Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-174). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Not available

After the fall of the Soviet Union, fifteen new states became independent. Of these, Tajikistan was easily among the most artificial, not because of its population, but because of its position tucked away on the western side of the Pamir Mountains with none of the historically Tajik cities included within its borders. The country suffered through a brutal civil war that lasted until 1997, then the people had to begin the long process of adjusting to their new reality as an entity apart from the Soviet Union on which they had become so dependent. This process has caused Tajiks to undergo many adaptations in their society, culture, and economy. Many of these changes involve painful economic choices that underscore the de-modernization and loss of support previously provided by the central government in Moscow. The fieldwork for this study centered around a single valley, the Hisor Valley of southern Tajikistan which extends from the capital of Dushanbe westward to the border with Uzbekistan. Starting with agriculture, easily the most important economic activity within the Valley, the largest employer, and the central part of most of the inhabitants' lives, and encompassing the extensive irrigation systems, inclusive of both older pre-Soviet systems and Soviet era construction, I shall show how changes in land tenure, environment, pastoralist activities, and machinery loss have affected the lives of Tajiks and their society. From this beginning, I shall show the new visions and ideas the people and the country as a whole display vis-à-vis civil society, the Tajik language, the place of Islam, and the geopolitical situation of Tajikistan. Since September 11, 2001, this region has taken on new meaning for the rest of the world and particularly the United States. Awareness of this society on the northern border of Afghanistan, that shares many of the same ethnic and cultural complexities of that country, will better aid academics and non-academics alike in navigating the new challenges facing not just these countries, but the world at large. Though slightly less divided ethnically than Afghanistan, Tajikistan still is a Muslim nation on the brink of economic ruin, and as such presents a model of a nation state that could again turn down the same path as Afghanistan into chaos and warfare as well as an area that could fall prey to Islamic extremism if the situation is not turned around. Understanding the reality for the people of the country is the first step towards realizing the work that is needed so desperately in comprehending not only the beauty of Central Asia, and by extension the Middle East, but also the importance it has today to the world at large. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-234). / xv, 234 leaves, bound ill., maps 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Supervisor: Karl W. Butzer. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

No description available.

Diss. Karlstad : Karlstads universitet, 2010.

This thesis examines the contemporary religious renewal and discourse on modernity of the Shi‘a Imami Ismaili Muslims of Nizari branch (hereinafter Ismaili) in post-Soviet Tajikistan. These developments are set against their reunion with the worldwide spiritual leader, the Aga Khan IV, and their convergence with the transnational (or global) Ismailis, following seven decades of Soviet isolation. The subject of ‘religious renewal’ among Ismailis of Tajikistan remains barely explored both in post-Soviet and Western academia. It is situated against the backdrop of rapidly expanding body of scholarly analysis on Central Asian Islam, which until recently was framed predominantly through securitisation discourses. These discourses provided a distorted picture of the nature of Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia. While not negating the relevancy of the aforementioned securitisation discourses, this thesis challenges their portrayal of both ‘international Islam’ and Islam in Central Asia as monolithic entities. It also questions how the former is being perceived as anti-Western, and therefore anti-modern, and the latter as a passive receiver. Drawing on the notions of ‘multiple modernities’ (Eisenstadt 2000) and ‘discursive tradition’ (Asad 1986), this thesis emphasises the multiplicity, diverse trajectories and distinct patterns of Islamic discourses on modernity not just among, but within each Central Asian state. It provides a better understanding of the complex and constantly evolving nature of Islam in Central Asia and its dynamics with modernity. Moreover, the research findings contribute to the understanding of modernity and secularisation, and indeed westernisation, as not identical in Central Asia. They highlight that dynamics between Islam and modernity are inclusionary, which interact, cross-fertilise and transform one another critically and creatively, rather than through a dichotomous relationship between the traditional and the modern, Islamic and secular (and/or Western). This work builds its analysis on local archives, reports, oral memories and multiple interviews with various stakeholders from within the Ismaili community and outside, in Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan and beyond. It depicts how contemporary readings of modernity within Ismailism in Tajikistan and its discourses derive extensively from the religious and temporal guidance of the Aga Khan that are entrenched in Ismaili doctrines and values of Islam. It also portrays how these discourses are then informed, altered and recreated acutely by various dynamics both within the faith and without, including the historical past and growing globalisation. As a result, this paper came to argue that these dynamics [within and without] are contested widely among the local Ismailis. They instigate systematic and indigenous approaches and answers that go beyond the ‘traditional’ discourses on Islam and modernity, and, nevertheless, accentuate the continuity of the Ismaili tradition.

This study explores the issues of subordination of women in Tajikistan through studying the phenomenon of violence against women. This study presents a socio-legal analysis of the responses of state and non-state institutions and how the justice system works for women, this study engaged in the feminist discourse on women's individual experiences of violence, the ‘woman question' in public and private, the construction of law and its effect on women and their subordinate position and how the laws and the legal and executive mechanisms construct the culture of inferiority of women in society. It employed qualitative methods of data collections, such as interviewing and participant observation along with a questionnaire. It draws on theoretical studies and the empirical work conducted in Tajikistan to present its findings. Theoretical input allows drawing on explanations and experiences provided in studies of VAW in other societies and empirical input allows placing them within the context of Tajikistan. This gives an opportunity to explore the interplay between hierarchical and structural basis of gender relations and women's individual experiences of violence. This study explores the power of societal norms and values pertaining women's subordination and male domination on individuals' perceptions of VAW and their responses to it. It analyses the socio-economic and legal context in Tajikistan and its influence on women's daily lives. This context also determines the choices women victims of violence are given and impacts women's decisions whether or not to seek solutions. The study establishes that the focus on increasing awareness of legal rights, or introducing new laws and making changes in the law, cannot in themselves provide women with long-awaited responses to the violence they experience. Changing the law, introducing well-developed law would be significant step forward but has to be accompanied by measures to bring a fundamental shift in attitudes. This study emphasises that the responses should encompass a number of initiatives and presents some examples of these.

This thesis consists of three essays which provide a detailed empirical investigation of the returns to education, gender wage gap and public-private wage differential in Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and Tajikistan - countries that have received little attention in the literature. The studies are based on rich data sets which allow the most up-to- date analysis of the specific labour market outcomes. All three essays go a step further than the existing empirical literature since in each one the quantile regression results showed a much broader picture than the ones based on central tendency measures such as Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). The first essay looks at what had happened to the returns to human capital in Bulgaria over the period from early 1986 pre-transition to 2003. The study also contributes to the literature by estimating returns to education across the entire wage distribution, providing further evidence from Serbia, Russia and Tajikistan. Moreover, it deals with endogeneity and sample selection biases in a quantile regression framework. The second essay estimates gender wage gaps in the selected countries by applying a decomposition method that simulates marginal distributions from the quantile regression process. The study seeks to extend the popular Machado and Mata (2005) distributional approach by addressing the 'index' number problem suggested by Neumark (1988) and Oaxaca and Ransom (1994 and 1998). The gender wage gap decomposition is performed for each quantile of the earnings distribution by using the pooled wage structure as a non-discriminatory structure and giving a much richer picture of the influence of the covariate and coefficient effects. The third essay provides a comprehensive empirical study on the public-private wage differential in Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, and Tajikistan. The study seeks to understand whether the differential in the public-private sector payment is explained by differences in workers characteristics or the difference in the returns to these characteristics. The endogenous sector choice is also considered. The study further analyses what has happened to the public sector hourly earnings differential at different points in the conditional earnings distribution and over time by adapting the Donohue-Heckman time-wise decomposition.