Description: Montgomery presents a rich ethnographic study on the practice and meaning of Islamic life in Kyrgyzstan. Through his years of on-the-ground research, he assembles both an anthropology of knowledge and an anthropology of Islam, demonstrating how individuals make sense of and draw meanings from their environments. This book offers the most thorough English-language study to date of Islam in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.
Review Quotes: An impressive piece of work based on a very large body of ethnographic material collected over an extensive period of time. The fine portraits and life stories around which the presentation of the ethnography is structured work really well to capture the complexities and nuances in people's ideas about and practice of Islam.-- "Maria E. Louw, Aarhus University, Denmark"