This article examines the emotional, embodied and sensuous aspects of intimacy within and between two families from Kulob, southern Tajikistan, as it is embedded in imminent or/and impending conflict. It focuses on touch and its importance to the fashioning of family life that is also informed by government policies and Muslim subjectivities. The ethnography highlights bodily sensations such as shaking chills, and visceral episodes such as vomiting, fainting, or sensuously-dreaming because they materialize the narrative, experience and performativity of the qualities of touch. The article advances the notion that touch pertains not only to both physical immediacy and intimate closeness, but also to processes of physical separation and estrangement between two or more intimates.
AbashinS (2006) The logic of Islamic practice: a religious conflict in Central Asia. Central Asian Survey25(3): 267–286.
2.
Abu-LughodL (1986) Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.
3.
AhmedS (2014) The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
4.
BeattyA (2014) Anthropology and emotion. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute20(3): 545–563.
5.
BecherH (2008) Family Practices in South Asian Muslim Families: Parenting in a Multi-faith Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
6.
BlakeR (2011) Ethnographies of touch and touching ethnographies: Some prospects for touch in anthropological enquiries. Anthropology Matters13(1): 1–12.
7.
CarstenJ (2004) After Kinship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
ClarkeM (2007) Closeness in the age of mechanical reproduction: Debating kinship and biomedicine in Lebanon and the Middle East. Anthropological Quarterly80(2): 379–402.
9.
ClassenC (2005) The Book of Touch, Oxford: Berg.
10.
CleuziouJ (2015) ‘A second wife is not really a wife’: Polygyny, gender relations and economic realities in Tajikistan. Central Asian Survey35(1): 76–90.
11.
DasV (2010) Engaging the life of the other: Love and everyday life. In: LambekM (ed.) Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action, New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 376–399.
12.
DeebL (2005) Living Ashura in Lebanon: Mourning transformed to sacrifice. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East25(1): 122–137.
13.
DerridaJ (2005) On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
14.
DreschP (2005) Debates on marriage and nationality in the United Arab Emirates. In: DreschPPiscatoriJ (eds) Monarchies and Nations, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 136–157.
15.
EdgarI (2011) The Dream in Islam: From Qur'anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration, New York: Berghahn Books.
16.
EickelmanD (1977) Maraboutism and ties of ‘closeness’ in Western Morocco. In: WerbnerR (ed.) Regional Culture, London: Academic Press, pp. 3–28.
17.
EpkenhansT (2016) Islam, religious elites and the state in post-civil-war Tajikistan. In: Luong JonesP (ed.) Islam, Society and Politics in Central Asia, Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.
18.
EspositoJ (1982) Women in Muslim Family Law, New York: Syracuse University Press.
19.
FranceschelliMO’BrienM (2014) ‘Islamic capital’ and family life: The role of Islam in parenting. Sociology48(6): 1190–1206.
20.
GeisslerPPrinceR (2010) The Land Is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya, New York: Berghahn Books.
21.
HarrisC (2004) Control and Subversion: Gender Relations in Tajikistan, London: Pluto Press.
22.
Heathershaw J and Mongomery D (2014) The myth of post-Soviet Muslim radicalization in the Central Asian Republics. Research paper, Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
23.
HirschS (1998) Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
24.
HowesD (2003) Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
25.
Ibañez-TiradoD (2016) Gold teeth, Indian dresses, Chinese Lycra and ‘Russian’ hair: Embodied diplomacy and the assemblages of dress in Tajikistan. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology34(2): 23–41.
26.
KandiyotiD (1994) The paradoxes of masculinity: Some thoughts on segregated societies. In: CornwallALindisfarneN (eds) Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, London: Routledge, pp. 197–213.
27.
LaplantineF (2015) The Life of the Senses: Introduction to a Modal Anthropology, London: Bloomsbury.
28.
MadaviP (2014) Love, motherhood and migration: Regulating migrant women’s sexualities in the Persian Gulf. Anthropology of the Middle East9(2): 19–37.
29.
MarsdenM (2007) Love and elopement in northern Pakistan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute13(1): 91–108.
30.
MarsdenM (2012) ‘For Badakhshan – the country without borders!’: Village cosmopolitans, urban-rural networks and the post-cosmopolitan city in Tajikistan. In: HumphreyCSkvirskajaV (eds) The Post-cosmopolitan City: Explorations of Urban Coexistence, New York: Berghahn, pp. 217–239.
