From Mahalla to Self-Help Groups: Changing Forms of Community Organisation in Central Asia
Keywords:
ahalla, self-help groups, Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, institutional bricolage, community organisation, post-Soviet transitionAbstract
Traditional mahalla in Central Asia is viewed as being superseded by 'imported development vehicles' like Village Organisations, Water user associations, savings groups and Self Help Groups (SHGs). This article contends that the displacement story is wrong on both sides. The mahalla has never been an unchanging communal unit as is claimed in official talk about it and in donor reports and it has seldom been replaced by the SHG. It explores four consecutive transformations, which are grounded in the anthropology of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and on the socio-legal understanding of informal welfare and on Cleaver's theory of institutional bricolage: from pre-Soviet quarter as a unit of ritual and mutual obligation to its Soviet subordination and partial preservation, then its codification as an arm of welfare targeting and social control in Uzbekistan, then its introduction of donor-supported, small groups in the late 1990s in an already crowded associational field. This main argument is that there are no types of community organisation in Central Asia, but rather a repertoire of types and that households select a specific type for the purpose of deriving the benefits that each type provides. The mahalla gives legitimacy, ritual obligation, access to the state; the SHG gives capital, access to donors, crucially, a meeting place ruled by rules which kinship hierarchy is not completely able to control. Three propositions on nesting, capture, and the division of labor are put forward, as well as a research agenda on labour migration, digital mutual aid, and Kyrgyz and Tajik cases are not sufficiently theorised in comparison to the Uzbek mahalla.
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