Food Security in Tajikistan: Opportunities at the Ground Level

Home , Tajik cuisine

Katherine Kostiuk

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in International Studies: Russia, East Europe and Central Asia

University of Washington

2009

Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington Graduate School

This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a master’s thesis by

Katherine Kostiuk

and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made.

Committee Members:

______Florian Schwarz

______Scott Radnitz

Date: ______

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master’s degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of this thesis is allowable only for scholarly purposes consistent with “fair use” as prescribed by the U.S. Copyright Law. Any other reproduction for any purposes or by any means shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Signature ______Date ______

University of Washington

Abstract

Food Security in Tajikistan: Opportunities at the Ground Level

Katherine Kostiuk

Chair of the Supervisory Committee:

Assistant Professor Florian Schwarz Department of History

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN FAO) estimates that 34 percent of the population of Tajikistan is undernourished, and during winter 2008, the country was declared to be in a food security crisis. Many international organizations administer aid and development programs to address

Tajikistan’s food security problem, but there is a lack of literature focused on ground- level food security issues. Most literature discusses macro concerns such as supply systems, policy issues, trade relations, economic models, and political variables, or takes a quantitative approach to the issue. There has been very little qualitative research about local food practices and coping/adaptation strategies in Central Asia.

This paper begins to fill the gap by providing a look at people’s everyday practices and attitudes related to food. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted

primarily among the Uzbek community in central Tajikistan, it discusses social aspects of food, strategies people use to deal with food shortages, and attitudes they have toward food and health. It touches on topics such as gender, ethnicity, family, community, informal networks, and notions of public versus private. By considering the ways people conceive of and use food in Tajikistan, scholars and development professionals can better understand how to approach food security problems and work with communities to build on their strengths. This paper provides recommendations for food aid and development efforts in Tajikistan.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... iii List of Tables ...... iv Note on Transliteration ...... v Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 1: International Development and Food Security ...... 6 Food Security and International Aid ...... 6 Food Security Literature ...... 10 The Micro Focus ...... 12 Coping and Adaptation ...... 13 Summary ...... 16 Chapter 2: Locating Tajikistan: History and Present-Day ...... 18 Geography and Demography ...... 18 Modern History ...... 19 Independence ...... 22 Poverty and Food Insecurity ...... 25 An Overview of Uzbek & Tajik Food ...... 28 Summary ...... 32 Chapter 3: International Development & Food Security in Tajikistan ...... 33 Aid in Tajikistan ...... 33 Food Security Literature on Tajikistan ...... 35 Summary ...... 41 Chapter 4: Methodology ...... 43 Chapter 5: The Social Aspects of Food: Community Building, Social Stratification, Ethnicity, and Gender ...... 51 Community Building: “The Generosity of the Land” ...... 51 Providing Access to Food: “They Will Split It into Tiny Pieces” ...... 54

Social Stratification: “It’s Just Us” ...... 57 Ethnicity: “I Can’t Say For Sure” ...... 59 Gender: “Economizing” ...... 63 Summary ...... 66 Chapter 6: Making Due: Strategies and Attitudes ...... 68 Sharing: Good for Us and for Them ...... 68 Personal Gardens and Livestock: “Rice is Money, Too” ...... 72 Movements to Obtain Food: Sharing with Relatives ...... 75 Conservation: “It’s So Much Cheaper to Make It Yourself!” ...... 77 Health Attitudes: “All Mixed Together” ...... 78 Attitudes: Home vs. Public & Local vs. Foreign ...... 82 Summary ...... 86 Conclusion ...... 87 Recommendations ...... 87 Glossary: Uzbek Terms ...... 95 Bibliography ...... 96 Appendix A: Map of Tajikistan ...... 107 Appendix B: Index of Study Participants ...... 108

List of Figures

Figure 1: Connections between Study Participants…………………………………..47 Figure 2: Figure 2: Movement to Obtain Food or Related Goods……………………76

iii

List of Tables

Table 1: Study Participants……………………………………………………….…..45

Note on Transliteration

Words in this paper have been transliterated from Uzbek, Russian, and Tajik.

For most words taken from Uzbek Cyrillic, I have used the spelling rules of the modern-day Latin-based Uzbek alphabet. However, words that are in common English usage have been spelled according to typical Western usage, so that Бухоро is Bukhara rather than Buxoro, and Самарқанд is Samarkand rather than Samarqand. I have transliterated all Russian and Tajik words using the ALA-LC Romanization Tables:

Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts.

Introduction

Zilola lives with her in-laws in a village near Dushanbe, Tajikistan. A young

Uzbek woman with two sons, she is highly educated but works as a housewife because her husband’s family does not believe that women should work outside the home. Her husband is the sole breadwinner for her and their children, as well as his parents and his brother’s family. The family rarely has electricity or water and cannot afford enough meat to feed everyone. When I visited them, a pregnant Zilola1 was eager to teach me how to make Uzbek palov (rice pilaf) but ashamed of her living conditions.

She said that she tries to keep things clean even though they do not have good facilities, but it is difficult. She also suffers because the family cannot afford wood or cotton stalks to burn in their traditional o’choq stove. Instead of firewood, they burn empty plastic soda bottles, and Zilola inhales the toxic plastic fumes every time she cooks. Her youngest son is nearly two years old but thin and lethargic, and Zilola is worried about the health of her unborn child.

Zilola’s story reveals much about local attitudes, struggles, and strategies related to food security in Tajikistan. Not only does it call to attention some of the difficulties people face on a daily basis, but it shows that people who suffer from food insecurity are not passive bystanders. They understand much about their situations – often more than the international organizations that seek to help them – and they are constantly seeking to improve their lives. This paper considers some of the ways that

1 See Appendix B for a complete list of study participants. All names have been changed.

Uzbeks in Tajikistan think about and interact with food, as well as strategies they use to maintain and improve their livelihoods and diets. It takes into consideration the strategies and knowledge that already exist in local communities and provides suggestions for the development of aid programs based on these practices.

Food security is a pressing issue in Tajikistan and throughout Central Asia.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [UN FAO] estimates that 11 percent of Central Asia and 34 percent of Tajikistan is undernourished (The

State of Food Insecurity, 2008). In 2005, a World Food Programme [WFP] survey found that 54 percent of households in Tajikistan had poor or very poor food consumption, and in 2008, Tajikistan was one of just 17 countries worldwide declared to be in a food crisis (The State of Food Insecurity, 2008; WFP, 2005). Water supply conflicts, outdated agricultural technology, natural disasters, global warming, and the world financial crisis threat to worsen the situation. The UN FAO (2005) predicts that there will be a continuing need for international food aid in Tajikistan in the foreseeable future.

Many international organizations administer food aid and development programs in Tajikistan to help alleviate the food security problem. These organizations provide emergency food aid and support projects such as land reform efforts, training in farming techniques, micro grants, food-for-work programs, and infrastructure development. Many have high success rates and try to incorporate local participation into their projects. However, most of the reports from these organizations and most of the scholarly literature about food security focuses on macro concerns such as world

3 grain prices, population growth, agricultural technologies, land ownership, climate change, trade agreements, policy recommendations, infrastructure development, and aid distribution methods (Darwin, 2001; Randerson, 2008; Shapouri & Rosen, April

2001). The few reports that do aim to examine micro-level concerns usually take a quantitative approach and fail consider existing systems, belief systems, and processes.

It is rare to hear the voices or read the stories of food insecure people themselves.

Some anthropologists have written about food use and attitudes toward food at the ground level, but most of their studies focus on issues of identity, ethnic relations, and life histories, rather than food security (Counihan, 2004; Farb & Armelagos, 1980;

Mintz, 1996; Rosenberger, 2007; Weismantel, 1988; Zanca, 2007). Only a small number of studies and reports have been written about how food insecurity is lived on the ground and how people use coping and adaptive strategies (Albarran & Attanasio,

2005; Davies, 1996; Dercon, 2002; Pottier, 1999; Rahmato, 1991). Most of these studies focus on communities in Africa or India; I found only one micro-level, qualitative study that focused on Central Asia. It was written more than ten years ago, with a focus exclusively on agricultural processes, not food processes in general

(Groetschel, Feiler, Jacobsen, Ruth, & Schroder, 1997).

Although macro issues and quantitative analyses are important, failing to take into consideration micro issues and qualitative analyses is dangerous because it overlooks on-the-ground processes related to food security. This paper aims to begin to fill the gap in literature by examining food practices and beliefs among the Uzbek

4 community in Tajikistan. It considers these processes from a food security perspective and provides recommendations to international organizations based on these findings.

The findings are the result of qualitative ethnographic research conducted between

June and August 2008, mostly among the Uzbek minority community in Dushanbe,

Tajikistan, and the surrounding area. The research takes a multi-sited approach and involves households and individuals who live in different towns, villages, and neighborhoods. It discusses the social aspects of food, strategies people use to deal with food shortage, and attitudes toward food, health, and related issues.

In chapter 1, I give an overview of international development and food security literature, and in Chapter 2, I provide an introduction to Tajikistan’s political, economic, environmental, historical, and food security situation. In Chapter 3, I discuss international organizations operating in Tajikistan and present an overview of food security literature about the country. Chapters 4-6 are about my research. In

Chapter 4, I describe my methodology, and in Chapters 5 and 6, I discuss my research findings. Chapter 5 is a discussion of the social aspects of food, including its importance in community building, social stratification, and gender and ethnic relations. In Chapter 6, I discuss strategies used by communities and families to deal with food insecurity. These include sharing, personal gardening and livestock tending, traveling to obtain food, and conservation of food. I also discuss ideas about health and dichotomies of home versus public and local versus foreign. In the conclusion, I provide suggestions for how international organizations, governments, and scholars can use this information to improve the lives and food security of people in Tajikistan. By

5 better understanding on-the-ground patterns of behavior and ideals related to food, international organizations and governments can better address food insecurity and involve local communities in the process. This will lead to more sustainable results, a higher level of success, and community empowerment.

Chapter 1: International Development and Food Security

International aid has been a debated and politicized subject since its inception, and food aid in particular has been one of the most controversial types of aid, defined by some as humanitarian altruism and by others as a way for developed countries to impose their agendas on recipient countries (Forsyth, 2005). Food aid and definitions of food security have come a long way since their inception in the mid-twentieth century, but the primary focus of scholars and international organizations continues to be macro and quantitative issues rather than micro and qualitative ones. In this chapter,

I give an overview of the concept of food security and the history of international food aid, followed by a discussion of the merits of a micro approach. In particular, I focus on coping and adaptation strategies people use at the local level.

Food Security and International Aid

Von Braun (1992) points out that food security has been a “widely debated and much-confused” topic. The first official international definition of food security was developed in 1974 and focused primarily on the supply of food and the need for more secure flows at stable prices (Pottier, 1999). In the decades that followed, food security was redefined several times. In fact, one estimate suggests that there have been as many as 200 definitions and 450 indicators of food security (UN FAO, 2003). The accepted present-day definition was developed at the World Food Summit in 1996. It states:

Food security [at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels] exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (UN FAO, 1996)

As this definition makes clear, food security today focuses not only on the supply of food, but on its availability and individuals’ access to it. Today’s definition also includes important facets not directly related to food, such as clean water, sanitation, and health care, and it adds the words “safe” and “nutritious” to the definition. In addition, it recognizes the dietary needs and cultural factors involved in food security.

Access to food has also been defined as a fundamental human right. The 1948

Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes a clause that states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food” (as cited in The Right to Food, 2002, p.1). However, not until recently has this been focused on and developed. In 1996, an agreement was reached in Article 11 of the United Nations’ International Covenant of Economic, Social and

Cultural Rights that parties should recognize “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” (OHCHR, n.d.). A UN FAO report clarifies the importance of this by pointing out that “hunger is both a violation of human dignity and an obstacle to social, political and economic progress” (The Right to Food, 2002, p. 1). This rights- based approach puts the primary responsibility for ensuring food security on the state and focuses on the rights of all to have equitable access to food, but it also recognizes

8 the importance of international actors in providing access to food when states are unable or unwilling to do so.

The first wide-scale international efforts at addressing food insecurity began during World War II and led to the 1945 creation of the United Nations Food and

Agriculture Organization [UN FAO] (Shaw, 2007). At this time, the primary focus of the UN FAO was on increasing worldwide food production; however, it was recognized early on that a main cause of hunger and malnutrition was poverty. In the decades that followed, food aid came to involve the transfer of food surpluses from donor countries to recipient countries. The redistribution of surpluses was seen as an important part of what was needed to assist developing countries and provide opportunities for people in the third world to develop skills in food production and other trades so that they could become self-sufficient (Shaw, 2007).

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, food aid was criticized for contributing more to the problem than solving it. Some saw the redistribution of food surpluses as merely a way for donor countries to dump extra food and maintain demand for their own food products, and they argued that when emergency relief was not needed, the redistribution of food surpluses created more dependency than self-sufficiency (Shaw,

2007). During this time, there was a movement toward forecasting methods that would allow for the targeted distribution of food based on need, rather than surpluses. A new approach to food security, largely supported by the World Bank, also focused on access to food rather than supply of food. Amartya Sen’s (1981) approach to food security, which focuses on entitlements, was particularly influential during this shift. He argued

9 that a food-centered view does not explain how starvation can occur when there is plenty of food available and suggested that food insecurity occurs because of inequalities in the mechanisms of distributing food and poor people’s difficulty accessing it. He argued that a person’s access to food is influenced by his ability to find employment, how much he can earn by selling his non-labor assets, how much it costs to buy what he needs or wants, what he can produce with his own labor power, and the social security benefits to which he has access and taxes he must pay.

This focus on poverty and inequality has been a major tenet of food aid efforts since the 1980s. Although food distribution continues in emergency relief situations, today most international organizations focus on addressing food security through the alleviation of poverty and improvement of people’s access to money and food. Popular programmatic areas include agricultural reforms, agricultural and job training, microfinance, environmental restoration, infrastructural improvements, education, and women and children’s programs. Most present-day aid activities also aim to create economically, socially, politically, and environmentally sustainable results and preserve the long-term productive capacity of a location’s natural resource base (Shaw,

2007). The world community has recognized that food security is a multifaceted issue that is interconnected with factors such as natural disasters, war and civil strife, national polices, level of development, agricultural technology, trade relations and policies, environmental conditions, poverty, population growth, gender inequality, and health (Shaw, 2007). At the same time, recent trends in aid have tended to encourage

10 increased partnership with and participation of aid recipients in decision-making processes and the implementation of programs.

Food Security Literature

Scholars and aid organizations have produced a great deal of literature about food security and food aid efforts. Much of the literature focuses on food security in

Africa, where large-scale aid efforts have been and continue to be made. Much also stresses famine prediction, prevention, and relief. Some reports focus on the worldwide causes and potential solutions to food security, while others discuss case- by-case situations. Some researchers (Davies, 1996; Messer & Shipton, 2002) argue that hunger is a symptom of poverty and not should be considered as a separate issue, while others (Moser, 1998) point out that poverty and vulnerability should not be used as synonyms. There is also much debate about microfinance and loans, which some

(Dercon, 2002) say provide opportunities for the poor to improve their conditions, and others (Messer & Shipton, 2002) criticize for putting poor people in debt.

Despite these and other lively debates in the field of food security, most of the literature retains a focus on quantitative issues and macro aspects such as trade processes, agricultural practices, technological reform and development, land rights, issues of nutrition, opportunities for education and receipt of health services, and reduction of poverty. There is little written about the micro level of food security, and the voices of local people rarely come through in written documents. Although most international organizations claim to involve local people in their projects, there is a lack of meaningful literature about this.

As a result, some scholars have criticized aid efforts for imposing Western models and overlooking the potential of local approaches. Johan Pottier (1999) writes that “the ‘superiority’ of the Western scientific approach to farming demands a reductionist view of farming knowledges and practices be adopted. This reductionist view separates local knowledges (plural!) from the specific social, economic, and political contexts in which they have emerged” (p. 125). Tuhiwai Smith (1999) points out that idea of “progress” (and hence “development”) is intrinsically linked to Western notions of time, space, and classification, as well as binary oppositions, dualisms, and hierarchical orderings. King and McGrath (2004) critique the popular concept of knowledge-based aid, which aims to bring knowledge to the poor, by pointing out that it assumes the West has knowledge and people in third world countries do not. As they point out, a focus on endowing knowledge upon others overlooks important, useful, and relevant knowledge that already exists in local communities.

Examples of Western-centric approaches can be found even in publications of organizations that support participatory methods. This is a particular threat for

Western organizations operating in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, since there is a tendency to dismiss local knowledge as archaic communist legacy. In the former Soviet Union, there has been a need and desire for assistance, but consensus about priorities and how to run programs has not been easily reached. Julie Hemment

(2007) studied women and NGOs in post-Soviet Russia and notes that during early

East-West interactions after the fall of the Soviet Union, exchanges tended to be

12 unidirectional, with local knowledge discounted as faulty. In her study of Russian

NGOs, Rebecca Key (2004) similarly notes that “persistent assumptions that ‘know- how’ lies in the West and that it can and should be imported wholesale to the East deprive both sides of what could be a mutually beneficial process of exchange and two- way learning and development” (p. 260). Sarah L. Henderson (2003) also found flaws in international development projects in post-Soviet Russia and points out that field offices often struggle to meet the needs of the people they serve while fulfilling the requirements of international donors and grants. She reports that the existing funding situation creates conflict between groups and that funded groups have little incentive to assess the real qualitative impact of their work.

