Relations made over tea: reflections on a meaningful life in a Central Asian mountain village

David W. Montgomery

Central Asian Survey, 2013, vol. 32, issue 4, 475-486

Abstract: Narratives of hardship and suffering found in portrayals of life in Central Asia elicit policy responses that attempt to remedy the situation through humanitarian or development interventions intended to enhance local well-being. This framing obfuscates a network of relationships and interactions that are instrumental in the making of meaningful lives in Central Asia. I explore the comfort of family and friends, the hope of possibility (real and imagined), and the happiness (even if fleeting) in the sharing of stories. Furthermore, even in the most trying of times, the communal sense that emerges in sharing concerns helps mitigate the stresses and strains of many social situations. Seeing these relationships as moments of well-being is essential to understanding everyday life and contextualizing hardship and suffering, and thus to conveying a fuller sense of what is understood as ‘a meaningful life’ in Central Asia.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02634937.2013.868980 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ccasxx:v:32:y:2013:i:4:p:475-486

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ccas20

DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2013.868980

Access Statistics for this article

Central Asian Survey is currently edited by Raphael Jacquet

More articles in Central Asian Survey from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().