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 Globalization
on the Margins
 Globalization
on the Margins
Education and Post-Socialist
Transformations in Central Asia

edited by

Iveta Silova
Arizona State University

Sarfaroz Niyozov
University of Toronto

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
  http://www.loc.gov

ISBN: 978-1-64113-882-6 (Paperback)

978-1-64113-883-3 (Hardcover)
978-1-64113-884-0 (eBook)

Copyright © 2020 Information Age Publishing Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments................................................................................. ix

Introduction: Education and Post-Socialist Transformations

in Central Asia: Exploring Margins and Marginalities...................... xi

PA RT I
COMPLICATING THE MARGINS: INTERNATIONALIZATION
AND HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS

1 Higher Education in the Former Soviet Union:

Recommendations for Reform in 1990—Were They Right?.............. 3
Stephen P. Heyneman

2 Internationalization of Higher Education in Central Asia:

Implications Beyond the Intended...................................................... 15
Martha C. Merrill

3 Accreditation as a Means of Quality Assurance System

in Higher Education in Kazakhstan: Developments
and Challenges..................................................................................... 41
Sulushash Kerimkulova

4 The Development of University Research in Kazakhstan

During 1991–2013: A Bibliometric View............................................. 69
Aliya Kuzhabekova

 v
vi  Contents

5 Higher Education Admissions Regimes in Kazakhstan and

Kyrgyzstan: Difference Makes a Difference........................................ 95
Todd Drummond

6 Developing a Common Admissions System for Institutions

of Higher Education: Contexts and Considerations........................ 125
Nazarkhudo Dastambuev, George Bethell, and Algirdas Zabulionis

7 The Changing Status of Faculty Work and Life in the

Universities of Tajikistan.................................................................... 147
Zumrad Kataeva and Alan J. DeYoung

8 Central Asian Higher Education on the Margins of the

European (Dis)Integration................................................................ 167
Voldemar Tomusk

PA RT I I
RE-ENGAGING THE MARGINS: GLOBALIZATION
AND NEW EDUCATION INEQUITIES

9 Language, Globalization, and Education in Central Asia.............. 191

Stephen A. Bahry

10 Including Children With Disabilities in Tajikistan’s Education

System: Global Ideas, Local Tensions............................................... 207
Kate Lapham

11 Efforts to Overcome Barriers to Girls’ Secondary Schooling

in Rural Tajikistan: The Importance of Experiential Activities..... 229
Kara Janigan

12 Transition From Higher Education to Employment in Central

Asia: Graduate Experiences in Post-Soviet Tajikistan..................... 249
Dilrabo Jonbekova

13 Examining Education Change in Urban Kazakhstan: A Short

Spatial Story........................................................................................ 273
Elise S. Ahn and Juldyz Smagulova

14 Parents’ Perspectives on the Educational Market in Central Asia....293

Christopher Whitsel
 Contents   vii

PA RT I I I
REFORMING FROM THE MARGINS: THE CENTRALITY
OF THE TEACHING PROFESSION

15 Ten-Plus-One Ways of Coping With Teacher Shortage in

Kyrgyzstan: Before and After 2011.................................................... 315
Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Nurbek Teleshaliyev

16 Teaching as a Profession in the Kyrgyz Republic: The Quest

for (Re)Building the Knowledge Base.............................................. 351
Alan J. DeYoung and Rakhat Zholdoshalieva

17 Blaming the Context Not the Culprit: Limitations on Student

Control of Teacher Corruption in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.............. 375
Eric M. Johnson

18 Teachers’ Continuing Commitment in Kyrgyzstan......................... 401

Nurbek Teleshaliyev

PA RT I V
REDEFINING THE MARGINS: INTERNATIONAL AID,
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS, AND LOCAL RESPONSES

19 Researching Internationalization and Educational Reform

in Kazakhstan..................................................................................... 431
David Frost and Assel Kambatyrova

20 Middleman in the Global Education Marketplace: The Role

of South Korea in Uzbekistan’s Education Transformations.......... 455
Byoung-Gyu Gong

21 Moving Between Soviet and Post-Soviet Educations in Tajikistan:

Institute of Professional Development as Response to
Globalization........................................................................................... 475
Sarfaroz Niyozov and Juma Bulbulov

22 Pedagogy and Power in Turkmenistan............................................. 505

Victoria Clement
viii  Contents

PA RT V
CONCLUSION

23 Moving Central Asia From the Soviet Margins to the Global

Center: Educational Implications and Conclusions........................ 527
Sarfaroz Niyozov, Izza Tahir, and Iveta Silova

About the Contributors...................................................................... 555

Index................................................................................................... 565
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The production and publication of the 2nd edition of this book came as a
result of multiple requests for updating the 1st edition to reflect the dynam-
ic development of research and scholarly exchange in the education field,
both internationally and in Central Asia. As a reminder, the 1st edition of
the book emerged as an outcome of a two-day conference, The Challenges of
Education Reform: Central Asia in a Global Context, which was organized by the
Harriman Institute, Columbia University in 2009. Since then, many chang-
es have naturally occurred. While the theoretical purpose of the edited vol-
ume reflects the original goals of the conference and the first edition, this
book is different in many ways. First and foremost, its authorship has signifi-
cantly broadened to include more diverse voices, especially from Central
Asia. Second, the latest edition of the book has broadened the scope of the
book thematically, covering new topics (e.g., inclusive education, gender
equity, language diversity), new geographic areas (e.g., Uzbekistan), and
new methodologies (e.g., spatial analysis). A few of the original chapters
have been significantly updated to reflect the latest developments, while
several new chapters have been added reflecting new research trends. In
addition, the volume’s introduction was revised along these conceptual,
methodological, and representational lines. Notably, this volume also has
a conclusion chapter, which pulls together key insights from the chapters,
connects them to the broader literature on postsocialism and comparative
education, and raises deep questions for new research, policy decisions,
and further engagement with education and society in Central Asia. A key
thread connecting the first and second editions is its collaborative nature,

Globalization on the Margins, pages ix–x

Copyright © 2020 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ix
x  Acknowledgments

reflecting close collaboration between Central Asian scholars and their in-
ternational colleagues in both the production of the chapters and the ex-
ternal reviews. As a result, this new edition represents expanded in size, too.
We are deeply grateful to all the contributors to this book who worked
patiently and enthusiastically across multiple continents to make this pub-
lication a reality. Special thanks go to OISE graduate student Izza Tahir for
helping us finalize this volume and co-authoring its concluding chapter.
Thank you also to graduate students from Lehigh University and Arizona
State University for all the hours invested in editing, organizing, and proof-
ing the manuscript.
 INTRODUCTION

EDUCATION AND
POST-SOCIALIST
TRANSFORMATIONS
IN CENTRAL ASIA
Exploring Margins and Marginalities

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Western academics and
commentators rushed to celebrate the long-awaited victory of liberal de-
mocracy and capitalism on the global scale. Following the logic of the “third
wave” of democratization1 (Huntington, 1993), the expectation was that the
Soviet system would ultimately be replaced by Western political, economic,
and social institutions. The former Soviet Union was thus pronounced “a
new frontier for the propagation of the western way” (MacFarlane, 1999,
p. 1). Indeed, most of the countries in the former socialist bloc appeared to
move towards the projected goals as they revised their constitutions, laws,
and policies to reflect the principles of market economy, democratic plural-
ism, and human rights. In education, policy rhetoric became remarkably
similar across the region, signaling a move from socialist education policies
to more Western-oriented ones. As Birzea (1994) observed, all post-socialist
countries have adopted, at least in official rhetoric, “one or another of the

Globalization on the Margins, pages xi–xxxix

Copyright © 2020 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. xi
xii  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

western ideologies” (p. 55). From the post-socialist countries of Central Eu-
rope to the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, the catchwords of the new
education reforms were “democratization,” “decentralization,” “liberaliza-
tion,” “pluralism,” and “humanization of learning” (Silova, 2009).
Almost three decades later, this triumphalist discourse remains strong
among many observers, although some cracks are beginning to emerge as a
result of the return of national-populist, right-wing neo-conservative move-
ments in the West, of which Brexit and Donald Trump are just a few ex-
amples. This new national-populist rightist challenge is exacerbated by the
revival of new pro-socialist discourses in the West, the rise of China, and Is-
lamist-driven resurgence on a global scale, as well as the “comeback” of Rus-
sia to the post-Soviet landscape. Nevertheless, as Gilbert, Greenberg, Helms,
and Jansen noted in 2008, some policy makers, scholars, and funding agen-
cies have in fact “declared Eastern Europe to be fully ‘transitioned,’ social-
ism dead and gone, and liberal democracy a cure-all for the difficulties of
global economic and political transformations” (p. 10). In particular, some
studies proposed that the accession of the former socialist countries into
the European Union (EU) should be viewed as one of the key indicators
marking the end of post-socialist transitions (Birzea, as quoted in Phillips &
Oancea, 2005). Commenting on the political, economic, and social develop-
ments in Central Asia, some commentators argued that the region was also
“at the end of the transition,” although at an entirely different “end”:

The transition period has come to an end in the sense that the states of Cen-
tral Asia have largely completed the process of systemic transformation. The
social and political structures in the Central Asian countries have acquired
a stable and (in terms of basic characteristics) a broadly similar character.
The countries have also fixed the shape of their basic features. They have es-
tablished regimes, with varying degrees of authoritarianism, behind a formal
quasi (or pseudo) democratic facade. These regimes range from what is a
relatively moderate regime (by regional standards) in Kyrgyzstan to the full-
blown despotism that prevails in Turkmenistan. (Rumer, 2005, p. 3)

While some of the newly independent countries of former Soviet Central

Asia have indeed adopted the rhetoric of democracy and market economy,
the modern triumphalism over the “end of socialism” has been clearly mis-
leading. Unlike most of the countries in Central/Southeast Europe and
the Baltic states, where the discursive debates about “the end of the transi-
tion” have only recently entered the public space (Vedres & Csigo, 2002),2
Central Asian political, economic, and social transformations have led to
distinctly different trajectories. While the Kyrgyz Republic attempted to
rapidly adopt democratic and market reforms, the rest of the Central Asian
republics—Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—have
maintained a certain degree of authoritarianism and state involvement in
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xiii

political, economic, and social life (Karatnycky, 2000; McGlinchey, 2011).