The Micro Focus

An alternative to top-down, Western-centric models of development is a community empowerment model that seeks to truly involve local communities in improving their own food security. Susanna Davies (1996) writes that most food security literature “focuses on the food system itself, rather than on the food-insecure people who strive to subsist within it” (p. 5). She describes the situation in Mali as

top-down, famine-oriented, concerned with production rather than access to food…; operating at the macro-level in a highly centralised manner; focusing on geographic entities as the units of analysis; [and] being data- not people-centred. (Davies, 1996, p. 5)

Other scholars have also pointed out the importance of understanding everyday happenings at the local level (Chen, 1991; Freedman, 1977; Kanbur, 2003). Pottier

(1999) advocates for a micro perspective because he says food security has become

“divorced from the everyday realities food-insure people face” (p. vii). He notes that the policy world does not deal well with social complexities and has a tendency to simplify matters with catch-all terms, phrases, and technical solutions. He also recommends considering the entire system, from global occurrences to local variables.

Christine Wilson (1977) adds that information on local cuisines is a necessary baseline before international planners attempt to improve nutritional intakes of malnourished populations, and Caroline Moser (1998) argues that international organizations should focus more on what poor people have, rather than on what they do not have. She believes that organizations should “strengthen people’s own inventive solutions, rather than substitute for, block or undermine them” (Moser, 1998, p. 1). Messer and Shipton

(2002) take a hopeful approach, writing that “ironically, the complexity and interdependence of the causes of hunger and famine—the very things that seem to make it so intractable—are the very features that may bring hope for a broader improvement of nutrition” (p. 228). They point out that most successes in food security have been small in scale, have usually drawn on local initiatives, and have taken unglamorous forms.

Coping and Adaptation

A small number of articles and books have discussed coping and adaptation strategies as important elements of the micro approach. Several scholars have used observations and surveys to examine the types of strategies people employ to survive poverty and hunger (Chen, 1991; Dercon, 2002; Gertler & Gruber, 2002; Jian, 2008).

Coping is usually defined as a short-term strategy used to avert a negative effect and gain access to what is needed, while adaptation is a long-term set of behaviors aimed at the same goals (Davies, 1996; Sauerborn, Adams, & Hien, 1996). However, the line between coping and adaptation strategies is not always clear, and it is important to understand both in order to grasp how people deal with food insecurity on a daily basis and how improvements might be made.

Writing about how villages in deal with drought, Martha Alter Chen (1991) notes the following strategies: reducing or modifying consumption levels, having only one meal per day, having only tea for breakfast, eating leftovers, reducing commitments (such as postponing expensive marriage ceremonies), participating in relief programs, mortgaging or selling assets, borrowing, and taking drastic measures such as abandoning a family, begging for food, or turning to prostitution. Farb and

Armelagos (1980) examined behavior during a famine in the Pacific island of Tikopia and found that at the onset of a famine, people intensified their activities and were motivated to work together in the search for food. They argue that while social cooperation may cease in the latter stages of famine, cultural traditions usually remain firm, and obligations that might be postponed during a famine will likely begin again after the famine has passed.

Naila Kabeer (1990) points out that class and gender are also important factors in coping and adaptation. She writes that although both men and women are active in survival strategies, “these strategies are by no means identical since the interplay of class and gender relations gives rise to highly differentiated patterns of constraints and

15 possibilities across the social spectrum” (p. 135). She found that except in extreme cases, women in rural Bangladesh did not break traditional gender roles in their attempts to cope with poverty and hunger. Instead, they sought to maintain family cohesiveness and adhere to social conventions in order to ensure the financial support of male family members. At the same time, they engaged in hidden activities such as home-based money-making and other culturally appropriate survival strategies.

These examples make it clear that culture is unique to each food security setting and that it is essential to understand what is happening on the micro level as well as the macro level. Alex de Waal (2002) points out that if governments and aid organizations better understand the micro level, they will be able to better predict and anticipate food crises and take measures to prevent famine. Other researchers stress the importance of understanding local traditions and coping strategies so that these can be incorporated into aid programs. While recognizing that coping mechanisms are not perfect, Pottier

(1999) argues that “measures that bolster existing coping mechanisms and prevent liquidation of productive assets are measures that can prevent famine” (pp. 149-150).

Dessalegn Rahmato (1991), who examined food survival strategies in northeastern

Ethiopia, writes that

what may appear to the casual observer as a disordered and isolated series of movements by individual peasants during the onset of famine is actually an ordered and group-centered effort to minimize the impact of the crisis and to stay alive. (p. 32)

Rahmato believes that emergency relief may temporarily abate famine but does not remove the root causes of the problem and may lead to greater dependency on

16 external powers, whereas a focus on bolstering local coping techniques can lead to cost-effective, easily diffused, viable, and indigenous food security measures.

Even if coping and adaptation strategies are not incorporated into food security programs, aid workers should be aware of them so that outside projects can avoid crowding out essential survival mechanisms. Dercon (2002) points out that public safety nets may have undesired effects by putting pressure on informal arrangements, particularly if some households covered by public safety nets have less incentive to participate in informal risk-sharing activities that are necessary for households not covered by the public safety nets. Albarran and Attanasio (2005) suggest that program coordinators be aware that programs “do not occur in a vacuum but interact with existing mechanisms within a society” (p. 301), and Attanasio and Rios-Rull (2000) add that “one should assess carefully the impact of a proposed intervention to see whether it may destroy private arrangements and the social fabric that sustains it” (p.

1227).

Summary

In this chapter, I have given a brief history of international food aid and argued that the focus of most literature is on the quantitative and macro, rather than the qualitative and micro. Several scholars have criticized international aid efforts for imposing Western ideas and failing to take local knowledge into consideration. They suggest that micro-level consideration of food security issues could contribute to a better understanding of the situation and the creation of more successful programs. As

Davies (1996) argues, finding out what local people do to confront food insecurity “is

17 not a luxury, but a necessity” (p. 310). In the following chapter, I give an introduction to the historical, political, economic, and food security situation in Tajikistan, followed by a discussion in Chapter 3 of food aid efforts in the country.

Chapter 2: Locating Tajikistan: History and Present-Day

Located in the heart of Asia, Tajikistan is a mountainous, landlocked country with a diverse population and a rich history. In this chapter, I give a brief overview of the country’s geographic and demographic features, followed by a discussion of its modern history. Then I turn to the post-1991 independence period and outline the political, economic, and food security situation today. I finish with an overview of

Uzbek and Tajik foods.

Geography and Demography

Tajikistan has an area of 143,100 square kilometers and a population of 7.2 million (“CIA World Factbook: Tajikistan,” n.d.). A landlocked country, it borders

Afghanistan to the south, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and Uzbekistan to the west. It is divided into four administrative regions: the province of Sughd

(formerly Leninabad) in the north, the province of Khatlon in the south, the autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan [GBAO] in the east, and the Region of

Republican Subordination in the center. The capital city, Dushanbe, is located in the

Region of Republican Subordination.2

Mountains are the predominant geographic feature of Tajikistan: more than half of the country lies at or above 3,000 meters (approximately 10,000 feet) above sea level. As a result, only 5.4 to 7 percent of the land is considered arable, and the country is subject to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and landslides

2 See Appendix A for a political map of Tajikistan.

(Knuth, 2008; Mayhew, Bloom, Noble, & Starnes, 2007; WFP, 2005). The two largest and most important rivers in Central Asia – the Amudarya and Syrdarya – pass through

Tajikistan, and the glacial melt-off from Tajikistan’s mountains feeds these rivers as they make their journey downstream to the drier lowlands of Uzbekistan,

Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

Unlike most of Central Asia, where Turkic languages such as Uzbek, Turkmen,

Kyrgyz, and Kazakh predominate, Tajikistan’s main language is a Persian language,

Tajik. Much of the population also knows Russian, and some speak it as their first language. Uzbek is spoken by the large Uzbek minority, which makes up 15.3 percent of the population according to official estimates but is guessed by some to be a much larger percentage of the population. Tajiks make up 79.9 percent of the population,

Russians 1.1 percent, and Kyrgyz 1.1 percent (“CIA World Factbook: Tajikistan,” n.d.). Although residents of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autnomous Oblast [GBAO] are called Tajik, they are different from Tajiks in the rest of the country. Most of them speak Eastern Iranian languages such as Shughni, Rushani, Khufi, and Wakhi and know Tajik only from studying it in school and watching television. The predominant religion of Tajikistan is Sunni Islam, but in the GBAO, most people are Ismaili, a division of Shi’a Islam (“CIA World Factbook: Tajikistan,” n.d.).

Modern History

After years of wars and shifting borders, Central Asia consisted of three states in the 19th century: the Khanate of Kokand, Khanate of Khiva, and Emirate of Bukhara.

The territory of present-day Tajikistan was part of the Emirate of Bukhara, along with large portions of present-day Uzbekistan. By the late 19th century, tsarist Russia had conquered all of these states. The Khanate of Kokand was incorporated into a larger unit called Turkestan, and the Khanate of Khiva and Emirate of Bukhara maintained their borders, but the local leaders now reported to Russia. During this period, Russian settlers began to come to Central Asia and in some cases caused discontent, but most of this happened in present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In Tajikistan, there was little Russian settlement and locals generally remained separate from Russian settlers and military officials in the region. Central Asians were not required to perform military service for the tsar, and as Wheeler (1964) puts it, Russian administrators

“were not interested in the people and did not like them; nor did they pretend as did their Soviet successors that the Central Asians liked or even loved them” (p. 69).

Major changes came with the October Revolution in 1917, the Russian civil war, and the creation of the Soviet Union. During the civil war, rail lines to Central

Asia were blockaded, and local people faced seclusion and food shortages. Relations between Central Asians and Russians became strained, as Russian settlers accused locals of being “speculators” and restricted their access to food. In reality, local bakeries had to mix chalk into flour to make ends meet, and regular deaths from starvation were recorded (Sahadeo, 2007). Sahadeo (2007) argues that the food shortages were partially due to colonial policies that encouraged cotton rather than wheat cultivation and sparked intense competition for supplies.

Under the Soviets, new borders were drawn, and Soviet Socialist Republics were formed in Central Asia. Most of present-day Tajikistan was designated as an autonomous region within Uzbekistan when the borders were first drawn, but in 1929, it became a separate Soviet Socialist Republic. Identities in the region had historically been defined by elements such as kinship group, neighborhood, village, or religious community, and Uzbeks and Tajiks had a long history of living side-by-side in cities like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khojent (Khalid, 1998). Although they spoke different languages at home, most urban Uzbeks and Tajiks were bilingual and shared many cultural traditions. However, during the Soviet period, ethnic definitions of identity were encouraged, and each republic developed its own national history, language, and traditions.

The Soviet era also brought the concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat, women’s “emancipation,” and atheism. In addition, there were efforts to industrialize and urbanize Central Asia, and there was an increased focus on cotton rather than food production in the region. This started during the tsarist period, when a tsarist minister is reported to have said that “every additional ton of Turkestan wheat is a competitor with Russian and Siberian wheat, [but] every additional ton of Turkestan cotton is a competitor with American cotton” (as cited in Wheeler, 1964, p. 157). However, grain remained the main crop in Central Asia during the tsarist period. In 1913, 75 percent of sown land in Central Asia produced grain, and only 16 percent produced cotton.

During the Soviet period, this changed. By 1965, the share of grain had fallen to 41

22 percent, and the share of cotton had grown to 36 percent (Khan & Ghai, 1979). Most of the irrigated land was shifted to cotton production, and grain production moved to marginal and dry land. At the same time, the agriculture system changed due to collectivization. In Tajikistan, this meant the total dominance of large collective and state farms, which controlled 99 percent of agricultural land and 96 percent of the available arable land (The Economic Effects, 2008).

The impacts of agricultural changes were both positive and negative. Wheeler points out that prior to the Soviet period, the supply of food and other necessities alternated between plenty and scarcity, often amounting to famine. During the Soviet period, the distribution and availability of food improved, and by 1950, the “spectre of famine had virtually disappeared from Soviet Central Asia and the sales of meat, sugar and dairy products had begun to rise steeply” (Wheeler, 1964, p. 167). However, the cotton monoculture meant environmental degradation and a loss of self-sufficiency for the people of the region. Tajikistan became dependent on the exchange of goods with other Soviet republics in order to meet its population’s needs; it was forced to import most of its wheat in exchange for cotton, a system that worked well during the Soviet period but has left the country vulnerable today (Abassian, 2005, p. 10).

Independence

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Tajikistan became an independent country for the first time in history. As one of the least developed republics in the

Soviet Union and the smallest country in Central Asia, it was immediately met with challenges. Tajik citizens faced rapid inflation, a breakdown of the health and

23 education sectors, widespread unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and an economy that came to a standstill. Adding to the devastation was a civil war that broke out shortly after independence and led to deaths, forced emigration, and the destruction of existing infrastructure.

The civil war was primarily a conflict between the northern Leninabad (today called Sughd) Province, which had controlled the top government positions during the

Soviet period, and the southern Kulyab Province (today part of Khatlon), which claimed that the presidential election in 1991 was falsified. Disagreement erupted into violence, and a civil war broke out in 1992, lasting until 1997. However, political violence continued in the country until as late as 2001. Ultimately, the Kulyabi faction was victorious, and Emomali Rakhmonov, a former kolkhoz chairman from Kulyab, was elected president. The civil war claimed the lives of between 40,000 and 80,000 people and forced 800,000 to flee abroad (Jonson, 2006). Today, the government is considered authoritarian but thought to be fragile and weak, and the economic situation remains dire in part as a result of the civil war (Jonson, 2006; Mack & Surina, 2005).

Since 1997, there has been steady economic growth in Tajikistan, but the economy remains weak, and more than 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas with widespread poverty (Abassian, 2005). Tajikistan’s economy relies almost exclusively on revenues from the export of aluminum and cotton, which makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in world markets. Because it is land-locked, the country has also little access to shipping routes (Abassian, 2005, pp. 11-12).

Many have sought relief from their poverty by migrating abroad to find work.

Between 600,000 and more than one million Tajik migrants work in Russia, and large numbers also work in Kazakhstan, Europe, and other locations (Marat, 2009).

According to official figures, in 1997 Tajiks working abroad sent home more than U.S.

$1.8 billion – or 30 percent of Tajikistan’s national GDP – and unofficial figures suggest that the proportion may actually be as high as 46 percent (Marat, 2009). This makes Tajikistan extremely vulnerable to world financial fluctuations and the current economic slowdown. A Washington Post article (Schafer, 2009) recently reported that many Central Asian migrant workers have lost their jobs in Russia and are being forced to return home. The article also notes that the construction sector, which accounts for about 40 percent of immigrant jobs in Russia, has been especially hit hard, with a halting of 60 to 80 construction projects in recent months and as many as 30,000 immigrants unemployed.

Compounding the potential for a drop in labor remittances is the risk of a loss of funds from foreign donors, since there have been recent discrepancies in the use of this money. The International Monetary Fund accused Tajikistan of misstating its finances in 2008, and independent audits have separately shown an $850 million fraud at the Tajik central bank (Laurent, 2009). One article argues that “if the charges turn out to be true, Tajikistan’s reputation as a country worthy of foreign aid will take a big hit” (Laurent, 2009).

Poverty and Food Insecurity

As a result of Tajikistan’s economic troubles, poverty and food insecurity abound. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [UN FAO] estimates that 34 percent of the population of Tajikistan is undernourished, and the World Food

Programme [WFP] reports that 27 percent is chronically food insecure or very vulnerable to food insecurity (The State of Food Insecurity, 2008; WFP, “Tajikistan

Profile,” n.d.). Fifty-four percent of households have very poor or poor food consumption, and the poorest groups spend more than 70 percent of their income on food (WFP, 2005, n.d.).

In many regions, less than half of the households have electricity, and many are forced to use firewood or animal manure for fuel (Abassian, 2005, p. 26). The amount of meat/beans and dairy products people regularly eat is extremely low at all levels of the food security spectrum, and many communities lack functioning health clinics

(Abassian, 2005). According to a Word Food Program survey (2005), people see a need for improvement in drinking water, access to quality healthcare, educational infrastructure, roads, water management, and electricity and power.

Much of the poverty and food insecurity in the country is linked to agricultural problems, including a small amount of arable land and problems transitioning from a

Soviet agriculture system to an independent one. Collective farms and state farms were the main source of livelihood for most rural households during the Soviet period, but the devaluation of currency since the mid-1990s has led to bankruptcy for many

26 state and collective farms (Grand, Leather, & Mason, 2001). The agricultural system in general suffers from the breakdown of the system of inputs and distribution channels; destruction and deterioration of buildings and irrigation systems; emigration of skilled professionals; state monopolies on supply and marketing; and the breakdown of the system of production control and monitoring. Since independence, the government has retained a main role in decision making, and strict controls exist on cotton production areas (The Economic Effects, 2008). Much of the land continues to be devoted to cotton rather than food production, and wheat production suffers due to poor quality seeds, deteriorating machinery, inadequate access to credits and other inputs, and a lack of prime land (Abassian, 2005).

