Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway

Azan on the Moon is an in-depth anthropological study of people’s lives along the Pamir Highway in eastern Tajikistan. Constructed in the 1930s in rugged high altitude terrain, the road fundamentally altered the material and social fabric of this former Soviet outpost on the border with Afghanistan and China. The highway initially brought sentiments of disconnection and hardship, followed by Soviet modernization and development, and ultimately a sense of distinction from bordering countries and urban centers that continues to this day. Based on extensive fieldwork and through an analysis of construction, mobility, technology, media, development, Islam, and the state along the Pamir Highway, Till Mostowlansky shows how conceptualizations of modernity are both challenged and reinforced in contemporary Tajikistan. In this vein, modernity as a future state to aspire to is juxtaposed with a modern past that people along the highway yearn for, and in the wake of the country’s marginalization and unequal relations with China, with a present in which modernity is under threat. Weaving together the road, a population, and a region, Azan on the Moon presents a rich ethnography of encounters marked by far-reaching transnational connections.