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have in fact settled into repressive autocra-
cies, with little or no space for opposition political groupings and indepen-
dent civic activism (Freedom House, 2005). Yet ruptures are taking place,
as the two countries’ new leadership is breaking up with the very rigid gov-
ernance practices inherited from their predecessors at home and opening
their countries to ideas and relationships with the outside world.
Moreover, while the four Central Asian republics have maintained inter-
nal stability throughout the transition period, Tajikistan has experienced a
civil war (1993–1995), followed by a prolonged period of civil unrest, which
ended with the signing of the peace accords in 1997. Leading to rapid socio-
economic growth and stability, as well as the inflow of foreign investments,
the signing of the peace accords has also been marred by political uncer-
tainties such as the attack on foreign tourists in the South, localized con-
flicts in Gorno-Badakhshan, and a prison riot in the north of the country.
In Kyrgyzstan, the peaceful “tulip revolution” of 2005 turned “blood red” in
the spring of 2010 as demonstrators stormed government buildings in Talas
and across the country’s north in an attempt to overthrow the increasingly
authoritarian regime (Horton, 2010). Following two violent revolutions in
2017, the first peaceful democratic transfer of prudential power took place
in the country later in the same year. The new president hails from southern
Osh region and there is hope that he may bring stability and balance to the
south-north and the inter-ethnic and interclan relationships in Kyrgyzstan.
In the area of education, the record of “transition” has been similarly
mixed. Most governments in Central Asia have adopted features of the
“post-socialist education reform package” (Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008,
p. 1), a set of policy reforms symbolizing the adoption of Western education
values, including such “traveling policies” as student-centered learning, in-
troduction of curriculum standards, decentralization of educational finance
and governance, privatization of higher education, standardization of stu-
dent assessment, and liberalization of textbook publishing, among others.
Additional changes include the internationalization of higher education,
such as aligning university curricula with the Bologna Process and other
international policies and standards, establishing international, or joint uni-
versities and schools, setting up testing centers, sending students to West-
ern universities and receiving those from the region, and accepting West-
ern graduate credentials. In some cases, the post-socialist education reform
package was imposed through the structural adjustment policies introduced
by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other agencies. In
other cases, however, it was voluntarily borrowed or introduced out of fear
of “falling behind” internationally (Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006, p. 189).
While Central Asian education discourses have become increasing-
ly similar to those of the rest of the world, education practices have not
xiv  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

substantially changed (Silova, 2005), leading to the perception that the

more things change, the more they remain the same. “Traveling policies”
have often clashed with the strong desire of education policy makers in
the region to maintain Soviet education legacies and, in some cases, revive
pre-Soviet traditions. While some countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and to
some extent Tajikistan, for example) have experimented with the adoption
of “traveling policies” quite actively, other countries (Uzbekistan and Turk-
menistan) often used the rhetoric of Western education reforms to simul-
taneously transform and reproduce, that is, legitimize the maintenance of
their authoritarian regimes, including ideological indoctrination in schools
and scrupulous control and management of the communities (Dailey &
Silova, 2008; Silova, 2005).
Almost 30 years later, an examination of the complex trajectories of
“traveling policies” in Central Asia still raises more questions than it brings
answers. In particular, why did some countries quickly move towards West-
ern education models, while others went initially backwards, followed en-
tirely new trajectories, or moved back and forth? Why did some elements
of the “old” system remain so surprisingly functional? How have Western
education discourses been hybridized in the encounter with collectivist and
centralist cultures within post-socialist environments? Why did some ele-
ments of the “post-socialist education reform package” create new and un-
anticipated distortions? More importantly, were Western educational poli-
cies and practices borrowed directly or via south-south collaboration, and
did they help improve quality, access and equity, while removing corruption
and nepotism?
This book responds to these and other questions by bringing together
essays that reflect on the continuities and changes in educational develop-
ment in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
authors represent a broad range of individual and collaborative scholar-
ship, reflecting geographic, and institutional diversity. Rather than view-
ing post-Soviet transformations in isolation, the authors place their analy-
ses within the global context by reflecting on how Soviet legacies interact
with global pressures to reform education in the Central Asian countries
of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The
book attempts to go beyond the common story of transnational projects
that arrive in the region to change and influence former socialist countries.
Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas
into the region, the chapters in this book provide new lenses to critically
examine the multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reform models
within the former Soviet countries of Central Asia. The authors critically
and constructively engage both local and international practices, policies,
contexts, and traditions in order to show new possibilities to build upon
and the new challenges to reckon with. By highlighting the political nature
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xv

of the transformation processes and the uniqueness of historical, political,

social, and cultural contexts of each particular country, this book portrays
post-socialist education transformations as complex, multidimensional, un-
certain, and increasingly unpredictable.
The title of this book, Globalization on the Margins, highlights the multiple
connotations and interpretations of the concepts of “margins” and “mar-
ginalities” surrounding the scholarship on post-socialist transformations in
Central Asia. For example, one may immediately picture the region as po-
sitioned on the margins of the world economy and dependent on global fi-
nancial and economic institutions (e.g., the International Monetary Fund,
the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank) to facilitate economic
restructuring. One may also think of the margins of democracy, in which
case the emphasis is on Central Asia’s maintenance of authoritarian po-
litical regime structures. Additionally, one may focus on social margins, in
which case the emphasis is on populations that have been economically,
socially, or politically marginalized—both externally and internally.
Another perspective is the margins of knowledge, especially its focus on
the uncertainty of post-socialist transitions. In the context of globalization,
this is uncertainty in the degree of change projected by competing global
discourses, uncertainty in regional differences in education change, and
unpredictability in education implications of post-socialist transitions. This
perspective from the margins of knowledge is vital as it shows how Central
Asia may differently move into new global margins, from the Soviet to the
late-neoliberal capitalist world order. This perspective also captures issues
related to the colonization of the mind and the transformation of Central
Asia into a market and testing site for the borrowed “best” ideas and prac-
tices in all spheres of human life rather than a context where collaborative
research is supported and relevant and empowering ideas are produced. In
sum, this book will explore these different notions of “margins” and “mar-
ginalities” and will examine where, why, and how they intersect in redefin-
ing Central Asia’s education spaces.

GEOPOLITICS ON THE MARGINS: THE DISPLACED

CENTRALITY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Located at a strategically important intersection between the two conti-

nents, Central Asia has a centuries-old tradition of bridging Europe and
Asia. Yet, despite its geographic and geopolitical centrality, Central Asia has
been consistently displaced from early modern history. In fact, the Cambridge
History of Islam (Holt, Lambton, & Lewis, 1970) largely dismisses the history
of Central Asia between 1400 and 1800, arguing the region was isolated and
therefore “led an existence at the margin of world history” (p. 471). While
xvi  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

many would passionately disagree with such glaring marginalization and

suggest that Central Asia was not entirely marginal and peripheral (Nanji &
Niyozov, 2002; Starr, 2013), the unfortunate narrative is that the region has
historically “fallen through the cracks, created by the segmentation of West-
ern academia” and, as a result, inspired little interest beyond the realm of
specialized Western and modern Russian historians (Erturk, 1999, p. 1). In
fact, Frank (1992) argues that the “centrality of Central Asia” has been not
only overly neglected but also outrightly denied by Eurocentric scholarship.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union brought renewed attention to
the region. Central Asia’s promising oil and natural gas reserves, combined
with its strategic geographic location between the “East” and “West,” put
the region back on the map as a central site of the new “Great Game”
among rival nations for hegemony in the region.3 The situation became fur-
ther complicated by the events of September 11, 2001, after which security
concerns began to overshadow political, economic, and cultural rivalries,
making Central Asia “the epicenter of geopolitical shocks on a global scale”
(Rumer, 2002, p. x). In more simplistic terms, Russia, China, and the West
were trying to pull Central Asia away from the Islamic world, while “its Mus-
lim neighbors were determined to build a greater economic and political
consensus with the Central Asian states” (Rashid, 1994, p. 250). However, a
more nuanced approach reveals much more complex rivalries, stretching
beyond the East/West dichotomy. For example, Sandole (2007) highlights
the multidimensional nature of the “Great Game” which includes not only
the traditional East–West dynamics, but also East–East and West–West rival-
ries. The East–East dimension includes regional power struggles between
Russia and China who have competing interests in energy, yet converge
politically in trying to limit the influence of NATO and the United States
in the region. The West–West dimension highlights the power dynamics
between NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and other allies in-
volved in military and reconstruction activities in neighboring Afghanistan
(Sandole, 2007). Other state “players” include Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and
India, all of which have their own specific interests in Central Asia.
Furthermore, the region hosts a whole range of multilateral and bilater-
al agencies involved in international development in the region, including
the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the United Nations
(UN), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and
the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), among others. In
addition, international private foundations, philanthropies, and develop-
ment agencies (such as the Open Society Foundations, the Aga Khan De-
velopment Network, Save the Children, and CARE) have firmly established
themselves in the region. Finally, the Central Asian states have themselves
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xvii

emerged as active players in world politics, further complicating the power

dynamics in the region.
Not surprisingly then, Central Asia has become a site of “colliding tra-
jectories” (Rumer, 2005, p. 39), with each international agency having its
own “donor logic” or country assistance strategy. More often than not,
what these international organizations fund reflects their own interests
rather than local needs, leading to ongoing controversies, complexities,
and misunderstandings (Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008).4 Of particular
interest is how these «colliding trajectories» play out on the ground, how
the local elites receive, reshape, and represent them to their populations,
and what becomes accepted as a norm for action in charting post-Soviet
education reforms locally. Notably, the local elites are no longer perceived
as naïve receivers of Western wisdom, but are rather viewed as confident
negotiators with sound knowledge of the lenders’ vulnerabilities and hid-
den agendas, as well as of their own geostrategic advantages, and strategies
for managing the locals. In this context, the notion of “controversies” is es-
pecially helpful. Instead of trying to understand which educational “logic”
is most appropriate in Central Asian contexts, the concept of “controver-
sies” allows us to critically examine how knowledge is produced within “an
amalgam of an immense world of institutions, authority relations, stories,
resemblances, memories, and fantasies” (Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004,
p. ix). As Lindblad and Popkewitz (2004) suggest, examining “controver-
sies” allows us to understand “the roles and standards of reasons that or-
der, differentiate, and distinguish the process of [education] restructuring
across different contexts” (p. ix).
Given the presence of virtually all the world’s global actors in the region
and the ongoing controversies among them over the future direction of
post-Soviet education reforms, the issues originally raised in Andre Gunder
Frank’s (1992) Centrality of Central Asia, deserve further examination. In
particular, what does Central Asia’s complex geopolitics reveal about
knowledge production in the context of globalization? What place and role
should Central Asian scholars have in this knowledge production equation?
How can the study of Central Asia assist us in theorizing the world’s shift-
ing geopolitical “margins” and constantly shifting and multiplying “cores”?
And what does Central Asia’s complex geopolitical space tell us about glob-
ally circulating education policies and practices, which order and differen-
tiate post-Soviet education reforms and thus inevitably produce new mean-
ings about what constitutes “good” education and “good” society? In other
words, if we understand how the controversies and contradictions embed-
ded in global imaginaries are being played out on the world’s geopolitical
margins, we should be able to learn more about the global norms as such,
and not just about their Central Asian versions.
xviii  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

