Further sources corroborate the observation that, for a long interval, disposable sanitary pads failed to render obsolete the traditional self-made options; the new and old technologies existed side by side, often complementing each other. In 1968, the editors of *Y*ŏ*s*ŏ*ngdonga* presented readers with a service-oriented article on how to wash sanitary napkins "easily."66 One of the magazine's readers submitted a letter in which she shares her advice: in the absence of access to boiling water, one can wash the sanitary napkins in lukewarm water to which sodium carbonate (washing soda) has been added. Notably, three years later, an Ewha Womans University textbook on "sex education," written for middle- and highschool pupils, refrains from recommending the use of either self-made or store-bought, disposable pads. While they deem disposable pads "convenient," the authors go on to encourage every girl to decide for herself which kind of pad to use.67 (Not considered a serious option, tampons are mentioned only in passing.) One of Lee's interviewees, whose menstrual cycle frst began in 1980, explained that she used disposable pads only when she was away from home; otherwise, she reverted to self-made sanitary pads. This was primarily for fnancial reasons.68

Moral concerns made it diffcult for manufacturers of disposable pads to reach large consumer groups. For example, a 1973 article in *Women Dong-A* sharply criticizes Yuhan-Kimberly's television commercials for Kotex. The article's author, a self-described housewife named Kim Sŏngsuk, reports fnding it highly embarrassing to be compelled to watch such

64*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, June 1970.

Seoul: Ewha Womans University, 1971, p. 74.

68Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 7 (anonymous, born in 1965).

65Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 12 (anonymous, born in 1967).

66*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, June 1968.

67*Chung*⋅ *kogyosaeng-u*̆*l wihan so*̆*n'gyoyuk – kyehoek-kwa siltche* (중⋅고교생을 위한 성교육-계획과 실제) ["Sex Education for Middle and High-school Pupils: Plan and Practice"].

advertisements together with male and female relatives. She notes that the commercial caused discomfort to everyone in her company.69 Criticism of the commercials continued, and in 1980, television commercials for menstruation products were, in fact, banned in South Korea.

Despite these public concerns, textbook authors gradually accepted disposable sanitary pads as a standard technology. A nicely illustrated book, published in 1984 and aimed at children in ffth and sixth grade, includes a romanticized drawing of an industrially produced pad. Focusing on cleanliness and hygiene, the author advises girls to change pads frequently and to make sure to keep the genital area clean. The author also states that, to reduce the risk of bacteria entering the vagina, menstrual pads should be put in place from front to back. Further advice: hard work and swimming should be avoided during the girl's period.70

#### Freedom to Consume

Like Baek Min Jeong's master's thesis, Youngju Lee's thesis is based on interviews with women in South Korea.71 Notably, one of Lee's thirteen interviewees, who is quoted anonymously, explains that she used recyclable cloth pads well into the 1990s. This interviewee was born in 1953 and got her period for the frst time at age seventeen. After working in the felds and in the home for roughly two decades, at the age of forty she became a factory worker. It was only after one of her coworkers had showed her the advantages of disposable pads that she decided to adopt this technology. In the interview, she states that, had she continued to stay at home, she would not have turned to disposable pads. At the workplace, the disposable pads were more convenient, though she found cloth pads to be softer and smoother.72

In general, women in Korea began to accept disposable sanitary pads in the second half of the 1970s. One of Lee's interviewees states that, in the small town where she grew up, disposable sanitary pads were still unavailable throughout the early 1970s. In 1975, newspapers continued to associate disposable pads with urban areas, and cloth pads with rural

69*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Sept. 1973.

70Lee, Won-gu, *Sojung-han uri-du*̆*l - 5* ⋅ *6 hangnyo* ̆*n* (소중한 우리들 – 5 ⋅ 6 학년) ["Precious Us: 5th and 6th Grade"]. Seoul: Tongjinmunhwasa, 1984, pp. 81–81.

71This section is based largely on Lee, "Introduction," pp. 29–43, including several of Lee's interviews.

72 Ibid., interviewee No. 1 (anonymous, born in 1953).

areas—although disposables by that time had begun to make inroads even in the countryside.73 Hailing a new "openness" and the "fresh air" in Korean villages, a journalist in 1977 observes that disposable sanitary pads had become a bestseller at local markets. In an interview, a woman pharmacist from Hwaseong County reports that rural women would walk for hours to the nearest small town to buy disposable pads.74

Apparently, this new "openness" was widespread in South Korea. Another of Lee's anonymous interviewees, who was born in 1961 in the southeastern part of the country but had grown up in Seoul, relates that she had no problem talking to her mother about her period and various personal-hygiene techniques.75 Meanwhile, public criticism continued, with some people citing the negative impact of TV commercials—for sanitary pads and contraceptives—on children and youth.76 This criticism did not staunch the trend toward more candid treatment of these formerly taboo topics. Commercial interests were only partly responsible for the changes; the Park administration also had a hand in this shift. The textbook mentioned above, *Sex Education for Middle- and High-School Pupils: Plan and Practice*, had been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Education; the book reproduces many of the arguments found in the government's so-called Family Planning Program. Supported by a number of international organizations, this program aimed to reduce the number of births in South Korea. To this end, it was deemed essential that young citizens receive the relevant information about the biology of reproduction and the technology of contraception. Knowledge about menstruation and personal-hygiene technologies was a part of this package.77

Throughout the 1970s, manufacturers of disposable personal-hygiene products, including tampons, intensifed their marketing efforts. New companies entered the market. Yungjin Pharm introduced a pad named Sophia, and the Ilyang Pharmaceutical Industry Corporation, in collaboration with a Japanese company, developed a product called Charming Chanel. The Hawgang Trading Company was the frst manufacturer of tampons in South Korea. Its Mon Clean was soon followed by the Amore tampon, manufactured by the Pacifc Chemical Company (now the Amore

77DiMoia, John P., *Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation Building in South Korea since 1945*. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013, Ch. 4.

73 Ibid., interviewee No. 2 (anonymous, born in 1970); *Dong-A Ilbo*, 17 Oct. 1975.

74*Kyunghyang Shinmun*, Aug. 11, 1977.

75Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 5 (anonymous, born in 1961).

76*Dong-A Ilbo*, April 27, 1979.

Pacifc Corporation) and the Tempo tampon, made by the Dong-A Pharmaceutical Company.

Intense competition followed. To raise awareness of their products among women, company representatives canvassed workplaces and distributed free samples.78 To cultivate future customers, companies also offered schools across the country special classes in sex education, an offer many teachers happily accepted.79 Advertisements in magazines and newspapers, as well as television commercials (up to 1980), reproduced the Western image of disposable pads. Yuhan-Kimberly picked up this trope the association of sanitary pads and tampons with a Western lifestyle—in several advertisements for its disposable pad named New Freedom. In one ad, to reinforce the association with the United States, the name of the product is written in English—in capital letters, no less. In another ad, a well-known Korean actress appears in a stars-and-stripes sleeveless shirt.80 Engaging another famous actress in Korea to promote Sophia, the Yungjin Company explicitly labeled its product "European." To highlight the sanitary pad's identity as European, the featured actress's style was unmistakably inspired by Western fashion: brown, curly hair; dark eyeshadow; and a turtleneck.81

The Yuhan-Kimberly and Yungjin companies appear to have been particularly successful in achieving brand recognition in the market. One of Lee's interviewees recalls that she and her friends seldom used the Korean word for menstruation or sanitary pad (*saengnidae*; 생리대). Instead, they simply referred, respectively, to "Sophia" and "Freedom."82

The brand name New Freedom was not meant to be understood in the political context of Western democratic rights; after all, the Park administration was a military regime that monitored closely people's lives as well as the country's companies. Rather, manufacturers aimed to highlight the freedom to enjoy newfound leisure activities. This marketing strategy squared well with the growing importance of domestic tourism and

78Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 12 (anonymous, born in 1967)

79Cf. oral evidence in Roh, Jieun, "Wŏlgyŏng kyŏnghŏm-kwa munhawjŭk kŭmgi" (월경 경험과 문화적 금기) [authorized translation: "A Study of the Experiences of Menstruation and the Cultural Taboos"], *MA Thesis*, Seoul: Ewha Womans University, 1995, p. 34, as well as in Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 3 (anonymous, born in 1959).

80*Kyunghyang Shinmun*, March 10, 1975; *Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Oct. 1975.

81*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, March 1976.

82Lee, "Introduction," interviewee No. 3 (anonymous, born in 1959).

weekend excursions in the 1970s.83 One Yuhan-Kimberly ad states that New Freedom enables a "Gentle Life"; another ad makes the grandiose claim that the Maxi version of the pad will "MAXIMIZE new freedom."84 Interestingly, both ads make partial use of the English language—and Latin alphabet—to strengthen the association with the West. Similarly, an ad for Kotex pads suggests the product enables Korean women to enjoy "Hip Fashion"—written in English.85 In some ads, Yuhan-Kimberly emphasizes the connection with the cultures of the United States and Europe in the 1970s by using Flower Power–inspired drawings commonly associated with Western pop music and alternative, hippie lifestyles.86 To ensure freedom of movement, New Freedom was the frst disposable pad with an adhesive strip. This design was meant to secure the pad in the underwear, obviating the need for hooks, buttons, or rubber bands. The new pad design implied that women would be able to go to the movies and to concerts, to play sports, and more. Thus, disposable pads were not simply Western; they gave women the opportunity to carry out their daily activities, even during their periods. With the adhesive-strip pad, women would be relieved of worry about having accidents with their sanitary pads, both at work and during their leisure time. The self-adhesive pad dovetailed nicely with South Korea's US-style consumer-society-in-the-making.

In a history of feminine-hygiene-product advertising, Feminist Studies scholar Jieun Roh relates disposable sanitary pads to changes in leisure activities and fashion. Citing further examples in the magazine *Y*ŏ*s*ŏ*ngdonga*, Roh references manufacturers' claims that, with their products, women could enjoy freedom of travel—throughout the month.87 The idea was that women were free of leaky cloth pads that could prevent them from taking vacations and other trips, as well as playing a range of sports. For example, Yungjin Pharm's ads for the Sophia pad feature images of women playing baseball; fencing; and riding horseback.88 Advertisements by various other manufacturers associate disposable pads with bicycling and sailing, roller-skating and skiing, for example.89

83 Song, "Politics."

84*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Feb. 1976.

85*Yo* ̆*haksaeng* (여학생) ["Female Students"], Nov. 1980.

86 Ibid., Aug. 1978; May 1979.

87Roh, "Menstrual Product," pp. 238–240.

In the mid-1970s, when tampons were introduced to the Korean market, advertising for the product featured sports and other leisure activities even more prominently than ever; Roh demonstrates that this continued well into the 1990s.90 For example, ads sponsored by the Dong-A Pharmaceutical Company purport that tampon use allows girls and women to play tennis and to engage in mountain climbing.91 Featuring six photos of young, White women from Western European as well as Anglo-Saxon countries, one Dong-A ad suggests that tampon use will enable Korean women to enjoy activities associated with a Western lifestyle; women can now go swimming and skating during their periods. In this ad as in others, the company uses the English slogan "TEMPO DAY" to highlight how tampons give women the freedom to plan their daily activities as they like.92 Manufacturers targeted girls and young women in particular, urging them to seize the day before traditional, adult responsibilities curtailed their freedom.93

Tampon ads repeated the same promises as the advertising for disposable pads: comfortable and convenient to use, tampons gave women a new kind of freedom. In addition, tampons were reputed to be hygienic and leak-proof, as well as to provide protection against unpleasant odors.94 Tampons were the perfect technology for women who wanted to live an "active" life.95 Supposedly, this was a life already attained by tampon-using women all over the world. To support this marketing strategy, the magazine *Y*ŏ*haksaeng* ("Female Students") ran ads accompanied by illustrated articles on how to use tampons.96

An advertisement for Amore tampons also exemplifes the tamponsequal-freedom narrative. A color photo shows a young woman on a bicycle, coasting through a puddle, her legs in the air to avoid getting splashed. The ad copy tells us it is early morning, the dew is still in the felds, and it promises to be a beautiful day. The reason for the young woman's good mood is also addressed: she is using a tampon, so she can enjoy the beauty of nature via bicycle—without having to worry about her period. The ad also boasts two unusual features of the Amore tampon. First, it does not

91*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, June 1976, July 1977.

