Islam, Modernity and the Politics of Gender 103disciplinary roles assumed by public bodies in enforcing conventional gender
norms^ (Kamp 2004).
However, presenting self-conscious manipulations of markers of national
identity as a ‘revival of tradition’ is a clear misnomer. Whilst reclaiming ‘tra-
dition’, successor elites have been presiding over profound transformations
of post-Soviet society. These include new patterns of social stratifi cation with
rapidly growing disparities in wealth between the ‘new rich’ and the ‘new poor’,
accompanied by popular perceptions of rampant corruption, the erosion of
social safety nets and increasing rates of internal and international migration
and urbanisation. The increase in polygynous unions, which are not legal but
becoming more commonplace, appear to have less to do with a return to Islamic
mores per se than with cashing in on the privileges of newly found wealth.^11 It
is not without irony that it is at the point when so-called traditional values are
being talked up that the material bases of communal solidarity that were able
to survive, albeit in modifi ed form, during the Soviet period, are being tested to
the limit.
There is little doubt that retreat of the Soviet state facilitated an offi cial
restoration of male privilege as an item of national culture. In Kyrgyzstan, the
decriminalisation of polygamy has already gone before parliament several times.
The increase of non-consensual bride-kidnapping in Kazakhstan is explained by
Werner (2004) with reference to the withdrawal of the state from gender-sen-
sitive social issues and new social attitudes towards Kazakh national traditions
promoted by the state. Kamp (2006) also suggests that the Soviet state had the
ability to intercede in favour of women and that state paternalism replaced the
formerly untrammelled authority of individual patriarchs, while Akiner (1997)
remarks on a new lack of restraint in expressions of male supremacy that were
generally kept in check as politically incorrect under the Soviet regime.
However, the demise of the Soviet state cannot, in and of itself, explain this
apparent transformation of gender discourses. Soviet policies in Central Asia
had the paradoxical consequence of both expanding opportunities for women’s
education and public presence and stalling processes of occupational and
spatial mobility commonly associated with modernity. The rural character of
Central Asian societies was consolidated through their mode of incorporation
into the Soviet Union, collectivisation reconfi gured and sometimes entrenched
traditional forms of social organisation, pro-natalist policies, that were meant
to address the demographic shortfalls of the more industrialised republics, sup-
ported high-fertility norms in Central Asia and the onslaught against Islam
tightened the association between religion and ethnic identity by binding reli-
gion more closely to the domestic sphere. In short, there was a great deal more
to the assumed ‘traditionalism’ attributed to Central Asian societies than could
be explained with reference to either anti-colonial resistance or a supposed
failure of modernisation.