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Kinship and Islam: The Role of Collective Identities in Shaping Institutional Order of Patronage in Southern Tajikistan
This comparative study of two village communities in two social-economically different districts of Southern Khatlon of Tajikistan reveals the important role of collective identities in local governance of rural organisations. Collective identities are boundaries which identify roles and statuses of individuals, categorise their groups and networks and include and exclude them from decision-making processes. The extended family groups are interwoven with kinship and patron-client networks. Especially elite groups are favoured with broader support networks which involve both the majority of the villagers and state and business actors at different levels. They and sometimes claimants strategically reconstruct and reinterpret collective identities (including ethnicity, Islam, etc.) in order to include or exclude ‘others’ from local governance. In part, they dominate decision-making structures of the rural organisations and use them as means to govern resources. Thereby, participation of other people is highly dependent on hierarchical structures of decision-making.
This study is also a contribution to the academic and policy-related discussion of local governance especially in the framework of the ZEF’s research project ‘Local Governance and Statehood in the Amu Darya Borderland’. To understand the complete picture of local governance, in part, an institutional setup of local politics, I discuss the role of collective identities in defining the prospects of statehood and its political strategy at local level. In both mountainous and cotton-growing villages local structures of the state are similar. State structures have different agendas in these villages: concerned with privatisation of land resources in mountainous village and with cotton-economy and thus state monopoly of land resources in the cotton-growing village. However, the state officials use collective identities as resources to shape local politics: to solve the conflicts deriving from distribution of land resources and to maintain successfully cotton economy. In both cases state political strategy favours especially the elite groups to dominate political decision-making through key rural organisations.
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| Department |
ZEF A: Department of Political and Cultural Change |
| Research areas |
- Governance and Conflict
- Knowledge Governance
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| Research countries |
- Tajikistan
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| Research topic |
The role of collective identities in shaping local governance in Southern Khatlon of Tajikistan |
| Projects |
PhD research on 'The role of collective identities in shaping local governance in Southern Khatlon of Tajikistan. Governance of rural organisations'
Local Governance and Statehood in the Amu Darya Borderlands
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| Affiliation of research |
I am affiliated with ZEFa Research Project 'Local Governance and Statehood in Amu Darya Borderland' |
| Funding institutions |
DAAD, Volkswagen Stiftung, Open Society Foundation - London |
| Financially supported by |
DAAD, Volkswagen Stiftung, Open Society Foundation - London |
| Cooperation partners |
UNDP Shahritus Area Office in Tajikistan, MSDSP - Kulob zone in Tajikistan |
| Publications |
Boboyorov, H., H. Poos, J. Prinz and C. Schetter.
2009.
Symposiumsbericht: Beyond the State - Local Politics in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Info,
65:
10-11.
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