90Roh, "Menstrual Product," Section III.2.

92 Ibid., Feb. 1979.

93*Yo* ̆*haksaeng*, March 1979.

94*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Dec. 1978, June 1979, Oct. 1981.

95*Yo* ̆*haksaeng*, May 1975.

96 Ibid., Oct. 1977.

require an applicator. Second, it comes from West Germany (manufactured by Dr. Carl Hahn Ltd., known in Germany under the brand name o.b., *ohne Binde*, i.e., "without pad") rather than the United States.97

Although the oral contraceptive pill ("the pill") was, of course, intended primarily to prevent pregnancy, it was also marketed as a technology to control menstruation, thereby affording users more freedom. The Chongkundang Pharmaceutical Corporation claimed that its oral contraceptive pill Norinil would help women to "normalize" menstruation.98 Presumably, this referred to the idea that, at least for some women, taking the pill would ensure their menstrual cycle occurred every twenty-eight days. The idea of normalizing menstruation may also refer to the fact that, for most women, the pill reduces bleeding considerably.

#### Resisting "The American Empire"

Undoubtedly, the United States exerted considerable infuence on consumer culture in South Korea. Magazines published ads for several US (and other Western) products, including Coca-Cola and Fanta.99 To help sell their refrigerators, General Electric's ads sported a modifed American fag.100 The US actresses Katharine Ross, Deborah Raffn, and Sydne Rome, appeared in Yuhan-Kimberly advertisements for disposable sanitary pads.101

Indeed, manufacturers of sanitary pads and tampons used as a key selling point the assertion that women in the United States, in European countries, and elsewhere had already adopted the products. Although it was repeated frequently in advertisements and television commercials, the message slowly lost its persuasive power; marketers began to realize that target customers might well be more susceptible to other campaign messages. While many advertisements and commercials for the Korean market reproduced US media campaigns based on the benefts of freedom, safety, and comfort, some marketing strategies were based on the needs of the Korean market.102 For example, a 1979 advertisement proclaimed that the

101*Yo* ̆*haksaeng*, March & June 1975, July 1976.

102Concerning advertisements in US magazines, see Merskin, Debra, "Adolescence, Advertising, and the Ideology of Menstruation," *Sex Roles* 40 (11–12), 1999: 941–957.

97 Ibid., Jan. 1979.

98*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Oct. 1978.

99 Ibid., May 1970; Aug. 1973.

100 Ibid., Jan. 1980.

Tempo tampon had been redesigned to better ft women in Korea. In particular, the company shortened the tampon and softened the applicator, claiming that these changes would make the tampon easier to insert.103 By touting the tampon as customized to Korean consumers, marketing people apparently tried to make tampons look and feel less "foreign," as it were. This strategy did not succeed, however.104 Statistics show that the tampon market began to take off only around 2010—more than thirty years after the product was frst introduced in South Korea.105

The subtext of a 1978 Tempo advertisement indicates another reason for the slow acceptance of tampons by women in Korea. The ad, sponsored by Dong-A Pharmaceutical, mentions that "even unmarried women" can use Tempo.106 This statement addresses the fear, believed to exist among young women, that tampon use would damage the hymen. As letters to the editor of the magazine "Female Students" show, this fear was indeed real. In 1985, for example, a "middle-school student" claims to have heard from a friend that "wrong usage" of a tampon might hurt the hymen. In a worried tone, she asks if a damaged hymen would make it impossible for her "to bear a baby" later in life.107 It is impossible to know the extent to which this anxiety was a motivating factor in young women rejecting the tampon. Jieun Roh claims that the rejection of tampons by unmarried women refects a paternalistic ideology. According to this thinking, a bridegroom would expect his bride to be a virgin on their wedding night, and an intact hymen supposedly represented proof of virginity. Although this ideological interpretation may well have played a role, Youngju Lee cites several other reasons why many women in Korea regardless of age and marital status—chose not to adopt the use of tampons. As we have seen from their marketing campaigns, tampon manufacturers suggested tampons would enable women to take part in sports during their period. To the interviewees, however, this "new freedom" to take part in sports every day of the month infringed on their freedom to *refrain* from intensive physical activity and labor when they were menstruating. For example, some of Lee's interviewees recall being

103*Yo* ̆*haksaeng*, Oct. 1980.

104Concerning the concept of "domestication" in technology studies, see Lie, Merete, and Knut H. Sørensen, eds, *Making Technology Our Own? Domesticating Technology into Everyday Life*. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996.

105Roh, "Menstrual Product."

106*Yo* ̆*so* ̆*ngdonga*, Oct. 1978; cf. Roh, "Menstrual Product," p. 83.

107*Yo* ̆*haksaeng*, June 1985, p. 328.

relieved at the prospect of *not* having to attend gym classes during the peak of their periods. By rejecting tampons, Lee suggests, women affrmed the specifcities of their own bodies and their gender identity, thus rejecting the idea that women need to perform in the same way as men. Women in the 1980s began to embrace the fact that their bodies were distinct and special. By choosing pads over tampons, women in Korea distinguished themselves from what they viewed as Western: rationally performing women's bodies.108

Despite women's newfound appreciation for their own bodies in the 1980s—according to Lee's interpretation—manufacturers continued to insist on the rational advantages of sanitary pads in the ensuing decades. In step with the increasing numbers of women in non-manual-labor jobs, advertisements targeted career women rather than girls and athletic women. The ad campaign's reasoning was: if a woman stayed home during her period, she would have no chance of winning in the ferce competition with her male colleagues. The new disposable sanitary pads and tampons might not erase physical pain and fatigue, but they were promoted as making users feel confdent of getting through the entire workday—without awkwardness or embarrassment.109

A comprehensive survey organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the mid-1970s supports the argument that women in South Korea followed a different path from their counterparts in the West. Whereas in the UK, almost half of women of reproductive age used tampons, in Korea, the proportion of tampon users was so low that it failed to show up in the WHO statistics; the US fgures were comparable to those in Britain.110 A plausible explanation for the reported low tampon use in Korea is that only three percent of the WHO interviewees were under twenty-four years of age. Although more than half of the 500 Korean women who took part in the survey lived in urban areas, seventy-one percent of the entire sample used homemade sanitary pads; only twenty-six percent of the women interviewed used "store-bought" pads.111

111 Snowden, Robert, and Barbara Christian, eds., *Patterns and Perceptions of Menstruation: A World Health Organization International Collaborative Study*. London: Croom Helm, 1983, pp. 11, 53, 249.

108Cf. Roh, "Menstrual Product," and Lee, "Introduction."

109Roh, "Menstrual Product," Section III.3.

110 Seok-jin Jang, "Urinara yŏsŏng saengniyongp'um chejoŏp-ŭi maak'et'ing-e kwanhan yŏn'gu" (우리나라 女性 生理用品 製造業의 마아케팅에 관한 硏究) ["A Study on the Marketing Female Menstrual Products in Korea"]. *Master's Thesis*, Korea University School of Management, 1981, p. 27.

In summary, considering the behavioral trends of women in South Korea, the United States was *not* viewed as an "irresistible empire." US-designed personal-hygiene products such as disposable sanitary pads and tampons became available to Korean consumers only in the 1960s (sanitary pads) and 1970s (tampons)―an era in which a Western-inspired consumer culture began to emerge. To establish their products on the Korean market, some US companies entered joint ventures with Korean partners, establishing domestic-production facilities. Although these efforts were modestly successful, the market for disposable products did not reach the levels Western companies were accustomed to achieving in North America and Europe.

Finally, we must answer the question of why women in South Korea "resisted"―or at least did not wholeheartedly accept―US consumer culture when it came to grappling with menstruation. The answer, which complements Lee's conclusion, can be extrapolated from yet more WHO data: four out of fve of the interviewees in Korea interpreted menstruation as a sign of femininity, whereas only a small minority regarded menstruation as "dirty" or as a "sickness." In contrast to Baek's observations about the taboo nature of menstruation as a topic, two out of three interviewees claimed to discuss issues around menstruation with their female friends.112 Thus, consistent with Lee's interpretation, the majority of women in Korea regarded menstruation as a normal, natural event, which they accepted and affrmed. For these interviewees, using a convenient technological fx, such as a tampon, was tantamount to negating their femininity by "hiding" their periods. To embrace the identity of a "Korean woman" was apparently more desirable than to become an "American lady." In a 2004 journal article, feminist scholar Soojung Kim expresses a similar idea. Kim argues in favor of returning to the use of washable sanitary pads—a practice that, by then, had become what she calls an "alternative technology."113

The story of self-made, reusable sanitary pads in Korea runs contrary to the evolutionary theory of technological development; products that were once discarded in the name of convenience or rationality may well return regardless of whether we call them "old," as David Edgerton once did, or "alternative," as Kim does.114

112 Snowden and Christian, *Patterns*, p. 58.

113Kim, Soojung, "Tarŭn sesang : Kaejim, taean saengnidae iyagi" (다른 세상: 개짐, 대안 생리대 이야기) ["Alternative World: A Story of an Alternative Sanitary Napkin"], *Yo* ̆*/songiron* (여/성이론) ["Journal of Feminist and Sexual Theories"] 10 (7), 2004: 209–215.

114Edgerton, David, *The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900*. London: Profle, 2006.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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# Doing It Yourself in Central Asia: Uzbeks Build Adobe Houses

Everything was in bad condition; well, why was everything derelict? It had once been very well-built, with a stable foundation. But then it began to deteriorate, to sag and buckle. This section of the house had been very well constructed. Every generation slowly, slowly built and rebuilt it, but because it was always used, it really began to deteriorate. In principle, every generation—or, at least, every other generation—probably would have had to rebuild this part.1

In this 2018 interview, Dilya, a woman in her mid-ffties, refects on the history of the house she co-owns with her older sister, Rano. Along with their parents and grandparents, Dilya and Rano grew up in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Over the course of the interview, Dilya recalls what their home looked like thirty years earlier, remarking that currently, the house

1Unless stated otherwise, the interviews cited in this chapter were carried out in 2018 as part of the research project for which I was the Principal Investigator: "A Global History of Technology, 1850–2000" (ERC AdG 742631). Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten conducted the interviews in Russian. The interviewees consented to their information being published anonymously by the project researchers; their names have been changed accordingly. Petrova and van der Straeten conducted the interview with Dilya and Rano excerpted above in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 17, 2018. All quotes represent English translations rendered from transcripts of the original interviews. I am responsible for this translation and all other Russian-to-English translations of primary—and secondary—source material in this chapter. Throughout the writing of this chapter, Mariya Petrova's knowledgeable and critical comments proved invaluable.

© The Author(s) 2023 M. Hård, *Microhistories of Technology*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22813-1\_9

219

bears no resemblance to its former state. Today, the premises are in excellent condition, with no part of the building sagging or buckling, no deterioration in sight. The brick walls, foors, and window frames have been renovated; old, carved columns have been once again exposed; the rooms are nicely furnished; the courtyard garden is flled with vines, small trees, and fowers. Readers of *House & Garden*—or practically any other interiordesign magazine—would be charmed by the place.

