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Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia

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Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia Laboring on the Margins: Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Rabinovich, Tatiana Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 06/10/2021 01:06:19 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631462 LABORING ON THE MARGINS: MUSLIM WOMEN, PRECARITY, AND POTENTIALITY IN RUSSIA by Tatiana Rabinovich __________________ Copyright © Tatiana Rabinovich 2018 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2018 2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Tatiana Rabinovich 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my interlocutors for their support, care, time, and sincerity. This project would not be possible without your generosity, trust, and guidance. I hope I can ever pay back for your kindness to me. I am deeply indebted to my family, who has helped me through this process. My partner Feras has been a reliable interlocutor, who has challenged me to think deeper and offered his ideas, encouragement, and support. My daughter Vera has also given me the inspiration and faith in this project - I look forward to your thoughts once you are able to read this work. Although not completely sure what I was doing and why, my mother Marina and grandmother Tamara have invested much of their care work in me and this project. I dedicate this ethnography to my family. I am grateful to my academic adviser Dr. Leila Hudson, who gave me the space and time to think and write, shared her fresh ideas with me, and has been there for me through all the troubles. Thank you for being a wonderful mentor and friend! Special thanks goes to my inspiring committee members and interlocutors Dr. Gokce Gunel and Dr. Zeynep Korkman – your helpful feedback, support, and generosity always motivated me to be a better thinker and writer. I am very lucky to have both of you as an example for me. I also want to thank Dr. Anne Betteridge and Dr. Can Aciksoz for the theoretical and methodological insights that are reflected in my work. Our conversations shaped my writing in many ways. Finally, I want to thank my friends: Natasha, who has read every chapter and offered generous commentary, and Atacan, Hayal, Abbass, Brittany, Saffo, Pouye, Mojtaba, and Emrah, among others, who have been my comrades, writing and thinking buddies, and interlocutors through the thick and thin. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 7 Introduction: 8 Embracing the Crisis I Telling Stories against Austerity 17 II On Method: 22 More (Feminist) Ethnography is always a Good Idea III On Theoretical Framework: 27 a Patchwork Chapter I: (Un)Stitching Precarious Worlds: 32 Muslim Women’s Atelier in Saint Petersburg I Ambivalent Self-Enterprising 34 II Giving away in Hard Times 40 III Dreaming against Austerity 44 IV Patchwork: 52 Gendered Labor of Stitching and Unstitching Chapter II: 54 Creating Human-Animal Solidarities: Muslim Women’s Labor with the Unworthy I Witnessing Pain 57 II Disposable Lives 66 III Ambivalences and Potentialities of 74 Gendered Care Labor Chapter III: 85 5 “Muhtasibat Needs You:” Rebuilding Islamic Institutions in Saint Petersburg I Islam in the City 86 II Putting Women to Work 98 III Zhensovet and the Ambiguities of 105 Women’s Volunteer Labor Chapter IV: 115 Feeling Depressed, Becoming Old: Public Life of Emotions in Saint Petersburg I “I Don’t Want to Work like a Dog” 122 II “Nobody Cleaned Staircases Better than 129 I Did” III Religious Affect, Gendered Labor, and 136 Health Chapter V: 139 Building Intimate Solidarities in Precarious Times I Strained Sisterhood 143 II Mothering in the Times of Crisis 150 III Unruly Women 158 Epilogue 165 Appendices 174 References 183 6 ABSTRACT Titled Laboring on the Margins: Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia , this dissertation explores how working-class pious Muslim women in Saint Petersburg cope with the ongoing economic crisis and political authoritarianism in today’s Russia. In order to understand the women’s responses to precarity, I examine the different forms of gendered labor they undertake to sustain themselves and their community. Based on 18 months of field research in Saint Petersburg, I demonstrate how the women run small businesses and volunteer, practice self-care and mother, struggle with health issues and invest their energies in cultivating bonds of solidarity under a regime of austerity. Drawing from feminist literature on affect and embodiment, I advance a concept of “embracing” precarity, which allows the women not only to survive on the margins of Russian society, but also to imagine and act upon more just and inclusive worlds. This dissertation offers a unique window into the lives of disempowered population groups in Russia, as well as into the exigencies of late capitalism, precarity, and gendered labor. 