Suchergebnisse

Preliminary Materials /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter One. Introduction /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Two. Place And People /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Three. Economic And Social Organization /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Four. Regulating Social Relations: The Force Of Custom /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Five. The Life Cycle /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Six. Religion, Islamic Institutions And Dealing With The Supernatural /I. Bellér-Hann -- Chapter Seven. Conclusion /I. Bellér-Hann -- Illustrations /I. Bellér-Hann -- Bibliography /I. Bellér-Hann -- Glossary Of Frequently Used Turki/Uyghur Terms /I. Bellér-Hann -- Index /I. Bellér-Hann.

Situated in China's northwest, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has often been characterized as one of China's most notorious "restive" areas. Scholarly enquiries to date have, therefore, often focused on issues of ethnicity, identity, and conflict, demonstrating how the center attempts to control its troubled periphery. In contrast, this paper focuses on the everyday strategies that Uyghur villagers in the eastern oasis of Qumul have at their disposal to make ends meet and to "muddle through" as best they can under the current conditions of the "socialist market economy." Using social support as an analytical concept around which to organize the ethnographic data, the paper is a preliminary attempt to explore how in response to increased exposure to market forces - ones that have created new uncertainties and insecurities for many rural households - Uyghur villagers creatively combine old and new forms of social support, drawing on the state as well as on kinship and religion to ensure social reproduction on both the household and the communal level. (Asien/GIGA)

AbstractThe article explores popular rituals among residents of a poor neighbourhood in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan. It focuses on the activities of Uyghur healers who mediate between humans and the spirit world. These inspirational practices are so thoroughly intertwined with Islamic symbols and assumptions that simply to label them shamanistic is inadequate and certainly unacceptable to the actors themselves. The efflorescence of healing activities among the Uyghur in the changed political and economic climate of post-Soviet Central Asia demonstrates continuities with past practices, which have some of their roots in ancestor cults. Invention of tradition is compatible with inventive strategies on the part of the healers, who are competing in a lucrative market. The success of individual healers depends on a number of interrelated factors, including intra-group divisions in the Uyghur diaspora in Kazakhstan, particularly that which separates early arrivals from more recent migrants.