Dilya and Rano's house is situated in the Old Town district of Samarkand; the property has been in the family since the late nineteenth century. Their great-grandfather was a wealthy Tajik merchant who bought the centrally located plot of land and commissioned a house to be built on the premises. After the turn of the century, he added extensions. Dilya and Rano's grandfather inherited the older parts of the house, and his brother's family moved into the newer section. Grandpa was a lawyer who paid little attention to home repair and maintenance. If anything, the girls' parents were even less interested than their grandfather was in investing time and money in the upkeep of the family home: "Daddy did not build anymore […] it was in critical condition and began to fall apart like that." The only maintenance they did was to whitewash the brick walls occasionally and to paint some of the outside walls and parts of the interiors: "We just used light blue. In Soviet times, this was fashionable—in Russian villages, as well."2

Another interviewee, Tatiana, also suggests that renovations were mostly cosmetic—prior to at least 1991, the year when the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR) broke up, and Uzbekistan became an independent country.3 To a large extent, it was lack of money that accounted for the lack of maintenance. Dilya and Rano's father earned a low salary, and there were few, if any, craftspeople among the family's closest relatives. When urgent repairs needed to be made, family members had to tackle the problems on their own. Or, as Dilya put it, "We did it ourselves" (*delali sami*).

"We did it ourselves"—делали сами in Cyrillic letters—is the reprise of many Central Asian interviewees for this chapter. Here, I highlight the ways in which Uzbeks and other inhabitants in the Central Asian area of

2The quotations in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned above.

3Quotation from an interview carried out by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 26, 2018, with Tatiana (name changed). The following quotations in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 1.

the Soviet Union approached home renovation; I document their best efforts at home repair. Interviews conducted with ordinary people reveal a high degree of self-reliance. After all, not only were fnancial resources often limited, but construction materials were at times diffcult to source, as were skilled craftspeople. Nonetheless, residents usually did not passively wait for someone else—or for the State—to fx the leaky roof or cracked façade: they did it themselves.

As a concept, "Do-It-Yourself," abbreviated as DIY, is known to many readers. Historians of technology have investigated the DIY phenomenon in domains like home improvement, hobbyism, and computer design.4 In all societies where people have not been able to fnd—or to afford—professional assistance, they had little choice but to solve technical problems independently. Although the phenomenon is as old as humanity, historian Steven M. Gelber argues that "by the end of the 1950s the very term 'doit-yourself' would become part of the defnition of suburban husbanding," especially in the United States.5 According to Gelber's interpretation, especially married male homeowners took pride in carrying out minor repairs and undertaking renovation work in their own houses. In the US suburbs, DIY was an individual practice. Residents certainly discussed various solutions with their neighbors, and they informed themselves by consulting manuals and hobby magazines such as *Popular Mechanics*. By and large, however, these men carried out the work themselves, in their own homes. Hardware stores and tool manufacturers happily supported their endeavors.

Do-it-yourself activities have in no way been limited to US suburbs, of course. In recent years, DIY has developed into a broad user movement, and today people get together in repair cafes, exchange information on social media, and publish their experiences on YouTube.6 Retired professionals show amateurs how to solve technical problems of home repair, from fxing bicycles to rewiring toasters. To underline the cooperative

4Maines, Rachel P., *Hedonizing Technologies: Paths to Pleasure in Hobbies and Leisure*. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009; Tinn, Honghong, "From DIY Computers to Illegal Copies: The Controversy over Tinkering with Microcomputers in Taiwan, 1980–1984," *IEEE Annals of the History of Computing* 33 (2), 2011: 75–88.

5Gelber, Steven M., "Do-It-Yourself: Constructing, Repairing and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity," *American Quarterly* 49 (1), 1997: 66–112; here: 67.

6Concerning the concept of the "user movement," see Oldenziel, Ruth, and Mikael Hård, *Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels: The People Who Shaped Europe*. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

character of this emerging movement, activists even launched the concept of "Do-It-Together" as a "post-capitalist" alternative to the individualistic, consumer-oriented DIY trend.7

Historians who research socialist countries have tended to analyze the practice of DIY as a necessary component of societies governed by economic and material scarcity.8 Given that it reduces DIY to an economic activity, this form of analysis is highly limited. As Dilya's representative narrative indicates, ordinary people in Central Asia had multiple reasons for fxing, extending, and renovating their homes. Just like the archetypical US suburban husband, they carried out DIY work on their homes for the sake of pride and for fun, for social recognition and for personal satisfaction, for a sense of communality and solidarity. Historians and anthropologists have described similar activities and processes for people in the Russian part of the USSR as well as those in post-Soviet Russia.9 For example, from 1966 onward, hobbyists across the USSR devoured the popular magazine *Modelist-Konstruktor*. 10

Reference material from Central Asia shows that communal activities are well established in local culture. When Dilya said, "We did it ourselves," she meant that family members carried out the necessary home maintenance. As we will see, however, Uzbek, Tajik, and other people in the region had, in fact, for centuries collaborated with close and distant neighbors on collective tasks. Communal work represents a well-practiced custom—before, during, and after the Soviet interlude. Unlike repair cafes, this tradition has a long history and remains an essential element of Central Asian cultures. Dilya's phrase references the collective and communal nature of such work—rather than the more individualistic work

7Baier, Andrea, et al., "Die Welt reparieren: Eine Kunst des Zusammenmachens," in: Baier Andrea, et al., eds, *Die Welt reparieren: Open Source und Selbermachen als postkapitalistische Praxis*. Bielefeld: transcript, 2016: 34–62.

8Cf. the discussion in Möser, Kurt, "Thesen zum Pfegen und Reparieren in den Automobilkulturen am Beispiel der DDR," *Technikgeschichte* 79 (3), 2012, 207–226.

9Vasilyeva, Zinaida, *From Skills to Selves: Recycling "Soviet DIY" in post-Soviet Russia*. Neuchâtel: University of Neuchâtel, 2019.

10Golubev, Alexey, and Olga Smolyak, "Making Things through Making Things: Soviet Do-It-Yourself Culture and Practices of Late Soviet Subjectivation," *Cahiers du monde russe* 54 (3–4), 2013: 517–542. This magazine *Modelist-Konstruktor* is still being published today.

implied by the term DIY. For this reason, "do it ourselves" is, to my mind, the most appropriate concept to use when analyzing these activities.11

In this chapter, I use the phrase "We did it ourselves" as the starting point for nudging History of Technology, as a feld, toward a stronger focus on repair and maintenance activities, and toward the reality of collective work. Around the turn of the twenty-frst century, historians and sociologists began to acknowledge the active incorporation of artifacts and systems into consumers' and users' lives. The slogan of the era was "Users matter."12 Historians of technology began to realize that scientists and engineers, economists and politicians are not the only ones who bring about technical change―and that History of Technology cannot narrate inventions and innovation processes to the exclusion of users. By blurring the boundaries between users and producers, Ruth Oldenziel and I made a case for studying organized consumers and amateur "tinkerers."13 In this chapter, I show how ordinary people in Uzbekistan and neighboring countries have taken on selected construction and maintenance projects *collectively*, hewing to an age-old Muslim way of organizing communal life. Although the examples in this chapter refer to Central Asia only, it is important to know that this practice of "We did it ourselves" extends to many parts of the world.

Most of the new empirical material presented in this chapter derives from interviews conducted for the research project on which this book is based. The interview excerpts included here highlight the relevance and value of oral history to contemporary history as a feld. In pursuing their research, my colleagues who contributed to this chapter adopted established oral-history methods. Given their need to understand events in interviewees' distant pasts, the researchers gave subjects ample time for refection. And given that interviewers were often asking personal questions, it was vital for them to build mutual trust. This meant that the

11The analysis in this chapter, including the elaboration of the "We did it ourselves" concept, derives mainly from the work done by (and discussions with) Jonas van der Straeten and Mariya Petrova under the auspices of the ERC project mentioned in Footnote 1. Cf., e.g., Straeten, Jonas van der, and Mariya Petrova, "Mud Bricks in a Concrete State: Building, Maintaining and Improving One Own's House in Soviet Samarkand, 1957–1991," in: Krebs, Stefan and Heike Weber, eds, *The Persistence of Technology: Histories of Repair, Reuse and Disposal*. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021: 111–137.

12Oudshoorn, Nelly, and Trevor J. Pinch, eds, *How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technology*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

13Oldenziel and Hård, *Consumers*.

interviews were relatively long, and that they did not follow a presetquestionnaire model.14

To provide readers with more examples of collective repair, maintenance, and construction work, I include references to, and quotations from, further interviews conducted by fellow historians and anthropologists. Considered as a body of evidence, this broader collection of interviews can be read as an important contribution to contemporary history writing, especially to the established practice of documenting the history of everyday life: "writing history from below."15

#### State Power and Beyond

Members of my research team asked informants to describe their housing arrangements in Samarkand during and after Soviet rule. This direct inquiry into residents' activities, "from below," so to speak, was meant to counterbalance the standard depiction of people in Uzbekistan as passive recipients of governmental housing and other public services. By interviewing dwellers of individual homes, for example, the historians sought to avoid an undue emphasis on people living in large-scale, state-run, functionalist areas, so-called microdistricts (*mikroraiony*). This choice of interviewees enabled the researchers to discover the extensive individual and cooperative action that took place—even during the Soviet era.

During the Cold War, most Western historians subscribed univocally to the one-sided view of the Soviet Union as a cruel power-machine. Specialists in the history of Central Asia under Soviet rule tended to reproduce this narrative, and they traced the roots of subjugation to Czarist times.16 In the 1990s, when archives became more readily available, somewhat more diverse narratives developed. One habit remains, however: scholars of history and political science tend to extrapolate the circumstances of the infamously brutal Stalinist phase to apply to other periods. For example, historian Sergey Abashin criticizes political scientist James C. Scott for drawing general conclusions about all of the Soviet Union and the entire Soviet period—from source material relating only to the

14Concerning the theories and methods of oral history, see Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, *The Oral History Reader*, 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2016.

15Cf. Chap. 1 and Thompson, Edward P., *The Making of the English Working Class*. London: Gollancz, 1963.

16Allworth, Edward, ed., *Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule*. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.

European parts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) during the Stalinist era.17

Scott's Soviet case study, published in his book *Seeing Like a State*, examines the collectivization and socialization of the land and the creation of large-scale agricultural units. Scott analyzes these processes by means of the concept "high modernism." According to Scott, high-modernist reformers believed that replacing individual farmland with collectively run *kolkhozy* and state-run *sovkhozy* would rationalize agricultural production and lead to higher crop yields. Scott argues that the practical outcome of the reformers' ideology—and the state's ambitions—was disastrous: peasants who managed to survive the Great Purge found themselves to be nothing more than modern-era serfs. Without land of their own, peasants were forced to accommodate to the rules of collective farms—or to become state employees.18

Abashin's portrayal of collective farm life in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic contrasts sharply with Scott's analysis. Whereas Scott sees his subjects as victims of state repression, Abashin, in his research on a small village in the post-Stalin era, depicts enthusiastic people with "hopes and plans for the future." His "microanalysis of the local situation" reveals that *kolkhoz* members exercised considerable freedom to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and to sell their produce at the local market. From an Uzbek viewpoint, the *kolkhoz* model seemed to harmonize with traditional ways of life.19

Like Scott, who is a political scientist, historians of technology are also prone to associating Soviet power with large-scale infrastructure projects. In a broad-ranging article, US historian Paul R. Josephson analyzes the ideological underpinnings of "Lenin's electrifcation, Stalin's canals and hydropower stations, Khrushchev's atomic energy, and Brezhnev's Siberian river diversion project."20 For Josephson, it was the monolithic

17Abashin, Sergey, "'Ideal'niy kolkhoz' v sovetskoi Sredney Azii: Istoriya neudachi ili uspekha?" *Acta Slavica Iaponica*, 29, 2011: 1–26, here: 2; cf. Straeten, Jonas van der, "Borderlands of Industrial Modernity: Explorations into the History of Technology in Central Asia, 1850–2000," *Technology and Culture* 60 (3), 2019: 659–687; here: 666.

