Talk on 'We are not ‘poor things’ (bechora). We have means (chora dorem)”: Femininity, patience and chronic hepatitis in southern Tajikistan'

Cambridge Central Asia Forum invites you to a talk on

'We are not ‘poor things’ (bechora). We have means (chora dorem)”: Femininity, patience and chronic hepatitis in southern Tajikistan'

by

Diana Ibanez-Tirado, University of Sussex 

Date: 15 May

Time: 11am-1pm

Venue: Room S3, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

Online Zoom registration link: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZDSon0AhSgij2RyUU0Umew

Everyone is welcome.  

Abstract: This paper examines women living with chronic hepatitis in southern Tajikistan to analyse how they constitute themselves as gendered and moral persons under conditions of suffering and precarity. It conceptualises practices of patience (sabr) as forms of feminine agency grounded in an ethic of care rather than piety or survival alone. Care, in its varied forms and intensities, shapes gendered and moral personhood by framing patience as active, labour-intensive, mutual, and relational. In the context of pain and incurable illness, patience also entails moral negotiation, including practices of concealment and the reshaping of social environments at the end of life.

Biography: Diana Ibanez Tirado is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She holds a PhD and an MA in Social Anthropology from SOAS, University of London. Her earlier research and publications focused on southern Tajikistan, and addressed themes of temporality, everyday life, and sensuous forms of care that shape kinship. She also published on the gendered dimensions of transnational trade between China and Central Asia. Her most recent book, From the Heart of Kulob: Gender, Personhood, and Everyday Life in Southern Tajikistan, published this year, explores the senses, embodiment, and emotion from an intersectional perspective to analyse the formation of gender and moral personhood. Diana’s current research interests are in medical anthropology, with a focus on British nationals seeking dental treatment in Turkey.