Provisions for remoteness: cutting connections and forging ties in the Tajik Pamirs

Saxer, Martin (May 2019): Provisions for remoteness: cutting connections and forging ties in the Tajik Pamirs. In: Social anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 2: pp. 187-203

Abstract

How does remoteness emerge from the very connections envisioned to unmake it? And how do connections arise from remoteness? In this article, I address these questions by taking remoteness and connectivity not as opposites but as entangled forces that condition each other. To explore this evolving nexus, I focus on provisions: the notion of provision denotes, at once, a foresight or visions of a better future, a rule or law, and supplies coming in from the outside. Looking into three junctures of cutting connections and forging ties in the Tajik Pamirs – the Soviet system of Moscow provisioning, wayfaring Pajero drivers and international trophy hunting – I show how provisions (of all three kinds) were instrumental in shaping the repeating return of remoteness in the region.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Form of publication: Publisher's Version
• Faculties: Cultural Studies > Department of Ancient and Modern Cultures > Ethnology
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology; 900 History and geography > 950 History of Asia
• Annotation: Special Issue Article
• Language: English