WOMEN, KINSHIP, AND PROPERTY IN CENTRAL ASIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52754/16948653_2026_1_1Keywords:
Kinship, Property Relations, Central Asia, Marriage, Bride Price, Dowry, Women’s Agency, Inheritance, Post-Soviet TransformationsAbstract
This article examines the interconnections between gender, kinship, and property relations in Central Asia within Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. It argues that women’s social status cannot be understood solely through the lens of victimhood or empowerment, but must be analyzed within the broader framework of kinship systems, marriage practices, property regimes, and labor contributions. While international organizations promote neoliberal models of gender equality grounded in individual property rights, such approaches often overlook the embeddedness of property relations in moral values, extended family networks, and culturally specific understandings of provision and reciprocity.
Drawing on anthropological literature and ethnographic insights, the article highlights how women’s agency is shaped by their position within systems of inheritance, bride price, dowry, and intergenerational support. It explores the tensions between Soviet legacies of female emancipation, post-Soviet nationalism, Islamic revival, and Western gender discourses. The study demonstrates that women in Central Asia simultaneously navigate patriarchy, economic necessity, and kin-based obligations, often using culturally embedded strategies to negotiate power and security. By foregrounding local women’s perspectives, the article calls for a more nuanced understanding of gendered subjectivities and property relations beyond universalist frameworks.
References
Kandiyoti, Deniz (2007) ‘The politics of gender and the Soviet paradox: neither colonized, nor modern?’ Central Asian Survey, 26:4, 601 — 623.
Patrick Heady and Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, “Implications of Endogamy in the Southwest Eurasian Highlands: Another Look at Jack Goody’s Theory of Production, Property and Kinship,” History and Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2020): 257–281.
Chris Hann, “Property, Neoliberalism and Rural Privatization. Overview,” in Property Relations: The Halle Focus Group, 2000-2005 (Halle/Saale: Max-Planck-Institut für Ethnologische Forschung, 2005); Chris Hann, “The State of the Art. A New Double Movement? Anthropological Perspectives on Property in the Age of Neoliberalism,” Socio-Economic Review 5 (2007): 287; Katherine Verdery, “Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania’s Decollectivization,” in Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World, ed. Michael Burowoy and Katherine Verdery (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 53-82; Katherine Verdery and Caroline Humphrey, eds., Property in Question. Value Transformation in the Global Economy (Oxford: Berg, 2004); Katherine Verdery, The Vanishing Hectare. Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
Exceptions are Frances Pine, “Reproducing the House: Kinship, Inheritance and Property Relations in Southern Poland,” in Distinct Inheritances: Property, Family and Community in Changing Europe, ed. Hannes Grandits and Patrick Heady (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2003), 279-295; and Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, “Remembering the Dead and the Living of the Kolkhoz and Sovkhoz: Past and Present of Gendered Rural Life in Azerbaijan,” Ab Imperio 2 (2005): 425–440.
Paolo Sartori, “Introduction: Dealing with States of Property in Modern and Colonial Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey 29, no. 1 (2010): 1-8; Sarah Robinson, Chantsallkham Jamsranjav, and Kramer Gillin, “Pastoral Property Rights in Central Asia: Factors and Actors Driving the Reform Agenda,” Études rurales 200, no. 2 (2017): 220-253.
Except a few scholars by whom I am inspired, including Deniz Kandiyoti (2007).
See Keebet von Benda-Beckmann’s work on bundles of rights and Judith Beyer’s work on social protection. Benda-Beckmann, Franz von, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie G. Wiber (2006) ‘The properties of property’. Changing properties of property. Ed. Franz von Benda- Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie G. Wiber. New York: Berghahn Books; Judith Beyer (2016) The force of custom. Law and the ordering of everyday life in Kyrgyzstan. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Deniz Kandiyoti, “The Politics of Gender and the Soviet Paradox: Neither Colonized, nor Modern?” Central Asian Survey 26, no. 4 (2007): 601-623.
Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).
Marvin Harris’ -emic/-etic distinction; Headland, Thomas N., Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris. 1990. Emics and etics: The insider/outsider debate (Frontiers of Anthropology). SAGE Publications Inc: Newbury Park
Ismailbekova Aksana. (forthcoming 2022) ‘Daughters as Ojiza: Marriage, Security and Care strategies for Daughters among Uzbeks in Southern Kyrgyzstan’. In Féaux de la Croix, Jeanne and Madeleine Reeves (eds.) Central Asian Worlds. The Routledge Handbook. Routledge.
Kandiyoti Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2: 274–290
Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
Heady and Yalçın-Heckmann, “Implications of Endogamy.”
https://voicesoncentralasia.org/women-kinship-and-property-in-central-asia/