GLOBALIZATION ON THE MARGINS:

THE CONSTRUCTION OF “CRISIS” AND “SALVATION”
IN CENTRAL ASIA’S EDUCATION REFORMS

Notwithstanding increasing attempts among academics and policy-makers

to redefine Central Asia’s “centrality,” the region continues to thrive on the
margins of globalization. Located within the narratives of “progress,” “eco-
nomic development,” and “equality” in dominating academic literature
and policy reports, Central Asia is often portrayed as a region constantly
defying global pressures and predictions, and haunted by the legacies of
socialist, Islamic, and other ethno-nationalist traditions, all of which are
viewed as regretful obstacles to the region’s development towards freedom
and prosperity. Central Asia is also presented as a region inevitably falling
behind in a global race towards democracy and market economy, which are
viewed as markers of happy humanity and successful society. From OECD’s
educational achievement rankings to Freedom House’s democratic devel-
opment scores and to Transparency International’s corruption perception
index, most Central Asian countries receive a low score or ranking by these
organizations, making them appear as far too distant from modernity’s
promise of democracy and economic development.
Central Asia’s perpetual location on globalization’s margins is further
intensified by the narratives of “decline,” “danger,” and “crisis,” which cir-
culate widely in the scholarship on political, economic, and social develop-
ment in the region. In fact, Central Asian Survey devoted an entire special
issue of the journal to examining “the discourses of danger,” pointing to
the tendency of “the researchers, the development agencies, the experts”
of Central Asia to socially construct the region as rife with conflict and dan-
ger (Thompson & Heathershaw, 2005, p. 1). While Frank (1999) correctly
points to the historical roots of this rhetoric dating back to the Soviet pe-
riod,5 the social construction of Central Asia’s “crisis” has become espe-
cially pronounced since the breakdown of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
Commenting on post-Soviet scholarship, Erturk (1999) argued that recent
literature is dominated by three main themes, including (a) the danger of
ethnic conflicts within and among the Central Asian states (and their Mid-
dle Eastern neighbors), (b) the rivalry for influence in the region between
secular Turkey and fundamentalist Iran, and (c) the nuclear threat posed
to the West (p. 2). While not all publications on Central Asia are alarmist
and crisis-oriented (e.g., see Starr, 2013; Pomfrett, 2019, for positive view),
a significant number of the edited volumes, books, and reports highlights
different angles and intensities of this impending “crisis.”
The theme of “crisis” has also penetrated the area of education, firmly
dominating all genres of education literature, including policy reports,
education sector reviews, ethnographies, qualitative case-studies, and
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xix

quantitative cross-national comparisons. International academics, experts,

and agencies have insisted almost unanimously that education systems in
the region were approaching a “crisis situation,” highlighting the urgency
of the problem in their panic-stricken reports with titles such as A Gen-
eration at Risk: Children in the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan and Kyr-
gyzstan (Khan, 1998), Youth in Central Asia: Losing the New Generation (In-
ternational Crisis Group, 2003c), and Public Spending on Education in the
CIS-7 Countries: The Hidden Crisis (World Bank, 2003). Since the early 1990s,
education sector reviews rushed to point out the alarming indicators of
crisis, including falling expenditures, declining literacy rates, decreasing
enrollment, rising student dropout, deteriorating capital infrastructure,
outdated textbooks, stagnated curricula, and a lack of qualified teachers
(Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008; Silova, Johnson, & Heyneman, 2007). Many
studies concluded that educational systems had become less equitable and
more corrupt (Hallak & Poisson, 2007; Heyneman, Anderson, & Nurali-
yeva, 2008; Johnson, 2008). Finally, some argued that Central Asia’s public
school systems could soon reach “a tipping point”—a point at which insti-
tutional and professional capacity drain away so that education systems are
no longer capable of regenerating themselves (Heyneman & De Young,
2004; Johnson, 2004).
What the emerging rhetoric of “crisis” suggests is that Central Asia’s
education systems need to be normalized—redefined, recuperated, and
reformed—usually (but not exclusively) against the prevailing Western
models. In a post-Soviet context, policy-makers and funding agencies have
systematically used certain norms as a powerful strategy for both a critique
of existing practices (“this is not normal”) and a legitimization of external
influences (“this will make you normal”). For example, Perry’s (2009) anal-
ysis of scholarly publications examining education change in the former
socialist countries highlights the use of “normalizing” discourses, which
emerge from the construction of conceptual dichotomies between educa-
tion in the “West” and “East.” Based on the analysis of documents written
by American academics involved in education assistance during the post-so-
cialist transformation (i.e., documents published between 1989 and 2001),
Perry (2009) highlights the dichotomies, which portray “the West as toler-
ant, efficient, active, developed, organized, and democratic, and the East as
intolerant, corrupt, passive, underdeveloped, chaotic, and undemocratic”
(Perry, 2009, p. 177). In her analysis of 65 documents dealing with educa-
tion change in Eastern Europe, Perry (2009) concludes that the majority of
texts (89%) discuss education change in post-socialist countries negatively.
For example, these texts project that “the typical teacher in a post-commu-
nist country is traditional, outmoded, unprogressive, authoritarian, unable
or unwilling to change, unprofessional, and ineffective” (p. 179). More spe-
cifically, these studies explain that
xx  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

[post-socialist] teachers focus too much on memorization and facts and not
enough on application, problem-solving, reasoning, analysis, and “critical
thinking”; teachers are too controlling and authoritative, classrooms should
be centered more around the student than the teacher; and teachers are pas-
sive, inflexible, and unable to adapt or take initiative. (p. 178)

By constructing a negative image of education in post-socialist contexts,

Eastern Europe (and by extension Central Asia) is presented as “backward
and inferior,” thus reinforcing the superiority of the West (Perry, 2009,
p. 184). More importantly, alternatives are presented through the famil-
iar narratives of “progress,” “hope,” and “salvation.” When seen from such
deficit perspectives, educational consultants and reformers, even those who
claim to be progressive, do not see hopeful insights and practices at the lo-
cal level, often rebranding “global” practices as local or connect[ing] them
with local traditions to make them legitimate (Niyozov, 2018). As Lindblad
and Popkewitz (2004) note, these modern narratives are meant “to bring
progress to society and redeem the individual” by invoking our “social ob-
ligation to rescue those who have fallen outside the narratives of progress”
(pp. xx–xxi). Further elaborating on the notions of deviance and normal-
ity, Lindblad and Popkewitz (2004) explain how some global reforms be-
come internalized as legitimate through the narratives of “progress”:

Educational attainment and child development become tales about “finding

a better life,” fulfilling one’s own and national destiny, and joining of the
progress and development of the individual with collective hopes and desires
of the nation. Progress is told as change in the curriculum and teaching that
ensures the future of democracy in the new global, informational world. The
mechanisms of inclusion are access to differential integration into labor mar-
kets, inclusive cultural representation in the curriculum, and democracy pro-
moted by decentralizing decisions and improving all children’s achievement
and performance. (p. 71)

In other words, the social construction of Central Asia has been general-
ly built around the unquestioned assumption that development, progress,
and modernity are not only neutral but also universally desired concepts.
Yet, the uniqueness of the Central Asian education case is that it hosts a
wide range of alternatives, which may not necessarily enter Western devel-
opment narratives as viable discourses. At the same time, however, these
alternative discourses affect local configurations of education reforms in
meaningful ways. As most of the chapters in this book illustrate, the mul-
tifaceted nature of the post-Soviet education reform trajectories in Cen-
tral Asia effectively disrupts the linearity of the transition from socialism
to capitalism. When projected onto post-Soviet education spaces, the as-
sumed homogeneity of the world culture is inevitably questioned, offering
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xxi

new opportunities to think about education reforms in more nuanced and

unexpected ways.

CONTESTING MARGINS AND MARGINALITIES

Reflecting on the period of nearly 30 years of post-Soviet transformations,

the essays in this book examine complexities, contradictions, and contro-
versies of Central Asian education reforms in a global context. Collectively,
they aim to highlight the continuities and discontinuities of post-Soviet
education transformations and they do so by using a variety of analytical,
theoretical, and methodological approaches and speaking from a variety
of geographical and institutional contexts. This diversity adds unique value
to understanding the dynamics of globalization and post-Soviet transfor-
mations in education. Rather than observing post-Soviet transformations
from a single epistemological viewpoint, the chapters in this book attempt
to grasp the diversity of post-Soviet education reform processes and the
multiplicity of outcomes emerging from new political, economic, and so-
cial constellations. As Rabikowsa (2009) noted, “generalizing diverse his-
torical and social entanglements in one pot of homogeneous experience
results in a reductionist view of the past and the abstraction of the present”
(p. 166). Thus, a combination of diverse analytical perspectives allows us
to reflect on post-Soviet transformations with a new conceptual openness.
Whether reflecting on higher education reforms or examining the chang-
ing status of the teaching profession in Central Asia, multiple theoretical
perspectives and methodological approaches allow us to challenge the no-
tions of “margins” and “marginalities” embedded in traditional conceptual
dichotomies, while also complicating our understanding of globalization
processes in meaningful ways.
The book is structurally divided into four interconnected thematic parts
that together create an integrated story of the evolving education transfor-
mations in the region. The first part focuses on the internationalization of
higher education reforms in Central Asia, highlighting a dynamic interac-
tion among state and non-state actors and examining competing agendas
advanced by these actors in the Central Asian higher education space. The
second section examines education inequities which have been intensified
in the context of globalization, ranging from linguistic and socioeconomic
inequities to gender and disability-related inequities. The third part of the
book brings together research on the central role of teachers during post-
Soviet education reforms. Finally, the fourth part of the book problema-
tizes international aid and development assistance in Central Asia, focus-
ing on the global/local dynamics and highlighting paradoxes inherent in
xxii  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

post-Soviet education reforms. The rest of this chapter offers brief summa-
ries of each section of the book.

