Review of Russell Zanca, Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village:Cotton Farming After CommunismBelmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2010, xxviii+212 pp. ISBN 978-0-495-09281-0

Emily O’Dell

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Having included Everyday Life in Central Asia Past and Present on the syllabus for mySufism in Central Asia seminar at Columbia University, I was looking forward to thepublication of Russell Zanca’s new book, Life in aMuslimUzbek Village: Cotton Farmingafter Communism, in Wadsworth Cengage Learning’s Case Studies in Cultural Anthro-pology series. Written for students taking introductory and intermediate courses onethnographic writing, the book investigates the economic, social, cultural, political andreligious dimensions of ‘cotton farming’ in Uzbekistan to introduce students to post-Soviet cultural patterns in Central Asia. As Zanca explains in the introduction, ‘whilecotton farming serves as a key part of this ethnography, the real story of this anthropo-logical work is the erosion of the Communist political order and socialist way of life’ (p. xii).

For those who are unfamiliar with Uzbekistan, choosing to concentrate on ‘cotton’production as a lens throughwhich to view the cultural transition from the Soviet economyto the present capitalist system might seem an unusual choice. But cotton, the ‘white goldof Uzbekistan,’ is the cornerstone of the Uzbek economy, and central to the Uzbek way oflife. Through a series of interviews with informants, Zanca presents interpretations ofvillagers on how life has changed—for better and worse—on cotton farms since the fallof the Soviet Union.

Zanca begins Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village by tracing the roots of his ownattraction to Central Asia. By modeling for students how to position the subjectivity ofthe anthropologist in ethnographic writing, Zanca simultaneously introduces the reader tothe Uzbek diaspora living in New York. Growing up in Queens surrounded by Uzbekimmigrants, Zanca became interested as a young child in the former Soviet Union. Afterits collapse, Zanca began fieldwork in Boburkent in the Ferghana Valley in themid-1990s,and continued his interviews with villagers through the first decade of 21st century. In thisthorough and engaging ethnographic work, Zanca explores how villagers negotiated andinterpreted the transition from the stresses of Soviet communism to the ongoing chal-lenges of market capitalism on formerly state-administrated collective farms (kolkhozes).

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E. O’Dell (*)Civilization Sequence Program, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh,Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanone-mail: emily.odell@aub.edu.lb

In the introduction, Zanca provides a brief but thorough overview of Uzbekistan’sgeography, history, and resources. Because most students who read this book will beunfamiliar with Central Asia, Zanca’s discussion of the environmental and geopoliticalconcerns of Uzbekistan in the post-Soviet era offers a necessary introduction to post-Soviet life in Central Asia in general. The second chapter, ‘Historical Connections andToday’s Kolkhoz’ contextualizes the category of the word ‘peasant’ in Soviet and post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The third chapter, ‘Kolkhoz as Plantation,’ is somewhat problematic,though its discussion of child labor and gender is essential to the book. In choosing toframe the kolkhoz as a ‘plantation-like’ system in Central Asia, Zanca does qualify thecomparison: ‘while peasants (Uzbeks use the term dehqon) were exploited, they werenot slaves as was true of African American workers on cotton plantations in the UnitedStates during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century’ (p. xxi). While Zancamaintains that his use of the term ‘plantation’ comes from his informants who ‘half-jokingly compare their situation to those of American slaves of yesteryear,’ (p. xxii) hedoes not explain the historical reasons why they may do so. For instance, in the 1920sand 1930s, when the Soviet Union was attempting to modernize farming to rivalAmerican and European farming, a number of African American workers came fromthe South to the Soviet Union to help modernize the cotton farming apparatus. InLangston Hughes’ memoir, I Wonder as I Wander, Hughes spends Christmas Day withAfrican American cotton farmers on a kolkhoz in Uzbekistan. The scarcity of workopportunities in the Great Depression, coupled with the racist hysteria surrounding theScottsboro Boys case, prompted a number of African Americans to journey to the SovietUnion for work. While the conditions on cotton farms in Uzbekistan were indeed harshin the Soviet period, they were not comparable to the conditions of slave life onAmerican plantations. Explaining why and how African Americans were involved incotton farming in Uzbekistan would be a welcome addition to the discussion in thischapter on the use of the term ‘plantation’ in an Uzbek context.

The rest of the book does a marvelous job surveying a variety of cultural andeconomic issues related to life on the cotton farms. Chapter Four, ‘Cuisine, Celebra-tions and Ceremonies,’ which explores how the harvest is ‘ritualized’ through customssuch as circumcisions and weddings, illustrates for students how cotton farming definesand cements intimate relationships in village life. Chapter 5, ‘Running on Empty:Surviving on the Kolkhoz’ describes the complex yet limited matrix of choices facingthe villagers, with regard to education, vocation, and charity.

Chapter 6, ‘Uzbekistan’s Cotton, Home Economics, and the Larger World,’ investi-gates the global implications of the changing economic landscape of Uzbekistan, alongwith how villagers weigh the benefits and risks of globalization against the safety net ofthe welfare benefits provided by the Soviet state. Though this chapter touches upon anumber of serious political issues, such as trafficking, religious violence, prison, andmigration, it does not incorporate the villagers’ views on these more politicized topics(since some questions may have been off-limits). In the book’s discussion of migration,it might be helpful for students to learn more about violence against Uzbek migrantworkers in Russia to supplement the other global connections drawn throughout the text.

While cotton farming is essential to the Uzbek economy, Islam is also central to thecustoms and culture of everyday life in Uzbekistan. Since independence, the Uzbekgovernment has framed ‘Islam’ as an essential component of ‘national’ and ‘cultural’identity. Like the economy, Islam has also undergone a significant transition from the

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Soviet period. For instance, Sufism and the Hanafi school of jurisprudence have beenactively promoted by the state, in contrast to religious policies and standards enactedduring Soviet and Tsarist times, when Sufism and the Hanafi madhhab were sup-pressed. While this book highlights Uzbek national identity, it does so at the expense ofconsidering how religious identity and communal religious rituals shape everyday life.However, since the author is an expert on the rituals and customs of daily life in CentralAsia, this lack of emphasis on Islam and its practice in Uzbekistan is most likely due tolack of space in a book focused primarily on the legacy of Soviet policies on village lifeand the national economy.

Having conducted research in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, a commonphrase I often encounter along the Silk Road is ‘how much better things were’ in theSoviet period with regard to the economy—a statement that my students in America arealways shocked to hear. I’m grateful that I can now direct my students to thiscaptivating and comprehensive book, which introduces students to the changes andchallenges of the current Uzbek economy, as well as to the nature of ethnographicwriting on rural life, gender, and globalization in Central Asia.

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