18 See Scott, James C., *Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed*. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, Ch. 6.

19Abashin, "'Ideal'niy kolkhoz,'" pp. 3–4.

20 Josephson, Paul R., "'Projects of the Century' in Soviet History: Large-scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev," *Technology and Culture* 36 (3), 1995: 519–559; here: 519.

power structure of the USSR that made it possible to mobilize enough resources to turn modernist ideas of technological grandeur into practical projects.

Historians interested in Soviet urban planning and city building also tend to emphasize the gigantism of many projects. Josephson's own monograph on Akademgorodok—which frames this Siberian city as the realization of a modern, Baconian utopia—is a case in point.21 A substantial amount of literature exists on the history of so-called socialist cities, *sotsgoroda*. 22 Much of this literature focuses on the foundation and development of large, industrial, mono-functional cities in the socialist bloc. Examples include the Soviet-Russian cities of Uli-Ilimsk, built around a hydroelectric plant, and Angarsk, the site of large-scale petrochemical factories.23 In Eastern Europe, the "steel towns" of Eisenhüttenstadt and Nowa Huta have garnered excessive attention from urban and economic historians.24

Indeed, in characterizing socialist cities, most historians emphasize their uniformity and drabness, as well as their tendency to embody rationalist planning ideals. Detailed case studies of daily life in such cities often provide a more balanced picture, however. For example, in his study of Magnitogorsk, a city designed to extract and process the abundant iron ore in the Ural Mountains, historian Stephen Kotkin provides an insightful counter-narrative to the standard-issue history of industrial cities in the USSR. Although Kotkin acknowledges that Magnitogorsk was planned as an urban utopia, his focus is not on planners' and architects' attempts to create an "ideal city." Instead, Kotkin brings out the "creative resistance" of ordinary citizens and unearths the activities of "individuals with hopes,

21 Josephson, Paul R., *New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

22This literature spans from French, R.A., and F.E. Ian Hamilton, eds, *The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy*. Chichester: John Wiley, 1979, to Meerovich, Mark G., Viachaslau I. Menkouski, and Igor L. Zherebtsov, *"Socialist City": Idea and Its Realization in the Soviet Union 1920's and 1930's*. Belianum: Banská Bystica, Slovakia, 2019.

23Engel, Barbara, *Öffentliche Räume in den blauen Städten Russlands: Entwicklungen, Status und Perspektiven; funktionale und räumliche Anforderungen an die Erneuerung öffentlicher Räume in den neuen Industriestädten Sibiriens unter veränderten sozioökonomischen Bedingungen*. Tübingen: Wasmuth, 2004.

24 Jajesniak-Quast, Dagmara, "In the Shadow of the Factory: Steel Towns in Postwar ́ Eastern Europe," in: Hård, Mikael, and Thomas J. Misa, eds, *Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008: 187–210.

fears, a capacity for survival, and no small amount of inventiveness."25 By focusing on Samarkand and other Central Asian cities, I strive to do the same in this chapter.

#### The Persistence of the Neighborhood Community

We also fnd a tension between monotonous utopias and local realities in the literature on Central Asia. In his history of the Uzbek city of Tashkent under Stalin and Khrushchev's rule, scholar Paul Stronski analyzes the dialectics of modernist plans and indigenous traditions.26 After Tashkent in 1930 was made the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, architects and engineers, working on behalf of the State, began to turn the city into a showcase of modern civilization and socialist ideals. Representative buildings, wide avenues, large squares, parks, and factories were to replace mosques, narrow alleys, and what the modernists considered to be flthy, unhygienic residential areas. Considerable resources were mobilized to turn Tashkent into a model town for Soviet Central Asia.

The Communist Party was the driving force behind these urban developments. In their efforts to create both a "socialist city" and the "Soviet Man"—a person who would incorporate communist ideals of collective action and unselfsh behavior—the Party tried to erase traditional structures, both material and social.27 In 1954, the Central Committee of the Uzbek Communist Party stated this goal forcefully: "We must liquidate the mud-brick home, we must liquidate the Old Uzbek way of life."28 By removing traditionally designed courtyard houses and forcing people to move to European-style residential areas, Party offcials aimed to make them accustomed to "modern" ways of life.

The modernizers never managed to realize all their goals. Although Tashkent became one of the most Sovietized cities in the region, Stronski concludes that "the traditional Central Asian neighborhood […], with its serpentine streets, internal courtyards, and local customs, continued to prove much more resilient than many urban planners had initially

25Kotkin, Stephen, *Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization*. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 19, 154.

26 Stronski, Paul, *Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966*. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.

27 Ibid., p. 63.

28Quoted from ibid., p. 308.

envisioned."29 Having learned how to subvert the Soviet legal system, individual house owners often successfully resisted eviction and confscation. Even when ultimately forced to move, many residents built new houses with traditional layouts on the outskirts of town.30

One reason for the refusal to move into the modern apartments of multistory buildings was the inappropriate design of the housing. The standard new apartments were intended for nuclear families consisting of two grown-ups and two children, rather than traditional extended families. The government-sponsored apartments also had a design faw: during the excessively hot summer months, the homes became practically uninhabitable. An additional problem was that most residents of large, reinforced-concrete buildings had no access to land, and they were unable to cultivate fruits or vegetables to meet their personal needs.

Facing resistance, architects tried to make life in modern residential areas more appealing. One idea was to create an area in Tashkent's Old Town that consisted of modern buildings of different sizes and would provide some families with access to courtyards and rooftop gardens. To underscore that the project was meant to allow the "native population" to continue living close to relatives and extended families, the architects called it "Mahalla"—a reference to traditional Islamic communities.31 Before the project could be realized, however, Tashkent in 1966 was hit by a devastating earthquake, after which the planning changed considerably.

The word *mahalla* can be found in Uzbek and other Turkic languages, as well as in Arabic and Persian. Often translated as "neighborhood community," a *mahalla* does not simply denote a group of people living in close proximity to each other, however. A *mahalla* has both a spatial and a social dimension, and it is mostly organized around a mosque. It is common to fnd a public water source, and perhaps a tea house in a *mahalla*. Traditionally, Central Asian *mahallas* were managed by an elected offcial, who organized community work, functioned as a bridge to the city or

31 Stronski, *Tashkent*, pp. 232–233. Stronski, on p. 232, has taken the quote about the "native population" from a 1968 article by Z.N. Chebotareva in the journal *Stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura Uzbekistana*.

29 Ibid., p. 269.

30Petrova, Mariya, *"Nah am Boden": Privater Hausbau zwischen Wohnungsnot und Landkonfikt im sowjetischen Samarkand der 50er und 60er Jahre*. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.

national government, and collected taxes.32 Some *mahallas* initially brought together members of a certain guild or a particular ethnic group but later diversifed. In Tashkent, for example, the Mahalla Ukchi used to be the neighborhood of the weapon blacksmiths, and the Tajik-Mahalla originally attracted people of Tajik descent.33 Funerals, weddings, and other communal events brought together members of a *mahalla*. Importantly, *mahallas* carried out essential support functions in societies lacking a state-run welfare system.34

Despite their communal character, *mahallas* also enable a high degree of social control on the local level. Some Soviet Republic and post-Soviet governments appropriated this age-old institution to make it suit their own purposes—for coercion and surveillance, for example. In today's Uzbekistan, the *mahalla* concept has been incorporated into the offcial local administration, and the government has even created new *mahallas* in modern residential areas.35

#### Construction Materials and Climate in Central Asia

The courtyard house is a traditional design in Muslim regions—beyond Central Asia as well. The courtyard itself typically includes a small vegetable garden, a few trees, and, sometimes, a well. Many activities take place in the yard—especially in the summer. Measures are taken to ensure that such activities are not visible to the outside world. Unlike the residential buildings in most European towns, residential structures in so-called Islamic cities often lack windows facing the street or the alleyway. High walls surrounding the courtyard manifest the separation between public and private life. In the private sphere, it is common to fnd additional

32Faizulloev, Muhiddin, "Mahalla in Northern Tajikistan from the End of 19th to the Beginning of the 20th Century: The Case of Khujand and Its Suburbs," in: Roche, Sophie, ed., *The Family in Central Asia: New Perspectives*. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2017: 55–83.

33Gangler, Anette, et al., eds. *Städte Usbekistans zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt: Städtische Transformationsprozesse der zentralasiatischen Städte Taschkent und Samarkand.* Cottbus and Stuttgart: BTU Cottbus and Stuttgart University, 2006, p. 26.

35Pétric, Boris Mathieu, "The Mahalla in Present-day Uzbekistan," in: Gammer, Moshe, ed., *The Caspian Region, Volume I: A Re-emerging Region*. London: Routledge, 2004: 228–243; Alexander, Catherine, and Victor Buchli, "Introduction," in: Alexander, Catherine, Victor Buchli, and Caroline Humphrey, eds, *Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia*. London: University College London Press, 2007: 1–39, here: 29.

34 Jordan, Jens W., "Die Mahallas der timuridischen Altstadt Samarkands," in: *2750 Jahre Samarkand*. Erfurt: Stein, 2007: 58–65.

forms of separation: between traditionally defned female and male areas; between areas where guests are entertained, and rooms to which only family members have access; between buildings inhabited by the older generation, and those designated for one of the sons and his family; and between living areas used in winter, and those used only in summer.36

Courtyard houses in Uzbekistan were traditionally built with loam bricks. These bricks were often made of a particular aeolian clay called loess—a mixture of sand, silt, and clay. Loam bricks were used for walls that faced the street as well as for various buildings within the courtyard. The advantages of using loam are clear: loess is abundant throughout Central Asia, and the making of unfred bricks with this material is a lowtech activity. In this sense, adobe (unfred bricks) is an excellent DIY building material, requiring neither large amounts of capital nor extensive engineering knowledge. When the construction area is large enough, bricks may be made on site. In any case, to make bricks, the builder or mason mixes loess with water and straw, then pours this mixture into brick-shaped molds. Ultimately, the bricks are laid out to dry in the sun. The product is commonly called mud bricks; in English, the word *adobe* (from Spanish) has gained currency.

The use of adobe—whether in the form of plaster or unfred bricks presents a trade-off. One advantage is that the material for making adobe is inexpensive and often easily accessible. Another beneft is the relative fexibility of adobe as a building material: given that it is not as stable as, say, concrete, adobe structures lend themselves to being "disassembled" when needed. For example, when a family needs to remove walls in order to build an extension, mud-brick walls are far easier to demolish. Accordingly, the drawback of an adobe-brick wall is that it may not last as long as one made of reinforced concrete; also, adobe requires ongoing maintenance.

To document the traditional brick-making process, researcher Enrico Fodde interviewed artisans in various Central Asian countries. Fodde's interviews, conducted in the early 2000s, document processes that have likely remained unchanged for much of the last century. (Evidence points to the arrival of Czarist troops—and Russian infuence—affecting

36Bianca, Stefano, *Hofhaus und Paradiesgarten: Architektur und Lebensform in der islamischen Welt*. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1991, pp. 208–244.

brickmaking techniques in the nineteenth century.37) When large quantities of bricks were needed, masons preferred sites close to rivers or canals. Here, loam is often plentiful, and access to water is practically guaranteed. Once a site had been located, the craftsperson tested the texture of the mud. If the quality was acceptable, workers dug out an appropriate area with a mattock (a combination of pickaxe and adze), crushed larger pieces of clay, and added water. When they lacked access to machinery, workers mixed loam and water using their bare feet. Small amounts of straw or other binding material were added. The brick molds used were often made of wood, and they were provided by carpenters. In earlier eras, bricks were square; later, rectangular bricks (also known as "Russian bricks") became more common.38

The climate in Central Asia has contributed to the widespread use of loam as a construction material. The region is characterized by extreme temperature differences: very hot summers and bitter-cold winters. Substantial variations may also occur between day- and nighttime temperatures. When it comes to creating stable indoor temperatures, thick loam walls—and the use of loam in roofs—do a better job than wood. Fodde describes Tajik village roofs made of a wooden frame covered by a thick layer of reed, bark, straw, and as much as 30 centimeters of clay.39

A drawback is that loam walls are affected by weather erosion and wearand-tear from residents. To prevent deterioration, walls may be plastered—or at least whitewashed. Typically, clay-based plaster includes a larger amount of straw to prevent the surface from cracking. Animal feces may also be added.40 Plastered walls are typically renovated every ten or twenty years, whereas whitewashed walls need to be maintained at fveyear intervals.41

37Pisarcik, A.K., ̌ *Narodnaya arkhitektura Samarkanda: XIX-XX vv*. Dushanbe: Izdatel'stvo "Donish," 1974, p. 57.

