The book examines the relations between an economic phenomenon, pastoralism, and a social one, patrilineal descent-reckoning. These relations are described and analyzed on the basis of long-term fieldwork and through the investigation of the existing historical and ethnographic sources.The book comprises seven sections: introduction, the past as a reference, integration into the Russian colonial system, Soviet reforms and Soviet herd breeding, dismantling of the Soviet system and conclusions. In the introduction the approach and the methodology of the author are situated within the larger context of anthropological studies of pastoralism and descent. Since contemporary actors often explain and evaluate their present day practices with a reference to a more or less clearly situated “Kyrgyz” past, the second section restores this past on the basis of the existing historical sources and oral traditions in order to allow a better understanding of the reasons for which and the ways in which this past is referred to. Each of the following sections describes and analyzes a particular configuration of the relations between pastoralism and descent and examines the ways these relations are shaped by the varying institutional frames. If integration is predominantly treated in its institutional aspects, the individual actors remain the main source of information. The book thus combines an exhaustive use of the existing historical and ethnographic sources with extensive accounts of individual actors’ memories, their experiences and their conceptions of the past, the present and the future. By developing a historical anthropological approach, the book offers a new perspective on pastoralism in a region that has remained largely unexplored up to now. It is of interest for specialists of Central Asia as a cultural area, for anthropologists and historians as well as for all those who are willing to initiate themselves in the past and present of Kyrgyzstan. weiterlesen