Uzbekistan--Culture Smart! by Alex Ulko

Author:Alex Ulko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kuperard
Published: 2016-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

chapter four

MAKING FRIENDS

Friendship is important in Uzbekistan, but its nature and value depend on the community or subculture. Traditional Uzbek culture gives more weight to family and neighborhood links, so your closest friends are often your cousins or neighbors. In the same kind of family, it is only boys and men who are allowed to form true and free friendships; girls are closely controlled by their parents, and then by their husbands, and their only chance to make friends outside the close circle of relatives and neighbors is at school.

In a less traditional setting, friendships are more flexible and cordial. Particularly strong are different forms of male bonds, which often reinforce existing communal, university, or corporate relationships. Men-only parties are common, sometimes accompanied by liberal amounts of alcohol, but women still find it more difficult to develop friendships outside their family context, even in the cities. Friendships between men and women are much less common among Uzbeks than other nationalities, and are not encouraged. Friends made in youth are for life; later relationships tend to be more context specific. Some nationalities, like Koreans and Uzbeks, tend to choose friends from their own kin, but ethnically heterogeneous companies in cities are very common and offer opportunities for friendships across the ethnic and cultural divide. However, if you don’t speak Uzbek or Russian, language will be a problem (see page 154).

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