Complicating the Margins: Internationalization

and Higher Education Reforms

The first part of the book brings together essays on higher education,
which collectively examine higher education reforms against the back-
ground of the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape of Central Asia.
While Central Asia’s “centrality” remains an elusive concept, it is important
to explore it in relation to the power dynamics and politics operating at the
national, regional, and global levels. Most of the chapters in this section at-
tempt to do just that by highlighting the multiplicity of state and non-state
actors involved, examining the variety of competing agendas circulating in
the Central Asian higher education space, and discussing the unpredict-
able outcomes emerging from these new educational constellations.
Stephen P. Heyneman begins the discussion with a short commentary
on structural changes in Central Asia’s higher education systems by not-
ing the similarity of post-Soviet education reforms in Central Asia. In par-
ticular, he suggests that at the time of their independence, the structure,
curriculum content, governance, and admissions procedures of higher
education institutions were more or less identical across Central Asia as
well as the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union. While indepen-
dence brought multiple changes, they have been quite similar in nature.
For example, Heyneman observes that there has been a move toward stan-
dardized testing as a criterion for admissions, a restructuring away from
sector ministerial control, a diversification of the provision of education, as
well as a decentralization of governance, salary, and tuition structures. The
chapter engages readers in thinking about the reasons for these apparent
similarities: Is it because globalization is so powerful and the local institu-
tions on the periphery so weak? Is it because of the irresistible pressures
from international financial institutions such as the World Bank? Or are
the requirements for excellence in higher education in a market economy
sufficiently similar to make changes inevitable? Based on his observations
of post-Soviet education reforms, Heyneman supports the latter argument
and suggests that the changes in higher education have been inevitable and
that future changes are predictable. In his view, the Central Asian states
are moving along a predetermined trajectory towards Western standards
in higher education reforms. Heyneman suggests that while trajectory, end
points, and key strategies are all clear (i.e., Western) the process of their
workability depends on the local actors, who should actively participate in
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xxiii

the processes of debating the relevance of the global ideas, and their fine-
tuning implementation in particular contexts.
While Heyneman’s chapter discusses the inevitability and predictability
of post-Soviet transitions, processes, and outcomes, most of the remaining
chapters irrevocably complicate his argument. For example, Martha C. Mer-
rill argues that having similar pasts and facing a similar set of problems do
not necessarily mean that higher education institutions in Central Asia have
pursued the same reforms. In “Internationalization of Higher Education
in Central Asia: Implications Beyond the Intended,” Merrill discusses the
emergence of new actors in higher education institutions across Central
Asia—ranging from the EU’s programs, Confucius Institutes, international
accrediting agencies, the Open Society Foundations and other donors to
students returning from international exchanges—and their influence on
the trajectories of higher education reforms in the Central Asian republics.
She argues that these new actors have significantly diversified the scope of
internationalization within Central Asian universities, influencing institu-
tional norms and structures in multiple ways. They have also diversified—
oftentimes unintentionally—the traditional powers of centralized author-
ity, such as Ministries of Education, thus further contributing to multiple
reform trajectories and diverse governance structures in higher education
institutions across the region.
Zooming in on university research in Kazakhstan, Sulushash Kerimku-
lova illustrates the shifting powers of higher education authority. In her
article “Accreditation as a Means of Quality Assurance System in Higher
Education in Kazakhstan: Developments and Challenges,” Kerimkulova ex-
plores the policies and developments in the accreditation journey of higher
education in Kazakhstan with a specific focus on the establishment of a
national model of accreditation as a means of assuring quality of higher
education, its impact on educational improvements in higher education,
and the challenges that it generates for the higher education institutions.
In particular, Kerimkulova’s study documents the evolution of the accredi-
tation infrastructure in Kazakhstan, reflecting its progressive movement
from being completely controlled by the government to one dominated
by independent accrediting agencies. Echoing Merrill’s findings, she il-
lustrates how the processes of developing the quality assurance system in
higher education have been strongly influenced by policies and develop-
ments at the EU level, while at the same time being driven by the “best
practices” borrowed from North American and Asian institutions and in-
formed by Kazakhstan’s own experience. In other words, the development
of Kazakhstan’s higher education quality assurance system has not neces-
sarily followed one (Western) blueprint, but was rather developed out of
an amalgam of diverse global, regional, and local practices. Yet, while a
few positive impacts of the accreditation system on Kazakhstan’s higher
xxiv  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

education institutions have been documented, practically nothing is known

about whether the new accreditation infrastructure has led to excellence
in education and improvements in quality, including curriculum content,
teaching activities, and students’ learning outcomes.
Continuing the discussion of the complex nature of higher education
reforms in Kazakhstan, Aliya Kuzhabekova focuses on the effects of So-
viet institutional legacies on post-Soviet aspirations to join the Western
higher education space. In her chapter “The Development of University
Research in Kazakhstan during 1991–2013: A Bibliometric View,” Kuzha-
bekova argues that despite efforts to “modernize” and “Westernize” its
national research and innovation system, which has been reflected in a
deliberate policy shift from a post-Soviet to a Western European and Amer-
ican sphere of influence, Kazakhstan’s higher education infrastructure re-
mains heavily dependent on Soviet legacies. Similar to the Soviet period,
research activity in post-Soviet Kazakhstan remains primarily concentrated
in the former and new capital cities, Almaty and Astana, and the industrial
centers; the most productive research institutions are those which have
inherited a history and capacity for research from the Soviet period; the
largest number of publications is produced in the fields of physics, chemis-
try, mathematics, and related fields, all of which were well-supported in the
Soviet era; and, the impact of the research output remains concentrated
on the area of influence of the former Soviet Union, with the majority of
research being published in Russian journals. Overall, this study concludes
that Kazakhstan remains largely isolated from the international research
community, despite its intensive efforts to internationalize during the last
three decades, and that this isolation is primarily caused by the persistence
of Soviet institutional legacies both in Kazakhstan and the broader post-
Soviet education space.
While an understanding of the increasingly complex power dynamics is
key, the role of local politics in reform implementation is equally impor-
tant. In “Higher Education Admissions Regimes in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz-
stan: Difference Makes a Difference,” Todd Drummond attempts to disen-
tangle the motives of different competing parties and local politics involved
in higher education admissions reforms in order to understand the actual
impact of these reforms on educational systems and the individuals who
constitute them. He argues that the ultimate question is not whether testing
has been introduced but whether or not it has served its purpose in pro-
moting fairness. While these reforms appear to align the new regimes with
norms in university admissions in many western countries, in practice they
appear to adhere loosely (and primarily rhetorically) to any international
norms. By examining such localized issues as language politics, corruption,
and institutional ownership, Drummond argues that the new admissions re-
gimes in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan differ both from each other and from
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xxv

Western countries in significant ways. Furthermore, he suggests that the

sustainability of the newly introduced reforms remains uncertain and will
be determined by local politics and power struggles.
This theme is further detailed by Nazarkhudo Dastambuev, George
Bethell, and Algirdas Zabulionis in their chapter “Developing a Common
Admissions System for Institutions of Higher Education: Contexts and
Considerations.” The chapter discusses how the global practices of stan-
dardized exams and common admission systems (CAS) have taken differ-
ent shapes and forms in the various post-Soviet countries and how these
variations are affected by local priorities, politics, and cultural contexts.
The authors look at the various models of CAS in Georgia, Lithuania, Rus-
sia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, suggesting general principles for
Tajikistan to take into consideration as it designs and implements its own
common admissions system. The authors contend that the common rea-
sons behind the adoption of these systems and unified examinations can
be grouped according to the requirements of the key groups of stakehold-
ers: society at large, students (and their supporters), and the institutions
of higher education. The old, Soviet-era systems of admission selection
were under the purview of individual institutions of higher education and
were believed to be particularly prone to corruption, especially by virtue of
being complex and opaque in nature. A common system under a publicly
accountable centralised authority, on the other hand, should be able to
ensure transparency, accountability, as well as avenues for appeals against
the procedures and decisions of the system. It should be able to minimize
the potential for corruption by maintaining integrity and fairness of as-
sessments. The authors argue that centralized systems are thus able to bet-
ter uphold the rights of students. Yet, the introduction of new centralized
models of higher education examination and admission systems are also
highly contested as those in power may attempt to influence the develop-
ment of these centers in a particular direction, while higher education
institutions themselves may be resisting the reforms. Tajikistan’s recent
adoption of this global “best practice” will be a test case of the viability of
the reform beyond its rhetoric and initial euphoria.
Undoubtedly, all of these reform dynamics have serious implications
for professional lives and personal well-being of higher education faculty.
In “The Changing Status of Faculty Work and Life in the Universities of
Tajikistan,” Zumrad Kataeva and Alan J. DeYoung draw on in-depth inter-
views with 23 faculty members in four universities in Dushanbe to reflect
on changes in the lives of higher education faculty from the Soviet to the
post-Soviet eras. They reveal that amidst the ambitious higher education
reforms, the working conditions and job satisfaction in the academic pro-
fession has significantly declined since the early 1990s. While education
was highly valued during the Soviet era for its moral as well as political uses
xxvi  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

and was funded accordingly, in the post-Soviet era the sector has seen a
significant decrease in government funding. Expected to actively partici-
pate in higher education reforms, faculty members are inadequately com-
pensated and struggle to make ends meet as the higher education sector
as a whole suffers from inadequate financial, infrastructural, and human
resources. Furthermore, higher education faculty face challenges related
to state control over curricula and assessment processes, have little or no
opportunities for professional development, and lack opportunities to ac-
cess supranational professional associations. At times, they have to take on
additional employment to supplement their incomes, leading to a frac-
tured professional identity and career trajectory. Needless to say, the de-
clining status of university faculty members irrevocably complicates higher
education reform trajectories in Tajikistan and perhaps Central Asia more
broadly, affecting not only occupational choices of individual faculty mem-
bers but also possible development options of the entire higher education
sector in the future (for further discussion about the effects of post-Soviet
transformations on university faculty in Central Asia see CohenMiller &
Kuzhabekova, 2018).
Finally, the last chapter in this section zooms out to bring back the dis-
cussion of Central Asian higher education into the broader European geo-
political space. In “Central Asian Higher Education in the Margins of the
European (Dis)Integration,” Voldemar Tomusk examines the implications
of the Bologna Process—EU project aimed at the integration of higher edu-
cation structures across the European education space—for both Central
Asian republics and the EU itself. He argues that political disagreements,
legal needs, and various competing interests among the EU member states
and beyond, have resulted in the loss of the Bologna Process’ reforming
power and thereby its integrating capacities. Tomusk notes that Kazakhstan’s
accession to the Bologna Process in 2010 has not only failed to make any
significant contributions to solving the problems of country’s higher educa-
tion, but also signaled to other Central Asian states that all that is required to
bring higher education to the level of European standards is skillful politics
and lots of connections. From this perspective, Kazakhstan’s accession to
the Bologna Process demonstrated the internal weaknesses of the EU inte-
gration process itself, while further contributing to its demise. While trying
to reposition themselves from the margins to the center of the European
education space, Central Asian higher education institutions instead found
themselves in the middle of a disintegrating European education space.
What is fascinating about Central Asia is that it embodies a multiplicity
of actors and institutions involved in redefining Central Asia’s geopolitical
space. And it encompasses the multidirectional flow of ideas and imagi-
naries about the future world order. Moreover, it questions the legitimacy
of the traditional East/West divide by suggesting that we may in fact be
 Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia  xxvii

witnessing the emergence of a new multi-polar (Grevi, 2009) or, according

to some authors, non-polar, world (Haas, 2008). In particular, Grevi (2009)
suggests that the world is becoming increasingly “multi-polar” as a result
of the post-Cold War processes, which have entailed a shift from Western
cultural, political, and economic predominance towards a more diverse
and heterogeneous international “cacophony” wherein “emerging and re-
emerging players not only assert their individual interests but also promote
their distinctive worldviews” (p. 7). While these processes are clearly unpre-
dictable and uncertain by their very nature, it is precisely this uncertainty
that deserves further examination.