Water-related conflicts also complicate the situation. Because of over-irrigation and poor water management that began during the Soviet period, much of the water that once reached the Aral Sea in the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers no longer does, causing problems in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (Linn, 2008). There is a shortage of water, and many of the Central Asian countries have periodic conflicts about water.

During the Soviet era, water sharing systems functioned decently because they were regulated by Moscow. Downstream countries provided upstream countries with coal and gas so that they had electrical power in the wintertime and could store water in reservoirs rather than use it for hydropower during the winter months. In the spring and summer, upstream countries released water downstream for irrigation in the low- land countries (Linn, 2008). Since independence, the system has not worked as well.

Eighty percent of the region’s water comes from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but these

27 countries are only able to withdraw 15 percent of their water and are restricted in their winter generation of hydropower because they have to save water to release to the other countries in the summertime (Jonson, 2006). Downstream countries like Uzbekistan accuse upstream countries of releasing water during the wintertime and causing floods and summertime shortages.

Relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have become tense at times, and

Uzbekistan regularly makes it difficult for Tajikistan to import gas and electricity. A news article in January (“Tajik Households,” 2009) reported that consumers in

Tajikistan would have to pay 54 percent more for their gas than they did the year before because Uzbekistan raised the price from $145 per 1,000 cubic meters to $240.

Another article (“Electricity Rationing,” 2009) reported that Tajikistan was forced to temporarily ration and in some cases eliminate electrical supply because Uzbekistan had stopped transporting Turkmen electricity (“Electricity Rationing,” 2009). The UN

FAO projects that “as long as relations with neighboring Uzbekistan are tense and unstable, Tajikistan will remain a vulnerable country both economically and politically” (Abassian, 2005, p. 11).

During the winter of 2008, the food security situation in Tajikistan was particularly bad, and the country was declared to be in a food security crisis (The State of Food Insecurity, 2008, p. 21). The UN Food Security Cluster in Tajikistan declared the crisis, noting that “extreme winter temperatures, depleting food and fuel stocks, increasing prices, prolonged blackouts at the local and national levels, and limited

28 access to water has pushed almost the entire population of Tajikistan into a situation of humanitarian concern” (United Nations, 2008). It reported that approximately 40 percent of Dushanbe residents and 94 percent of residents in cities outside the capital had inadequate access to water due to blackouts and that 30 percent of those surveyed in the capital and 75 percent of those surveyed outside the capital were experiencing difficulties purchasing food as a result of high food prices, food shortages, and limited access to markets due to heavy snowfall and ice (United Nations, 2008).

A recent World Food Programme report concluded that severe food insecurity seems to have improved in Tajikistan since 2008. However, it also notes that chronic food insecurity remains a serious issue (Food Security Monitoring System, 2009).

Sughd and Khatlon are the most food insure regions, and despite the improved conditions overall, 43 percent of households estimate their economic situation to be worse than it was in 2008 and that many households are taking on new debts, mostly to buy food and feed. The report suggests that the future of food security in Tajikistan will depend upon remittances and migration, employment, weather and harvest success, government spending, water access and health, the world financial crisis, prices of food, and individual nutrition and dietary intake.

An Overview of Uzbek & Tajik Food

Uzbek and Tajik cuisines are very similar. Although there are small differences, I describe the cuisines together in this section because they share most of the same basic elements. Because my research focuses on Uzbeks living in Tajikistan, it is worthwhile to consider both cuisines at the same time. Later in the paper, I will

29 elaborate on the small differences between the two cuisines, but for now, I focus on their similarities.

Both Uzbek and Tajik foods require significant effort and preparation time.

They are typically made by hand and in quantities large enough to feed the whole family. Very few families have microwaves, and even fewer eat convenience foods like premade or frozen dishes. Typical methods of cooking include frying, boiling, steaming, and (for bread and cakes) baking. Families who live in houses often have both an indoor and an outdoor kitchen, which they use at different times of the year.

During the hot summer months, the outdoor kitchen is used, and during the cold winter months, the indoor kitchen is used. The outdoor kitchen usually contains an o’choq, a mud-built stove in which cauldrons can be placed over a fire pit so that food can be made for large groups. In a family’s courtyard or in a shared space for apartment dwellers, there is also often a tandir, a clay oven for baking non (flatbread) and somsa

(meat-filled pastries).

Meat is important in the cuisine of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is often eaten with every meal and served to guests when they visit. Fat is also highly valued, and many foods are cooked with large amounts of animal fat or oils such as cotton, flaxseed, or vegetable. However, the amount of meat eaten at a meal is usually small, and rice and grains make up the largest part of the Uzbek and Tajik diet. The most popular dish made with rice is palov, a rice pilaf made with onions, carrots, small amounts of meat (usually mutton or beef), seasonings, and sometimes other ingredients

30 like chickpeas, raisins, and garlic. Palov (also called osh) is served as a family dinner

(usually on Thursdays and Sundays), but is also served on more ceremonious occasions, such as when a guest visits or when there is a wedding or holiday party

(Mahmudov, 1989b).3 There are said to be more than 100 types of palov in Uzbek cuisine, and it is similarly made and just as important in Tajik cuisine (Mahmudov,

1989b; “Plovy,” n.d.). In fact, several Uzbek cookbooks (Makhmudov, 1979, 1987) have been dedicated exclusively to it, and one notes that palov is “is a suitable dish for everyone, from young infants to elderly people” (Mahmudov, 1989b, p. 199).

However, wheat is the most important base in the Uzbek and Tajik diet and is used to make non (flatbread), somsa (pastries filled with meat or vegetables), manti

(dumplings), and noodles for various types of soup, among other things. A UN FAO report calls wheat the base of Tajikistan’s diet and says that it accounts for nearly three-fifths of people’s total caloric intake, with the rest coming from dairy, meat, potatoes, and vegetable oil (Abassian, 2005, p. 11). Of the foods made with wheat, non is the most venerated and important. Just as there are cookbooks devoted exclusively to palov, there are also books devoted to non, and non has many cultural traditions associated with it. The inscription of one cookbook says that “non is humankind’s greatest invention,” and a popular saying goes that “a meal without non is not a meal”

(Makhmudov, 1988; “Osobennosti Uzbekiskoi Kukhni,” n.d.).

3 Karim Mahmudov has written numerous Uzbek cookbooks. In his most recent books, his name has been spelled “Mahmudov,” but in earlier versions and in Russian versions, his name is spelled “Makhmudov.” I have used both in this text, but it should be noted that they refer to the same author.

A 2005 report noted that bread, tea, cooking oil, and potatoes were the most commonly consumed and accessible foods in the districts of Tajikistan where people had been surveyed, and the most commonly produced vegetables were tomatoes, onions, carrots, cucumbers, and leafy green vegetables like cabbages (Food Security

Survey, 2005). Eggplant, squash/pumpkin, chickpeas, mung beans, and black-eyed peas are also popular in Uzbek and Tajik cuisine. Fruits such as melons, grapes, quinces, apples, persimmons, pears, pomegranates, lemons, and mandarins are eaten fresh and made into jams and fruit juices. Mack and Surina (2005) note that “Central

Asia produces some of the world’s sweetest sun-drenched melons, tomatoes, grapes, and apricots” (p. 91). They are such a pride point that one Uzbek cookbook includes pictures of fresh fruits and vegetables after a series of pictures of prepared dishes like palov, non, and manti (Zakirov, 1998). Dairy products such as milk, kefir (a sharp homemade yogurt), cream, and suzma (a condensed form of yogurt somewhat like cottage cheese) are also popular and are usually made from cow milk, although in mountainous and remote areas they may be made with goat, sheep, camel, or horse milk (Mahmudov, 1989b).

Tea and sweets are also very common. Many people eat small pieces of hard candy or sugar-coated nuts while having tea, and Russian and Tatar pastries have become popular. Typical desserts include holvaytar (a dish made from flour, sugar, and oil), chakchak (fried dough fingers with honey), urama (fried spirals of dough coated with powdered sugar), and nisholda (a type of marshmallow-like syrup). Green

32 or black tea is usually drunk with every meal and is poured from a teapot into bowl- shaped piyola teacups at the table. A traditional hostess will pour from the teapot into a piyola and back into the teapot three times before offering tea to her guest. This serves to agitate and mix the loose tea leaves in the pot, but is also a tradition. It is said that the first time one pours tea, it is loy (mud), the second time it is moy (oil), and the third time it becomes choy (tea). In addition to tea, people drink store-bought sodas, mineral water, and fruit juices, as well as homemade fruit juices. Wine, vodka, and beer are widely available, although many abstain due to religious beliefs.

Summary

Tajikistan has a rich history but has suffered from challenges in recent history.

Today, conditions are slowly improving after years of civil war and economic decline, but poverty and food insecurity remain problems. A UN FAO report predicts that in the foreseeable future Tajikistan will need to continue relying on international aid to achieve food security (Abassian, 2005). The following chapter discusses international aid organizations in Tajikistan and literature about food security in the country.

Chapter 3: International Development & Food Security in Tajikistan

Many international organizations provide assistance in the area of food aid and development in Tajikistan. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the main organizations and projects related to food security in the country. Then I discuss food security literature about Tajikistan, which focuses primarily on macro aspects and uses quantitative evaluative methods. Finally, I discuss the handful of studies that have looked at the micro level in Tajikistan and what their findings have been.

Aid in Tajikistan

Since 1991, many international aid organizations have begun work in

Tajikistan. Most Western-funded organizations are based in Dushanbe, but many have smaller offices in other cities or administer programs in rural areas (Lafaro, 2007). The two leading food aid agencies in Tajikistan are the World Food Programme [WFP] and

CARE, including its counterparts Mercy Corps and Save the Children (Abassian,

2005). The WFP is active in providing food relief, as well as food for education programs, therapeutic and supplementary feeding, and food for work programs

(“Countries: Tajikistan,” n.d.). Mercy Corps sponsors efforts to improve mother and child health, bolster community healthcare, spread low-cost hygiene technologies, and increase agricultural production, processing, and marketing (“Program Details,” 2006).

As noted in a recent publication, Mercy Corps uses a “community mobilization methodology” to engage communities in identifying priorities, resources, needs, and

34 solutions with the aim of promoting participation, good governance, accountability, and change (Sustainability Field Study, 2007). Similarly, Save the Children’s efforts focus on improving the health and sanitation practices of school-age children, increasing household food production, and enhancing communities’ abilities to manage financial and environmental shocks (“Tajikistan,” n.d.). Recently, Mercy Corps and

Save the Children launched the cooperative Emergency Food Security Project, which aims to distribute basic food commodities such as wheat flour, lentils, and vegetable oil and provide cash safety nets for those in need. A report notes that “in each case, the community members themselves, who are most aware of the situation on the ground, meet and identify their most vulnerable neighbors through a fully transparent, participatory process” (USAID, n.d.).

Although these are the largest programs, many other international programs also seek to improve food security in Tajikistan. The UN FAO plays a key role in emergency food relief and supports projects in pasture rehabilitation, food security monitoring, animal health, avian influenza, land reform, disease control, and watershed management projects (UNFAO, 2009). UNICEF is also working to improve material and child nutrition by decreasing iron deficiency anemia and iodine deficiency disorders through a universal salt iodization and wheat flour fortification project and is involved in water hygiene and sanitation projects (UNICEF, 2009). Deutsche

Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action, Action Against Hunger, and Oxfam also offer programs in emergency food aid, crop production technique training and provision of seeds and tools to farmers, water sanitation projects, and the provision of

35 supplementary food and vitamins (Food Security Survey, 2005; “German Agro

Action,” n.d.; “Tajikistan: Intro,” n.d.).

USAID and the European Commission on Humanitarian Aid [ECHO] are involved in educating mothers about breast-feeding, childcare, hygiene, nutrition, and disease prevention; providing supplementary food and de-worming medications; and improving water and sanitation facilities (“European Commission on Humanitarian

Aid,” n.d.; USAID, n.d.). The Aga Khan Development Network is also active in

Tajikistan, particularly in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast [GBAO].

During the civil war, it provided food aid in the GBAO, and today it administers programs in disaster management, economic development, education, health, microfinance, regional cooperation, and rural development (“Countries: AKDN in

Tajikistan,” n.d.). Furthermore, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank offer loans and grants related to food security and have been active in emergency relief projects (The World Bank, 2008). Other organizations such as International Society of

Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Relief International, Winrock International,

ACDI/VOCA, and the German Development Service (DED) are involved in smaller- scale efforts.

Food Security Literature on Tajikistan

As is the case for food security literature worldwide, the primary focus of literature on Tajikistan is macro issues, and even those reports that discuss micro issues rarely include detailed reviews of local perspectives or customs. Almost none of the

36 literature that directly relates to food security mentions the daily activities of people, and I have been able to find only one report describing people’s coping and adaptation strategies. While much of the literature by organizations operating in Tajikistan reviews ongoing aid programs and professes to use participatory methods, the voices of local people and their everyday actions rarely come through in these reports.

Many reports focus on agricultural land reform (Abassian, 2005; The Economic

Effects, 2008; Foroughi, n.d.). Other reports focus on land and agricultural reform as it relates to cotton production (Knuth, 2008; The Economic Effects, 2008). Microfinance is another popular topic, since many international organizations provide credit to farmers and small business owners in Tajikistan (Lamberte, Vogel, Moyes, &

Fernando, 2006). Other topics include policy and legal frameworks, emergency food supply, and women’s issues (Csaki & Tuck, 2000; Grand et al., 2001; Mainstreaming

Gender, 2006; Rural, Environmental, and Social Development, 2000). Organizations operating in the GBAO also focus on the subject of sustainable mountain development

(Nygaard, Jumakhonov, & Hendrickx, 2005; Yao & Rüffer, 2005).

While all of these subjects are important to understanding the big picture, the overwhelming focus on them has prevented organizations from understanding the daily food practices and experiences of local communities. Only a handful of food security reports examine processes at the local level, and most of these are based on surveys that use quantitative methodologies. A 2007 USAID/World Bank survey asked local people about their experiences with farming and land reform, and surveys of small farmers were also conducted in 2008 by the Asian Development Bank and in 2007-

2008 by the UN FAO (The Economic Effects, 2008). One of the most thorough surveys about food security and poverty appears to be a World Food Programme survey in 2005 that asked 5,150 households throughout Tajikistan about their food consumption levels, access to water and fuel, and top priorities (WFP, 2005). It reported valuable information about the percentage of income households spend on food, differing levels of food security in different regions, and access to clean water and electricity. Similarly, a joint report by the World Food Programme, World Health

Organization, and Department for International Development contains a detailed description of which districts in Tajikistan are the most food insecure, how much people in these districts rely on remittances from abroad, and what problems exist in each location (Food Security Monitoring System, 2009).

These surveys are important because they report what is happening at the ground level and what people are doing and feeling. However, they do not focus much or at all on cultural practices or attitudes, and many look primarily on macro issues.

They also take a quantitative focus, and their survey format prevents them from observing the complexities of local experiences and discovering results outside the realms of their study focus. Only a very small number of researchers have attempted to look at local processes using qualitative methods that could supplement the many existing quantitative findings. These include a 1997 report on food security in northern

Tajikistan and anthropological studies conducted by Andrea Berg and Aziz Niyazi.

The 1997 report is based on a six-week study in northern Tajikistan that includes not just surveys but also interviews and intensive fieldwork (Groetschel et al.,

1997). The study focuses on the socio-economic environment in the region and assesses a German Agro Action seed and fertilizer project. It discusses agricultural production and household and farming systems and provides details about farming techniques, methods of earning income, gender relations, education, health, physical infrastructure, and daily practices related to food production. It also mentions ways that local communities work together to cope with difficulties and how local mechanisms allow for this. It recommends that aid programs provide credit training, methods that improve the processing and marketing of agricultural products, advice on land reform, opportunities for improvement to harvest storage systems, prevention of erosion through tree planting, and food-for-work measures. Sadly, this report is now more than ten years old, and there do not appear to have been related studies since its completion. The study also focuses only on the northern part of the country and mainly on rural areas, and it does not include information about activities that are not agriculture-based, so gaps remain on this subject.

The two anthropological studies focus more on connecting cultural practices to development projects. Berg (2004) conducted research in Uzbekistan on gap parties, a custom in which women form a group that agrees to hold parties at each of the members’ houses during a specified period of time, such as once every week or month.

She argues that non-government organizations – which are new to Uzbekistan and are often run by women – should seek to better utilize existing social networks and design

39 their programs and operations based on accepted models like the gap. She points out that at a gap is one of the few places where women can discuss private and public needs and seek advice or support:

Although they may not solve these problems, they learn to discuss, to debate, and to develop an opinion with familiar persons. Women’s informal networks have persisted for a long time and are well embedded into the social environment. (Berg, 2004, p. 200)

Meanwhile, Aziz Niyazi (1999) argues that Islamic customs and beliefs could be the key to sustainable development in Central Asia because they take a balanced approach to human development and natural resource conservation. He believes that there are many opportunities to build on customs of husbanding water and land resources, as well as Muslim restrictions on the limitation of needs, moderation of consumption, condemnation of egoism, and preservation of strong family bonds and human health. He argues that long-term development projects must be directed at

“establishing harmony between the spiritual and material activities of mankind and its environment” and should “take into account specific interests and problems, the potential of all regions of the republic, cultural and economic traditions, and the human psychology of all its inhabitants” (Niyazi, 1999, p. 192).

