Wedding rituals and the struggle over national identities

Abstract

This article argues that rituals are the creative link between state hegemony and the everyday practices of ordinary people. Based on the idea of ritual as experimental technology developed by the Comaroffs (1993), we analyse the Tajik wedding as a means to deal creatively with the tension between the nation-state's claims to exert control over its citizens, on the one hand, and the use of traditions as historical continuity to create a common identity, on the other. Whereas weddings conform to state law and have thus adapted to the changing legal frames during the Soviet period and continue to do so in independent Tajikistan, they have also been used as rituals of cultural resistance in which ethnic, local and national identities are asserted against homogenizing efforts. Taking an historical perspective on weddings, this article contributes to the debate on the role of rituals in the creation and contestation of national identity and state ideologies.

Keywords:

• national identities
• culture
• wedding
• ritual
• Tajikistan

Acknowledgement

As part of a larger project, this research was funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany and by the EHESS and INED in Paris, France and kindly supported by the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany. We thank the director of the statistical service of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in Khorog for providing statistical data.

Notes

In this paper we use the term ‘identity’ to designate the way people construct their selves in contrast to others as individuals and as a local, ethnic or national entity. We eschew a theoretical discussion because we are less interested in the nature of identities than in the way people shape rituals and the impact this has on how the nation is imagined as an ethnic, social and political construct.

Heathershaw (2009, pp. 75–76, 82) refers to a concept of ‘harmony ideology’ that fittingly captures people's effort and will to create a peaceful society despite numerous dissonances and conflicts (cf. Bichsel 2005, Stephan 2008).

Soviet sources claim that by 1923 a network of offices for civil registration (Zapis Aktov Grazhdanskogo Sostoyaniya [ZAGS] –Record of Civil Status Act) had been set up in most areas with the exception of the Central Asian republics and other outlying areas (Jones and Grupp 1987, p. 38).

We refer to ethnic Tajik identities as the growing consciousness of an ethnic identity that was unleashed by the creation of Central Asian countries as ethnic-linguistic entities. Although the Persian-speaking population lives in multi-ethnic regions, weddings are one of the most important events in which ethnic identities are reproduced, discussed and negotiated. Today many villages have created their own sets of rituals and, although these are mixed with various elements from cohabitating groups, claim to have an authentic Tajik ceremony.

Caroline Humphrey has discussed the politics of ritual in the Buryat context. In a detailed analysis of the economic implications, she argues that life-cycle rituals have become ritually simpler and materially more complex and extravagant only in the last century.

I use the term ‘modern’ here in the Tajik sense of the description of weddings – namely, to describe a consumerist feast in which status is displayed through wealth. This notion of modernity differs from the Soviet notion, which was tied to an evolutionary construction of society.

In a recent survey, Hohmann found that 50% of the young men born between 1975 and 1985 had spent some time in Russia before getting married. This differs from the older generation, which had already married during the Soviet period.

It is usually overlooked that such rituals of excess support a whole economic branch that supplies rituals with goods, items, musicians, dancers and so on. This aids the reproduction of traditional and non-traditional professions such as chest makers, cradle makers, musicians, sweets traders, traditional cloth production, clerics, filmmakers and others, and thus contributes considerably to the country's economy.

Jumhurii Tojikiston [Republic of Tajikistan] (2007). For a similar development in Uzbekistan since 2002, see Kehl-Bodrogi (2008, p. 100). In fact, the 2007 law seems arbitrary about where and how to control expenses. Mandating that the days of celebration be on public holidays, limiting celebrations to no more than one day and controlling the number of guests and items do not affect the essence of the customs and may not have aimed at regulating gender relations, but this seems to be an important side effect of the law. Rather it aims to stop competition in the performance of weddings and exert control over the reproductive behaviour of the citizens.