Re-Engaging the Margins: Globalization

and New Education Inequities

The second part of the volume brings to readers’ attention the various
manifestations of the marginality and inequity within Central Asia, or what
one might metaphorically call the “marginalities in the global margins.” No-
tably, the chapters in this section also illustrate that global traveling policies
might be helping with both better articulation and sustainable resolution
of some equity issues, especially when many of these issues have been disre-
garded by the neoliberal discourses of meritocracy, resilience, and choice, or
by religious and cultural discourses of predestination, luck, and fate. The au-
thors problematize these discourses and assumptions, suggesting that equi-
ty-inequity occurrences are sociocultural structural and systemic constructs,
and are defined and worked through power, politics, and interests. They
should be acknowledged, debated, and addressed in policy and practice.
Stephen Bahry’s chapter “Language, Globalization, and Education in
Central Asia” looks at how specific languages are diffused in post-Soviet Cen-
tral Asia by means of societal multilingualism and personal plurilingualism,
which are prerequisites for cross-border interchange between people and,
therefore, global change. Taking a “skeptical” approach towards globaliza-
tion, Bahry argues that globalization research, especially in post-Soviet Cen-
tral Asia, has largely focused on debates about language policy and has ne-
glected to problematize the role language plays in the process. Not only can
individual languages be diffused by globalizing forces but language capaci-
ties may also be globalized through the diffusion of bilingualism or multi-
lingualism. Multilingualism and plurilingualism are not obstacles, but assets
to making globalization work better for all. Bahry maps out different in-
ternational influences on language policy development, including Western
actors (e.g., Germany, France, Canada, the United States, and the United
Kingdom), regional influences (e.g., Turkey, Iran, South Korea, China, and
Russia), as well as international agencies (e.g., UN, OSCE, and others). Yet,
xxviii  Education and Post-Socialist Transformations in Central Asia

