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Rustamjon Urinboyev

Associate professor

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Is there an Islamic Public Administration Legacy in Post-Soviet Central Asia? An Ethnographic Study of Everyday Mahalla Life in Rural Ferghana, Uzbekistan

Author

  • Rustamjon Urinboyev

Summary, in English

This paper examines the role of mahalla as a “hybrid” institution in the process of revamping public administration in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. It argues that the mahalla system, which is anchored on Islamic principles, has now become an institutionalized feature of Uzbekistan’s public administration (through legislative codification and executive incorporation) and now operates partly on behalf of the state and partly community-driven as a local-level provider of social welfare and, increasingly, as the [state] mechanism of social control. Also this paper aims to illuminate the processes and dynamics of the mahalla system and how it has evolved to respond to the changing political regime in the post-Soviet period, acting as a pseudo local-government entity, given the failure of the existing regime to provide much-needed development in rural Uzbekistan.

Department/s

  • Department of Sociology of Law

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

157-178

Publication/Series

Halduskultuur - Administrative Culture

Volume

15

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Halduskultuur Tallinn University of Technology

Topic

  • Law and Society

Keywords

  • Islamic public administration
  • post-Soviet societies
  • mahalla
  • Uzbekistan
  • Central Asia
  • law and society
  • ethnography of the state
  • Islamic legal culture.

Status

Published

Project

  • Migration and Legal Cultures in Post-Soviet Societies: Ethnographic Study of Uzbek Migrant Workers and Their Families

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1736-6089