Constructed Images of Ethnic Culture among the Diaspora from [Tajikistan's] Pamirs in St. Petersburg

Abstract

Many factors influence the construction of ethnic cultural images in a diaspora. In the case of the Pamiris [pamirtsev] in St. Petersburg, one such factor is the need to incorporate themselves into the system of views about various cultures in the receiving country. The Pamiris understand their role as the role of a cultural “alien” [chuzhogo], standing lower in the cultural hierarchy relative to the receiving society. Such phenomena correlate with Martin Barker's writing on cultural racism. In light of this approach, I show the transformation of perceptions of tolerance in the diaspora, relative to understanding of tolerance in Isma'ilism, the religious teaching of the Pamir people. I examine why the space where the community gathers is positioned as a museum and why the museum exhibition is aimed at “exoticizing” the ethnic culture.

Notes

English copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text “Konstruirovanie obraza etnicheskoi kul'tury v pamirskoi diaspore v Sankt-Peterburge.” Author copyright. Aleksandra Vyacheslavovna Alekseeva is a graduate student at the European University at St. Petersburg. The research was carried out with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 14-18-02149) under the European University at St. Petersburg. Translated by Stephan Lang.

^1. The author does not know of other such examples of museum-ization of a community's gathering place. About urban ethnic museums see Clifford (1997).

^2. A dialogue is ongoing in the scholarly literature about what kind of a group this is and under what influence it is being formed (Davlatshoev 2006).

^3. The St. Petersburg House of Nationalities is a state institution that provides space for a community to gather. The main task of the institution is work with ethnic communities and “strengthening a culture of tolerance” (http://www.spbdn.ru/main/istspbdn/).

^4.Jamoatkhona [also jama'at khana]—a space for the community to gather and for celebrating prayers.

^6. One can also mention the Gurminj Zavkibekov museum in Dushanbe. Zavkibekov was a Soviet Pamiri and Tajik actor and musician. His relatives, Pamiris, are in charge of the museum. In this situation he acquires the status of a righteous person and is practically equated with a pir (a holy person, a sage), as can be seen from the similarity between his museum and those in Badakhshan.

^7. The understandings are borrowed from the official rhetoric of Tajikistan (Tajik: vahdat, sulh).

^8. I am acquainted with such “outsiders”: several Pamiri [individuals] who criticize different aspects of the community's policy do not come to its meetings as a matter of principle.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant of the Russian Science Foundation (project #14-18-02149) at the European University in St. Petersburg.