University of Pittsburgh
Department of Anthropology
presents
David W. Montgomery
Postdoctoral Fellow, Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding Initiative
Emory University
“Experience, Morality, Islam, and Authority in the Kyrgyz Republic (With
a Comparative Note on Albania)”
Monday, February 23, 2009
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Anthropology Lounge
3106 WWPH
The reemerging presence of religion in Central Asia has led political
leaders to view increased Islamic practice as a "radical" threat to the
state. This fear creates a discourse of danger that caricatures banned
Islamic groups in the Kyrgyz Republic yet ignores how experience frames
understandings of morality, the legitimacy of authority, and the structures
drawn upon to maintain local order. Attending to experience as a category
of analysis makes sense of a "radical" turn from corrupt civil law to
tradition or religion, and reveals how local knowledge animates and
regulates everyday life.
