Rhythms of being together: public space in Urban Tajikistan through the lens of rhythmanalysis

The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe and critically assess public space in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, recurring to Henri Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis.

The empirical findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork on a courtyard in a housing estate in Khujand in northern Tajikistan.

The paper argues that an analytic dichotomy between the private and the public realm conceals more than it reveals, for the Central Asian case at least. The rhythmanalysis framework is presented as a possible solution to the deficiencies of dichotomic categories.

Even if we find a series of scholarly works dealing with (post-)Soviet and/or Central Asian public spaces, they very scarcely provide a critical assessment of the roots and the usefulness of this concept for the regional setting they work in. The paper strives to close this gap and to present Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis framework as a possible solution for overcoming dichotomic categories.