many policy innovations may privilege certain languages according to the

perceived value of investment in those languages. Thus, the chapter raises
a larger question with regard to the fate of the national minority languages
in the context of competing discourses of indigenisation and globalization.
Despite changing language policies and proclamations, the minority and
small languages and their carriers find themselves increasingly marginalized
and disenfranchised in the neoconservative and neoliberal Central Asia.
It is not only the minority language speakers who are feeling the heat.
Kate Lapham’s chapter “Including Children with Disabilities in Tajikistan’s
Education System: Global Ideas, Local Tensions” critically discusses the cas-
es of, and solutions to, the issue of children with disabilities in Tajikistan.
Lapham’s robust examination of the tensions that arise between the increas-
ing foregrounding of Western-defined “inclusivity” in global education dis-
courses, on the one hand, and a local, Tajik understanding of the concept,
on the other, is simply fascinating. Through the use of two vignettes, she
suggests that in order to make Tajik education more inclusive, the reformers
must adopt creative ways of working with, and within, the constraints and
realities of the local context. These vignettes illustrate how civil society orga-
nizations have successfully navigated the Tajik legal and policy architecture
governing inclusive education and surmounted two of the biggest barriers
to inclusive education: the lack of financial resources and teachers’ lack of
confidence and training in working with children with disabilities.
Kara Janigan examines girls’ secondary education in Tajikistan in her
ethnography-based chapter “Efforts to Overcome Barriers to Girls’ Sec-
ondary Schooling in Rural Tajikistan: The Importance of Experiential Ac-
tivities.” She looks at the UNICEF-funded Girls Education Project (GEP)
implemented from 2006 to 2008. The research was conducted in six rural
schools, three of which implemented the GEP and the other three did not.
Janigan develops a complex theoretical framework by drawing concepts
from Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory, “empowerment” theories, and
theories of education for girls’ and women’s empowerment within the field
of international development, which prove successful, but raise questions
about whether the application of a Western theoretical framework in a Ta-
jik context was sufficient for a deeper understanding and resolution of the
girls’ education challenge.
Marginalization affects not only girls, but also youth more broadly. Dil-
rabo Jonbekova’s “Transition from Higher Education to Employment in
Central Asia: Graduate Experiences in Post-Soviet Tajikistan” details the
experiences of disenfranchisement of the post-Soviet Tajikistan’s university
graduates as they navigate their transition from university to employment.
The author argues that this transition has become more difficult for students
in the post-Soviet era due to continuing challenges in the education system,
a struggling and stagnant economy, poor labor market opportunities, a lack
Another random document with
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fruitless search, they go away back to their dead bodies lying, it may
be, among the blackened ruins of their desolated home. Then the
victors come forth, and taking up the weapons from their hiding-
places, wash them clean of blood and bring them back to the
village.125.1 But “as more or less of the soul-stuff of their slain foes
always sticks to the victors, none of their people may touch them
after their return to the village. They are strictly shunned by their
friends for several days. People go shyly out of their way. If any one
in the village gets a pain in his stomach, it is assumed that he has
sat down on the place of one of the warriors. If somebody complains
of toothache, he must have eaten a fruit which had been touched by
one of the combatants. All the leavings of the men’s food must be
most carefully put out of the way, lest a pig should get at them, for
that would be the death of the animal. Therefore the remains of their
meals are burnt or buried. The warriors themselves cannot suffer
much from the soul-stuff of the foes, because they treat themselves
with the disinfecting sap of a creeper. But even so they are not
secure against all the dangers that threaten them from this
quarter.”125.2
Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela
Customs observed River, in British New Guinea, “a man who has
by manslayers in
British New Guinea. taken life is considered to be impure until he has
undergone certain ceremonies: as soon as
possible after the deed he cleanses himself and his weapon. This
satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village and seats
himself on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or
takes any notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which
is put in charge of two or three small boys as servants. He may eat
only toasted bananas, and only the centre portion of them—the ends
being thrown away. On the third day of his seclusion a small feast is
prepared by his friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands
for him. This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his
best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully
armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt is organised,
and a kangaroo selected from the game captured. It is cut open and
the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of the man. He then walks
solemnly down to the nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it
washes himself. All young untried warriors swim between his legs.
This is supposed to impart his courage and strength to them. The
following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed,
and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having satisfied himself that
he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to
his house. The beating of flooring boards and the lighting of fires is
also a certain method of scaring the ghost. A day later his
purification is finished. He can then enter his wife’s house.”126.1 In
this last case the true nature of such so-called purifications is clearly
manifest: they are in fact rites of exorcism observed for the purpose
of banning a dangerous spirit.
Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America a
Customs observed murderer whose life was spared by the kinsmen of
by murderers
among the Omaha his victim had to observe certain stringent rules for
Indians. a period which varied from two to four years. He
must walk barefoot, and he might eat no warm
food, nor raise his voice, nor look around. He had to pull his robe
around him and to keep it tied at the neck, even in warm weather; he
might not let it hang loose or fly open. He might not move his hands
about, but had to keep them close to his body. He might not comb
his hair, nor might it be blown about by the wind. No one would eat
with him, and only one of his kindred was allowed to remain with him
in his tent. When the tribe went hunting, he was obliged to pitch his
tent about a quarter of a mile from the rest of the people, “lest the
ghost of his victim should raise a high wind which might cause
damage.”126.2 The reason here alleged for banishing the murderer
from the camp of the hunters gives the clue to all the other
restrictions laid on him: he was haunted by the ghost and therefore
dangerous; hence people kept aloof from him, just as they are said
to have done from the ghost-ridden Orestes.
Among the Chinook Indians of Oregon and Washington, “when a
person has been killed, an old man who has a guardian spirit is
asked to work over the murderer. The old man
Ceremonies takes coal and mixes it with grease. He puts it on
observed by
homicides among to the face of the murderer. He gives him a head
the Chinook ring of cedar bark. Cedar bark is also tied around
Indians. his ankles and knees and around his wrists. For
five days he does not drink water. He does not sleep, and does not
lie down. He always stands. At night he walks about and whistles on
bone whistles. He always says ‘ä ä ä.’ For five days he does not
wash his face. Then on the next morning the old man washes his
face. He takes off that coal. He removes the black paint from his
face. He puts red paint on his face. A little coal is mixed with the red
paint. The old man puts this again on to his face. Sometimes this is
done by an old man, sometimes by an old woman. The cedar bark
which was tied to his legs and arms is taken off and buckskin straps
are tied around his arms and his legs. Now, after five days he is
given water. He is given a bucket, out of which he drinks. Now food
is roasted for him, until it is burned. When it is burned black it is
given to him. He eats standing. He takes five mouthsful, and no
more. After thirty days he is painted with new red paint. Good red
paint is taken. Now he carries his head ring and his bucket to a
spruce tree and hangs it on top of the tree. Then the tree will dry up.
People never eat in company of a murderer. He never eats sitting,
but always standing. When he sits down to rest he kneels on one
leg. The murderer never looks at a child and must not see people
while they are eating.”127.1 All these measures are probably intended
to rid the murderer of the clinging ghost of his victim, and to keep
him in quarantine till the riddance has been effected.
While the spirit of a murdered man is thus
Ghosts of slain feared by everybody, it is natural that it should be
kinsfolk, fellow-
townsmen, and specially dreaded by those against whom for any
fellow-clansfolk reason he may be conceived to bear a grudge. For
especially dreaded. example, among the Yabim of German New
Guinea, when the relations of a murdered man
have accepted a bloodwit instead of avenging his death, they must
allow the family of the victim to mark them with chalk on the brow.
Were this not done, the ghost of their dead kinsman might come and
trouble them for not doing their duty by him; he might drive away
their pigs or loosen their teeth.128.1 The ghosts of murdered kinsfolk
and neighbours are naturally more formidable than those of
foreigners and strangers; for their wrath is hotter and they have more
opportunities of wreaking their anger on the hard-hearted friends
who either did them to death with their own hands or left their blood
unavenged. Indeed some people only fear the wraiths of such
persons, and regard with indifference all other ghosts, let them mow
and gibber as much as they like. Thus among the Boloki of the
Upper Congo “a homicide is not afraid of the spirit of the man he has
killed when the slain man belongs to any of the neighbouring towns,
as disembodied spirits travel in a very limited area only; but when he
kills a man belonging to his own town he is filled with fear lest the
spirit shall do him some harm. There are no special rites that he can
observe to free himself from these fears, but he mourns for the slain
man as though he were a member of his own family. He neglects his
personal appearance, shaves his head, fasts for a certain period,
and laments with much weeping.”128.2 Again, a Kikuyu man does not
incur ceremonial pollution (thahu) by the slaughter of a man of
another tribe, nor even of his own tribe, provided his victim belongs
to another clan; but if the slain man is a member of the same clan as
his slayer, the case is grave indeed. However, it is possible by
means of a ceremony to bind over the ghost to keep the peace. For
this purpose the murderer and the oldest surviving brother of his
victim are seated facing each other on two trunks of banana trees;
here they are solemnly fed by two elders with vegetable food of all
kinds, which has been provided for the purpose by their mothers and
sprinkled with the contents of the stomach of a sacrificed sheep.
Next day the elders proceed to the sacred fig-tree (mugumo), which
plays a great part in the religious rites of the Akikuyu. There they
sacrifice a pig and deposit some of the fat, the intestines, and the
more important bones at the foot of the tree, while they themselves
feast on the more palatable parts of the animal. They think that the
ghost of the murdered man will visit the tree that very night in the
outward shape of a wild cat and consume the meat, and that this
offering will prevent him from returning to the village and troubling
the inhabitants.129.1
The Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central
Ghosts of the slain Celebes are greatly concerned about the souls of
dreaded by the
Toradjas of Central men who have been slain in battle. They appear to
Celebes. think that men who have been killed in war instead
of dying by disease have not exhausted their vital
energy and that therefore their departed spirits are more powerful
than the common ruck of ghosts; and as on account of the unnatural
manner of their death they cannot be admitted into the land of souls
they continue to prowl about the earth, furious with the foes who
have cut them off untimely in the prime of manhood, and demanding
of their friends that they shall wage war on the enemy and send forth
an expedition every year to kill some of them. If the survivors pay no
heed to this demand of the bloodthirsty ghosts, they themselves are
exposed to the vengeance of these angry spirits, who pay out their
undutiful friends and relatives by visiting them with sickness and
death. Hence with the Toradjas war is a sacred duty in which every
member of the community is bound to bear a part; even women and
children, who cannot wage real war, must wage mimic warfare at
home by hacking with bamboo swords at an old skull of the enemy,
while with their shrill voices they utter the war-whoop.129.2 Thus
among these people, as among many more tribes of savages, a
belief in the immortality of the soul has been one of the most fruitful
causes of bloodshed by keeping up a perpetual state of war between
neighbouring communities, who dare not make peace with each
other for fear of mortally offending the spirits of the dead.130.1
But, whether friends or foes, the ghosts of all
Ghosts of all who who have died a violent death are in a sense a
have died violent
deaths are public danger; for their temper is naturally soured
dangerous. How the and they are apt to fall foul of the first person they
Karens propitiate meet without nicely discriminating between the
such ghosts.
innocent and the guilty. The Karens of Burma, for
example, think that the spirits of all such persons go neither to the
upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world of woe, but linger on
earth and wander about invisible. They make men sick to death by
stealing their souls. Accordingly these vampire-like beings are
exceedingly dreaded by the people, who seek to appease their
anger and repel their cruel assaults by propitiatory offerings and the
most earnest prayers and supplications.130.2 They put red, yellow,
and white rice in a basket and leave it in the forest, saying: “Ghosts
of such as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of
hunger or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger’s tooth or the
serpent’s fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of such as died
of small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, O ill-treat us not,
seize not upon our persons, do us no harm. O stay here in this
wood. We will bring hither red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for
your subsistence.”130.3
However, it is not always by fair words and
The angry ghosts of propitiatory offerings that the community attempts
the slain are
sometimes forcibly to rid itself of these invisible but dangerous
driven away with intruders. People sometimes resort to more
noise and clamour. forcible measures. “Once,” says a traveller among
the Indians of North America, “on approaching in
the night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion:
they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and
most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been
lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the
object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed
combatants from entering the village.”131.1 Again, after the North
American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to death, they
used to run through the village, beating the walls, the furniture, and
the roofs of the huts with sticks and yelling at the pitch of their voices
to drive away the angry ghost of the victim, lest he should seek to
avenge the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated body.131.2
Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, when
a murder has been committed in the village, the inhabitants
assemble for several evenings successively and shriek and shout to
frighten away the ghost, in case he should attempt to come
back.131.3 The Yabim, a tribe in German New Guinea, believe that
“the dead can both help and harm, but the fear of their harmful
influence is predominant. Especially the people are of opinion that
