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The world is established through the work of existence : the performance of Gham-Khadi among Pukhtun Bibiane in Northern Pakistan.
This thesis explores the social lives of elite Pukhtun women or Bibiane in
northern Pakistan, with an ethnographic focus on the enactment of particular life-cycle
or gham-khadi ceremonies (funerals and weddings). The widely used Pukhto term ghamkhadi
both refers to specific segregated gatherings and designates the emotions of
sorrow (gham) and joy (khada) which they elicit. In the local understanding, gham-khadi
comprises a system of life, in which happiness and sadness are understood as
indissoluble, and are celebrated communally within networks of reciprocal social
obligations. Bibiane's social role entails preparation for and attendance at gham-khadi,
according to a stylized set of performances thought integral to Pukhtun identity or
Pukhtunwali (ideal Pukhtun practices). In this sense, the "women's work" of gham-khadi
links with another indigenous term, tieest-roĂ˝.g ar, which I translate as the "work of
existence", and through which Bibiane maintain the fabric of life by sustaining social
inter- and intra-family relationships. Ethnographic fieldwork, conducted in Islamabad
and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP or "Frontier") regions of Swat and
Mardan between 1996-1998 and 1999-2001, suggests the extent to which Bibiane's sense
of their gham-khadi obligations underpins their understanding of their personhood. In
the process, the thesis unfolds a Pukhtun construction of work divergent from
professionalism or physical labour, in which work produces not things, but social
relations and transactions.
This thesis, therefore, seeks to contribute to anthropological debate on a
number of issues. First, it seeks to establish the distinctive sociality of Pukhtun Bibiane
in terms of their participation, within and beyond the household, in gham-khadi
festivities, joining them with hundreds of individuals from different families and social
backgrounds. Second, the thesis makes a case for documenting the lives of a grouping
of elite South Asian women, contesting their conventional representation as "idle" by
illustrating their commitment to various forms of work within familial and social
contexts. Third, it describes the segregated zones of gham-khadi as a space of female
agency. Reconstructing the terms of this agency helps us to revise previous
anthropological accounts of Pukhtun society, which project Pukhlunwali in
predominantly masculine terms, while depicting gham-khadi as an entirely feminine
category. Bibiane's gham-khadi performances allow a reflection upon Pukhtunwali and
wider Pukhtun society as currently undergoing transformation. Fourth, as a contribution
to Frontier ethnography, the thesis lays especial emphasis on gham-khadi as a
transregional phenomenon, given the relocation of most Pukhtun families to the
cosmopolitan capital Islamabad. Since gham-khadi is held at families' ancestral homes
(kille-koroona), new variations and interpretations of conventional practices penetrate to
the village context of Swat and Mardan. Ceremonies are especially subject to negotiation
as relatively young convent-educated married Bibiane take issue with their "customs"
(rewaĂ˝) from a scriptural Islamic perspective. More broadly, the dissertation contributes
to various anthropological topics, notably the nature and expression of elite cultures and
issues of sociality, funerals and marriage, custom and religion, space and gender,
morality and reason, and social role and personhood within the contexts of Middle-
Eastern and South Asian Islam