Jeff Sahadeo is Assistant Professor, Institute of European and Russian Studies and Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa. He is author of Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 (IUP, 2006).

Russell Zanca is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northeastern Illinois University. He is author of The Big Cotton Collective: Uzbeks after Socialism.

Contents

Introduction: Central Asia and Everyday Life

Part One: Background

Introduction

[...] and Tajiks in Central Asian History Scott Levi

Part Two: Communities

Introduction

2. Everyday Life among the Turkmen Nomads Adrienne Edgar

3. Recollections of a Hazara Wedding in the 1930s Robert Canfield

4. Trouble in Birglich Robert Canfield

5. A Central Asian Tale of Two Cities:Locating Lives and Aspirations in a Shifting Post-Soviet Cityscape Morgan Y. Liu

Part Three: Gender

Introduction

6. The Limits of Liberation: Gender, Revolution, and the Veil in Everyday Life in Soviet

Uzbekistan Douglas Northrop

7. The Wedding Feast: Living the New Uzbek Life in the 1930s Marianne Kamp

8. Practical Consequences of Soviet Policy and Ideology for Gender in Central Asia and Contemporary Reversal Elizabeth Constantine

9. Dinner with Akhmet Greta Uehling

Part Four: Performance and Encounters

Introduction

10. An Ethnohistorical Journey through Kazakh Hospitality Paula A. Michaels

11. Konstitutsiya Buzildi: Gender Relations in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Peter Finke and Meltem Sancak

12. Fat and All That: Good Eating the Uzbek Way Russell Zanca

13. Public and Private Celebrations: Uzbekistan's National Holidays Laura Adams

14. Music Across the Kazakh Steppe Michael Rouland

Part Five: Nation, State, and Society in the Everyday

Introduction

15. The Shrinking of the Welfare State: Central Asians'Assessments of Soviet and Post-Soviet Governance Kelly McMann

16. Going to School in Uzbekistan Shoshana Keller

17. Alphabet Changes in Turkmenistan: State, Society, and the Everyday, 1904-2004 Victoria Clement

18. Travels in the Margins of the State: Everyday Geography in the Ferghana Valley Borderlands Madeleine Reeves

Part Six: Religion

Introduction

19. Divided Faith: Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan Eric McGlinchey

20. Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the Uzbek State David Abramson and Elyor Karimov

21. Everyday Negotiations of Islam in Central Asia: Practicing Religion in the Uyghur

Neighborhood of Zarya Vostoka in Almaty, Kazakhstan Sean Roberts

22. Namaz, Wishing Trees, and Vodka: The Diversity of Everyday Religious Life in Central Asia David Montgomery

23. Christians as the Main Religious Minority in Central Asia Sebastien Peyrouse

Index

Contributors