7 Introduction: Embracing the Crisis In August 2015 I arrived in Saint Petersburg to begin my fieldwork among a community of pious Muslim women. It coincided with an unfolding economic crisis and growing political tensions in Russia: the collapse of oil prices, US and EU-imposed sanctions, 1 and the shrinking state budget led to increasing prices on basic commodities, decreasing wages, and creeping unemployment. According to the Levada Center polls, 55% of the population considered the year of 2015 to be “more difficult” than the previous one. As polls indicated, more respondents noted that in 2015 the quality of life worsened and opportunities to make a decent living diminished, while the personal safety of ordinary 2 people and their ability to influence politics decreased. 3 Politically, Russia was deeply embroiled in the Ukrainian conflict and militarily intervened in the Syrian civil war in fall 2015. State TV channels hosted programs about Islamic radicalism, corrosive US policy in the Middle East, and the malicious intentions of “Western states” to isolate Russia. I gathered from small talks that people were afraid of possible terrorist attacks on subway trains and in public spaces. These fears grew after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) sympathizers planted a bomb in a Russian plane flying from Sharm al-Shaykh to Saint Petersburg on October 31, 2015. 224 passengers and crewmembers perished. These fears were not completely unfounded, as in April 2017 a member of Katibat al-Tawheed wal Jihad 4 from Kyrgyzstan carried out an attack in a train 1 These sanctions were imposed to punish Russia for its participation in the Ukrainian civil war. 2 By “ordinary” I mean people who do not belong to economic or political elites. 3 https://www.levada.ru/2015/12/28/itogi-uhodyashhego-goda-i-samye-vazhnye-sobytiya-2015- go/ Accessed on July 10, 2018. 4 It is a radical Islamist organization formerly headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. 8 compartment in Saint Petersburg metro. 5 I lived on and used that metro line during my fieldwork. As a result, Russian Muslims, including several of my interlocutors, were worried about the possibility of Islamophobic attacks and increased surveillance. While the majority of Muslims seemed to generally support Russia’s foreign policy, most of my interlocutors strongly opposed the country’s military intervention in the Middle East. 6 The economic crisis hit hard the most disadvantaged and the marginalized: old women and disabled men were quietly begging in busy subway passages, while young women’s names appeared on hundreds of colorful flyers and graffiti that advertised sex services and were scattered on the outskirts of the city (see Appendix I). Opposition radio stations and TV channels (e.g., Ekho Moskvy and RBK ) criticized the government’s corruption and ignited anti-government sentiments, which I heard from random conversations on buses and the metro. Simultaneously, I witnessed small demonstrations in downtown Saint Petersburg in support of Vladimir Putin and his political decisions to annex the Crimea, intervene in Syria, and impose counter-sanctions on American and European goods (see Appendix II). The nation, statehood ( gosudarstvennost ), and traditional values figured prominently in the imaginary of the demonstrators, political commentators, and some of my friends and family members. This conservative order 5 I heard a rumor that the attack was allegedly carried out by the Russian security services to shift attention away from tanking economy. 6 Thus, my interlocutor Masha was attacked on social media for expressing condolences to the families of the deceased. In our conversation she pointed out that those who aggressively commented on her post refused her the right to grieve and assumed her immediate solidarity with the perpetrators. As opinion polls show, most Russians support Russia’s participation in the civil war in Syria on the side of president Bashar al-Asad. However, they know little about politics in Syria and the broader Middle East. See https://www.rbc.ru/politics/15/02/2016/56c073989a7947700d64cad6 Accessed on July 20, 2018. 9 centered around “Russianness,” 7 where minorities, women, and the working class had to sustain a unique civilization called the Russian world.
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