The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan
The Force of Custom presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork and firsthand experience, Judith Beyer reveals how Kyrgyz in Talas province negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation is shown to be a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt in order to meet the challenges of contemporary political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further demonstrates, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life and how it is used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the shifting tides of religious movements.
1123908552
The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan
The Force of Custom presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork and firsthand experience, Judith Beyer reveals how Kyrgyz in Talas province negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation is shown to be a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt in order to meet the challenges of contemporary political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further demonstrates, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life and how it is used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the shifting tides of religious movements.
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The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan

The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan

by Judith Beyer
The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan

The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan

by Judith Beyer

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Overview

The Force of Custom presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork and firsthand experience, Judith Beyer reveals how Kyrgyz in Talas province negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation is shown to be a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt in order to meet the challenges of contemporary political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further demonstrates, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life and how it is used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the shifting tides of religious movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780822964209
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date: 12/07/2016
Series: Central Eurasia in Context , #24
Edition description: 1
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Judith Beyer is professor of anthropology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She is coauthor of Kirgistan: A Photoethnography of Talas and coeditor of Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xv

Notes on Naming, Addressing, and Fieldwork xxi

Introduction. Invoking Custom 3

Chapter 1 Histories of Legal Plurality 19

Chapter 2 Sealing Descent 36

Chapter 3 Imagining the State 60

Chapter 4 Performing Authority 82

Chapter 5 Buying and Paying Respect 112

Chapter 6 Taking and Giving Carpets 135

Chapter 7 Taming Custom 155

Conclusion Ordering Everyday Life in Kyrgystan 172

Notes 181

Glossary 205

Bibliography 211

Index 229

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