38This paragraph is based on Fodde, Enrico, "Traditional Earthen Building Techniques in Central Asia," *International Journal of Architectural Heritage: Conservation, Analysis, and Restoration* 3 (2), 2009: 145–168. Cf. also Pisarcik, ̌ *Narodnaya arkhitektura*, Ch. II. Concerning the concept "Russian bricks," see Cooke, Louise, "Earthen Building Materials and Techniques at Merv, Turkmenistan," in: *LEHM 2004: 4th International Conference on Building with Earth*. Weimar: Dachverband Lehm, 2004: 52–61; here: 57.

39Fodde, "Traditional," pp. 160–162.

40 Ibid., pp. 158–160.

41Cooke, "Earthen," p. 57.

Given the extreme weather in Central Asia—heavy precipitation, harsh winds, and scorching sunshine—roofs that incorporate loam must be maintained regularly. For example, when inhabitants remove snow from fat roofs in winter, the top layer of loam may sustain damage. Rooftops are also used as a storage area and as a playground for children; both activities add to the wear-and-tear on the structure. Fodde's Tajik interviewees from the Zerafshan area informed him that, every fve years or so, they add a couple of centimeters of clay to the top of their roofs.42

Climatic conditions also limit the window of time for building construction in Central Asia. Adobe bricks can only be made during the hot, dry summer months. House building starts in the spring and may take place until November, but seldom longer. By and large, construction used to be a male activity. Women sometimes played a role in plastering and whitewashing walls; evidence from Turkmenistan shows that women were often responsible for painting and wallpapering.43 The homeowner's decision about whether to engage experienced builders was based on the family's fnances. As a rule, however, family members and relatives took an active role in the construction process, whether in building from scratch or helping with renovations. Neighbors and other members of the village or the *mahalla* also lent home builders a hand.

In a conversation with anthropologist Victor Buchli in the early 2000s, an interviewee named Auntie L. explains the advantages of adobe bricks. Auntie L. lived (and still lives, one hopes) with her husband in the originally Czarist part of Astana (called Tselinograd in Soviet times and Nur-Sultan between 2019 and 2022), the modern capital of Kazakhstan. At the time of the interview, Auntie L. had recently replaced a dilapidated part of her house with a new section, intended for the youngest son and his family. For this extension, she had decided to use mud bricks, which promised to protect against the cold temperatures and gale-force winds of the Kazakh steppe. Auntie L.'s land had plenty of loess soil, making it easy to produce adobe bricks on-site. The entire extended family took part in the construction process. They mixed loam with water and hay, and subsequently, they set out the bricks to dry in the sun. The men in the family raised the walls in as little as three days, and the women plastered the walls

42Fodde, "Traditional," p. 162.

43Cooke, "Earthen," p. 55.

with a layer of clay. Together, the family members built the addition to the house-themselves.44

One of the people my research colleagues interviewed testifed to the simplicity of the adobe-manufacturing process. As a teenager, Bakhrom worked with friends during the summer months to make bricks at various locations. Neither specialist knowledge nor advanced equipment was required; Bakhrom and his friends mixed the loam with water, formed the bricks, and lay them in the sun to dry. To save time and money on travel, the friends built themselves a small hut close to each production site, where they spent the evenings cooking before they slept.45

Another interviewee, Wladimir, remembers his parents hiring a pair of workers to make adobe bricks, from loam, in their own yard: "First they came to have a look and walked around the yard." After the workers found suitable soil, "they began to shovel. After removing the top layer, they dug deeper. When one of them found a good layer, they extracted the loam […] and added some sand." The loam-sand mixture was then thrown back into the hole, and water was added. After a couple of days, when the mixture had taken on the right texture, the workers started forming the bricks. Working "quickly," they managed to make several hundred per day. At the end of this process, the adobe bricks were placed in the hot sun to dry for approximately one week. "Most of the additions and other things" in the family's yard were eventually built with these bricks.46

#### Between *Hashar* and *Subbotnik*

We know that people throughout the centuries have come together to undertake tasks of common concern: constructing houses of worship; repairing roads; combatting fres; and designing irrigation systems. Communal work was, and may still be, especially urgent in regions with a low population density (as in the North American countryside), a lack of specialists (as in distant Norwegian valleys), and a weak monetary

44This paragraph is based on Buchli, Victor, "Astana: Materiality and the City," in: Alexander, Catherine, Victor Buchli, and Caroline Humphrey, eds, *Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia*. London: University College London Press, 2007: 40–69, here: 56.

45The information in this paragraph is taken from an interview with Bakhrom (name changed), carried out by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 18, 2018.

46The information and quotations in this paragraph are taken from two interviews with Wladimir (name changed) carried out by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on June 19 and July 29, 2018.

economy (as in many Central Asian areas).47 People also gathered to help individuals carry out tasks they could not manage on their own. For example, in a ritual called barn raising, rural farmers in the United States would collaborate to help a neighbor build a barn; similarly, Uzbek villagers would congregate to help a neighbor repair a leaking roof.48

Communal work has a long history in Central Asia. Bearing certain similarities not only to barn raising, but also to *dugnad* (voluntary work for a common good) in Norway, this social practice is widespread both in the countryside and urban neighborhoods.49 In Tajik, this form of mutual aid is called *hashér*; Kazakhs employ the term *assàr*, and Uzbeks use the word *hashar*. 50 The fact that their root lies in the Arabic word *hšr*, meaning community or collective, indicates this is an old institution in Turkic, Persian, and Arabic communities alike.51 In an interview with anthropologist Christilla Marteau d'Autry, one inhabitant of Samarkand defned *hashér* as an event in which "everyone gathers for the beneft of society," to "work together."52

During Soviet times, the State introduced the idea of the *subbotnik* across the entire USSR. In Russian, *subbota* means Saturday; the idea was that Soviet citizens should devote at least one Saturday per year to unpaid, communal work. To a certain extent, this attempt by the State to mobilize local communities for its own purposes reminds us—as we saw in Chap. 7—of the ways in which the Kenyan authorities used the concept of *harambee* ("Let's pull together") in various campaigns.

Immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Uzbek government reinvented *hashar* to replace the Communist *subbotnik*. By transforming the *hashar* tradition into an Uzbek alternative to the mandatory Soviet Saturday, the authorities tried to kill two birds with one stone: to boost solidarity, and to motivate citizens to undertake important

47For a general overview of this kind of activities, see Lorentzen, Håkon, and Line Dugstad, *Den norske dugnaden: Historie, kultur og fellesskap*. Kristiansand: Norwegian Academic Press, 2011, pp. 9–41.

48Marteau D'Autry, Christilla, "*Vyjdem vse, kak odin!* 'Allons-y tous comme un seul homme!' Ethnographie d'un *hashar* national dans un quartier de Samarkand, Ouzbékistan," *Cahiers d'Asie centrale* 19–20, 2011: 279–301; here: p. 281.

49Concerning this long-standing practice in Norway, see Lorentzen and Dugstad, *Dugnaden*.

50Fodde, "Traditional," p. 153.

51Marteau D'Autry, "*Vyjdem vse*,", p. 279.

52 Ibid., pp. 287, 292.

communal tasks. Such work is often carried out as a part of the preparations for *Nowruz*, an offcial holiday celebrated on March 21, the day of the vernal equinox. On the local level, the offcial *mahallas* are responsible for organizing these *hashar* events.53

In 2007, Marteau d'Autry attended a "national benefcence *hashar*" in a Tajik *mahalla* in Samarkand. Situated on the outskirts of the city, the *hashar* activities in this *mahalla* included various tasks. In addition to cleaning streets and painting the community center, participants were expected to clean the water basin and other areas of the old cemetery; to plant trees; to lay the foundation for a mosque; and to start construction on a sports feld. Women were explicitly asked to sweep streets and alleyways, and children helped to clean the grounds of the local cemetery. Other tasks were carried out by both unskilled and skilled men. Like everyone else, a professional carpenter, electrician, and house painter contributed their labor without remuneration—although the *mahalla* reimbursed them for any materials. The elderly attended as well, drinking tea while offering their knowledge and experience to the younger generation. Marteau d'Autry's somewhat romantic story paints a picture of *hashar* as a social event that contributes to keeping the neighborhood together while reproducing gender roles, generational differences, and status symbols. The collective work typically ends with common meals or festivities.54

The extension and maintenance of private buildings may also take place *hashar*-style. In this case, rather than calling on the entire *mahalla*, owners mobilize family members, close or distant relatives, and, perhaps, several direct neighbors.55 Mukhabbat, an interviewee living on the outskirts of Samarkand, confrmed this practice. In 1986, when Mukhabbat and her husband wanted to build a dining hall large enough to accommodate at least thirty-fve people, the couple relied on their relatives. "We have always had the *hashar* method. For example, we have a big family—brothers come, my nephews […]." In exchange for their work, the team members received three meals per day: "We had a good breakfast […], for lunch there had to be pilaf or cabbage rolls." After a whole day's heavy

53This and the following paragraph are based on ibid.

54 Scholars criticize overly romantic images of *hashar*, pointing out that―after the fall of the Soviet Union―well-off persons would hire others to do the required tasks for them; cf. Koroteyeva, Victoria, and Ekaterina Makarova, "Money and Social Connections in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Uzbek City," *Central Asian Survey* 17 (4), 1998: 579–596.

55Faizulloev, "Mahalla," p. 72.

work, everybody enjoyed *chorba*, a hearty soup.56 Mukhabbat's teenaged nephews received money for their work, in addition. The nephews were assigned the task of making the loam bricks needed for the sixty-squaremeter dining hall. Like the workers in Wladimir's narrative, Mukhabbat's nephews made the bricks on-site.

#### Repair and Maintenance

All dwellings are affected by the ravages of time; people across the world are compelled to repair leaky roofs and water pipes, deteriorating walls and window frames. What varies, though, is the amount of work we commit to home maintenance. For example, the most active homeowners arrange for their house to be painted—or whitewashed—on a regular basis; other residents, whether for lack of time, funds, or motivation, may simply keep their fngers crossed, in the hope that the effects of time will not destroy their abode. An engineer once calculated that almost one-third of the money spent on construction in Britain covered repair and maintenance work.57

Historians of technology have only recently discovered the importance of repair and maintenance.58 After decades of researching inventions and innovations, members of the profession have fnally become curious about what happens to technological structures as they age. In the last decade, anthropologists have also begun to investigate how communities manage the built environment. Interviews and historical sources reveal how people in Central Asia combat decay—and take precautions for the future.

Scholar Wladimir Sgibnev documents the broad scope of repair and maintenance activities in parts of Central Asia. During his feldwork in 2009 and 2010, Sgibnev interviewed homeowners and tenants in the Tajik city of Khujand (called Leninabad during the Soviet era). At the center of his analysis is *remont*, an originally French word that entered Central Asian languages from Russian. Like the English words renovate (a transitive verb) and renovation (the noun), *remont* captures various kinds of repair and maintenance activities, as well as reconstruction work.

