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Azerbaijani Meykhana: Cultural Policy and Local Actors’ Agenda

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Informality, Labour Mobility and Precariousness

Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

Abstract

Meykhana is spoken word improvization, verbal recitatives, and an example of a musical genre in the promotion of which the state and society find their common goals. Based on the results of field research, and available sources, I pay attention to the relationship between what is offered by the government and how meykhana is practiced and perceived by ordinary people. Taking into account everyday practices of local players and using such an aspect of nationalism as folklorization, I examine how the interplay between formal and informal approaches can be used in the study of national building process. This paper contributes a case study to the rich body of literature on political dimension of informality and nationalism by analyzing the ways in which local players have concrete impact on top-level politics, including cultural policy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Since 2017, Mehriban Aliyeva has been the First Vice President of the country and the second most powerful person in the country.

  2. 2.

    Bedie (bədihə)—another name for meykhana. See below for further discussion on this topic.

  3. 3.

    This refers to the former president of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, who ruled the country in 1993–2003.

  4. 4.

    A similar social structure exists in Georgia. See in more detail: Voell, S. (2015) Moral Breakdown among the Georgian Svans: A Car Accident Mediated between Traditional and State Law in State and Legal Practice, in The Caucasus: Anthropological Perspectives on Law and Politics, edited by S. Voell, and I. Kaliszewska. Farnham: Ashgate, 95–112.

  5. 5.

    Khirdalan (Xırdalan) is a city located in the western part of the Absheron Peninsula, 5 kilometers northwest of Baku. About 10 thousand inhabitants.

    Akhoond is a Muslim scholar, his status is at the level of the imam of a mosque, although it happens that he is the head of a city or region's Muslims.

  6. 6.

    Aksakal (ağsaqqallı, literally white-bearded)—in the Caucasus and among the Turkic peoples in Central Asia, a venerable elderly man, an elder.

  7. 7.

    In 2006, Aghasalim Childagh was awarded the Order of Glory, approved in 1993 by President Heydar Aliyev for his merits in the development of national culture.

  8. 8.

    Madrasah (mədrəsə)—an educational institution that traditionally exists at the mosque, performing the function of a secondary general education school (its graduates had the right to enter the university). Classes in the madrasah were conducted in Persian, less often in the Turkic (Azerbaijani) languages.

    Ghazals (qəzəl)—it is the main genre of lyric Azerbaijani (and Persian, sometimes for generalization called Middle Eastern) poetry. Ghazal is composed in different sizes of aruz, usually consists of 5–12 couplets—bayts. The two lines of the first bayt rhyme with each other, in the subsequent bayts, every second line rhymes with the first and second lines of the first bayt according to the scheme: aa ba ca da. See more details: Tağısoy N., Zakariyya Z. 2011. Meyxananin poetikası. Baku: Çaşıoğlu.

  9. 9.

    More on this topic: Strzemżalska A. (2020) Slam in the Name of Country: Nationalism in Contemporary Azerbaijani Meykhana, Volume 79, Issue 2, Summer 2020, pp. 323–344.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Aneta Strzemżalska

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  1. Aneta Strzemżalska
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  1. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Abel Polese

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Strzemżalska, A. (2022). Azerbaijani Meykhana: Cultural Policy and Local Actors’ Agenda. In: Polese, A. (eds) Informality, Labour Mobility and Precariousness. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82499-0_8

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