Other anthropologists have written about relevant issues in Central Asia but have not directly tied their findings into the food security situation. Nancy

Rosenberger (2007) writes about the role of cuisine in Uzbek national identity and argues that the cuisine has grown in part out of deprivation: “Food tells people what they can grow or not, sell or not, afford or not; what they should remember and what

40 they should forget” (p. 340). She notes that Uzbek cuisine is promoted as abundant and diverse, but poverty causes many people to feel ashamed because they do not see the ideal of abundance reflected in their daily meals. She cautions that “the national feast may index national prosperity, but the meagerness or lack of this feast may index the failure of the national promise, stirring discontent” (Rosenberger, 2007, p. 340).

Alma Kunanbaeva (2008) discusses the Kazakh tradition of giving different parts of a slaughtered sheep to different family members and guests. She notes that this builds community and is a form of conservation at the same time:

I have always been struck by this endless transformation and reworking of one dish into others. The basic principle is completely waste-free production. Literally everything went into the food. Even the congealed fat removed from the broth was melted and used for frying or in making dough for bread. (Kunanbaeva, 2008, p. 51)

Although without focusing on them with intent, others discuss some of the strategies people in Central Asia use to survive. Russell Zanca (2007) notes that personal gardens ensure people’s access to food, and Rosenberger (2007) adds that

Uzbeks often share their garden products with family members. She points out that this sharing “bear[s] witness to the current necessity and willingness to use ingenuity and cooperation in order to survive in the harsh politico-economic environment of a newly independent nation” (p. 347). She also discusses the Uzbek practices of canning, buying in bulk, and eating at home as ways to conserve and save money.

Several scholars have also mentioned the role of gender in food processes. In her study of gender in rural Tajikistan, Colette Harris (2004) discusses a few women who suffer from hunger and malnutrition, although she does not concertedly look at

41 this factor. Tahmina, a kelin (daughter-in-law) who must perform many household duties for her in-laws’, is an example:

Tahmina has to get up early in the morning and start the fire going before the rest of the family gets out of bed. She is given a minimum of food, and scolded if she asks for more… Village life is especially hard in cold weather and in the first few years adversely affected her delicate health. She was constantly in pain from her back, lost a great deal of weight and generally felt terrible. (Harris, 2004, p. 107)

Other researchers show the power of food to challenge gender stereotypes.

Cynthia Werner’s (2004) study of women traders in Kazakhstan shows that some women use food as a way to earn a living as bazaar merchants. She notes that “the high visibility of merchant women, including Muslim women, stands in contrast to population stereotypes of secluded Muslim women” (p. 106). Meanwhile, Rosenberger

(2007) adds that some young, educated women in Tashkent use global foods to show individuality from their husbands, and Zanca (2007) points out that women’s role in preparing meals at home contributes to a family’s status and character. He writes that a man “cannot really control what he eats; he has to trust his wife, so all the most basic aspects of the nature of the husband-wife relationship are going to be concentrated in how and what a man eats, and in how his social/family life gets represented to his larger village or community” (p. 189).

Summary

Many international organizations are involved in efforts to improve food security in Tajikistan. However, most of the literature produced by these organizations and by scholars focuses on macro issues and uses quantitative methods to analyze the

42 situation. Only a handful of reports have been written about local customs and attitudes related to food, and very few of these have directly tied their findings to food security issues. This paper is an attempt to provide micro-level information and show its implications for food security projects. In Chapter 4, I will describe my methodology and in Chapters 5 and 6, I will discuss my research findings.

Chapter 4: Methodology

In her book The Pull of the Earth, Laurie Thorp (2006) admits that her ethnography of a school garden in Michigan is “messy” and may appear as a “mixing of science and love” (p. 10). She writes:

The stories jump out at me so fast and furious, I doubt my ability to capture them all—to get it right. I lay down the words in fits and jerks not knowing where they lead nor understanding their pattern. Yet I know from my own experience that it is in the telling and retelling of these stories that our wounds can heal and some sense can be made of it all. (Thorp, 2006, p. 11)

In this paper, I seek to avoid the urge to smooth over the messiness of everyday life but nonetheless to make sense of it all. Real life is messy, and people’s everyday connections to food are not simplistic or unidirectional. As Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw

(1995) point out, “the task of the ethnographer is not to determine ‘the truth’ but to reveal the multiple truths apparent in others’ lives” (p. 3). The examples of everyday food practices in this paper are not meant to be an exhaustive list, nor do I mean to suggest that all people in Tajikistan act in these ways or believe in these things.

Although many of the practices and ideas do appear to be widespread, this is not a quantitative study and does not seek to show how widespread these practices are.

Instead, it aims to provide insight into general trends in local culture and behavior and to illustrate their implications for food security programs in the region.

This study is based on participant observation and interviews conducted in

Dushanbe, Tajikistan, as well as a nearby town called Navoi4 and villages not far from

Dushanbe and Navoi. This research was conducted between June and August 2008, while I took part in a language program coordinated by a foreign organization based in

Dushanbe. During this time, I lived with a host family and spent most of my time in

Dushanbe but also made several overnight trips outside the capital city. Throughout the summer, I observed individuals and households as they shopped, cooked, ate, and cleaned up after meals. I also conducted seven in-depth interviews and three briefer interviews. All names have been changed for the sake of anonymity, but demographic features remain unchanged.

My in-depth interviews were with Dilshod, Rustam aka, Mavluda opa, Sayora opa, Fazilat, Lobar, and Zilola.5 The people I observed and spoke with less formally were Nargiza opa, Yulduz opa, and Aziz aka. Table 1 reveals demographic information about the participants, including gender, age range, ethnicity, marital status, ethnicity of their spouse or ex-spouse, and location and type of residence.6 Also included is information about household size and primary family roles. Household size is described as nuclear – meaning that only parents and children live together – or extended – meaning that grandparents, grandchildren, and/or other extended relatives also live in the household. Participants’ primary roles within the family are described with a focus on an individual’s main position within the family and how they saw

4 For the sake of anonymity, the name of the town has been changed in this study. 5 Aka is a term of respect used for elder men, and opa is a term of respect used for elder women. 6 See Appendix B for a narrative description of the study participants.

Table 1: Study Participants

Gender Age Ethnicity Spouse's Location Home Household Marital Primary Range Ethnicity Size Status Family Role Aziz aka M 70s Uzbek Uzbek Village House Multi- Married Grandfather generation Dilshod M 30s Uzbek Uzbek Navoi Apartment Single Married Father generation Fazilat F 20s Uzbek Uzbek Dushanbe Apartment Single Divorced Mother generation Lobar F 30s Uzbek Tajik Dushanbe Apartment Single Divorced Mother generation Mavluda F 50s Uzbek Tajik Dushanbe House Single Separated Grandmother opa generation Nargiza F 40s Uzbek Uzbek Dushanbe House Multi- Married Grandmother opa generation Rustam M 40s Tajik Tajik Dushanbe Apartment Single Divorced Father aka generation Sayora F 50s Uzbek Tajik Dushanbe House Multi- Married Grandmother opa generation Yulduz F 60s Uzbek Uzbek Village House Multi- Widowed Great- opa generation grandmother Zilola F 20s Uzbek Tajik Village House Multi- Married Mother/Kelin generation 45

themselves. In the case of Zilola, I have described her as “Mother/kelin.” Kelin is an

Uzbek word meaning “daughter-in-law” or “bride.” Often a kelin lives with her husband’s family and performs many of the household chores. I have not included religion in the table because all of the participants were Sunni Muslim, although their level of religiosity and regularity of practice varied greatly. All of the participants also had children, so I have not included this detail in the table.

Participants were selected using the snowball method: I asked acquaintances if they would like to participate in the study, and many in turn introduced me to friends and relatives who were willing to participate. As a result, my research is not focused on a single site but is multi-sited and includes individuals and households that live not in different cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods. However, several of the participants did live in the same neighborhood, and many were friends or co-workers.

Still others were related to each other. The diagram in Figure 1 illustrates participants’ locations of residence and the social connections between them.

When I began my research, I was interested in learning more about the role of food in the Uzbek communities’ self-definition and food security level. My research focused on two main questions:

1. What role does ethnicity play in Uzbeks’ use of food and understanding of their identities in Tajikistan?

2. How do people cope with food security on a daily basis?

Many of my questions and observations focused on these subjects, but I also tried to keep an open mind and observed and spoke with people about a wide range of topics. I sought to allow my research participants to share what they felt was important

Figure 1: Connections between Study Participants

R F Y

D S A Navoiy

N Key Work together M L Have connections because of work (but do not work together) Dushanbe A = Aziz aka N = Nargiza opa Family members/relatives D = Dilshod R = Rustam aka F = Fazilat S = Sayora opa City limits L = Lobar Y = Yulduz opa M = Mavluda opa Z = Zilola Neighborhood 47

and to define the parameters of our discussion about food security and ethnicity. As a result, my research took on new directions and foci as it progressed.

Because I was interested in ethnicity as part of food security, I focused primarily on ethnic Uzbeks for this study. I spoke Uzbek much better than Russian or

Tajik, so it made sense to take this focus. However, I did not want to exclude Tajiks and in many cases observed Tajiks along with Uzbeks because my study participants were married to or friends with ethnic Tajiks. In addition, I interviewed one ethnic

Tajik, a middle-aged man named Rustam aka who spoke Uzbek and had Uzbek friends.

Many of the Uzbek participants lived in mixed Uzbek-Tajik neighborhoods or communities, although a few lived in predominantly Uzbek communities. The town of

Navoi was largely Uzbek, as were the villages where Yulduz opa and Aziz aka lived.

Many of the study participants had also been born in Uzbekistan and come to

Tajikistan as children during the Soviet period, although a few had lived in the country their whole lives and/or were members of families that had lived on the territory of

Tajikistan for generations.

As a foreigner and student, I tended to meet people who were middle class and well educated. However, all of the people I interviewed faced some type of periodic shortages of money and utilities such as water or electricity, and a few faced very serious and ongoing monetary and nutrition deficiencies. All but Yulduz opa had received higher education, but several worked outside their fields of study, and one did not work outside the home at all (Zilola). Others had jobs that paid very small salaries, which they supplemented with other work, and a few survived on pensions. One

person had traveled to the U.S., one to Turkey, one to Russia and Afghanistan, and several to Uzbekistan. However, in general, most were not widely traveled.

My position in relation to this research affected my observations and conclusions, so it is worth noting. First, I came to this research as an American. Julie

Hemment (2007), an anthropologist who works in post-Soviet Russia, writes that “in postsocialist states, the anthropological encounter is structured by the Cold War and its legacy” (p. 304). While I would argue that the impact of attitudes from the Cold War is less relevant today than it once was, it continues to play a role in research encounters. Second, I came to this research with a strong Uzbek background rather than a Tajik one. I had lived in Uzbekistan from 2003-2005 as a Peace Corps

Volunteer and spoke Uzbek and some Russian, but very little Tajik. As a result, I was not able to understand much of the Tajik conversations around me, and the intermixed nature of many relationships meant that this was a significant disadvantage. However,

I was often able to get the gist of Tajik conversations based on shared Uzbek or

Russian words, contextual clues, and translations provided afterwards.

Several scholars have noted links between Western research and the colonization or mistreatment of local peoples (Narayan, 1997; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999).

Because of this connection, some people are hesitant to participate in research. Marfua

Tokhtakohdjaeva (1995) notes that while asking people to complete questionnaires for a book about women in Central Asia, she received responses such as:

‘Who needs your book now when we are living in difficult circumstances. Our answers and you book would change nothing in our surroundings.’

‘If the book is to be published abroad, I am afraid of answering your questions; I do not know how you would misinterpret me.’ ‘I do not want to be a guinea pig.’ (pp. 183-184)

Such attitudes are not surprisingly, given that most Western research is conducted in Central Asia and then taken back to the U.S. or Europe, where few

Central Asians have access to it. Nonetheless, while conducting my research, I found that people were remarkably cooperative, in part because they were proud to share their food traditions and in part because they wanted to find solutions to their food security problems. Lather (1986) writes that the “degree to which the research process reorients, focuses, and energizes participants” is how it should be judged (p. 67).

Thorp (2006) adds that “research reports that fail to engage readers or prompt action have failed the catalytic criterion” (p. 134). In this paper, I seek to write about food security in a way that helps international scholars and aid workers find better solutions, but also reaches Central Asians and is meaningful to them.

Chapter 5: The Social Aspects of Food: Community Building, Social Stratification, Ethnicity, and Gender

Despite food shortages, Uzbek and Tajik cultures highly value hospitality and abundance. One is expected to invite a friend as well as an enemy inside for a meal and to show guests great respect. This custom – with food at the center of it – strengthens community relations and provides opportunities for the less fortunate to gain access to food when they need it most. However, because of food’s social role, it is also involved in processes that reinforce hierarchies based on age, wealth, gender, and ethnicity. At the same time, differing expectations about the duties of men and women mean that food shortages affect them in different ways. In this chapter, I discuss my research findings based on observations and interviews among the Uzbek community in Tajikistan. I begin with a discussion of the role of food in community building and move on to reveal its role in social stratification. Then I discuss the connections between ethnicity and food security in Tajikistan, and I finish with a discussion of gender roles and food.

Community Building: “The Generosity of the Land”

The ideal Uzbek host or hostess presents guests with an overflowing dasturxon

(tablecloth or table setting), repeatedly extols them to eat as much as they can, and suggests that they stay longer if they make a movement to leaving. Hospitality is so important that an entire Uzbek book has been written about it and includes explanations of the main rules of behavior (Mahmudov, 1989a). It notes that

“decorating a beautiful dasturxon and warm-heartedly receiving a guest is indeed a certain art. The person who sets the dasturxon must be intelligent, pure, and tasteful in character” (p. 59). The dasturxon is considered “dear, sacred, a source of daily subsistence, and symbolic” and should exude abundance and reveal the generosity of the host (Sattor, 2007, p. 62). It should also reflect the “generosity of the land” and include a sampling of the region’s fresh vegetables, fruits, dairy products, and meats

(“Osobennosti Uzbekiskoi Kukhni,” n.d.; O’zbek Taomlari, 1996).

An example of hospitality customs and how they build community can be seen in the story of a beshik to’y I attended in a village outside of Navoi. A beshik to’y is a party to celebrate the birth of a child and is the time when a baby’s maternal grandparents give his or her parents a beshik cradle for the baby. Although these are sometimes large celebrations, the one I attended was modest and involved only family members and close friends (besides me). Women of various ages gathered in the living room of a rural home and sat on cushions around a dasturxon that had been spread on the floor. The dasturxon was covered with a rich assortment of appetizers and sweets, including cakes, candies, salads, sliced cheese and sausage, piles of fresh melon and fruits, raisins and nuts, and somsa (pastries filled with meat), as well as soda, juice, and tea. In the middle was an enormous, sprawling pile of flatbread: some pieces that were small, some that were big, some that had seeds on top, some that were large patir

(layered flatbread), and some that were smaller patir with sugar sprinkled on top. The bread had clearly been gathered from a variety of sources, possibly from the baby’s

maternal grandparents and likely also from some of the guests, since it is common for a guest to bring an even number of non or some other food gift when visiting someone.

When new guests entered the room, the younger guests greeted them by standing, while the elderly guests remained seated so as to not strain themselves. Each new person walked around the room to shake hands and kiss other women on the cheeks before taking her seat. Then everyone cupped their hands, and the eldest woman in the room said a short prayer. In this way, each woman was welcomed and made to feel a part of the community as soon as she entered.

We sat for several hours, nibbling on melon, bread, cookies, and somsa and sipping tea and soda. Later, we were served soup and then palov. Although the soup was served in individual bowls, the palov was served in the traditional manner: on shared plates. One plate of palov was given to every two or three people, who ate from the same plate. Most people ate the palov with spoons, but several elderly women said they preferred to eat with their right hands in the traditional, old-fashioned manner.

Our sharing of pieces of non (flatbread) that had been torn from the same round and our shared plates of palov served to symbolically and tangibly bring the community together and build trust among the group.

Later, the beshik to’y ceremony brought the women even closer together. After some negotiation about who would perform the ceremony, the eldest woman in the room ceremoniously placed the baby into her new cradle and said a prayer. Then she passed a string around the room, and each woman tied a knot into it while saying a short blessing for the baby. After the thread had been knotted by everyone, the eldest

woman tied it on the beshik above the baby so that she would feel the communal wishes of this collection of friends and relatives.

Other forms of sharing took place before and during the meal. When we arrived, the guests discreetly pooled their money so that it could be privately given to the family as a gift. Then, after the beshik ceremony finished, the hosts gave each woman a small headscarf and a piece of candy as a thank you and a commemoration of the event. When the meal was finished, there was a scramble for the leftover appetizers on the dasturxon. Each woman pulled a neatly folded plastic bag or cloth towel out of her bag and took the leftover bread, sweets, and candy from the table.