58Russell, Andrew L., and Lee Vinsel, "After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance," *Technology and Culture* 59 (1), 2018, 1–25.

56The quotations in this paragraph are taken from an interview with Mukhabbat (name changed), carried out by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 22, 2018. 57 Seeley, Ivor H., *Building Maintenance*. London: Macmillan, 1976, p. 2.

*Remont* can be used as a verb and as a noun.59 One homeowner Sgibnev interviewed used the word *remont* in its most versatile, encompassing form:

We had an old house but we made remont there. It's a normal Tajik house, but now there is a remont like in Europe. […] We have done all the remont already, it looks like new. But […] we will do another remont when we have a wedding. Then we will renew the remont.60

The interviewee indicates that substantial work went into repairing the original building, which had been in poor condition. One of the goals of the renovation was to adopt European standards, which were apparently considered superior to Tajik ones. Well aware that any building must be maintained regularly, the owner claimed that his family would undertake another round of renovations in preparation for a future marriage.

In addition to showing that recurring maintenance was crucial for loam buildings, Sgibnev documents how people in modern concrete-panel buildings carried out repair and renovation. Often, this was easier said than done, however. In this interview, an apartment owner describes some of the diffculties with living in a building designed during the Soviet period:

You've got this problem in every house. In this fat which I bought, too, the roof is leaking. I was told already that I had to fx it myself. So I will start with the roof, and then go on to a *remont* of the apartment.61

Other anthropological studies also discuss maintenance activities in multistory, concrete buildings. During his feld work in 2008–2009, Mateusz Laszczkowski observed the problems faced by residents of an apartment block in Astana. Residents could trust neither service providers nor the authorities to carry out the necessary repairs, so they had no choice but to address maintenance work themselves, repairing the building's plumbing system and outdoor facilities, for example. Given the high turnover of residents in the 1990s and the 2000s, social cohesion in the building was weak; repair-and-maintenance initiatives depended on a small group of

59 Sgibnev, Wladimir, "*Remont*: The Social Production of Space in Central Asia," *PhD Dissertation*. Berlin: Humboldt University, 2012.

60Quoted from Sgibnev, Wladimir, "Remont: Housing Adaptation as Meaningful Practice of Space Production in Post-Soviet Tajikistan," *Europa Regional* 22 (1–2), 2014: 53–64, here: 55.

61Quoted from ibid., p. 57.

active individuals. One of the most devoted residents told Laszczkowski, "No one wants to do the job."62 Apparently, a certain tension between apartment owners, long-term tenants, and short-term tenants made it diffcult to organize collective work.

## Doing It Together: Cooperation and Collectivity

The interviews we conducted support the conclusions drawn by historians and anthropologists who have studied urban life in Central Asia. Our research also complements the existing body of knowledge: our interviewees describe how ordinary people actively designed, repaired, and maintained their living spaces—cooperatively and collectively, with family members and with neighbors.

Anvar, a Samarkand merchant, recalls how residents of an urban *mahalla* would gather on a yearly basis to "help each other." In the 1960s, when Anvar was still a child, the roofs of his parents' and neighbors' houses "did not have fber cement covering, only clay." This solution was cheap and simple, but it had its obvious drawbacks. Anvar recalls:

Sometimes, when we were sleeping, in the wintertime, water dripped from the roof (the roof was leaky), and we had to dash off to get coal ash, to sprinkle onto the roof. It turned into a kind of cement which stuck to the roof. We took a bucket and then sprinkled salt on top of it […].

To avoid troublesome leaks, the roofs had to be repaired and maintained "every year." This work was usually done in September, before the frst snow fell. Members of the *mahalla* organized the labor themselves: "We started with the tea houses, then your roof, his roof." It was "like *hashar*." No professional builders took part, and to motivate the volunteer participants, "a good meal at lunchtime with pilaf or vodka" was provided. Although these activities took place during the Communist era, they had nothing to do with the offcially prescribed practice of *subbotnik*. Anvar describes collective work in which neighbors collaborated to solve problems of common interest—or to help each other.63

62This paragraph is based on Laszczkowski, Mateusz, "Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place-Making, and the State in an Astana Apartment Block," *City & Society* 27 (2), 2015: 136–159; here: 150.

63The quotations and information in this and the following two paragraphs are taken from an interview conducted by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 25, 2018, with Anvar (name changed).

Only in the early 1980s did residents of the *mahalla* get ahold of fbercement sheets with which to cover their roofs: "One neighbor began to bring asbestos sheets, and another asked where he had gotten them—and it went on and on." Anvar worked at a gas station at the time; he recalls how he "sent a truck to the *mahalla* where they, day after day, removed 50 centimeters of clay from the roof and replaced it with fber-cement sheets." Asbestos sheets had the advantage of being both waterproof and considerably lighter than the thick layer of clay. If the fber cement was of good quality, the sheets would also require less-frequent maintenance. (At the time, asbestos was not known to be carcinogenic.)

In Soviet times, the process of gaining access to construction materials differed from that of capitalist societies. The members of the *mahalla* managed to acquire asbestos sheets and beams at a local lumberyard for a very low price. To secure permission for this, however, the local Mahalla Committee was required to frst submit a request to the Local Executive Committee of the Communist Party. Only after the Party Committee "had issued an order could you go there, pick up your sheets, and pay." Individuals had to go through the same procedure every time they needed "bricks or boards or asbestos sheets."

Bakhrom, who grew up in a large house on the outskirts of Samarkand, was lucky enough to have a close friend whose father was a high-ranking member of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party. Whenever Bakhrom wanted boards or fber-cement sheets for his own house—which he built with his father, on his parents' property—his friend made sure Bakhrom got what he needed. Via other personal connections, Bakhrom's family was able to procure iron hardware. Nevertheless, it took Bakhrom and his father as long as eight years to fnish the new house: "I received the beams, and then I had to wait for the boards. While making the foors, I had to wait for the laths."64

Anvar and Bakhrom's experiences were common ones. Another of our interviewees, Wladimir, relates that written permission from the Executive Committee was seldom enough to secure the necessary building materials: workers and security personnel at the lumberyard expected a gratuity, and the lumberyard's truck driver had to make sure he had reserved enough gasoline to make the unoffcial delivery—without getting into trouble with his superiors. In the 1980s, when Wladimir needed building material

64The quotations and information in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 45.

to create a footpath in his yard, he managed to get his hands on three bags of powdered cement from the company for which he worked—by tipping one of the foremen.65

Like many others in former socialist republics, Anvar remembers the past in a positive—or even nostalgic—way:

At that time, people respected each other. Cultural standards were very high. And today, nobody needs anyone. Back then, if our neighbor was doing something, my father would come and ask me if we shouldn't make something, too.

In Anvar's opinion, the traditional urban *mahalla* gave people a particular sense of belonging that could not be found in the modern concrete-panel buildings of the city: "I grew up in the *mahalla*; it taught us children everything." Through experience, customs, and daily "practice," children in the *mahalla* learned what was expected of them as grown-ups. Weddings and funerals drew people together.66

Anvar grew up in low-income circumstances, which he expresses as, "We were ordinary people." His family lived in a typical courtyard house in Samarkand. Today, the house's "old doors" and nicely "carved columns" attract curious tourists who may well have a romantic view of life in the old town. The reality was far from romantic: not only did the roofs leak; one of the rooms in Anvar's house was "very cold" in the winter, and the kitchen walls were made of thin plywood boards, just enough to "protect it from the wind." As Dilya also told us, no one in the Soviet era really valued the old architectural style.67 For example, Anvar's parents had the old columns in their home "covered with plywood."

Heating technologies refected the humble living conditions. In the early 1970s, before gas pipes were installed in the *mahalla*, residents used masonry stoves and *sandals*—small pans or pits, which were flled with pieces of smoldering wood or coal. A *sandal* is a truly simple heat source, usually found underneath dining tables.68 The slowly burning substance is

65The information in this paragraph is taken from the interviews mentioned in Footnote 46.

66The quotations and information in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 63.

67Cf. the interview mentioned in Footnote 1.

68Cf. El Hariry, Shorouk, et al., "Toward a Global History of Material Culture," *Technikgeschichte* 88 (2), 2021: 178–182.

simply put in a small hole in the ground or in a small pan on the foor. Anvar remembers the small pit under his grandmother's dinner table, where red-hot pieces of coal were placed to keep everyone's feet warm. Central Asian dining tables are low, and people used large tablecloths or carpets to hang well below the table's surface; this made the *sandal* a highly effcient heating technology.

Dilya, too, mentions that her grandfather's house was equipped with masonry stoves, and she also recalls the importance of the small *sandals*:

Coal was placed under the table. The table was completely covered with a rug, and you would then put your legs underneath. In Afghanistan, they also had this type of fre pit. It was a very smart thing. In the winter, it was even possible to keep a small room warm with it.

"Out of habit," the family held on to some of their coal pits after their home was connected to the city's gas network.69

Masonry stoves are called "Dutch stoves" (*gollandskaja pechka*) in Russian, and most likely they were introduced into Central Asia during Czarist times. Anvar relates that during his childhood, family members had managed to build their own masonry stoves. Only when the Soviet administration introduced gas was it necessary to hire specialists to insert gas burners into the existing masonry stoves: "The experts got twenty-fve rubles for their work, and they worked for two days. And then the gas was connected." As long as the residents were not hooked up to any technological infrastructure, they "did not need any experts" or craftspeople. In the extended family, there were always enough "brothers" who "knew something."70

Tatiana, frst introduced at the start of this chapter, tells a similar story. Tatiana grew up in Samarkand, in the kind of standardized private house that residents built themselves—a kind of State-supported do-it-ourselves activity. This housing was part of an offcial construction program of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Born in 1950, Tatiana recalls that, in the beginning, her family only had a bathroom and a toilet in the yard. To

69The quotations in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 1. Mukhabbat, in the interview mentioned in Footnote 56, describes the *sandal* in a similar way.

70The quotations in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 63.

fetch water, family members also had to go outside. The house had a masonry oven, but in the mid-1960s, her parents decided to switch to gas for heating and cooking. Electricity had been available early on.71

## Making the Comfortable Home

Gas pipes were only one of the technical systems that found their way into Soviet Uzbekistan. The history of electricity provision goes back to the interwar period, and in the same era, some urban areas began to receive piped water. The house where Dilya grew up was connected to the urban gas network in the late 1960s. Initially, family members were skeptical about gas heating: "We don't need it, we don't know what that thing is." Dilya explained their reluctance: "You know, we had the small, coal-fred *sandal* ovens. They were cheap, and people were used to them." But when some of Dilya's neighbors decided to get a gas connection, her grandfather decided to follow suit. Apparently, the fact that gas was considered new and modern justifed its high cost.72

The development of large-scale, modernist construction projects went hand in hand with the introduction of large-scale, centralized technical systems. Access to essential services facilitated life in multistory residential housing complexes. From their inception in the late 1950s, concretepanel building areas were designed to provide electricity and water, as well as sewerage, district heating, and gas.

Natalya, another one of our interviewees, has fond memories of when she and her parents moved into one of Samarkand's newly built apartment blocks, in 1976:

Absolutely everything was there, electricity and light bulbs, wood everywhere, everything was painted, there was a toilet and a bathroom, a gas stove. Absolutely everything was there. Radiators, central heating, the radiators were hot. Everything was OK. […] It was very comfortable in the winter; [the temperature inside] was up to 30 degrees, everything worked, the co-generation plant worked without problems. We turned on the heat at the end of October; there was always hot water; there were never any problems.

71The quotations and information in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 3.

72The quotations and information in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 1.