the ghost of a slain man haunts his murderer and brings misfortune
on him. Hence it is necessary to drive away the ghost with shrieks
and the beating of drums. The model of a canoe laden with taro and
tobacco is got ready to facilitate his departure.”131.4 So when the
Bukaua of German New Guinea have won a victory over their foes
and have returned home, they kindle a fire in the middle of the
village and hurl blazing brands in the direction of the battle-field,
while at the same time they make an ear-splitting din, to keep at bay
the angry spirits of the slain.131.5 When the cannibal Melanesians of
the Bismarck Archipelago have eaten a human body, they shout,
blow horns, shake spears, and beat the bushes for the purpose of
driving away the ghost of the man or woman whose flesh has just
furnished the banquet.131.6 The Fijians used to bury the sick and
aged alive, and having done so they always made a great uproar
with bamboos, shell-trumpets, and so forth in order to scare away
the spirits of the buried people and prevent them from returning to
their homes; and by way of removing any temptation to hover about
their former abodes they dismantled the houses of the dead and
hung them with everything that in their eyes seemed most
repulsive.132.1 Among the Angoni, a Zulu tribe settled to the north of
the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear
their bodies and faces with ashes, and hang garments of their
victims on their persons. This costume they wear for three days after
their return, and rising at break of day they run through the village
uttering frightful yells to banish the ghosts of the slain, which
otherwise might bring sickness and misfortune on the people.132.2
In Travancore the spirits of men who have died
Precautions taken a violent death by drowning, hanging, or other
against the ghosts
of executed means are supposed to become demons,
criminals and other wandering about to inflict injury in various ways
dangerous persons. upon mankind. Especially the ghosts of murderers
who have been hanged are believed to haunt the
place of execution and its neighbourhood. To prevent this it used to
be customary to cut off the criminal’s heels with a sword or to
hamstring him as he was turned off.132.3 The intention of thus
mutilating the body was no doubt to prevent the ghost from walking.
How could he walk if he were hamstrung or had no heels? With
precisely the same intention it has been customary with some
peoples to maim in various ways the dead bodies not only of
executed criminals but of other persons; for all ghosts are more or
less dreaded. When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of Bering
Strait used in the old days to cut the sinews of his arms and legs “in
order to prevent the shade from returning to the body and causing it
to walk at night as a ghoul.”132.4 The Omaha Indians said that when
a man was killed by lightning he should be buried face downwards,
and that the soles of his feet should be slit; for if this were not done,
his ghost would walk.133.1 The Herero of South Africa think that the
ghosts of bad people appear and are just as mischievous as in life;
for they rob, steal, and seduce women and girls, sometimes getting
them with child. To prevent the dead from playing these pranks the
Herero used to cut through the backbone of the corpse, tie it up in a
bunch, and sew it into an ox-hide.133.2 A simple way of disabling a
dangerous ghost is to dig up his body and decapitate it. This is done
by West African negroes and also by the Armenians; to make
assurance doubly sure the Armenians not only cut off the head but
smash it or stick a needle into it or into the dead man’s heart.133.3
The Hindoos of the Punjaub believe that if a
Precautions taken mother dies within thirteen days of her delivery,
in India against the
ghosts of women she will return in the guise of a malignant spirit to
who die in torment her husband and family. To prevent this
pregnancy, some people drive nails through her head and
childbed, or soon
after it. eyes, while others also knock nails on either side
of the door of the house.133.4 A gentler way of
attaining the same end is to put a nail or a piece of iron in the clothes
of the poor dead mother,133.5 or to knock nails into the earth round
the places where she died, and where her dead body was washed
and cremated. Some people put pepper in the eyes of the corpse to
prevent the ghost from seeing her way back to the house.133.6 In
Bilaspore, if a mother dies leaving very young children, they tie her
hands and feet before burial to prevent her from getting up by night
and going to see her orphaned little ones.134.1 The Oraons of Bengal
are firmly convinced that any woman who dies in pregnancy or
childbirth becomes an evil and dangerous spirit (bhut), who, if steps
are not taken to keep her off, will come back and tickle to death
those whom she loved best in life. “To prevent her, therefore, from
coming back, they carry her body as far away as they can, but no
woman will accompany her to her last resting-place lest similar
misfortune should happen to her. Arrived at the burial-place, they
break the feet above the ankle, twist them round, bringing the heels
in front, and then drive long thorns into them. They bury her very
deep with her face downwards, and with her they bury the bones of a
donkey, and pronounce the anathema, ‘If you come home may you
turn into a donkey’; the roots of a palm-tree are also buried with her;
and they say, ‘May you come home only when the leaves of the
palm-tree wither,’ and when they retire they spread mustard seeds
all along the road saying, ‘When you try to come home pick up all
these.’ They then feel pretty safe at home from her nocturnal visits,
but woe to the man who passes at night near the place where she
has been buried. She will pounce upon him, twist his neck, and leave
him senseless on the ground, until brought to by the incantations of a
sorcerer.”134.2 Among the Lushais of Assam, when a woman died in
childbed, the relatives offer a sacrifice to her departed soul, “but the
rest of that village treat the day as a holiday and put a small green
branch on the wall of each house on the outside near the doorpost to
keep out the spirit of the dead woman.”134.3
Among the Shans of Burma, when a woman
Precautions taken dies with an unborn child, it is believed that her
in Burma against
the ghosts of spirit turns into a malignant ghost, “who may return
women who die in to haunt her husband’s home and torment him,
pregnancy or unless precautions are taken to keep her away. To
childbed.
begin with, her unborn child is removed by an
operation; then mother and child are wrapped in separate mats and
buried without coffins. If this be not done, the same misfortune may
occur again to the woman, in her future life, and the widower will
suffer from the attacks of the ghost. When the bodies are being
removed from the house, part of the mat wall in the side of the house
is taken down, and the dead woman and her baby are lowered to the
ground through the aperture. The hole through which the bodies
have passed is immediately filled with new mats, so that the ghost
may not know how to return.”135.1 The Kachins of Burma are so
afraid of the ghosts of women dying in childbed that no sooner has
such a death taken place than the husband, the children, and almost
all the people in the house take to flight lest the ghost should bite
them. They bandage the eyes of the dead woman with her own hair
to prevent her from seeing anything; they wrap the corpse in a mat
and carry it out of the house not by the ordinary door, but by an
opening made for the purpose either in the wall or in the floor of the
room where she breathed her last. Then they convey the body to a
deep ravine where foot of man seldom penetrates, and there, having
heaped her clothes, her jewellery, and all her belongings over her,
they set fire to the pile and reduce the whole to ashes. “Thus they
destroy all the property of the unfortunate woman in order that her
soul may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and to bite the
people in the attempt.” When this has been done, the officiating
priest scatters some burnt grain of a climbing plant (shămien),
inserts in the earth the pestle which the dead woman used to husk
the rice, and winds up the exorcism by cursing and railing at her
ghost, saying: “Wait to come back to us till this grain sprouts and this
pestle blossoms, till the fern bears fruit, and the cocks lay eggs.” The
house in which the woman died is generally pulled down, and the
timber may only be used as firewood or to build small hovels in the
fields. Till a new house can be built for them, the widower and the
orphans receive the hospitality of their nearest relatives, a father or a
brother; their other friends would not dare to receive them from fear
of the ghost. Occasionally the dead mother’s jewels are spared from
the fire and given away to some poor old crones, who do not trouble
their heads about ghosts. If the medicine-man who attended the
woman in life and officiated at the funeral is old, he may consent to
accept the jewels as the fee for his services; but in that case no
sooner has he got home than he puts the jewels in the henhouse. If
the hens remain quiet, it is a good omen and he can keep the
trinkets with an easy mind; but if the fowl flutter and cackle, it is a
sign that the ghost is sticking to the jewels, and in a fright he restores
them to the family. The old man or old woman into whose hands the
trinkets of the dead woman thus sometimes fall cannot dispose of
them to other members of the tribe; for nobody who knows where the
things come from would be so rash as to buy them. However, they
may find purchasers among the Shans or the Chinese, who do not
fear Kachin ghosts.136.1
The ghosts of women who die in childbed are
Precautions taken much dreaded in the Indian Archipelago; it is
in the Indian
Archipelago against supposed that they appear in the form of birds with
the ghosts of long claws and are exceedingly dangerous to their
women who die in husbands and also to pregnant women. A
childbed.
common way of guarding against them is to put an
egg under each armpit of the corpse, to press the arms close against
the body, and to stick needles in the palms of the hands. The people
believe that the ghost of the dead woman will be unable to fly and
attack people; for she will not spread out her arms for fear of letting
the eggs fall, and she will not clutch anybody for fear of driving the
needles deeper into her palms. Sometimes by way of additional
precaution another egg is placed under her chin, thorns are thrust
into the joints of her fingers and toes, her mouth is stopped with
ashes, and her hands, feet, and hair are nailed to the coffin.136.2
Some Sea Dyaks of Borneo sow the ground near
Attempts to lame cemeteries with bits of sticks to imitate caltrops, in
and otherwise
disable ghosts. order that the feet of any ghosts who walk over
them may be lamed.137.1 The Besisi of the Malay
Peninsula bury their dead in the ground and let fall knives on the
grave to prevent the ghost from getting up out of it.137.2 The
Tunguses of Turukhansk on the contrary put their dead up in trees,
and then lop off all the branches to prevent the ghost from
scrambling down and giving them chase.137.3 The Herbert River
natives in Queensland used to cut holes in the stomach, shoulders,
and lungs of their dead and fill the holes with stones, in order that,
weighed down with this ballast, the ghost might not stray far afield; to
limit his range still further they commonly broke his legs.137.4 Other
Australian blacks put hot coals in the ears of their departed brother;
this keeps the ghost in the body for a time, and allows the relations
to get a good start away from him. Also they bark the trees in a circle
round the spot, so that when the ghost does get out and makes after
them, he wanders round and round in a circle, always returning to
the place from which he started.137.5 The ancient Hindoos put fetters
on the feet of their dead that they might not return to the land of the
living.137.6 The Tinneh Indians of Alaska grease the hands of a
corpse, so that when his ghost grabs at people’s souls to carry them
off with him they slip through his greasy fingers and escape.138.1
Some peoples bar the road from the grave to
The way home prevent the ghost from following them. The
barricaded against
ghosts. Tunguses make the barrier of snow or trees.138.2
Amongst the Mangars, one of the fighting tribes of
Nepal, “when the mourners return home, one of their party goes
ahead and makes a barricade of thorn bushes across the road
midway between the grave and the house of the deceased. On the
top of the thorns he puts a big stone on which he takes his stand,
holding a pot of burning incense in his left hand and some woollen
thread in his right. One by one the mourners step on the stone and
pass through the smoke of the incense to the other side of the thorny
barrier. As they pass, each takes a piece of thread from the man who
holds the incense and ties it round his neck. The object of this
curious ceremony is to prevent the spirit of the dead man from
coming home with the mourners and establishing itself in its old
haunts. Conceived of as a miniature man, it is believed to be unable
to make its way on foot through the thorns, while the smell of the
incense, to which all spirits are highly sensitive, prevents it from
surmounting this obstacle on the shoulders of one of the
mourners.”138.3 The Chins of Burma burn their dead and collect the
bones in an earthen pot. Afterwards, at a convenient season, the pot
containing the bones is carried away to the ancestral burial-place,
which is generally situated in the depth of the jungle. “When the
people convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with them
some cotton-yarn, and whenever they come to any stream or other
water, they stretch a thread across, whereby the spirit of the
deceased, who accompanies them, may get across it too. When they
have duly deposited the bones and food for the spirit in the cemetery
they return home, after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to
follow them back to the village. At the same time they block the way
by which they return by putting a bamboo across the path.”139.1 Thus
the mourners make the way to the grave as easy as possible for the
ghost, but obstruct the way by which he might return from it.
The Algonquin Indians, not content with beating
Devices of the the walls of their huts to drive away the ghost,
North American
Indians to keep stretched nets round them in order to catch the
ghosts at bay. spirit in the meshes, if he attempted to enter the
house. Others made stinks to keep him off.139.2
The Ojebways also resorted to a number of devices for warding off
the spirits of the dead. These have been described as follows by a
writer who was himself an Ojebway: “If the deceased was a
husband, it is often the custom for the widow, after the burial is over,
to spring or leap over the grave, and then run zigzag behind the
trees, as if she were fleeing from some one. This is called running
away from the spirit of her husband, that it may not haunt her. In the
evening of the day on which the burial has taken place, when it
begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns through the hole left
at the top of the wigwam. As soon as this firing ceases, the old
women commence knocking and making such a rattling at the door
as would frighten away any spirit that would dare to hover near. The
next ceremony is, to cut into narrow strips, like ribbon, thin birch
bark. These they fold into shapes, and hang round inside the
wigwam, so that the least puff of wind will move them. With such
scarecrows as these, what spirit would venture to disturb their
slumbers? Lest this should not prove effectual, they will also
frequently take a deer’s tail, and after burning or singeing off all the
hair, will rub the necks or faces of the children before they lie down
to sleep, thinking that the offensive smell will be another preventive
to the spirit’s entrance. I well remember when I used to be daubed
over with this disagreeable fumigation, and had great faith in it all.
Thinking that the soul lingers about the body a long time before it
takes its final departure, they use these means to hasten it
away.”140.1
The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco in South
Spirits of the dead America live in great fear of the spirits of their
greatly feared by
the Lengua Indians dead. They imagine that any one of these
of the Gran Chaco. disembodied spirits can become incarnate again
and take a new lease of life on earth, if only it can
contrive to get possession of a living man’s body during the
temporary absence of his soul. For like many other savages they
imagine that the soul absents itself from the body during sleep to
wander far away in the land of dreams. So when night falls, the
ghosts of the dead come crowding to the villages and lurk about,
hoping to find vacant bodies into which they can enter. Such are to
the thinking of the Lengua Indian the perils and dangers of the night.