31.
MarsdenMRetsikasK (2013) Introduction. In: MarsdenMRetsikasK (eds) Articulating Islam: Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds, London: Springer, pp. 1–31.
32.
MarsdenMIbañez TiradoD (2015) Repertoires of family life and the anchoring of Afghan trading networks in Ukraine. History and Anthropology26(2): 145–164.
33.
MiltonK (2002) Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion, London: Routledge.
34.
Mir-HosseiniZ (1993) Strategies of selection: Differing notions of marriage in Iran and Morocco. In: Fawzi El-SolhCMabroJ (eds) Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality, Oxford: Berg, pp. 55–71.
35.
MittermaierA (2011) Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press.
36.
ModyP (2008) The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi, New Delhi: Routledge.
37.
MorganD (1996) Locating ‘family practices’. Sociological Research Online16(4): 14.
38.
MostowlanskyT (2017) Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway, Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.
39.
NourzhanovKBleuerC (2013) Tajikistan: A Political and Social History, Canberra: ANU University Press.
40.
OlimovM (2002) Odobi Raftor, Dushanbe: Irfon.
41.
OsellaC (2012) Desires under reform: Contemporary reconfigurations of family, marriage, love and gendering in a transnational South Indian natrilineal Muslim community. Culture and Religion13(2): 241–264.
42.
PaasonenS (2011) Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43.
PeloguinS (2005) Helping through touch: The embodiment of caring. Journal of Religion and Health28(4): 299–320.
44.
PrivratskyB (2001) Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory, Richmond: Curzon Press.
45.
Rahmonova-SchwarzD (2012) Family and Transnational Mobility in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Labour Migration from Kyrgysztan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Russia, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
46.
RasanayagamJ (2006) Healing with spirits and the formation of Muslim selfhood in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute12(2): 377–393.
47.
RasmussenS (2006) Those Who Touch: Taureg Women in Anthropological Perspective, Evanston: Northern Illinois University Press.
48.
RocheS (2014) Domesticating Youth: Youth Bulges and their Socio-Political Implications in Tajikistan, Oxford: Berghan.
49.
Rosaldo MZ (1984) Toward an anthropology of self and feeling. In: Shweder R and LeVine R (eds) Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 137–157.
50.
SchielkeS (2012) Being gin Ramadan: Ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute15: S24–S40.
51.
SchmitzA (2015) Islam in Tajikistan: Actors, Discourses, Conflicts. SWP Research Paper, Berlin: German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
52.
Sedwick EK (2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press.
53.
Shaw A and Raz A (eds) (2015) Cousin Marriages: Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change. Oxford: Berghan.
54.
ShillingCMellorP (2010) Saved from pain or saved though pain? Modernity, instrumentalization and the religious use of pain as a body technique. European Journal of Social Theory13(4): 521–537.
55.
SingermanD (2005) Rewriting divorce in Egypt: Reclaiming Islam, legal activism, and coalition politics. In: HefnerR (ed.) Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 161–187.
56.
SinghB (2011) Agonistic intimacy and moral aspiration in popular Hinduism. A study in the political theology of the neighbor. American Ethnologist38(3): 430–450.
57.
SparrowT (2015) Plastic Bodies: Rebuilding Sensation after Phenomenology, London: Open Humanities Press.
58.
SpencerD (2013) Sensing violence: An ethnography of mixed martial arts. Ethnography15(2): 232–254.
59.
Stephan-EmmrichMMirzoevA (2016) The manufacturing of Islamic lifestyles in Tajikistan through the prism of Dushanbe’s bazaars. Central Asian Survey35(2): 157–177.
60.
StollerP (1989) The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
61.
Suad J (ed.) (1999) Intimate Selving in Arab Families: Gender, Self and Identity. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
62.
TahhanDA (2014) The Japanese Family: Touch, Intimacy and Feeling, New York: Routledge.
63.
TaussigM (1991) Tactility and distraction. Cultural Anthropology6(2): 147–153.
64.
Von PoserA (2013) Foodways and Empathy: Relatedness in a Ramu Riber Society, Papua New Guinea, New York: Berghahn Books.
65.
WatanabeC (2014) Muddy labor: A Japanese aid ethic of collective intimacy in Myanmar. Cultural Anthropology29(4): 648–671.
66.
WilliamsT (1966) Cultural structuring of tactile experience in a Borneo society. American Anthropologist68(1): 27–39.