When the family moved into their new apartment, Natalya was eleven years old. Her father was a somewhat high-ranking soldier, and the family was given a relatively large apartment: sixty-one square meters with three rooms and two balconies. The family bought beds and closets in a furniture store, and they asked a local carpenter to build a few items. Although the store's selection was limited, it refected the transnational networks of the socialist block. Some products had been imported from the German Democratic Republic; others were "made in Poland."73

Echoing Anvar's nostalgia for the Soviet era, Natalya, a seamstress by vocation, expressed her satisfaction with the service providers of the 1970s and 1980s. If the sink was clogged, for example, Natalya remembers that she would simply call the Housing and Maintenance Offce, and they would come by to fx it. Serious problems seem to have surfaced only in the late 1980s, when utopian visions of a comfortable life began to fray.

An architect by training, Wladimir analyzes the precarious state of the supply networks in the Samarkand microdistricts of the mid-1980s: "Because everything had been poorly made, the various components began to deteriorate very quickly." Leaky water pipes led to fooded basements; hot water for a bath or shower was a rarity. The district-heating system was in particularly bad shape: thermostats did not work, and valves were defective: "The heating system was dysfunctional practically everywhere." In addition to this hardship, residents experienced shortages of both the electricity and water, as neither the electrical network nor the water-supply system had been updated to accommodate increased demand.74

When confronted with such diffcult circumstances, many people were compelled to return to the old practice of doing things themselves. The knowledge needed to intervene with modern technical systems was far greater than the skill required to repair a loam roof, however. When the water supply became erratic, Wladimir decided to take matters into his own hands—a project that required all of his "technical cunning." To collect water on the days when the supply was suffcient, Wladimir sourced "a 112-liter tank" and then "installed a water pump." The idea was to pump the water to the family's apartment on the ffth foor. As it turned out, the greatest challenge was to fnd suitable pipes. Whereas Wladimir was able

73The information in this paragraph is taken from an interview conducted by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 20, 2018, with Natalya (name changed).

74The quotations in this paragraph are taken from the interview mentioned in Footnote 46.

to buy valves and couplings in a local store, "pipes were in very short supply." So, again, Wladimir took the initiative. He told us:

I went looking among the debris at various building sites, then I sawed them [the pipes], cut the threads myself, and made the connections. […] Thank God our construction workers didn't really care; there were lots of scraps, and I designed the couplings myself.

Unfortunately, the situation became even worse after the fall of the USSR; for a long time, Uzbekistan was cut off from Tajikistan's power supply.75 After independence, Wladimir claims, the situation "really turned into a nightmare. They couldn't keep the voltage stable, so we often had power outages. Household appliances and other machines suffered a lot." Natalya also maintains that service provision "collapsed" along with the Soviet Union.76

## The "Private Initiative" for Home Improvement

Liberal ideology presumes that private ownership motivates people to take responsibility for their own property—for example, by carrying out repairand-maintenance work. As early as the Cold War period, liberal Western scholars observed with satisfaction "the visible presence of private initiative" in Uzbekistan. Compared to other Soviet republics, Central Asia saw higher rates of home ownership. According to offcial fgures from 1977, roughly half of all residential buildings—from freestanding houses to apartment complexes—in the region were privately owned, as compared to 13% in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Not surprisingly, US observers held a favorable view of this "benevolent attitude towards private housing" in the Central Asian Soviet Republics.77

Four of our interviewees grew up in adobe-brick courtyard houses, located in the older parts of Samarkand. In the Soviet era, while land was designated as State property, established residential areas were defned as

75Högselius, Per, "The Hidden Integration of Central Asia: The Making of a Region through Technical Infrastructures," *Central Asian Survey* 41 (2), 2022: 223–243: here: 235.

76The last quote comes from the interview with Natalya, mentioned in Footnote 73; all other quotes in this paragraph come from interviews with Wladimir (Footnote 46).

77The quotes and information in this paragraph are taken from Rywkin, Michael, "Housing in Central Asia: The Uzbek Example," in: Grant, Steven A., ed., *Soviet Housing and Urban Design*. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1980: 39–42; here: 40–41.

belonging to the so-called "private sector" (*chastnyj sektor*).78 In practice, homeowners in both urban and rural areas of Samarkand had freedoms and responsibilities similar to homeowners in Western countries. To build additions onto homes or undertake other major renovations, permission from the authorities was offcially required. According to Mukhabbat, however, almost "no one" applied for building permits during the Soviet era—or even bothered to register their houses with the land-registry offce.79 And, in the case of homeowners like Dilya's father, who cared little about repair and maintenance, the authorities would not intervene.

An interview with sister and brother Evgeniya and Boris corroborates these observations. The siblings were born in 1941 and 1939, respectively. They grew up in Samarkand's "colonial" district—the part of town planned and built by Russian military and administrative personnel in the last third of the nineteenth century. Evgeniya and Boris's grandfather, a Russian pharmacist, was dispatched to Russian Turkestan shortly before the First World War. Allotted a piece of land in the colonial city, he arranged to have a house built. To maximize insulation, the house was designed with one row of adobe and one row of burnt bricks with a layer of air in-between. In total, the wall was a staggering eighty centimeters thick. Around 1950, when the siblings were approximately ten years old, their parents decided to modernize parts of the building and undertake some repair work: the outdoor toilet was a mere hole in the ground, the kitchen needed an extension, and the cellar was threatening to collapse. Some of the planned work was quite complex; for example, the family needed to install heavy beams to buttress a new adobe wall. When asked if her parents had hired people to do the work, Evgeniya joked, "No, my father did everything, and for manpower, he used my mom." She laughed and pointed to herself: "I remember having to mix cement all the time." Boris assisted, as well: given that their father had lost one of his hands, Boris helped him to tile the terrace. So, more or less voluntarily, the family members did it themselves.80

Wladimir was not the only tenant in large-scale apartment houses who took matters into his own hands. A common practice across the Soviet

78Petrova, "*Nah am Boden*," p. 22.

79 Interview with Mukhabbat mentioned in Footnote 56.

80The quotations and information in this paragraph are taken from an interview carried out by Mariya Petrova and Jonas van der Straeten on September 21, 2018, with Boris and Evgeniya (names changed).

Union and in other socialist countries was to convert balconies into bedrooms, kitchens, or storage areas. This practice became even more widespread in the post-Soviet era. Referring to a friend of his, a Khujand resident in 2010 told an interviewer, "There are seven people living in a two-room apartment, and he himself sleeps on the balcony."81 Interviewees from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and the former Yugoslavia verify that enclosing balconies was a widespread practice during the Communist era.82 Repurposing balconies helped to alleviate the general shortage of housing space; as such, authorities usually turned a blind eye to these unoffcial renovations.

Natalya tells a similar story about Samarkand. After roughly two years of living in their home, her parents decided that the balcony was far too hot. Natalya notes, "We are in Central Asia; you cannot build an open balcony with metal balustrades," remarking that the design might work for Moscow, but not for Samarkand. To solve the problem, Natalya's father sourced bricks and window frames, then commissioned a couple of soldiers to do the work of enclosing the balcony. Despite the family's fear that the authorities would object, "nobody said anything." Forty-two years later, in 2018, the structure was still there.

As the supply of construction materials grew in the post-Soviet era, homeowners and tenants invested considerable resources in making their enclosed balconies more colorful and more elaborately designed. Balconies could even be made to refect the dweller's personality. Referring to the bright-yellow color of his grandfather's balcony extension, one of Sgibnev's interviewees in 2010 comments, "This cheerful colour is there, because grandpa is a cheerful guy himself!"83 To fully enclose the balcony, people used either glass, bricks, corrugated-iron sheets, or wood. More temporary enclosures were made of drywall or paperboard.84 Turning a balcony into a kitchen required extending the water- and sewage-pipes. For residents who cook with coal, a chimney had to be added. Given that many residents undertook the works themselves, problems could ensue. A Khujand apartment owner tells the following story:

84 Ibid., p. 188.

81Quoted from Sgibnev, "Remont: Housing," p. 186.

82Bouzarovski, Stefan, Joseph Saludvadze, and Michael Gentile, "A Socially Resilient Urban Transition? The Contested Landscapes of Apartment Building Extensions in Two Post-communist Cities," *Urban Studies* 48 (13), 2011: 2689–2714.

83Quoted from Sgibnev, "Remont: Housing," p. 190.

My neighbour is fooding me regularly. Something is broken at her place and water seeps down to my balcony. Every time I go to her and tell her that she has to fx it, but she tells me: "I don't have any money". Her husband is somewhere, working, and she doesn't have sons. Well, I can't pressure her. I don't know. I live with it. I have done some repair work at my balcony, but it didn't help. […] The problem is that she has transferred her kitchen to the balcony and apparently something was not done the right way. Now, water seeps through. Whatever I do, it doesn't work.85

This fnal quote highlights the neighbors' inability to solve the problem on their own. Both of them live in an apartment of their own, in a modernist apartment building, and neither one appears to have anyone to assist them; there is no social network to be mobilized. For reasons we can only speculate about, "We'll do it ourselves" is apparently not a viable option. Perhaps the problem is rooted in fragmented family ties, or the anonymity of life in a large apartment building. Or perhaps Anvar was right when he said: "Today, nobody needs anyone."

85Quoted from ibid., pp. 189–190. This quotation is taken *verbatim* from Sgibnev's English translation.

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# Conclusion: Challenging Globalizing Technologies

Scientifc progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the process of intellectualization which we have been undergoing for thousands of years and which nowadays is usually judged in such an extremely negative way. Let us frst clarify what this intellectualist rationalization, created by science and by scientifcally oriented technology, means practically.

Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall, have a greater knowledge of the conditions of life under which we exist than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to be set in motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfed that he may "count" on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his conduct according to this expectation; but he knows nothing about what it takes to produce such a car so that it can move. The savage knows incomparably more about his tools. […] The savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do *not*, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives.1

Here it is again, the infamous reference to "the savage." We frst encountered this derogatory, racist denomination in the opening quote of

1Weber, Max, "Science as a Vocation," in: Gerth, H.H., and C. Wright Mills, eds, *From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology*. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958: 129–156, here: 138–139. Weber held this talk in 1917; it was frst published in German in 1919.

© The Author(s) 2023 M. Hård, *Microhistories of Technology*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22813-1\_10

249

the introductory chapter, in which Helbig's use of "the savage" (*der Wilde*) referred to the Dayak gold miner. In the above excerpt, the slur connotes the "American Indian" or the "Hottentot," whom we today refer to as Native American and Khoekhoe people, respectively. The excerpt above comes from a well-known lecture delivered in 1917 by the German sociologist Max Weber. Like Helbig's observations on Dayak technology, Weber's remark about the knowledge and skills of indigenous people is based on a racist worldview. Paradoxically, both Helbig and Weber's repugnant comments were meant to demonstrate that "even" indigenous people, whom Europeans placed at the bottom of the cultural ladder, were neither incompetent nor ignorant. Despite their racist evolutionary thinking, Helbig and Weber acknowledged that Asian, African, and Native American peoples embody the skills and knowledge to command their resources—and their environment.

To my mind, Weber's refections on the limitations of "rationalization" and of the development of "scientifcally oriented technology" are of particular interest. Consistent with my argument in the preface of this book, Weber's ideas suggest that macro processes cannot be used to analyze the entire world. Even if a concept like globalization could be helpful in describing the rise of international connections, "globalization" fails to capture the particularities of local phenomena. The microhistories presented in this book were designed to do exactly that—to bring the local to the surface, as Ulf Hannerz suggested. The preceding chapters showcase selected technologies in various parts of the Global South and East. Incorporating primary-source research and oral testimonies, I have shown that the protagonists of these narratives created and maintained technological solutions that suited their needs. As the case of sugar manufacturers in Northern India indicates, it often makes sense to deem such solutions "appropriate technologies" (Chap. 4).

