On 8th March, Dr. Najam Abbas, a Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, gave a talk entitled “When Transition Visits Mountains: Education, Work and Careers in South eastern Tajikistan” at the Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus in the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies (SOAS). Dr Abbas had been invited by the Centre’s Chair, Dr. Bhavna Dave, as part of the Centre’s regular Seminar Programme.
Dr. Abbas’ talk explored the impact of socio-economic transition on education and careers of the youth of isolated mountainous regions. In particular, he looked closely at recent challenges faced by Tajikistan’s Pamiri youth who are completing their education and entering the labour market, making comparisons with the challenges their parents had faced.
The aim of the talk was to examine the complex interactions that are encountered by young people in attempting to achieve their aspirations. An understanding of the impact of socio-economic mobility requires familiarisation with the factors defining the available pathways to meaningful adulthood through educational and occupational attainments. It further necessitates a study of the sense-making devices utilised by young people in their attempts to understand their own lives and future opportunities.
The presentation examined the constructive contribution Pamiri society could make to enable its youth to generate the social capital vital for civil society, through creativity in education and connectivity in everyday life.
Dr Abbas, concluding that the challenges that arise are related to ideas about the utility of education and purposefulness of a young adult’s life, referred to inter-linked and inter-related factors such as isolation, levels of employment, and opportunities to travel or study abroad. He suggested that there is a wider need for studies to develop and define concepts of disadvantage or social exclusion in mountainous settings.
Ismailimail 
Its interesting that you have made 2 recent posts on the subject of mountains and mountain societies: this one dated May 1st 2007 and the one below, dated May 9th 2007. As you know I just returned from a trip to the Chinese(eastern) side of these mountain ranges, the western sides of which exist the following countries, stated in sequential order from north to south and making up the western border of the vast country of China: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India:
https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/rakaposhi-mountain-range-internship-research-with-akdn-in-gilgit-pakistan/
All of these mountain ranges radiate outwards from the Pamir Knot along the border of Tajikistan and China. In the eyes of God they are just one vast mountain range but in the eyes of man they have different names: Tien Shan in China, Altai along Mongolia and bits of Russia, Tien Shan in Kazakhstan and Kyrgistan; Pamirs, Hindu Kush, Karakorum along the borders of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, Kunlun along the northern border with Nepal, the southern border with India of which is made up by the Himalaya mountain range.
Seeing these tall, craggy. snow-capped mountains from the western Xinjiang Province Chinese side forces one to catch ones breath as I am sure they also do when they are seen from the Central Asian side(I am reminded of a series of pictures from the post ‘The Road To Hunza’ by Ali Khursheed on this website, some of which depict these breathtaking mountains).
This series of mountain ranges, the tallest in the world at the moment and growing taller still, began to sprout upwards from the ground within the past 200 million years when the subcontinent of India, which was initially perched along the African border near Madagascar, South and East Africa, moved up the Indian Ocean and slammed(in slow motion) into the vast underbelly of Asia, where it exists today. This impact caused, and is still causing today, these vast mountain ranges to be created and pushed upwards, some almost 6 miles tall. At the same time this process began, on the other side of the world, there was no Atlantic Ocean and the continents of Europe and Africa were grinding up against the continents of North and South America and had already created and pushed upwards the Apalachian chain of mountains on the eastern seaboard of North America, mostly in eastern Pennsylvania. This impact of whole continents against one another was so strong that the Appalachian mountain chain was once even taller than the Himalayas, Pamirs, Karakorums, Hindu Kush and Tien Shans are today.
I am currently mulling over a series of posts for my blogsite called the China Series and will talk in more detail about this and other topics, including the Rock Cycle in Nature, evidence of a most dynamic “universe in which we live, move and have our being”(Aga Khan III).
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well done
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