INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores the complexities of village life (deho zindagi) in Rowshan. What is a village (deh) in this region of northern Pakistan, and what constitutes village life? It addresses these questions by exploring the moral complexity of village life. In particular it discusses the ways in which Rowshan people make moral and social judgements about the state of village life, and it examines the ways in which the making of moral valuations is concerned especially with maintaining proper levels of emotion and affection. Ethnographically this chapter deals with ‘devilish’ children, parental affection, illicit cross-gender friendships, human–animal relations, cleanliness, education and migration. In all these areas of village life a discourse of moral valuation is continually constructed by Rowshan people (Rowshanech) in debate, and a recurrent focus of this debate is the current state of the villager's emotions. This discourse is itself structured by broader concerns about secrecy (khoashteik) and revelation (khulao korik), the inside (andreni) and the outside (berie), as well as the interaction between the village (deh) and the state (sarkar).

I am here concerned with village life because it is so often just assumed to be stagnant, backward and static: intellectually just waiting to be enlightened or Islamised.