Within no more than a minute, a tablecloth that had been overflowing was reduced to nothing. Here was another example of community exchange and reciprocity: we gave money to the family and brought bread with us when we came, and they gave us headscarves and leftovers to take home. A sense of community was built, and there was a common goal of supporting one another, as well as blessing the new child.

Providing Access to Food: “They Will Split It into Tiny Pieces”

Other examples of receiving guests illustrate the role that hospitality plays in building community and providing for those in need. While it is common to invite friends and neighbors inside for tea or a meal, people also invite in those they do not know as well. One evening while I was having dinner with Mavluda opa, a middle- aged Uzbek woman who lived in Dushanbe, her tailor stopped by the house to drop off a dress and receive payment for it. The tailor, Asal, was a rough-looking young woman who lived in the neighborhood and had several young children. When

Mavluda opa saw her, she invited Asal and her youngest daughter, who was with her, to join us for dinner. Although Asal protested, Mavluda opa would not take no for an answer. Asal looked embarrassed and sheepishly sat down, eating nothing. Mavluda opa repeatedly told her to “oling” (take) and “yeying” (eat), and finally the woman took a small piece of bread and fed it to her daughter. It was clear that Asal did not want to appear greedy, while Mavluda opa wanted to appear generous. After a moment,

Mavluda opa left to make sure the dress fit properly. The tailor continued to give her daughter nibbles of food but did not take more than a small bite herself. After about five minutes, she asked for permission to get up from the table. Mavluda opa was running around in search of her wallet, so she did not give permission. “Just a moment,” she said and disappeared. The woman continued to sit, but when Mavluda opa had not returned after another few minutes, she said omin (a prayer) and got up.

Mavluda opa had found her wallet and caught up with Asal. She walked outside to pay her and see her off at her courtyard gate.

When I asked Mavluda opa about this, she said simply, “In Central Asia, people are very hospitable. If they have a piece of bread, they will split it into tiny pieces and share it.” This custom builds community and solidifies trust in social and business relationships, but it also provides access to food for those who need it. Although Asal may not have needed the food that Mavluda opa offered, her invitation gave Asal the opportunity to eat if she wanted to. Zilola, a young Uzbek woman with two sons, regularly took advantage of this aspect of the culture of hospitality to gain access to food. Zilola was five-months pregnant when I met her and lived with her parents-in-

law and brother-in-law’s family in a village outside of Dushanbe. The family had little money because her parents-in-law were elderly and did not work, and her brother-in- law had trouble finding a job. The family was very religious and did not believe that women should work outside the home, so although Zilola had a good education, she was not allowed to seek work outside the house. Her husband supported the entire family on the small salary he made as a trader and goods transporter and was often gone for long periods of time for work.

Zilola’s youngest son appeared to be malnourished, and she admitted that she was worried about her own health and the health of her unborn child. She did not get along with her in-laws, in part because she was not as religious as they were. She said that they called her the devil because she could not always pray due to her pregnancy, and her mother-in-law accused her of sneaking extra food while she prepared meals, perhaps because she was concerned about the family’s meager food supply. Zilola told me that she preferred to eat small meals throughout the day during her pregnancy, but her mother-in-law did not approve of this and demanded that she eat only at family mealtimes. In order to get the food she needed, Zilola found several solutions.

Sometimes she picked a piece of fruit off a tree in the family’s garden to snack on, but more often, she visited neighbor women because she knew they would serve her tea and bread when she came over. In this way, traditions of hospitality and shows of abundance bring communities together and solidify relationships, as well as provide opportunities for the poor to gain access to food when they need it.

Social Stratification: “It’s Just Us”

Many of the traditions related to receiving guests and eating emphasize communal harmony and cooperation, but many also reinforce hierarchies. Uzbek and

Tajik societies are highly stratified based on factors such as age and gender, and economic class or financial position also play a role in how people are judged.

Because food is such an important element of communal relations, its use both reflects and reinforces these divisions. For example, seating arrangements at a table are always based on respect, which is usually dictated by age and gender. The most respected person sits in the place farthest away from the doorway and usually has extra pillows to recline upon, whereas those in other positions might not have pillows at all. The most respected person also must be the first to begin eating, and everyone else has to wait until he or she has started eating before they can begin. At the end of a meal, no one is allowed to leave without permission, and permission is granted through a closing prayer performed by the most respected person in the room. Therefore, other people must make a request for the final prayer to be said, and if the most respected person does not wish to perform it, no one is allowed to leave.

At a typical family dinner, some rules might be relaxed, but many still apply.

Usually the father sits in the place of honor, begins to eat first, and decides when the meal is over. When guests are visiting or there is a party, it is usually the eldest person in the room who sits in this position. Men and women traditionally eat separately at such events if there are unrelated visitors, but within families or amongst close relatives, it is common for the genders to eat together. If both genders are at the same

table, the eldest male takes precedence over a female of similar age. Gender hierarchies also impact the way women are expected to behave when they are at the table, since women should be quiet, modest, and deferent around men. While eating with Zilola and her sister one afternoon, they chastised me for not eating more voraciously and told me, “Don’t be shy! It’s just us women!” I heard the same imperative from Mavluda opa and her friends on another occasion. Such comments suggest that food traditions reinforce gender and other hierarchies that exist in society.

The preparation of food is also an area in which women are impacted by age hierarchies. When a young couple marries, they frequently move into the husband’s family’s home, and the new wife usually takes on the responsibility of cooking and cleaning for the entire family. She is at the beck and call of her mother-in-law, who may make life difficult for her by making unreasonable demands, preventing her from studying or working outside the home, or criticizing her. In some cases, women are supportive of their daughters-in-law and do not make demands on them. This was the case for Mavluda opa, who did most of the household cooking and serving herself and asked very little of her kelin. However, others can be very demanding, and food can become an arena in which the hierarchy of age is played out between these women.

Stratification also occurs during the reception of guests or hosting parties because the hosts are judged for what they serve. Since abundance is highly valued, a family will be judged poorly if they cannot provide lavishly for their guests. This can be a hardship for families that are struggling to make ends meet. Sometimes families have to choose between going hungry because they provide lavishly for a guest or

facing ridicule for not doing so. While some people receive guests infrequently, others have them much more often. Dilshod, an Uzbek man in his mid-30s who lived in

Navoi, said that his family receives guests at least three or four times a week but they used to receive them even more often. He explained that before the widespread use of mobile phones, his relatives regularly came from nearby villages to use his telephone, but now they came less frequently because they had their own phones. Sayora opa, a middle-aged Uzbek woman living in Dushanbe, said that when she was younger and lived with her in-laws, she had to make and remake the dasturxon four and five times in a single day when new sets of guests arrived. Although such behavior provides opportunities for families to solidify social relations, it also requires a great wealth and be a strain on the families that endure it.

Ethnicity: “I Can’t Say For Sure”

Since food and food traditions play important roles in community building and social stratification, one might expect food to play a role in ethnic divisions. Many researchers have pointed out that food can be used as an ethnic marker and is often an element of conflict between different ethnic groups (Kalcik, 1984; Leitch, 2003;

Weismantel, 1988). For most Uzbeks, food is an element of pride and a part of their identity, and they believe their cuisine to be unique and special. However, the Uzbeks

I met in Tajikistan did not draw a distinct boundary between Uzbek and Tajik cuisine, and did not appear to use food to make divisions between themselves and Tajiks or

Uzbeks in their communities.

Most of the people I spoke with labeled their cuisine as Uzbek, but when asked how Uzbek cuisine is different from Tajik cuisine, they seemed initially stumped, as if they had not previously given the question much thought. Some people provided examples but pointed out only small differences, the importance of which they minimized. The main difference people noted was that Tajiks eat two dishes not considered part of Uzbek cuisine: qurutob (a dish of fried onions, qurut salty cheese balls dissolved in water, and pieces of patir flatbread) and shakarob (a salad/cold soup of green onions, cilantro, basil, parsley, spicy red peppers, salt, and cream/kefir).

Sayora opa told me that she did not like qurutob and did not eat it, although her children, whose father was Tajik, ate it regularly. However, other people told me that they defied ethnic lines related to food. Fazilat, a divorced Uzbek woman in her late

20s, said that she and her family like qurutob and make it often, even though they are

Uzbek. Meanwhile, Sayora opa said that although her husband is Tajik, he does not like qurutob, so they rarely eat it. There appears to be an acknowledgement of small cuisine variation but recognition that one can choose to eat anything.

Lobar, an Uzbek woman in her 30s who lived in Dushanbe, showed the most pride in Uzbek food and confidence that it was different from Tajik food. She said that most people consider Uzbeks to be better cooks than Tajiks and pointed out that in

Uzbek restaurants in Tashkent usually serve 50 different types of food, while Tajik restaurants in Dushanbe only serve 10 or 15 different types of food. “Ask anyone,” she said. “It’s not a secret. Uzbeks are better cooks.” She also said that Tajik men prefer to marry Uzbek women because they are renowned for their cooking skills. Despite

such strong statements, however, Lobar generally grouped Uzbek women with the urban Tajik she lived side-by-side with in Dushanbe. She said that Pamiris in the

GBAO were not good cooks, but the Tajik women around Dushanbe had learned to cook (presumably from Uzbeks at some distant point in the past) and were usually just as talented as Uzbeks. She clearly felt an affinity for the Tajiks living near her and only considered those who in a distant region to be different.

This theme of regional variation came up in other conversations. Several people told me about variations in palov and non styles between one region and another, both within Tajikistan and within Uzbekistan. The most notable varieties were from Samarkand, where people told me that non is large and thick (unlike the local smaller and flatter version) and that palov is cooked so that the rice remains white, whereas in Dushanbe it is mixed with the fried carrots and onions to take on a brownish tint. However, such variations were not seen as negative. In fact, people praised the non and palov of Samarkand as being delicious and special. Sayora opa also noted differences in Tajik cuisine, pointing out that soups in the northern part of the country are usually made with meat as well as vegetables, but soups in the south are often made only with meat. Here she seemed to look less positively upon the regional variation but did not voice any judgments about the people based on this assessment.

Palov is widely considered to be the main national dish of Uzbekistan, and one cookbook describes it as the dish that “most clearly show[s] off the character” of

Uzbek cuisine (Makhmudov, 1979, p. 3). However, it is also a popular Tajik food (and part of most of the Central Asian cuisines), and no one I spoke with tried to claim that

it was uniquely Uzbek. Rustam aka, a middle-aged Tajik man who knew Uzbek well, said that people in Dushanbe learned to make palov from people in the Qarshi region of

Uzbekistan. However, he made an effort to distinguish between borders and ethnicity and refused to label the food as Uzbek or Tajik. “I can’t say if palov is Uzbek or

Tajik,” he said. “I can’t say for sure. But it came from Qarshi. If I say that now, people think it’s Uzbek, but it’s not. There are many Tajiks there. It’s certain that it came from there, but I can’t say from whom.” Here, he noted the interconnectedness of Uzbeks and Tajiks and the similarities between their foods, even as he pointed out differences.

A few people noted that Uzbeks make certain dishes that Tajiks are less likely to make, but these were few and far between. For example, Sayora opa noted that

Uzbeks make somsa (pastries usually filled with meat) more than Tajiks do. Others also said that certain dishes are made differently between Uzbeks or Tajiks, but this usually only meant the addition or substitution of one ingredient. Such findings suggest that there are not significant cuisine variations or ethnic definitions of cuisine between Uzbeks and Tajiks that live in the same region. There does not appear to be a significant difference in the ingredients people use or the types of foods people eat, and relations between Uzbeks and Tajiks seem to be congenial. Although one person I met in Tajikistan said that Uzbeks were not allowed to advance in government positions, no one else expressed similar feelings of discrimination, and no one expressed any sense of animosity toward Tajiks. In fact, as will be discussed later, cooperation related to food between Uzbeks and Tajiks within neighborhoods and communities appeared

common. Acknowledgement of regional variations and differences between Central

Asian food and Russian food were much more prevalent. Very different food elements, such as the inclusion of pork and alcohol in Russian cuisine, might play a role in food security, but there appears to be little recognition of difference between

Uzbek and Tajik cuisine.

Gender: “Economizing”

Both men and women are involved in feeding their families, but in different ways. Men are traditionally in charge of making money to support their families, while women maintain the home, cook, and look after children. The traditional role of males as breadwinners can put stress on men who cannot find decent-paying jobs. Many men have taken less prestigious but better paying jobs, and many have migrated abroad.

Bekzod, a young man I met while visiting his family in a village outside of Dushanbe, had been educated as a teacher but had never worked as an educator because he knew it would not pay enough. Instead, he saved his money and pooled loans from family members to buy a car that he now drives as a taxi. He said that it may not be what he studied, but he can make more money doing this. Meanwhile, Zilola’s husband spent much of his time away from the family because he had changed from a white-collar job to a job transporting goods long distances across the country. Although he made more money, he left Zilola and his family for long periods of time and suffered physically because of the long hours he worked.

Despite their traditional role as homemakers, many Uzbek and Tajik women also work outside the home, and I observed that several women had changed jobs or

sought alternatives to their home-based roles to support their families. The young divorced women I met – Lobar and Fazilat – both lived in apartments and worked several different jobs to make ends meet, often leaving their children home alone to deal with housework. Others moved from white-collar jobs to more physically demanding and less intellectual ones. Two middle-aged women I met at the beshik to’y were college educated and had worked in respected professions for years but had recently left their jobs to become watermelon salespeople because it paid more.

Other women did not have such opportunities. Zilola was highly educated and had worked in a good position before moving into her in-laws’s house in a village outside of Dushanbe, but her in-laws were very conservative and did not approve of her working outside the home, even though the family needed money. Zilola had not found a solution to her dilemma when I met her, but some women do manage to balance traditional roles with work by earning money through home-based trades.

Nargiza opa, a middle-aged woman who lived in Dushanbe, worked as a teacher but supplemented her income by baking non, patir (a flaky flatbread), and somsa at home and taking them to a shop near her house where the merchant had agreed to sell them for her. This was an ideal arrangement for her because she was ailing and did not have the energy to work in a physically demanding career. It also allowed her to maintain face within her community by continuing to work in a low-paid but gender-appropriate job and making money by working within her own home, the traditional domain of a woman.

Although in many cases both men and women work outside the home, duties related to food preparation at home remain the domain of women. Men’s primary role is to shop for food, which Russell Zanca (2007) says gives a man a “key role in ensuring that his family members and guests eat well” (pp. 187-188). Men usually make a trip to a large bazaar once a week and purchase fresh foods in bulk to bring home to their families. Because this requires the strength to carry large amounts of food (and for those who have cars, the ability to drive the food home in a car), this is typically a male rather than a female duty. Shopping also requires a discerning eye, strong will, and knowledge of appropriate prices.

Women are not traditionally involved in shopping duties, but many go with their husbands on shopping trips and commonly visit smaller bazaars and shops closer to home. Nonetheless, their main role is doing the family’s cooking, and the physical demands of working in hot kitchens without electricity, gas, or water can negatively impact the women who regularly cook – often young and pregnant women. Zilola, who was five months pregnant when I spoke with her, had to haul heavy pails of water from a neighbor’s house because her home did not usually receive water. Her home also did not have electricity and gas, so she had to use alternative methods of fuel for cooking. Because the family could not afford to buy firewood to burn in their o’choq,

Zilola had to burn empty plastic bottles, which meant that she inhaled toxic plastic fumes while she prepared meals, even while pregnant.

Women may also suffer socially when they are not able to fulfill their duty of providing abundant food for their families. Zilola received the brunt of her mother-in-

law’s criticism, in part because of the woman’s frustration with her family’s poverty, and other women suffer larger social ostracism because of the poor conditions in which they work. Lobar, who lived in the city, said that village girls are seen as less desirable marriage partners than city girls because they live in such difficult circumstances. She said that village women are seen as dirty and smelly because they do not have running water and often have to use livestock manure as an alternative fuel.

The burden of making due until more food can be bought often also falls onto the women who prepare food for their families, and as a result, women have become known as “economizers.” On three separate occasions, people told me that men are better cooks than women, even though women cook on a daily basis. When I asked why, they said that women “economize,” while men throw everything into the foods they make. As a result, their foods are richer, while women’s foods may not have as much oil, fat, or meat. This concept of women’s economizing nature points to the fact that women have to prepare everyday meals with the notion of shortage in mind.

While men face money shortages by suffering social and psychological problems due to their inability to fulfill the role of breadwinner and may face difficulties purchasing the products their families need, women face the shortages at home and may suffer from ostracism because they live in difficult conditions.

Summary

In this chapter, I have discussed the social role of food in communities and within families in Tajikistan. I have shown that food plays an important role in community building but that it is also an element in the social stratification of

communities based on age, gender, and class. In addition, I have discussed the role of ethnicity in the food security of Uzbeks in Tajikistan, and I have pointed out the different challenges men and women face as they deal with food and money shortages.

In the next chapter, I build on these findings by discussing strategies people use to deal with food shortages and their attitudes toward food and health.

