Judith Beyer presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Beyer shows how local Kyrgyz negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation needs to be understood as a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt to suit political, legal, economic, and religious environments.

Judith Beyer is professor of anthropology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She is coauthor of Kirgistan: A Photoethnography of Talas and coeditor of Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics.