Marriage, Markets, and Merchants: Changes in Wedding Feasts and Household Consumption Patterns in Rural Kazakstan

Abstract

In recent years, economic anthropologists have become increasingly interested in the relationship between consumption and social experience, especially in connection with the consumption of global commodities (Friedman 1994; Miller 1987,1995; Rutz and Orlove 1989; Tobin 1992). Throughout the world, goods such as food and clothing are used in distinct ways by different social groups and classes (Bourdieu 1984; Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Weismantel 1988). The recent anthropological literature on consumption stresses that preferences do not simply reflect social and cultural diversity. Rather, consumption is an activity that can create and change social relationships and systems of meaning (Miller 1987; Rutz and Orlove 1989; Wilk 1994). By emphasizing the social component of consumption, scholars have brought attention to the various motives for consuming particular goods and the contested meanings assigned to this behavior. And, since local cultural meanings are attached to the consumption of outside goods, they argue that consumption does not signify a naive emulation of Western culture or a loss of local cultural authenticity (Miller 1995; Wilk 1994). In rural Kazakstan, large ceremonial feasts for weddings and circumcisions provide a valuable lens for observing the link between household consumption and social relationships. Conspicuous consumption—and conspicuous exchange—are a central part of these feasts. Despite the perception and reality of economic hardship during the post-Soviet transition to a market economy, rural Kazaks have continued to spend large portions of their income and resources at frequent, extravagant feasts. Most rural Kazaks estimate that over half of their household income is spent on feast gifts. Elsewhere I examine how the exchange of gifts and labors at ritual events helps rural Kazaks maintain invaluable household networks (Werner 1997). In this paper, I focus on the meanings behind the consumption and exchange of foods and objects, respectively, at wedding feasts. I am particularly interested in the ways rural Kazaks use both local and imported goods to establish social status and identity in the post-Soviet period. Examples are taken from the various foods and gifts associated with wedding feasts and festivities. In the following section, I provide a brief description of marriage in rural Kazakstan, followed by a more thorough treatment of the foods and gifts exchanged at Kazak weddings.