Chapter 6: Making Due: Strategies and Attitudes

In the previous chapter, I discussed the social importance of food in Tajikistan.

In this chapter, I point to tangible strategies people and communities are using to deal with food insecurity. This chapter shows that although people face challenges, they also seek their own solutions, and many solutions are built into culture expectations. I begin this chapter with a discussion of sharing within communities, and then I discuss individual/household strategies such as personal gardening and livestock tending, movements to obtain food, and food conservation. I finish with a discussion of attitudes related to food and health, home versus public food, and local versus foreign ideas.

Sharing: Good for Us and for Them

In the communities I observed, there was much sharing and cooperation related to food and related resources such as water and electricity. This cooperation seems to play a role in ensuring the food security of people within these communities and often reaches across ethnic labels such as Uzbek and Tajik.

Zilola regularly got water from a neighbor’s house because her home did not receive it, and Mavluda opa, whose house did receive water, intentionally left her hose running outside the front gate at certain times so that neighbors could fill up their pails.

Electricity is more difficult to share than water, but some people found ways to do so.

When the power went out one evening and Mavluda opa was home alone because her family members had gone out for the night, neighbors invited her over because they

had a generator and knew she would be lonely and afraid in the dark by herself.

Meanwhile, Aziz aka, an elderly Uzbek man who lived in a village outside of Navoi, had a water-powered generator and shared electricity with his neighbors during the wintertime.

Food loans between neighbors were also common. Fazilat told me that one way families get help when they need to serve an unexpected guest is to ask a neighbor for a short-term loan. She said:

When a guest comes, if you don’t have much money, you just put out whatever you have. Instead of palov [the traditional dish served to a guest], a person might make soup, since you don’t need as much meat to make it. Or we fry potatoes and can give that to people. If there is little money and we need to serve palov, we’ll go to the neighbors’ and ask for a loan of carrots or meat. We have this tradition. Or you can ask your friends or relatives.

This tradition is prevalent in some communities, but according to Fazilat, it is becoming less common in others. She said that people don’t ask neighbors for loans as much as they once did, and now many people get loans from shops rather than neighbors or simply sell things to make the money they need. This suggests that there are fewer safety nets available to the poor than there once were in some communities.

However, other forms of sharing remain prevalent. Perhaps the strongest custom of sharing is associated with the cultural traditions related to bread. Non

(flatbread) is extremely important in Uzbek communities and seen as sacred: “Many believe that bread is God’s first and most important gift to humans. Thus the food acquired a religious significance beyond the practical and frugal considerations of sustenance on the Asian plateau” (Mack & Surina, 2005, p. 130). Non symbolizes

community bonds and cooperation. If a family member goes away for a long period of time, such as to war, he takes a bite from a piece of non, and the family keeps the remaining round until he returns home safely. Non is also placed under a newborn baby’s head to wish her a healthy life and put between the legs of a baby who has just taken his first steps. Moreover, a prospective groom’s parents bring non when they ask a girl’s parents if she can marry their son, and if they agree, the two families eat the non together (“Bread and Salt,” 2000; “Customs and Traditions,” n.d.).

Other traditions relate to the way that non should be used. For example, it is never to be turned upside down or thrown away. If non becomes hard or stale, people find a way to use it in another dish rather than dispose of it. Mavluda opa used her leftover non to make shir choy (“literally “milk tea”), a mixture of hot milk, salt, pepper, butter or oil, and walnut shavings with pieces of bread torn and placed into the milk to soak it up. Other women I observed, including Nargiza opa and Sayora opa, used leftover bread to dip or soak in soups, since it becomes softer and more appealing after soaking in the warm liquid. However, if non becomes too stale or moldy even for this use, it is still not appropriate to throw it away. At that time, if a family has livestock, they give use the leftover bread as livestock feed. If they do not have livestock, they save leftover non until they can give it to someone who does. Mavluda opa kept her stale non on a metal dish above her outdoor freezer and because she did not have livestock and gave it to a woman from a nearby village who came to the city periodically to collect non. “This system is good for us, and it’s good for them,”

Mavluda opa told me. The system allowed her to dispose of her stale bread in a

culturally appropriate way, while it allowed the woman access to a free supply of food for her livestock.

This type of “recycling” is essential, since throwing away non is forbidden.

However, some people also recycle melon rinds and other waste materials because it makes for easy disposal and because they want to help others. Mavluda opa put watermelon rinds outside her front gate when her family ate melon, and someone would stop by to get them for their animals. Fazilat, who lived in an apartment, said that she does not have the same opportunities to dispose of melon rinds because no one near her has livestock or comes from villages to get food. However, she always recycles non: “I won’t throw away leftover non. We cannot throw away non. We put it into other foods or give it to someone else. Other things we throw away. I don’t know anyone with animals, so I throw away things like melon rinds.” However, rather than giving her non to someone who comes to her door like Mavluda opa, Fazilat took leftover non to the village when she went to visit relatives.

This type of sharing does not only go one way. Although I did not observe examples of it during my research, people told me that livestock owners sometimes offer products from their livestock to their communities. In some cases, a family might give fresh milk to friends who bring them leftover non, but more commonly, families offer extra manure to neighbors in the springtime for use as fertilizer on their gardens.

People do not appear to think of this as a direct reciprocal exchange, but it is clearly part of a community-wide cycle that benefits both parties and builds community trust.

Personal Gardens and Livestock: “Rice is Money, Too”

In addition to neighborhood cooperation, people utilize strategies within their households and between relatives to ensure that they and others have enough food.

One of the most common ways people do this is to have personal gardens and keep livestock in the courtyards of their homes. All of the families I observed who lived in houses had personal gardens, and all of them – regardless of income level or social status – used these gardens as a source of food and sometimes money. Although very few in the city kept livestock, most of the families I observed in villages had cows, sheep, and/or chickens.

Zilola’s family had a relatively small garden, but she made use of it to get the food she needed when she was hungry, picking fruits or cucumbers to snack on between meals. Sayora opa, who lived in a large house in Dushanbe and had a well- paying job, kept a personal garden, and her family used the fresh fruits and vegetables in their meals. Mavluda opa and Nargiza opa lived in smaller houses in Dushanbe but had gardens where they grew grapes, apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, and other foods.

Two of the families I observed living in villages had much more substantial gardens and livestock, including cows, sheep, and/or chickens. These families saw the gardens and livestock as investments, not just provisions. They used the foods they grew not only to eat, but also to sell, and although they used the products of their livestock for their own families, these animals were seen as a way to safely store money. Dilshod, who lived in the city but had relatives in villages, told me, “Of course, everyone in the village has a cow – maybe two or five – and maybe a horse, a donkey, chickens…

People in the city save their money in banks. People in the villages put their money into cows.”

Yulduz opa, an elderly Uzbek woman who lived with her children and grandchildren in a village outside of Dushanbe, told me that her family grew fruits and vegetables primarily to eat but sold extras if there were any. She said that her family wanted to be self-sufficient because they could not rely on public systems for food or basic commodities. She added that the previous winter, they had “not even one house of electricity” from the government. The family grew its own pumpkins, cucumbers, basil, radishes, tomatoes, and henna (for dying eyebrows and hair), and it had chickens and two cows. From the cows, they took milk for drinking and making other dairy products, and they used the cow dung to make patties, called tappi-tezak, which they burned during the wintertime for fuel.

Aziz aka, an elderly Uzbek man living in a village near Navoi, had an even larger garden than Yulduz opa. He lived with his children and grandchildren on a large plot of land with a small stream running through it and had developed an intricate gardening system in the courtyard of his home. Although he was in poor health, he showed great enthusiasm for his garden. He told me that it had been even more impressive the year before the harsh winter had destroyed many of his melons and grapes, but I had a hard time imagining it could have been any grander. The garden was lined with fruit trees on the edges, and trellises stood overhead, covered with vines that had pumpkins and squashes hanging off of them, beginning to ripen. Below, the garden was covered in other varieties of plants, including tomatoes, hot peppers, bell

peppers, and eggplant. The family also grew black-eyed peas, apples, currants, and peaches and had 12 boxes for beekeeping at one edge of the garden. Elsewhere, they owned a plot of land where they grew rice and wheat, and at the back of their home property, they had a large building where they kept a processing mill for wheat and rice and an oil processor. Behind this was a wheel in a small stream that could be used to produce electrical power. Aziz aka’s daughter told me that neighbors and friends regularly came to process their wheat and rice, but the family did not take money for this. Instead, they asked for a portion of the flour or rice. “People would talk [i.e. gossip] if we asked for money,” she said, “but rice is money, too.”

The family also used the watermill to provide electricity to neighbors when necessary, and although they kept most of the food in their garden for themselves, they occasionally sold extra tomatoes, grapes, currants, and apples. Dildora, the kelin of the family, told me that they rarely bought anything at the bazaar because they produced it all themselves. They kept two sheep and many chickens, but they sometimes had to buy oil and meat from the bazaar because they could not produce enough themselves.

They had until recently kept cows but sold them to get money for a car a relative had wanted to buy so that he could use it as a taxi driver. Like many rural families, they used cow dung to make tappi-tezak. Because they rarely had electricity during the wintertime, they used these for cooking and heating fuel. The family was nearly self- sufficient in numerous ways and was able to gain status within their community by offering services like access to their wheat and rice mills.

Movements to Obtain Food: Sharing with Relatives

People who live in apartments do not have the same opportunities as those who live in houses to own livestock and tend to personal gardens. However, many of them regularly visit relatives who live in villages and have large gardens. Dilshod and his family lived in an apartment in Navoi but went to see relatives in a nearby village every

Saturday or Sunday. When they returned home, they usually took with them ripe tomatoes, potatoes, and/or onions, which meant that they did not have to buy these things at the bazaar. Fazilat, who lived in an apartment in Dushanbe, also regularly visited relatives in a village and took food from their garden. She said that she preferred food from personal gardens because it was fresher and, in her opinion, healthier. Tomatoes sold at the bazaar, she said, had been treated with pesticides, while tomatoes grown by her family were fresh and pesticide-free. She felt that the tomatoes at the bazaar had no smell or flavor, but those grown at home were rich and delicious.

The image in Figure 2 illustrates some of the movements study participants make to obtain food. While this is not an exhaustive illustration, it shows that many people I interviewed travel to obtain food in one capacity or another. The city dwellers

– particularly those living in apartments – regularly go to villages to obtain fresh food from their relatives, and many village dwellers travel to the city to buy or sell goods.

There is also much exchange of food and resources like water or milling services within neighborhoods. In addition, people come from villages to get leftover non for

76 76

Figure 2: Movement to Obtain Food or Related Goods

R F S Y

D Z A N M L Navoi

Dushanbe City

A = Aziz aka N = Nargiza opa Key D = Dilshod R = Rustam aka F = Fazilat S = Sayora opa Family living in a house City Limit L = Lobar Y = Yulduz opa M = Mavluda opa Z = Zilola Family living in an apartment Neighborhood

Arrows indicate direction traveled

77 their livestock and sell goods door-to-door. Instead of sitting with their goods in a bazaar stall, these vendors cultivate relationships with households and go door-to-door to sell their products. In Figure 2, the arrows not connected to households are meant to represent traveling vendors and people who came to get non from city households. The direction of the arrows indicates the direction in which people move to obtain food.

Conservation: “It’s So Much Cheaper to Make It Yourself!”

People also attempt to conserve and not waste what they have, and many people plan ahead for tougher times. One way in which this is done is winter preparations.

People know that wintertime will bring higher prices and more difficult access to fresh products, so people often buy produce in bulk and store food in a cool place, such as a cellar or an unheated room, for the wintertime. In many apartment buildings, what were once outdoor balconies have been covered and are now used as storage rooms for fruits and vegetables. Many people also make jams and pickled salads in the summer and fall that they eat during the wintertime. Meat can also be preserved in its oils and used in soup or palov during the wintertime. Sayora opa, who had a steady job and a decent salary, nonetheless preferred to can her own tomatoes, pickles, cabbage, and jams. According to her, the store-bought versions were too expensive and lacked the flavor of homemade versions. She also pointed out that preparing one’s own canned goods is tradition. She said, “People don’t buy these things. Mostly, they make them.

My jam and pickles are 100 times better than the stuff you can buy in stores. Jam is so expensive to buy in a jar [i.e. from a store]. It’s so much cheaper to make it yourself!”

Other forms of food conservation are also built into cultural traditions.

Although abundance is valued, there is an effort not to waste food. Scraps from the cooking process are often given to a family’s dog or livestock, or to a neighbor who keeps a dog or livestock, and after a meal for guests, whatever is leftover is often given away to the visitors, as was illustrated in the story of the beshik to’y, or saved for the future. Hosts encourage guests to clean their plates and eat as much as they can. They repeatedly tell guests to eat, take, and drink, and if one does not appear to be finishing something, they may say, “Qolmasin,” which literally means, “May it not remain.”

While eating with Mavluda opa once, I had not finished a fresh salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, and she told me, “Qolmasin. We can save the food [i.e. main dish], but this salad won’t be good tomorrow.” It was important to eat the salad because it would spoil. However, the main dish could be put into the refrigerator and reheated later. In this way, people attempt to preserve what they have and make use of it before it goes bad.

Health Attitudes: “All Mixed Together”

Uzbeks have many ideas about what constitutes healthy or good food.

Although some notions are individual and some people have specialized knowledge such as medical training, many people share common ideas about what foods are healthy or unhealthy. One of the most prevalent ideas about health is the notion that cold things are bad: for example, fans and air conditioners are unhealthy if they blow cold air directly onto a person. At several parties I attended, it was too hot not to use an electric fan or air conditioner to cool the room, but people did not want wind to

79 blow on them, so they would try to avoid being in its path. Additionally, very few people drink cold water in Tajikistan, and even during the hot summer months, hot tea is popular. In many ways, this seems to be a survival technique for dealing with poor- quality water that must be boiled in order to be drunk. Children in particular are seen as vulnerable to the cold. At one party, people showed extreme concern for a young child who was sitting near the air conditioner and asked the hosts to turn it off because they were sure he would catch a cold. Eating with Mavluda opa, her granddaughter once reached for a cold glass jar of tea she had prepared for me (knowing that I was not afraid of getting sick from drinking it), and Mavluda opa demanded that the girl mix it with warm tea so that she didn’t get a sore throat.

Although some Uzbek cookbooks and Web sites suggest that dinner is supposed to be the largest meal of the day (“Uzbekskaia Kukhnia,” n.d.), several people I interviewed spoke of the advantages of eating smaller dinners. Rustam aka and Sayora opa separately said that it is better to eat a big lunch and a small dinner than the other way around. Sayora opa noted that Uzbeks and Tajiks eat a lot of food with oil and meat in it and that it is best to eat this during the daytime, rather than at night.

“Palov is a very heavy food, so it should be eaten during the daytime, not at night. It’s harmful to eat it at night,” she said. Uzbeks also typically divide foods into categories such as suyuq (liquid) foods and quyuq (solid) foods. As the names suggest, suyuq foods are more fluid and generally considered lighter than quyuq foods. Rustam aka and Sayora opa both said that it is healthy to eat suyuq foods at night. Rustam aka

80 noted that suyuq foods, like soups and stews, are good for you and will help if you have a stomachache.

People also categorize food into the categories of “hot” and “cold,” although which foods belong in which category might not be immediately be apparent to an outsider.7 Soups are included in the category of hot foods, but according to one person

I asked, so is horse and lamb meat, while chicken is considered cold. Sayora opa told me that both “hot” and “cold” foods can be good for the health, but there should be a balance between them. However, she noted that her family does not always follow common ideas about health: “People say it’s not good to put too many tomatoes or hot peppers into food, but we put it all in. We like it that way.” Rustam aka also noted that steamed and boiled vegetables are healthier than fried ones, and Fazilat said that meat is not as healthy as fresh fruits and vegetables. She said, “Here people usually like strong foods a lot – foods with a lot of oil and meat. It’s a custom. But meat is not very beneficial. Fruit and vegetables are good for you.”

As Fazilat noted, fruits and vegetables are thought to be particularly beneficial for health. Sayora opa said that somsa filled with mint or spinach are good for one’s heart, and foods made with pumpkin or beets are also healthy. Lobar noted that apricots and apricot seeds are good for the heart, and when speaking together, Lobar and Zilola agreed that raisins are good for one’s health and pistachios are good for the brain. While shopping with Lobar one hot afternoon, she veered over to a man selling fresh mulberry juice, drank two glasses, and offered one to me. She told me under her

7 These notions of “hot” and “cold” may be built upon ancient Greek philosophies of about the classic elements Earth, Water, Air, Fir, and Ether.

81 breath that she was having her period and that mulberry juice was good for the blood and could help prevent anemia. Mavluda opa, who suffered from high blood pressure, separately concurred when she told me that mulberry juice helps clean the blood and make it stronger.

