STOCKHOLM – Tajikistan. Approaches, fieldworks and topics

A Conference organized by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and The George Washington University’s Central Asia Program (CAP)
Stockholm, June 13-14, 2016

June 13, 2016

9.45-10.00 Welcoming Remarks and Coffee

10.00- 11.00 Panel 1. Tajikistan at the Interplay of Foreign and Domestic Policies

David Abramson (US State Department)
Interwoven Affairs: Foreign and Domestic Politics in Rahmon’s Governing Style

Kirill Nourzhanov (Australian National University)
Tajikistan’s Foreign Policy in 2015 and after: the Pros and Cons of President Rahmon’s multi-vector Diplomacy

11.00-13.00 Panel 2. Tajikistan’s Contested Political Legitimacy

Jessie Driscoll (Stanford University)
Beyond Hobbesian Legitimacy: Thinking A Way Out Of Neopatrimonialism in Tajikistan

John Heathershaw & Alexander Sodiqov (Exeter University and Toronto University)
Rebels without a Cause? Authoritarian Conflict Management as State Formation in Tajikistan

Suzanne Levi Sanchez (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Politics at the Periphery of Tajikistan

Brent Hierman (Virginia Military Institute)
Dushanbe is quite far away: Deconcentrated Agrarian Reform in Rural Tajikistan

13.00-14.00 Lunch 

14.00-15.30 Panel 3. Memory and Identities

Tim Epkenhans (Freiburg University)
Remembering the Civil War in Tajikistan

Sophie Roche (Heidelberg University)
Culture as Fact

Marlene Laruelle (George Washington University)
Tajikistan’s Quest for a National Storytelling. Ambivalences, Blank Spaces, and Discontinuities

June 14, 2016

10.00-12.30 Panel 4. Plural Islams 

Sultonbek Aksakolov (Independent Researcher)
Between State and Religion: Officials and Religious Figures in Soviet Tajikistan

Edward Lemon (Exeter University)
Governing (in)Security: Security Governance and Muslim Migrants in Russia and Tajikistan

Michelle Commercio (University of Vermont)
“A Woman without a Man is a Kazan without a Lid”. Polygyny in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

Shahnoza Nozimova (George Mason University)
Hijab Ban in Tajikistan: Unveiling the Fault Lines

Saodat Olimova (Sharq Analytical Center)
Islam and Migration: the Role of Religion and Religious Institutions in the Life of Tajik Migrants

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.o0 Discussion on publication