Marriage, Divorce and Mutual Indebtedness. Perspectives from Tajikistan

Juliette Cleuziou () and Caroline Dufy ()
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Juliette Cleuziou: LADEC - Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Des Enjeux Contemporains - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Caroline Dufy: CED - Centre Émile Durkheim - IEP Bordeaux - Sciences Po Bordeaux - Institut d'études politiques de Bordeaux - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This article offers an original insight on the gift economy in Tajikistan. As long shown by the literature, ceremonial expenditures sustain social status and convey moral obligations and social order. In this context, we find that marriage breakdown sheds a new light on social cohesion and the sense of indebtedness in Tajik society. In the case studies provided, the material and symbolic meaning of marital breakdown is analysed from the perspective of divorced women. In the context of high ritual expenditure, we ask what are the effects of divorce (and more broadly, demarriage) on women's perceptions of gender and marital roles in a context of economic crisis and mass male migration to Russia. Specifically, we are interested in the language of debt that shapes women's discourses about their former marital bond, and how it disrupts the principles of the gift economy that derive from traditional gender and generational roles. In particular, the notion of debt allows divorced women to condemn their ex-in-laws' failings towards them. The end of the marriage opens the way for the denunciation of broken promises, the expression of unfulfilled expectations and the breaking of marital, gender and collective obligations towards the spouse. While it brings with it a demand for recognition and social justice, it also expresses the contradictory tensions that run through society, its norms and the traditional social roles associated with conjugality.

Keywords: Tajikistan; Central Asia; Marriage; Divorce; Debt; Gender relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis and nep-his
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Published in Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2022, Social Lives of Debts: Ethnographies from Post-Soviet and Post-socialist Economies, 6 (1), pp.73-95. ⟨10.5617/jea.9562⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03774872

DOI: 10.5617/jea.9562

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