The benefits of fruits and vegetables appear to be tied to their freshness and pureness. Fruits and vegetables treated with pesticides or otherwise artificially made were not as positively viewed as “natural” ones. As noted earlier, Fazilat preferred tomatoes from her family’s garden, where pesticides were not used, rather than those sold in the market, where she said that pesticides were used. She also told me that fresh, natural fruit is good for you, but chemically treated fruit is not as healthy. Lobar also showed a strong preference for natural vegetables and fruits. When I asked her to help me find snacks to take on an upcoming trip, she took me to a section of dried fruit and nuts at a local bazaar and offered to help me find highest quality snacks. As I perused the piles of raisins and dried apricots, she steered me away from perfectly colored, spotless varieties that were soft and easy to chew and towards dirtier-looking, chewier, duller-looking varieties. When I asked her why she preferred this type of raisin or apricot, she said that these were natural and the others were chemically treated. “Fruits without chemicals are better,” she said with a flick of her hand, surprised I had asked.

There are also rules about what types of food should be eaten in sequence. For example, many agreed that it is inappropriate to eat melon early in a meal and that it

82 should be reserved for the end. Zilola gossiped about how she could not believe her

Tajik in-laws could eat everything “all mixed up,” meaning that they ate sweets, fruits, bread, and melons at the same time and in any order they wished. “Uzbeks eat things in an order,” she said. “If we didn’t, our stomachs would hurt!” However, this did not appear to be a true ethnic difference because Rustam aka, a Tajik, separately told me that he and other Tajiks adhere to many rules about the order of eating. He said that one should not drink water after eating watermelon or cucumber, nor should one drink tea or eat cake after having soup. In addition, it is better to drink green tea or water rather than black tea with palov.

Attitudes: Home vs. Public & Local vs. Foreign

In addition to a preference for natural foods, there is a widespread notion that food made at home is better than food made in restaurants. This notion was particularly strong among the women I interviewed. While men seemed to think that home-cooked food was better, they were not hesitant to eat in restaurants, but many women were. Dilshod and his friends regularly ate lunch at an oshxona (a small café serving traditional Uzbek/Tajik food) near their workplace, and at most of the restaurants I saw, men were the main customers. Women – even those who worked outside the home – were much more likely to bring their own lunch to work or go home to eat. Perhaps this is an element of the “economizing” trait mentioned earlier, but it also seems to be the result of women having responsibility for food preparation at home and feeling uncomfortable eating food made by someone they do not know.

Since men almost never see what goes into their food or how it is prepared, they may feel less resistance to eating food made by someone they do not know.

On the other hand, many women were certain that eating at restaurants was dangerous and pointless. Mavluda opa told me that she very rarely eats in restaurants because it’s expensive and she does not trust the food. She said you cannot know how the food has been prepared or whether the ingredients are good quality, and she associated eating in restaurants and cafes with getting food poisoning, which she warned me I would get if I continued to eat out. Similarly, Sayora opa did not like eating in restaurants and went home to eat lunch every day when she was at work. “I don’t usually go to restaurants,” she said. “Only for birthdays or celebrations.

Otherwise, we eat at home because first of all, it’s expensive [to eat out]. Second of all, in the summertime, you can get sick from food at restaurants. At home, you can make whatever you want and how you want to make it.”

The younger generation of females seems more willing to eat out, but only to a certain extent. It remains improper for women to eat at most oshxona and choyxona

(tea houses), which are both the traditional domain of men. While in Dushanbe, I never saw a local woman eat at an oshxona, but I did see young local women eating in foreign restaurants. Unlike the higher priced Italian, Chinese, and Indian restaurants, which attracted mostly expats, Turkish and Russian restaurants were popular with local clientele and had reasonable prices. They were also one of the few places where both local men and local women could be found. While eating with friends at such a

84 restaurant one day, I ran into Lobar, who had come to grab a fast bite before going back to work. The fact that she felt comfortable going to a restaurant to get a meal alone – relatively unheard of in a place where eating is communal – speaks volumes about the difference she saw between this foreign restaurant and an oshxona.

In addition to restaurants, there also appears to be a difference in how people approach other things that are labeled local or foreign. Mavluda opa, who told me that she “loved the kitchen,” explained that her daughter Feruza had never cared for it.

Mavluda opa made sure to tell me that Feruza had always been good at other housework but for some reason had never enjoyed cooking or cleaning in the kitchen.

“I used to say to her, ‘What are you going to do when you get married?” Mavluda opa said, adding that she had been concerned about whether Feruza would find a husband if she was unable to cook. However, Feruza had never been worried. Mavluda opa said

Feruza simply told her she would marry a foreigner, not an Uzbek or Tajik man who would expect her to cook. When I visited, Feruza was a grown woman and had, indeed, married a foreigner and did not spend much time in the kitchen. Mavluda opa lamented how her daughter left dirty dishes in the kitchen and had husband eat at a café if she did not feel like cooking.

Although it is possible that Mavluda opa’s memory of her daughter’s childhood attitude was influenced by her later marriage to a foreigner, it is nonetheless relevant that Mavluda opa sought to locate what she saw as her daughter’s abnormal behavior in a sphere that made it more appropriate: the foreign one. She seemed proud to tell me – a foreigner – about her daughter’s “foreign” ways, but her comments were more than

85 an attempt to impress me with her daughter’s worldliness. They were an illustration of the importance of cooking as an aspect of Uzbek and Tajik female identity, and they were a notation about the role the foreign sphere plays in enabling women (and perhaps also men in certain contexts) to be excused from local cultural norms.

Certain foreign foods also seem allow a reprieve from traditional social norms.

Although the people I spoke with preferred most traditional foods over foreign ones, they widely acknowledged that popular salads and sweets were not Uzbek or Tajik but came from Russia, Korea, and elsewhere. Like foreign restaurants and foreign husbands, sweets and salads seem to be areas where women can step outside of local norms because they are considered “foreign.” This can be seen in the different ways that women learn to make sweets and salads. Fazilat said that she learned to make national dishes like palov and manti by watching their relatives at home. Similarly,

Sayora opa taught herself to make the main national dishes by watching relatives and asking questions. However, Fazilat and Sayora opa both learned to make sweets and salads outside their homes. Sayora opa had enjoyed collecting recipes for sweets from journals and television shows when she was little, and she had also gone to visit an ethnic Tatar relative to learn to make different types of sweets. In addition, she had learned new recipes for sweets and salads when she went to the university and found herself surrounded by students of different ethnicities and from different regions of the country. Later, when she worked as a teacher, she gathered recipes from a diverse faculty that prepared unique sweets and salads for holiday celebrations. Fazilat also

86 collected recipes from magazines and TV shows when she was little, and several years earlier, she took a two-month cooking course in which she learned to make sweets and salads. Cooking courses or recipe books for traditional Uzbek or Tajik foods were relatively unheard of.

Part of what drew women to sweets seemed to be the fact that they were not considered part of the male domain. Dilshod said that his wife and children ate candies with their breakfast of bread, tea, and jam, but he did not. Meanwhile, Sayora opa said that she knew how to pick out and bargain for sweets better than her husband did, although she generally considered him more skilled at shopping for other things. It seems that sweets and salads are one of the few areas in which foreign recipes have entered the local diet, and as a result, they remain distinct from other foods. They also offer opportunities to act in different ways and challenge traditional norms.

Summary

In this chapter, I have discussed my findings about strategies people use to deal with food insecurity and some of the attitudes they have about health and food. I have shown that within neighborhoods and communities, people share to help one another.

People also use individual/household strategies such as keeping personal gardens and livestock, traveling from one location to another to obtain food, and conserving. They have strong ideas about what is healthy and unhealthy and have a preference for home and local foods over public and foreign foods. However, people also show openness to foreign foods and ideas that do not threaten the local ones. In the following chapter, I show how these findings can be used to improve food security in Tajikistan, and I give

87 recommendations to international organizations administering aid and development programs in the country.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed everyday food practices and attitudes among Uzbeks in Tajikistan. I have advocated for balancing existing quantitative and macro-focused food security literature with more qualitative studies that consider micro factors that impact food security. International organizations must recognize that food is more than a source of nourishment but also an important element in cultural traditions and social relations. As organizations seek to improve food security, they must also take into consideration local strategies and processes. As I have argued, a genuine focus on understanding local processes can lead to the development of successful, sustainable projects that have broad community support. Meanwhile, not understanding local processes can lead to the crowding out of important existing coping strategies. A singularly macro and quantitative focus limits organizations’ ability to understand and involve local people in the programs designed to benefit them. This study has found that local people are not passive suffers but active participants seeking to improve their lives. Food aid organizations need to be aware of how they can work together with communities to achieve sustainable food security. In this final section, I build upon the findings in Chapters 5 and 6 by giving recommendations for food security programs in

Tajikistan.

Recommendations

First, this research makes it clear that continued efforts need to be made to address food insecurity in Tajikistan. Even relatively educated, middle class, and urban segments of the population suffer from food security challenges, and a significant reason for the food insecurity appears to be a lack of money due to low- paying work or unemployment. Training and food-for-work programs could address this goal, and other programs could provide opportunities for women in conservative families to earn money while adhering to traditional gender roles. These programs might offer training in home-based craft-making, gardening, or baking, as well as assistance with distribution, marketing, and where applicable, micro-credit.

There is also a need for improvements to basic infrastructure, such as transportation, electricity, gas, and water. Regular access to electricity, gas, and water appear to be rare for many people in Tajikistan, and this negatively affects their health, nutrition, and livelihoods. Improvements in access to these resources would enable women to spend less time hauling water or seeking alternative fuel sources, and more time seeking to improve the livelihoods of their families. In addition, better access would improve sanitary conditions and the health of entire families. Organizations should work together with local government and businesses to find ways to improve infrastructure in the country.

Food security also needs to be addressed at numerous levels, not only at the individual or household levels, but also at the community, family (including extended relatives), neighborhood, city, village, regional, national, and international levels. The findings of this study make it clear that there is cooperation between neighbors, friends,

89 and relatives. Organizations should seek to not interrupt existing strategies of sharing and community cooperation that make survival possible for many in these communities. A focus on larger groups rather than individuals might reduce the crowding out effects that individual-focused programs risk imposing.

Because culture plays a role in how people think about and use food on a daily basis, organizations need to keep in mind the social role of food. People may be expected to provide lavishly to guests, and not doing so may harm their chances for upward movement in society. As such, people may be likely to adhere to established traditions related to food and hospitality, and may shy away from alternative methods if they are unsure that these methods will have community-wide support. Moreover, it is important to recognize the stratified nature of Uzbek and Tajik society and the value placed on elders and men. This must be taken into consideration when instituting programs because projects focused solely on one segment of the community may not win the support of the whole community. Programs should focus on multiple levels within families and communities, including the young and the old, the male and the female. Programs targeted at the elderly might seek to bolster their leadership roles while encouraging the use of new techniques or ideas, and programs aimed at the younger generations might focus on training and education, since these folks are likely to be the most intimately involved in implementing changes in labor or cooking processes. Programs aimed at men might focus on money-making, shopping, and trade activities, while those aimed at women might target food preparation techniques,

90 sanitation, and home-based money-making activities. Programs might also focus on improving employment opportunities for men within their home territories so that they do not need to travel away from their families to earn a living.

Ethnicity was not a significant factor in the food security of the members of the

Uzbek community I observed in Tajikistan. Many people appear to be integrated into mixed Uzbek-Tajik communities and have similar attitudes toward food as their Tajik neighbors. There also appears to be very little difference between the ingredients used and foods eaten in Uzbek and Tajik cuisine. As a result, it does not appear likely that food shortages will negatively affect ethnic relations between Uzbeks and Tajiks living in intermixed communities. However, further studies are needed to determine the real threat of risk and should consider the situation is in more homogenous communities, such as the Uzbek communities of the north and Tajik communities of the south.

Moreover, it will be important to learn more about how food security may affect relations between Tajiks/Uzbeks and other ethnicities, such as Russians, who consume noticeably different foods. Regional variations should also be researched with a particular focus on the GBAO.

The findings of this study show that community-wide sharing of food and other resources is important for many people. Organizations should seek to maintain this cooperation and should be aware of the interconnectedness within communities and between communities, such as between cities and villages. Knowledge of this may enable better prediction of food shortages and a better understanding of how these will affect the population. For example, if organizations are aware that city dwellers travel

91 to rural areas to obtain fresh produce from relatives’ gardens, they will be able to predict that a disaster in a rural area will affect the urban population, even though they might not be directly impacted by the disaster. Organizations should also recognize that people who do not have strong connections with their neighbors, such as those who are for some reason on the margins of society, and people who do not have connections to relatives in rural areas (most likely ethnic Russians and other urban immigrants) may be more likely to suffer from food insecurity because they do not have access to these safety nets.

Phil Brown (n.d.) notes that “not all societies organized around means of production, but they were also formed around the means of disposal” (p. 12). The recycling of non, melon rinds, and other products within communities and between cities and villages makes it clear that some aspects of Uzbek and Tajik society are organized around means of disposal. Programs should build on these existing strategies of conservation and recycling. A programmatic focus might be the improvement these systems within apartment complexes, where there appear to be fewer opportunities to recycle. Organizations should also carefully assess the anticipated effects of new conservation programs, such as the use of compost piles, to ensure that these do not interrupt existing processes.

The importance of personal gardening and livestock tending for both urban and rural communities cannot be underestimated. Organizations might seek to build on these existing processes by encouraging the expansion of personal gardening and

92 livestock tending and seeking to improve distribution and marketing systems. Aid should also focus on those who do not have access to gardens or livestock, such as those living in apartment buildings. Programs to develop shared urban gardens for these communities might help improve their food security. People also appear to have positive feelings toward home-cooked food and pesticide-free, natural produce.

Organizations should build on these feelings and recognize that local people may not be supportive of genetically modified variations or the use of pesticides. Instead, organizations might seek opportunities in the production and marketing of organic goods locally and abroad.

Many people appear to have lost faith in public systems and rely on individual and community resources rather than public ones. Therefore, organizations may need to bolster trust in their initiatives in order to be successful. In addition to working with local government to improve good governance processes and find projects to cooperate on, organizations should involve local people at every step of their programs and build programs based on local demand. Organizations might also bolster trust in existing institutions such as restaurants through food safety and sanitation training. At home, education could focus on similar topics but also add to people’s knowledge of how to

“economize.” Since this is already an important female duty, such programs could focus on women, but they would do well to also incorporate men, perhaps in the area of budgeting. However, such programs should recognize that people already have knowledge of their own, and their ideas and existing practices should not be criticized or looked down upon.

Local people know that the winter months will be difficult and that prices will be high, so they take measures in summer and fall to ensure that they are prepared for winter. This includes buying in bulk for winter storage and canning/preserving fruits, vegetables, and even meat for use during the wintertime. These processes suggest that it might be possible to anticipate food shortages during the winter if there are crises during the summer or fall that prevent people from being able to buy or store these products. If this is the case, organizations might institute programs that enable people to gain access to these materials so that they can prepare for winter before a large-scale food crisis occurs. At the same time, further research is needed into the prevalence of botulism and canning processes, and if it is found to be an issue, education programs might teach ways to prevent it.

People also have ideas about what is healthy and unhealthy, and these local ideas should not be dismissed as antiquated or silly. Many of these ideas are useful and effective, and while others may be less effective, programs should seek to supplement them rather than deny or replace them wholesale. As this study shows, people appear open to foreign ideas and opportunities but seek to keep the foreign separate from the local. They may be open to accepting foreign supplements to local ideas of health but not open to replacing local ideas with foreign ones. This approach in all aspects of program administration would likely be a positive one.

Finally, it should be recognized that outsiders cannot predict outcomes or understand local processes without studying the everyday activities and ideas of local

94 people. Those who face food insecurity every day will always understand their circumstances better than outsiders will. International organizations need to take a serious look at their practices and find ways to better incorporate local processes and involve local people in their programs. One of the best ways to do this is to systematically consider existing strategies and work with local communities to build on their strengths and improve in their areas of weakness. Organizations should conduct fieldwork and micro-level studies on subjects such as those discussed in this paper and publish their written results so that others can learn from their findings. Future studies might also seek to combine quantitative and qualitative methods; research the role of ethnicity, religion, and region in food security; and seek to understand how existing aid programs have affected local behavior and attitudes.

Tuhiwai Smith (1999) points out that most communities already have the answers to their own problems, even though these are often dismissed or overlooked by international organizations. She writes that, “Visits to communities which have developed their own programmes demonstrate both the creativity alive and well at the community level and the strength of commitment shown when the programme is owned by the community” (p. 159). Sustainable improvement of food security in

Central Asia must involve local communities at every step of the process and take into consideration existing food practices, beliefs, and traditions.

Glossary: Uzbek Terms

Beshik – A traditional Uzbek baby cradle.

Beshik To’y – The celebration of the birth of a baby. During the celebration, the mother’s parents usually give a beshik as a gift, and the child is ceremoniously placed into it.

Dasturxon – The Uzbek word for “tablecloth,” but it is used in the sense of “table setting” to denote the many things that are placed on top of it. A dasturxon may be set on a high European-style table, on a low traditional Uzbek table, or on the floor.

Kelin – The Uzbek word for “bride,” but it is most commonly used to refer to a daughter-in-law in relation to her husband’s family.

Non – Traditional Uzbek flatbread.

O’choq – A traditional-style outdoor stove.

Oshxona – A café or restaurant where national Uzbek or Tajik dishes are served; usually the domain of men.

