and a clear analysis of women’s problems in that country.
Islam led to strict sequestration of women and their almost total lack of life choices. The Communist system that took over in the early 1920s tried to shatter Islamic patterns and introduce more open, Western gender norms. The Tajiks, like everyone else, resented this interference and subtly tried to subvert the new system. While outwardly conforming, men often insisted on traditional relations between men and women at home. Harris looks at how repression of women continued as well as how the older generations dominated the younger. She adds that in some ways, Western countries are not so different in the way that gender roles are formed and maintained. She advances the idea of “gender masks”—meaning assumed and discarded roles that people play according to the social situation they are in. Most people begin to “wear” these at an early age, not only in Tajikistan. She allows that women in Tajikistan are not robots controlled by men and do not totally internalize “socially desired” roles, but respond to various situations as they appear by using their gender masks to best effect.
If I use the following quote, readers may sense the general direction of Harris’ study.
“In this culture, where marriage is the single most significant occurrence in the lives of the vast majority, but where young people rarely have input into the choice of partner, they are particularly vulnerable, dependent for their happiness and futures on the decisions of others, very often made with totally different goals in mind.” (p.166) Women, with no freedom of choice and little knowledge about sexual life, see marriage as a trap, while men can find sex elsewhere if marriage doesn’t satisfy them and there is little opprobrium attached. Their life is far freer than that of women who, even if they work in the public sphere, often suffer strictly controlled movements.
There are interesting ideas about the role of gossip in social control and the power of family and community in oppressing Tajik women (and often men as well). In Tajik society, connections run from family to family, not person to person, and there is a separate network of power relations within each family (p.91). She also writes about shame as a controlling mechanism to prevent people from deviating from the accepted norms which were not Soviet norms.
Harris offers a large number of life stories and observations by Tajiks, mainly but not only women. These are the most fascinating part of the book and what make it worth reading. If her sociological comments do sometimes become repetitive, these narrations more than make up for it. I liked the fact that unlike other feminist analyses of different societies, she fairly balanced the situations of both men and women, young and old. However, I am sensitive to reductionism of any sort. When, (p. 57), she claims that the conflict between the Bolsheviks and Central Asians in the Twenties was a struggle over gender identity, I feel she goes too far. It was a struggle between two societies over everything! OK, that’s a minor quibble about a good book. And you are going to have to search hard to find a better one about Tajikistan.
I like to read books about countries I know little about, so I got hold of this one because I had never read an entire book about Tajikistan and the choices are few. I realized beforehand that the focus would be on women’s lives rather than on the whole society. Still, I found the general content very interesting. Tajikistan had enjoyed a secure if poor existence for many years under the USSR. When that nation broke up, Tajikistan was plunged into severe economic decline and civil war. The author arrived not long after the war had stopped. While opportunities for women had never been very wide, the economic collapse narrowed them even further and men in large numbers had to emigrate to Russia for employment. Working with a health project, Harris was able to talk in Russian and a growing knowledge of Tajik to many women who revealed their lives to her. Despite a heavily academic introduction, the rest of the book is an intimate view of the dilemmas of Tajik women and a clear analysis of women’s problems in that country.
Islam led to strict sequestration of women and their almost total lack of life choices. The Communist system that took over in the early 1920s tried to shatter Islamic patterns and introduce more open, Western gender norms. The Tajiks, like everyone else, resented this interference and subtly tried to subvert the new system. While outwardly conforming, men often insisted on traditional relations between men and women at home. Harris looks at how repression of women continued as well as how the older generations dominated the younger. She adds that in some ways, Western countries are not so different in the way that gender roles are formed and maintained. She advances the idea of “gender masks”—meaning assumed and discarded roles that people play according to the social situation they are in. Most people begin to “wear” these at an early age, not only in Tajikistan. She allows that women in Tajikistan are not robots controlled by men and do not totally internalize “socially desired” roles, but respond to various situations as they appear by using their gender masks to best effect.
If I use the following quote, readers may sense the general direction of Harris’ study.
“In this culture, where marriage is the single most significant occurrence in the lives of the vast majority, but where young people rarely have input into the choice of partner, they are particularly vulnerable, dependent for their happiness and futures on the decisions of others, very often made with totally different goals in mind.” (p.166) Women, with no freedom of choice and little knowledge about sexual life, see marriage as a trap, while men can find sex elsewhere if marriage doesn’t satisfy them and there is little opprobrium attached. Their life is far freer than that of women who, even if they work in the public sphere, often suffer strictly controlled movements.
There are interesting ideas about the role of gossip in social control and the power of family and community in oppressing Tajik women (and often men as well). In Tajik society, connections run from family to family, not person to person, and there is a separate network of power relations within each family (p.91). She also writes about shame as a controlling mechanism to prevent people from deviating from the accepted norms which were not Soviet norms.
Harris offers a large number of life stories and observations by Tajiks, mainly but not only women. These are the most fascinating part of the book and what make it worth reading. If her sociological comments do sometimes become repetitive, these narrations more than make up for it. I liked the fact that unlike other feminist analyses of different societies, she fairly balanced the situations of both men and women, young and old. However, I am sensitive to reductionism of any sort. When, (p. 57), she claims that the conflict between the Bolsheviks and Central Asians in the Twenties was a struggle over gender identity, I feel she goes too far. It was a struggle between two societies over everything! OK, that’s a minor quibble about a good book. And you are going to have to search hard to find a better one about Tajikistan.