When he awakes in the morning from a dream in which he seemed
to be hunting or fishing far away, he concludes that his soul cannot
yet have returned from such a far journey, and that the spirit within
him must therefore be some ghost or demon, who has taken
possession of his corporeal tenement in the absence of its proper
owner. And if these Indians dread the spirits of the departed at all
times, they dread them doubly at the moment when they have just
shuffled off the mortal coil. No sooner has a person died than the
whole village is deserted. Even if the death takes place shortly
before sunset the place must at all costs be immediately abandoned,
lest with the shades of night the ghost should return and do a
mischief to the villagers. Not only is the village deserted, but every
hut is burned down and the property of the dead man destroyed. For
these Indians believe that, however good and kind a man may have
been in his lifetime, his ghost is always a source of danger to the
peace and prosperity of the living. The night after his death his
disembodied spirit comes back to the village, and chilled by the cool
night air looks about for a fire at which to warm himself. He rakes in
the ashes to find at least a hot coal which he may blow up into a
flame. But if they are all cold and dead, he flings a handful of them in
the air and departs in dudgeon. Any Indian who treads on such
ashes will have ill-luck, if not death, following at his heels. To prevent
such mishaps the villagers take the greatest pains to collect and bury
all the ash-heaps before they abandon the village. What the fate of a
hamlet would be in which the returning ghost found the inhabitants
still among their houses, no Indian dares to imagine. Hence it
happens that many a village which was full of life at noon is a
smoking desert at sunset. And as the Lenguas ascribe all sickness
to the machinations of evil spirits and sorcerers, they mutilate the
persons of their dying or dead in order to counteract and punish the
authors of the disease. For this purpose they cut off the portion of
the body in which the evil spirit is supposed to have ensconced
himself. A common operation performed on the dying or dead man is
this. A gash is made with a knife in his side, the edges of the wound
are drawn apart with the fingers, and in the wound are deposited a
dog’s bone, a stone, and the claw of an armadillo. It is believed that
at the departure of the soul from the body the stone will rise up to the
Milky Way and will stay there till the author of the death has been
discovered. Then the stone will come shooting down in the shape of
a meteor and kill, or at least stun, the guilty party. That is why these
Indians stand in terror of falling stars. The claw of the armadillo
serves to grub up the earth and, in conjunction with the meteor, to
ensure the destruction of the evil spirit or the sorcerer. What the
virtue of the dog’s bone is supposed to be has not yet been
ascertained by the missionaries.141.1
The Bhotias, who inhabit the Himalayan district
A scapegoat for of British India, perform an elaborate ceremony for
ghosts.
transferring the spirit of a deceased person to an
animal, which is finally beaten by all the villagers and driven away,
that it may not come back. Having thus expelled the ghost the
people return joyfully to the village with songs and dances. In some
places the animal which thus serves as a scapegoat is a yak, the
forehead, back, and tail of which must be white. But elsewhere,
under the influence of Hindooism, sheep and goats have been
substituted for yaks.142.1
Widows and widowers are especially obnoxious
Precautions taken to the ghosts of their deceased spouses, and
by widows in Africa
against their accordingly they have to take special precautions
husbands’ ghosts. against them. For example, among the Ewe
negroes of Agome, in German Togoland, a widow
is bound to remain for six weeks in the hut where her husband lies
buried. She is naked, her hair is shaved off, and she is armed with a
stick with which to repel the too pressing familiarities of her
husband’s ghost; for were she to submit to them, she would die on
the spot. At night she sleeps with the stick under her, lest the wily
ghost should attempt to steal it from her in the hours of slumber.
Before she eats or drinks she always puts some coals on the food or
in the beverage, to prevent her dead husband from eating or drinking
with her; for if he did so, she would die. If any one calls to her, she
may not answer, for her dead husband would hear her, and she
would die. She may not eat beans or flesh or fish, nor drink palm-
wine or rum, but she is allowed to smoke tobacco. At night a fire is
kept up in the hut, and the widow throws powdered peppermint
leaves and red pepper on the flames to make a stink, which helps to
keep the ghost from the house.142.2
Among many tribes of British Columbia the conduct of a widow
and a widower for a long time after the death of their spouse is
 regulated by a code of minute and burdensome
Precautions taken restrictions, all of which appear to be based on the
by widows and
widowers in British notion that these persons, being haunted by the
Columbia against ghost, are not only themselves in peril, but are
the ghosts of their also a source of danger to others. Thus among the
spouses.
Shushwap Indians of British Columbia widows and
widowers fence their beds with thorn bushes to keep off the ghost of
the deceased; indeed they lie on such bushes, in order that the
ghost may be under little temptation to share their bed of thorns.
They must build a sweat-house on a creek, sweat there all night, and
bathe regularly in the creek, after which they must rub their bodies
with spruce branches. These branches may be used only once for
this purpose; afterwards they are stuck in the ground all round about
the hut, probably to fence off the ghost. The mourners must also use
cups and cooking vessels of their own, and they may not touch their
own heads or bodies. Hunters may not go near them, and any
person on whom their shadow were to fall would at once be ill.143.1
Again, among the Tsetsaut Indians, when a man dies his brother is
bound to marry the widow, but he may not do so before the lapse of
a certain time, because it is believed that the dead man’s ghost
haunts his widow and would do a mischief to his living rival. During
the time of her mourning the widow eats out of a stone dish, carries
a pebble in her mouth, and a crab-apple stick up the back of her
jacket. She sits upright day and night. Any person who crosses the
hut in front of her is a dead man. The restrictions laid on a widower
are similar.143.2 Among the Lkungen or Songish Indians, in
Vancouver Island, widow and widower, after the death of husband or
wife, are forbidden to cut their hair, as otherwise it is believed that
they would gain too great power over the souls and welfare of
others. They must remain alone at their fire for a long time and are
forbidden to mingle with other people. When they eat, nobody may
see them. They must keep their faces covered for ten days. For two
days after the burial they fast and are not allowed to speak. After that
they may speak a little, but before addressing any one they must go
into the woods and clean themselves in ponds and with cedar-
branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they call out his name
when they first break their fast, and they bite very hard in eating.
That is believed to kill their enemy, probably (though this is not said)
by directing the attention of the ghost to him. They may not go near
the water nor eat fresh salmon, or the fish might be driven away.
They may not eat warm food, else their teeth would fall out.144.1
Among the Bella Coola Indians the bed of a mourner is protected
against the ghost of the deceased by thorn-bushes stuck into the
ground at each corner. He rises early in the morning and goes out
into the woods, where he makes a square with thorn-bushes, and
inside of this square, where he is probably supposed to be safe from
the intrusion of the ghost, he cleanses himself by rubbing his body
with cedar-branches. He also swims in ponds, and after swimming
he cleaves four small trees and creeps through the clefts, following
the course of the sun. This he does on four subsequent mornings,
cleaving new trees every day. We may surmise that the intention of
creeping through the cleft trees is to give the slip to the ghost. The
mourner also cuts his hair short, and the cut hair is burnt. If he did
not observe these regulations, it is believed that he would dream of
the deceased, which to the savage mind is another way of saying
that he would be visited by his ghost. Amongst these Indians the
rules of mourning for a widower or widow are especially strict. For
four days he or she must fast and may not speak a word, else the
dead wife or husband would come and lay a cold hand on the mouth
of the offender, who would die. They may not go near water and are
forbidden to catch or eat salmon for a whole year. During that time
also they may not eat fresh herring or candle-fish (olachen). Their
shadows are deemed unlucky and may not fall on any person.144.2
Among the Thompson Indians of British
Precautions taken Columbia widows or widowers, on the death of
by widows and
widowers among their husbands or wives, went out at once and
the Thompson passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times.
Indians. The intention of this ceremony is not reported, but
we may conjecture that it was supposed to deter
the ghost from following for fear of scratching himself or herself on
the thorns. For four days after the death widows and widowers had
to wander about at evening or break of day wiping their eyes with fir-
twigs, which they hung up in the branches of trees, praying to the
Dawn. They also rubbed their eyes with a small stone taken from
under running water, then threw it away, while they prayed that they
might not become blind. The first four days they might not touch their
food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks, and spat out the first four
mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into the fire. For a
year they had to sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-
bush sticks were also spread at the foot, head, and middle. Many
also wore a few small twigs of rose-bush on their persons. The use
of the rose-bush was no doubt to keep off the ghost through fear of
the prickles. They were forbidden to eat fresh fish and flesh of any
kind for a year. A widower might not fish at another man’s fishing-
place or with another man’s net. If he did, it would make the station
and the net useless for the season. If a widower transplanted a trout
into another lake, before releasing it he blew on the head of the fish,
and after chewing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease out on its
head, so as to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let it
go, bidding the fish farewell, and asking it to propagate its kind. Any
grass or branches upon which a widow or widower sat or lay down
withered up. If a widow were to break sticks or branches, her own
hands or arms would break. She might not cook food nor fetch water
for her children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she lie
or sit where they slept. Some widows wore a breech-cloth made of
dry bunch-grass for several days, lest the ghost of her dead husband
should have connexion with her. A widower might not fish or hunt,
because it was unlucky both for him and for other hunters. He did not
allow his shadow to pass in front of another widower or of any
person who was supposed to be gifted with more knowledge or
magic than ordinary.145.1 Among the Lillooet Indians of British
Columbia the rules enjoined on widows and widowers were
somewhat similar. But a widower had to observe a singular custom
in eating. He ate his food with the right hand passed underneath his
right leg, the knee of which was raised.146.1 The motive for
conveying food to his mouth in this roundabout fashion is not
mentioned: we may conjecture that it was to baffle the hungry ghost,
who might be supposed to watch every mouthful swallowed by the
mourner, but who could hardly suspect that food passed under the
knee was intended to reach the mouth.
 Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia we are told “the
regulations referring to the mourning period are
Precautions taken very severe. In case of the death of husband or
by widows and wife, the survivor has to observe the following
widowers among
the Kwakiutl rules: for four days after the death the survivor
Indians. must sit motionless, the knees drawn up toward
the chin. On the third day all the inhabitants of the
village, including children, must take a bath. On the fourth day some
water is heated in a wooden kettle, and the widow or widower drips it
upon his head. When he becomes tired of sitting motionless, and
must move, he thinks of his enemy, stretches his legs slowly four
times, and draws them up again. Then his enemy must die. During
the following sixteen days he must remain on the same spot, but he
may stretch out his legs. He is not allowed, however, to move his
hands. Nobody must speak to him, and whosoever disobeys this
command will be punished by the death of one of his relatives. Every
fourth day he takes a bath. He is fed twice a day by an old woman at
the time of low water, with salmon caught in the preceding year, and
given to him in the dishes and spoons of the deceased. While sitting
so his mind is wandering to and fro. He sees his house and his
friends as though far, far away. If in his visions he sees a man near
by, the latter is sure to die at no distant day; if he sees him very far
away, he will continue to live long. After the sixteen days have
passed, he may lie down, but not stretch out. He takes a bath every
eighth day. At the end of the first month he takes off his clothing, and
dresses the stump of a tree with it. After another month has passed
he may sit in a corner of the house, but for four months he must not
mingle with others. He must not use the house door, but a separate
door is cut for his use. Before he leaves the house for the first time
he must three times approach the door and return, then he may
leave the house. After ten months his hair is cut short, and after a
year the mourning is at an end.”147.1
Though the reasons for the elaborate restrictions thus imposed on
widows and widowers by the Indians of British Columbia are not
always stated, we may safely infer that one and all they are dictated
by fear of the ghost, who, haunting the surviving spouse, surrounds
him or her with a dangerous atmosphere, a contagion of death,
which necessitates his seclusion both from the people themselves
and from the principal sources of their food supply, especially from
the fisheries, lest the infected person should poison them by his
malignant presence. We can, therefore,
Social ostracism of understand the extraordinary treatment of a
widowers in New
Guinea dictated by widower by the Papuans of Issoudun in British
fear of the ghosts of New Guinea. His miseries begin with the moment
their dead wives. of his wife’s death. He is immediately stripped of
all his ornaments, abused and beaten by his wife’s
relations, his house is pillaged, his gardens devastated, there is no
one to cook for him. He sleeps on his wife’s grave till the end of his
mourning. He may never marry again. By the death of his wife he
loses all his rights. It is civil death for him. Old or young, chief or
plebeian, he is no longer anybody, he does not count. He may not
hunt or fish with the others; his presence would bring misfortune; the
spirit of his dead wife would frighten the fish or the game. He is no
longer heard in the discussions. He has no voice in the council of
elders. He may not take part in a dance; he may not own a garden. If
one of his children marries, he has no right to interfere in anything or
receive any present. If he were dead, he could not be ignored more
completely. He has become a nocturnal animal. He is forbidden to
shew himself in public, to traverse the village, to walk in the roads
and paths. Like a boar, he must go in the grass or the bushes. If he
hears or sees any one, especially a woman, coming from afar, he
must hide himself behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to go
hunting or fishing by himself, he must go at night. If he has to consult
any one, even the missionary, he does it in great secrecy and by
night. He seems to have lost his voice, and only speaks in a whisper.
He is painted black from head to foot. The hair of his head is shaved,
except two tufts which flutter on his temples. He wears a skull-cap
which covers his head completely to the ears; it ends in a point at the
back of his neck. Round his waist he wears one, two, or three
sashes of plaited grass; his arms and legs from the knees to the
ankles are covered with armlets and leglets of the same sort; and
round his neck he wears a similar ornament. His diet is strictly
regulated, but he does not observe it more than he can help, eating
in secret whatever is given him or he can lay his hands on. “His