Palov – Rice pilaf made with carrots, onions, and meat (and less frequently with chick peas, raisins, and/or garlic), often called Uzbekistan’s “national food.”

Patir – A type of traditional Uzbek flatbread that is made with oil and therefore flaky.

Quyuq – “Solid,” used to refer to certain types of food.

Somsa – Pastries that are usually filled with meat but sometimes with other ingredients such as spinach or pumpkin.

Suyuq – “Liquid,” used to refer to certain types of food.

Tandir – A traditional Uzbek clay oven, usually used for baking bread and somsa.

Bibliography

Abassian, A. U.-F. (2005). Tajikistan: Market Profile for Emergency Food Security Assessments. World Food Programme.

Albarran, P., & Attanasio, O. P. (2005). Do Public Transfers Crowd Out Private Transfers?: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mexico. In S. Dercon (Ed.), Insurance Against Poverty (pp. 281-304). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Attanasio, O., & Rios-Rull, J.-V. (2000). Consumption smoothing in island economies: Can public insurance reduce welfare? European Economic Review, 44 1225- 1258.

Berg, A. (2004). Two Worlds Apart: The Lack of Integration between Women’s Informal Networks and Nongovernmental Organizations in Uzbekistan. In K. Kuehnast & C. Nechemias (Eds.), Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition (pp. 195-216). Washington, DC, and Baltimore and London: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bread and Salt Anchor Culinary Traditions in Uzbekistan and Switzerland. (May 28, 2000). CNN Transcripts Retrieved April 21, 2009, from http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0005/28/wr.10.html.

Brown, P. (No date). Who is the Community? What is the Community? Retrieved Jan. 8, 2009, from researchethics.org/uploads/pdf/Phil.commun.ss.pdf.

Chen, M. A. (1991). Coping with Seasonality and Drought. New Dehli: Sage Publications.

CIA World Factbook: Tajikistan. (No date). Retrieved March 16, 2009, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ti.html.

Counihan, C. M. (2004). Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Florence. New York and London: Routledge.

Countries: AKDN in Tajikistan. (No date). Aga Khan Development Network. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.akdn.org/tajikistan.asp.

Countries: Tajikistan. (No date). World Food Programme. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from http://www.wfp.org/countries/tajikistan.

Csaki, C., & Tuck, L. (2000). Rural Development Strategy: Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Customs and Traditions. (No date). Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.geocities.com/optionalcourse7a191/uzbekistancustomsand traditions.htm.

Darwin, R. (2001). Climate Change and Food Security: United States Department of Agriculture.

Davies, S. (1996). Adaptable Livelihoods: Coping with Food Insecurity in the Malian Sahel. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

De Waal, A. (2002). Anthropology and the Aid Encounter. In J. MacClancy (Ed.), Exotic No More (pp. 251-269). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dercon, S. (2002). Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets. The World Bank Research Observer, 17(2), 141-166.

The Economic Effects of Land Reform in Tajikistan. (July 2008). EC/FAO Food Security Programme--Phase II: Food Security Information in Action.

Electricity Rationing Tightened In Tajikistan (Feb. 10, 2009). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. http://www.rferl.org/content/Electricity_Rationing _Tightened_In_Tajikistan/1490933.html

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

European Commission on Humanitarian Aid: Tajikistan & Central Asia. (No date). Retrieved April 13, 2009, from http://ec.europa.eu/echo/aid/ asia/tajikistan_en.htm.

Farb, P., & Armelagos, G. (1980). Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Food Security Monitoring System: Data Collected in Rural Areas in January 2009. (2009). World Food Programme, World Health Organization, and the Department for International Development.

Food Security Survey in Supplementary Feeding Center Caretakers -- Kurgan Teppe and Kulyab Zones, Khatlon Region of Tajikistan. (August/September 2005). Action Against Hunger and ECHO.

Foroughi, P. (No Date). Food Security in Tajikistan: Private Farming Shows Promise. ISAR: Resources for Environmental Activists Retrieved March 6, 2009, from http://www.isar.org/pubs/ST/TJfarming49.html.

Forsyth, T. (Ed.). (2005). Encyclopedia of International Development. London and New York: Routledge.

Freedman, R. L. (1977). Nutritional Anthropology: An Overview. In T. K. Fitzgerald (Ed.), Nutrition and Anthropology in Action (pp. 1-23). Assen/Amsterdam: van Gorcum.

German Agro Action: Tajikistan. (No date). Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.untj.org/?c=6&id=158&a=541.

Gertler, P., & Gruber, J. (2002). Insuring Consumption Against Illness. American Economic Review, 92 (1), 51-70.

Grand, J., Leather, C., & Mason, F. (2001). Tajikistan: What Role for Nongovernmental Organizations? In A. A. Hunger (Ed.), The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000-2001 (pp. 63-78). Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Groetschel, A., Feiler, U., Jacobsen, I., Ruth, P., & Schroder, J. (1997). From Relief to Rehabilitation: Towards Food Security in Northern Tajikistan. Chkalovsk/Berlin: Centre for Advanced Training in Agricultural and Rural Development.

Harris, C. (2004). Control and Subversion: Gender Relations in Tajikistan. London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

Hemment, J. (2007). Public Anthropology and the Paradoxes of Participation: Participatory Action Research and Critical Ethnography in Provincial Russia. Human Organization, 66(3), 301-314.

Henderson, S. L. (2003). Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for Grassroots Organizations. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Jian, L. (2008). Economic Costs of Serious Illness in Rural Southwest China: Household Coping Strategies and Health Policy Implications. Human Organization, 67(2), 151-163.

Jonson, L. (2006). Tajikistan in the New Central Asia. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

Kabeer, N. (1990). Poverty, Purdah and Women’s Survival Strategies in Rural Bangladesh. In H. Bernstein, B. Crown, M. Mackintosh & C. Martin (Eds.), The Food Question: Profits Versus People (pp. 134-148). New York: Monthly Review Press.

Kalcik, S. (1984). Ethnic Foodways in America: Symbol and the Performance of Identity. In L. K. Brown & K. Mussell (Eds.), Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity (pp. 37-65). Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Kanbur, R. (2003). Qualitative and Quantitative Poverty Appraisal: The State of Play and Some Questions. In R. Kanbur (Ed.), Q-Squared: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods of Poverty Appraisal (pp. 1-21). Dehli, India: Permanent Black.

Key, R. (2004). Meeting the Challenge Together? Russian Grassroots Women’s Organizations and the Shortcomings of Western Aid. In K. Kuehnast & C. Nechemias (Eds.), Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition (pp. 241-261). Washington, DC and Baltimore and London: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Khalid, A. (1998). The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

100

Khan, A. R., & Ghai, D. (1979). Collective Agriculture and Rural Development in Soviet Central Asia. New York: St. Martin's Press.

King, K., & McGrath, S. (2004). Knowledge for development? Comparing British, Japanese, Swedish and World Bank Aid. Cape Town and London and New York: HSRC Press and Zed Books.

Knuth, L. (2008). Institutional, Policy and Legislative Framework of Food Security in Tajikistan. Rome: European Commission/FAO Co-Operative Programme.

Kunanbaeva, A. (Winter 2008). Food as Culture: the Kazakh Experience. The Silk Road, 5(2), 48-56.

Lafaro, L. N. (2007). On the Ground: The Geopoltiics of Civil Society in Tajikistan. University of Washington, Seattle.

Lamberte, M. B., Vogel, R. C., Moyes, R. T., & Fernando, N. A. (Eds.). (2006). Beyond Microfinance: Building Inclusive Rural Financial Markets in Central Asia. Philippines: Asian Development Bank.

Lather, P. (1986). Research: Between a Rock and a Soft Place. Interchange, 17(4), 63- 83.

Laurent, L. (April 13, 2009). Trouble in Tajikistan. Forbes.

Leitch, A. (2003). Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat: Italian Food and European Identity. Ethnos, 68(4), 437–462.

Linn, J. F. (June 19, 2008). The Impending Water Crisis in Central Asia: An Immediate Threat. from http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/ 0619_central_asia_linn.aspx.

Mack, G. R., & Surina, A. (2005). Food Culure in Russia and Central Asia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

101

Mainstreaming gender in poverty reduction strategies: Tajikistan: country gender assessment. (2006). Manila: Asian Development Bank East and Central Asia Regional Dept.

Mahmudov, K. (1989a). Mehmonnoma. Toshkent: "Yosh Gvardiya."

---, K. (1989b). O’zbek Tansiq Taomlari. Tashkent: "Mehnat."

Makhmudov, K. (1979). Uzbekskii Plov. Tashkent: "Uzbekistan."

---, K. (1987). Plovy Na Liuboi Vkus. Tashkent: "Mehnat.”

---, K. (1988). Aziz Rizq-Ro’zimiz - Khleb Nash Nasushchnyi. Tashkent: "Yosh Gvardiia."

Marat, E. (Feb. 11, 2009). Shrinking Remittances Increase Labor Migration from Central Asia. Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst. http://www.cacianalyst. org/?q=node/5035).

Mayhew, B., Bloom, G., Noble, J., & Starnes, D. (2007). Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan. Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia and London: Lonely Planet Publications.

Messer, E., & Shipton, P. (2002). Hunger in Africa: Untangling Its Human Roots. In J. MacClancy (Ed.), Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines (pp. 227- 250). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Mintz, S. W. (1996). Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom. Boston: Beacon Press.

Moser, C. O. N. (1998). The Asset Vulnerability Framework: Reassessing Urban Poverty Reduction Strategies. World Development, 26(1), 1-19.

Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism. New York and London: Routledge.

102

Niyazi, A. (1999). Islam and Tajikistan's Human and Ecological Crisis. In M. H. Ruffin & D. Waugh (Eds.), Civil Society in Central Asia (pp. 180-197). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.

Nygaard, D., Jumakhonov, D., & Hendrickx, K. (June 6-10, 2005). Seizing Opportunities to Promote Development and Improve Food Security in the Mountainous Regions of Central Asia. Paper presented at the Strategies for Development and Food Security in Mountainous Areas of Central Asia. International Workshop.

O'zbek Taomlari - Uzbek Cuisine - Uzbekskaia Kukhnia. (1996). Tashkent: "Mehnat".

OHCHR. (No date). Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food: International Standards. Retrieved April 10, 2009, from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/standards.htm.

Osobennosti Uzbekiskoi Kukhni. Uzbekskaia Kukhnia. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://www.uzbekcuisine.narod.ru/.

Plovy. (No date). Tadzhikistanskaia Kukhnia. Zemlia Dalekaja i Blizkaia FOND. Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.zdb.ru/kitchen/kitchen_cauacasus_2_2.shtml.

Pottier, J. (1999). Anthropology of Food: The Social Dynamics of Food Security. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Program Details: Helping Farmers and Families Prosper: Tajikistan. (November 2006). Mercy Corps, from http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/tajikistan/15092.

Rahmato, D. (1991). Famine and Survival Strategies. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

Randerson, J. (2008). Food Crisis Will Take Hold Before Climate Change, Warns Chief Scientist. The Guardian, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/mar/07/scienceofclimatechange.food.

The Right to Food. (2002). Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

103

Rosenberger, N. (2007). Patriotic Appetites and Gnawing Hungers: Food and the Paradox of Nationbuilding in Uzbekistan. Ethnos, 72(3), 339-360.

Rural, Environmental, and Social Development Strategies for the Eastern Europe and Central Asia Region. (June 29, 2000). Prague and Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Sahadeo, J. (2007). Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Sattor, M. (2007). O'zbek Udumlari. Toshkent: Cho'lpon Nomidagi Nashr Iyot-Matbaa Ijodiy Uyi.

Schafer, S. (February 8, 2009). Russia's Recession Squeezes Migrants. Washington Post.

Sauerborn, R., Adams, A., & Hien, M. (1996). Household Strategies to Cope with the Economic Costs of Illness. Soc. Sci. Med., 43(3), 291-301.

Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Shapouri, S., & Rosen, S. (April 2001). Food Security Assessment: Regional Overview: United States Department of Agriculture.

Shaw, D. J. (2007). World Food Security: A History Since 1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World. (2008). Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Sustainability Field Study: Understanding What Promotes Lasting Change at the Community Level. (December 2007). Mercy Corps. Tajikistan. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from http://www.savethechildren.org/countries/middle-east- eurasia/tajikistan.html.

104

Tajik households face hike in gas bills. (Jan. 12, 2009). Washington Post. Associated Press. Accessed Jan. 20, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011200705.html.

Tajikistan: Intro. Oxfam. (No date). Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/where_we_work/tajikistan.html.

Tajikistan Map. Geology.com. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from http://geology.com/world/tajikistan-satellite-image.shtml. Accessed April 27, 2009.

Thorp, L. (2006). The Pull of the Earth: Participatory Ethnography in the School Garden. Landham and New York: AltaMira Press.

Tokhtakhodjaeva, M. (1995). Between the Slogans of Communism and the Laws of Islam (E. C. Balchin & T. S. Aslam, Trans.). Lahore, Pakistan: Shirkat Gah Women's Resource Centre.

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd. and Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

UN FAO. (1996). Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action. Paper presented at the World Food Summit. from http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.HTM.

---. (2003). The state of the food insecurity in the world 2001. Peace Research Abstracts, 40(2), 123-261.

---. (2009). Organisation Profile. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from http://www.untj.org/?c=6&id=51&a=229.

UNICEF. (2009). Tajikistan: Activities. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.unicef.org/tajikistan/activities.html.

USAID. (No date). Tajikistan: Background. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://centralasia.usaid.gov/page.php?page=article-3.

105

---. (March 5, 2009). Food Assistance to Vakhsh Residents. from http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MSAO- 7Q35D7?OpenDocument

United Nations. (February 5, 2008). Food Security Cluster - Tajikistan Situation Report. http://www.untj.org/files/React/Food_Sector_ Situation_Report_Feb_5_2008_ENG.pdf.

Uzbekskaia Kukhnia. (No date). Vse o Sluzhbakh Dostavki Edy i Produktov Pitaniia, Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www.rfds.ru/delivery/uzbek/index.html.

Von Braun, J. (1992). Improving food security of the poor : concept, policy, and programs. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Weismantel, M. J. (1988). Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Werner, C. (2004). Feminizing the New Silk Road: Women Traders in Rural Kazakhstan. In K. Kuehnast & C. Nechemias (Eds.), Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition (pp. 105-126). Washington, DC and Baltimore and London: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press.

The World Bank. (2008). Country Portfolio Review 2008: Tajikistan. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/ COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/TAJIKISTANEXTN/0,,contentMDK:22102750~page PK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:258744,00.html.

World Food Program (WTP). (No date). Tajikistan Profile. from http://beta.wfp.org/countries/tajikistan.

---. (2005). Household Food Security and Vulnerability Survey in Rural Tajikistan: November 2004. Rome.

Wheeler, G. (1964). The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia. New Yrok: Frederick A. Praeger.

106

Wilson, C. S. (1977). Research Methods in Nutritional Anthropology: Approaches and Techniques. In T. K. Fitzgerald (Ed.), Nutrition and Anthropology in Action (pp. 62-68). Assen/Amsterdam: van Gorcum.

Yao, A. V., & Rüffer, H. (June 6-10, 2005). Food Security in Tajikistan: German Agro Action Strategy. Paper presented at the Strategies for Development and Food Security in Mountainous Areas of Central Asia. International Workshop.

Zakirov, M. (1998). Kulinarnye Sekrety Xodzhi Nasreddina. Tashkent: Glavnaia Redaktsiia IPK “Shark."

Zanca, R. (2007). Fat and All That: Good Eating the Uzbek Way. In J. Sahadeo & R. Zanca (Eds.), Everyday Life in Central Asia (pp. 178-197). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

107

Appendix A: Map of Tajikistan

Source: Tajikistan Map. (No Date). Geology.com. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from http://geology.com/world/tajikistan-satellite-image.shtml.

108

Appendix B: Index of Study Participants

Asal – an Uzbek woman in her 20s who works as a tailor and lives near Mavluda opa.

Aziz aka – an elderly Uzbek man who lives with family in a house in a village outside of Navoi.

Bekzod – Yulduz opa’s grandson. He has a teaching degree but works as a taxi driver.

Dildora – Aziz-aka’s daughter-in-law.

Dilshod – an Uzbek man in his thirties who lives with his wife and children in an apartment in Navoi.

Fazilat – an Uzbek woman in her thirties who is divorced and lives with her children in an apartment in Dushanbe.

Feruza – Mavluda opa’s grown daughter, married to a foreigner.

Mavluda opa – a middle-aged Uzbek woman who lives in a house in Dushanbe.

Nargiza opa – a middle-aged Uzbek woman who lives in a house in Dushanbe. She supplements her income by baking bread that is sold at a shop near her house.

Lobar – an Uzbek woman in her late 20s who is divorced and lives in an apartment in Dushanbe.

Rustam aka – a middle-aged Tajik man who lives in an apartment in Dushanbe. He knows Uzbek well but speaks Tajik in his daily life.

Sayora opa – a middle-aged Uzbek woman who lives in a house in Dushanbe.

Yulduz opa – an elderly Uzbek woman who lives in a house in a village outside of Dushanbe.

Zilola – a young married Uzbek woman who lives in a house with her in-laws outside of Dushanbe.