Shifting Foodscapes in the Pamirs of Tajikistan

This paper uses food as a prism to examine society and the impacts of social change at different scales, ranging from the scale of the region, through the scale of the local community, to the scale of the household. It applies an approach that combines materials gained from archival studies, a literature review, and empirical research conducted in the Western Pamirs of Tajikistan to reconstruct socio-historically and spatio-environmentally situated food-related arrangements (foodscapes) in the study region. The main characteristics addressed include rootedness, richness, scarcity, and remoteness. It makes visible both continuities and shifts that have occurred to these arrangements in the course of social transformations. The study joins the canon of ethnographic food studies, and, by presenting a regional focus on the Tajik Pamirs, complements the emerging body of food-related socio-scientific research in and on Central Asia.