The case studies presented in this book span almost two hundred years. Many of the scenarios described took place in colonial settings. A central message is that historians of technology should not make the mistake of starting their analyses with the advent of colonialism. While colonial powers indeed brought with them their own tools and artifacts, they did not face a technological vacuum upon arrival. On the contrary, colonizers met with local material cultures that historians are compelled to acknowledge. When, for instance, European companies and colonial governments began to set up technological infrastructure, they did so in areas that had usually been inhabited for centuries. In the case of Côte d'Ivoire, before the French colonizers began to design the frst railroad lines, they made use of—and even expanded—the existing transportation network of footpaths and rivers. For centuries, this network had been an essential, wellintegrated component of the "technological landscape" of the area (Chap. 3).

The process of widespread colonization certainly challenged established technological landscapes and material cultures. It would be inappropriate to interpret the technological exploitation of the colonies as a one-sided phenomenon, however. There is far more to the history of colonial technology than that which the catchphrase "tools of empire" claims.2 As suggested by the microhistory about the introduction and use of electricity in East Africa, members of the non-European population quickly learned how to beneft from this new technology (Chap. 5). Customers and local technicians challenged the authority of so-called public utilities by developing intricate methods of accessing the electricity network. It is certainly no coincidence that this struggle between providers and users of electricity calls to mind what anthropologist Bryan Pfaffenberger dubbed "Technological Dramas."3

Pfaffenberger no doubt employed the concept of "drama" to draw attention to the conficts that often attend the introduction of new technology. In doing so, Pfaffenberger also elevated the voices of users and consumers. To analyze user activities, he introduced concepts such as "counterappropriation" and "counterdelegation."

This book surpasses such concepts. Rather than focusing on how people in various parts of the Global South and East responded to the introduction of Western technologies, I have emphasized the persistence of established skills and methods. The availability of Western-imported products did not necessarily challenge the ways in which people went about their daily chores. For example, despite the availability of disposable sanitary pads—designed in the United States—in South Korea from the mid-1960s onward, a large majority of women continued to use the same kind of menstruation cloths their mothers and grandmothers had used (Chap. 8).

2Headrick, Daniel R., *The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century*. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

3Pfaffenberger, Brian, "Technological Dramas," *Science, Technology, & Human Values* 17 (3), 1992: 282–312.

The microhistory of building methods in Central Asia illustrates a similar pattern of persistence (Chap. 9). Members of local communities preserved their knowledge of and skills with constructing, expanding, maintaining, and repairing their buildings made of friable adobe bricks. In labeling these collective construction and repair activities as part of a "Do-It-Yourself" (DIY) practice, I propose the global usefulness of this concept.

Aside from a steady persistence, the cultures described here were never static. Often, material cultures underwent change as an outcome of encounters with other cultures. For example, the concept of the "trading zone" describes sites at which representatives of various peoples and cultures exchanged skills, knowledge, and technologies (Chap. 2). Similarly, the "fexible settlement" encouraged change in the form of preparedness for innovation and an openness to novelty; in the case of Nairobi's lowincome areas, technological change was an innate ability to adopt to constantly changing circumstances (Chap. 7).

Some people believe that, by narrating history "from below," the historian is automatically seduced into overlooking global connections. I have shown otherwise. For example, I have described the process of mining for gold in Borneo as an international endeavor traceable to the eighteenth century (Chap. 1). In line with this thinking, I have clearly identifed the longstanding, transatlantic roots of creole cooking techniques in South America (Chap. 6). The 1890 cookbook *Eclectic Cooking* epitomizes how indigenous and European foodways synergize. Indeed, cross-cultural encounters often imply novelty. According to Hannerz, the concept of creole "has connotations of creativity and of richness of expression."4 I couldn't agree more.

By "going global," the history of technology also becomes a more exciting endeavor and a richer academic discipline. I hope these microhistories will inspire readers to view the past in a new light. For example, this book makes clear that standard periodization paradigms are less useful than previously believed in our quest to accurately frame the past. In particular, the formal transition to a colonial power seldom coincides with the implementation of imperial tools on a broad scale (Chap. 3), just as the offcial status of "independent" does not mean independence from external engineering knowledge and foreign capital (Chap. 5). Another

4Hannerz, Ulf, *Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places*. London: Routledge, 1996, p. 66.

example: although the First World War gave rise to fuctuations in the price of sugar on the "world market," these fuctuations barely affected the regional market in Northern India (Chap. 4).

#### Symmetry and Heterogeneity

The investigation of regions beyond Europe and North America increases the empirical basis of the history of technology. Recounting microhistories from around the world allows us to question received notions of world history, replete with its traditional myths and tenacious concepts. In fact, a paramount task of the humanities is to question established views and their attendant nomenclatures.

For example, in other writings, Jethron Ayumbah Akallah and I have shown the limitations of the Large-Technological-System (LTS) model of technological infrastructure.5 The LTS is only one of several paradigms that a global history of technology is obliged to contest. The same applies to terms such as "technology transfer" and "technological diffusion." While acknowledging that material objects, knowledge, and skills often travel from one geographical area to another, I also suggest in this book that there are other stories to tell. The use of the terms "transfer" and "diffusion" suggest a benchmark view of technology. Such a view means that one specifc technology or technological system serves as an exemplar for other solutions in the world. Benchmark technologies tend to spread and overtake other solutions. By default, then, the history of technology becomes one of growing uniformity and homogeneity. According to this narrative, people across the globe either willingly orient themselves around this exemplar—or are forced to do so for economic, political, or cultural reasons. In contrast, the microhistories in this book illustrate the heterogeneous nature of the world. The case histories are meant to support my argument that historians of technology would be well served to use the concept of "material culture" rather than "technology" when analyzing the complex connections between objects and societies.

Using the term material culture instead of technology provides several advantages. Increasingly, "technology" has come to be associated with complex, high-tech devices, as well as the marginalization of low-tech solutions. In fact, the term technology gives rise to a skewed perception of

5Akallah, Jethron Ayumbah, and Mikael Hård, "Under the Historian's Radar: Local Water Supply Practices in Nairobi, 1940–1980," *Water Alternatives* 13 (3), 2020: 886–901.

the material world: the association of "technology" with advanced machinery and systems can tempt historians of technology to overlook people that use manual tools and apply less "advanced" solutions. For example, whereas much has been written about the introduction of electricitypowered cooking appliances to modern households, considerably less has been written about low-tech food-preparation techniques. Taking "material culture" rather than "technology" as the point of departure, I demonstrated in Chap. 6 that barbequing meat on an outdoor grill was an integral part of Argentine material culture. Writing a history of material culture necessarily involves the analysis of manual techniques, local knowledge, and region-specifc solutions.6

A further task of the humanities is to improve our understanding of human behavior and the complexities of human societies.7 In my view, historical knowledge must aim at increasing our understanding of past events and cultures. Given that events and cultures are unique, this understanding requires knowledge about local conditions as well as empathy and an open mind. As the title of Benjamin Elman's history of Chinese science suggests, such understanding is only possible if we approach other cultures *On Their Own Terms*. 8 From a European standpoint, using a bird as a dowsing tool to locate gold may appear ineffectual, or even ridiculous. Similarly, scientifcally educated agronomists would likely consider the use of low-yield, indigenous sugarcane varieties to be a strange—and even foolhardy—choice. The historian, however, is obliged to abjure verdicts, and must try to comprehend the beliefs and actions of others on their own terms.

In line with sociologist of science David Bloor, I suggest that understanding requires symmetry.9 Symmetry implies that we―in an unbiased manner―must accept the fact that people in distinct settings and at various junctures make different choices. The fact that roughly half of women in Britain chose to adopt tampons in the 1960s and 1970s does not imply we can expect women in South Korea to have done the same. Symmetry also requires that historians―in a balanced manner―employ different

6El Hariry, Shorouk, et al., "Toward a Global History of Material Culture," *Technikgeschichte* 88 (2), 2021: 178–182.

7Wright, Georg Henrik von, *Explanation and Understanding*. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.

8Elman, Benjamin A., *On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

9Bloor, David, *Knowledge and Social Imagery*. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 (orig. 1976).

theories, methods, concepts, and models for different cultures and for different eras. The choice of conceptual model must be culturally and historically sensitive. As such, we cannot expect the Large-Technological-System model, for example, to work for all regions of the Global South; we need other models, to address the circumstances in other parts of the world. At the same time, the historians of Europe must be open to theories, methods, concepts, and models that originate in other cultures. By adopting models more selectively, and by modifying favored approaches, we can ultimately develop commensurable paradigms.10 To pick up on the "trading zone" concept of Chap. 2, I believe that one way to formulate crosscultural interpretations could be to set up "trading zones" where historians from various parts of the world exchange views and experiences. This book is meant as a contribution to the trading zone of global historians of technology.

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is one historian of technology who takes a truly non-Western perspective—and makes his material accessible to Western readers. Critiquing standard notions of technology and innovation for being biased in favor of Western-based concepts and knowledge systems, Mavhunga asks us to employ an analytic language that takes seriously "vernacular registers and syntaxes" from other parts of the world in this case, Africa.11 Taking a similar approach, scholars and coauthors John Law and Wen-yuan Lin write history from an East Asian perspective, carrying out "forms of postcolonial investigation that use non-Western analytical resources."12 Further steps on the way toward a truly global history of technology and material culture require further forms of collaboration to foster a multilingual dialog and cross-cultural experience.

#### Globalization Revisited

We can now understand why "globalization" cannot serve as the central theme of a global history of technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Like Weber's "intellectualist rationalization," "globalization" is

10Kuhn, Thomas S., *The Structure of Scientifc Revolutions*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

11Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa, "Introduction: What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?" in: idem, ed., *What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?* Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017: 1–27, here: 7.

12Law, John, and Wen-yuan Lin, "Provincializing STS: Postcoloniality, Symmetry, and Method," *East Asian Science, Technology and Society* 11 (2), 2017: 211–227, here: 212.

an asymmetric—if not a teleological—concept. In this sense, globalization is on par with the concepts of "evolution," "transfer," and "diffusion." As long as we continue to believe that "mechanization" has taken command (Giedion) or that "Americanization" has been an "irresistible" force (de Grazia), we remain "one-dimensional" human beings (Marcuse).13

The world looks different from ground level. Everyday life is not characterized by smooth development processes ("evolution") but by mundane activities and confict: we observe how the *chang'aa* distiller in Kibera struggled to contain production costs and to evade police, and we appreciate how, to this day, the home cook in South America makes elaborate dishes without having to invest in expensive new appliances. Indeed, daily life is not governed by one-way linearities, like "globalization," but by temporal rhythms.14 For example, in Uzbekistan, a family decides to build onto their house only when the oldest son marries, and the frst grandchildren are on the way. In India, agricultural workers harvested their sugarcane and produced their sugar in time to pay their taxes to the British colonialists, and in South Korea, women washed their menstruation pads in sync with their monthly periods. As global processes and larger networks operate in the background, local life continues.

History itself—microhistory, in particular—contains multitudes; the historian must make careful choices of what to narrate. Such choices refect the historian's knowledge interests.15 For this book, my knowledge interest has been to lay the foundation for a global history of technology that brings the local in contact with the global―both theoretically and empirically. Now, it is up to others to take the baton— and continue to craft further microhistories.

13Giedion, Sigfried. *Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History*. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948; Grazia, Victoria de, *Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-century Europe*. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005; Marcuse, Herbert, *One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society*. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1964.

14 Straeten, Jonas van der, and Heike Weber, "Technology and Its Temporalities: A Global Perspective," in: Carnino, Guillaume, et al., eds, *Global History of Techniques (19th–21st Centuries)*. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, forthcoming 2022.

15Habermas, Jürgen, *Technik und Wissenschaft als "Ideologie*." Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1968.

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