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Ethnography and Eroticism in Russian Turkestan
There are not many examples of gender studies in the field of historical
research of Muslim peripheries of the Russian Empire. This article
explores the representations of Muslim women in pre-revolutionary
Turkestan. It focuses on the research and practices of colonial ethnography,
which supplied the authorities with knowledge about local
people. In particular, the article considers and compare “The Turkestan
Album”, a state-sponsored photography project, and French
traveler Hugues Krafft’s volume “Through Russian Turkestan»”, with
the pictures of Muslim women. The article deals with the issue of social
portrait of Muslim women by external observers. Besides, it looks
at how the observers assessed the morality of Muslim women, as well
as the impact of male addiction with effeminate young boys (bachas)
on the segregation of women.