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Many Central Asians speak of marriage as important and self-evident despite the fact that marriage in practice across the region presents a more complicated story. There is not only an extensive array of practices indicated by the single term marriage and a wide variety of things accomplishes by its conclusion and duration, but many non-marital sets of relations in Central Asia similarly realise what marriage does. This may lead one to question whether there is any sense in trying to pin marriage down at all. Yet, this tension — the flexibility of marriage in form and function, and its overlap with nonmarriage on the one hand, and its abiding importance and, at times, self-evidentiary nature, on the other — we suggest, lies at the heart of marriage-as-practice in Central Asia. Following recent turns in kinship studies, and long-standing feminist traditions, this paper envisages marriage as a relational practice of legitimization rather than pinning it down as a particular content. We argue that by focusing on the act of getting married in particular, its particular efficacy, as well as the disputes, questions, and conflicts that sometime arise as a result – in short, the quandaries of getting married – we get not only at this tensional nature of marriage, but at the everyday concerns and major societal issues wrapped up in marriage in Central Asia.

When Mukadas Kadirova changed her mode of dress as an act of religious devotion, she and her family – the self‐proclaimed (former) epitome of modern, Soviet citizenry – were confronted with conflicting normative systems. Was Mukadas still a modern woman? Was the family? And what was modernity anyway, they asked: socialist ideals, capitalist consumption, or pious women fashionably tying their headscarves? This paper, based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, examines Mukadas's religious transformation; her attempts to map this alteration onto the shifting discursive and material realities of the post‐Soviet period; and her play with variant notions of modernity. Mukadas's struggle ultimately shows that while modernity is often characterized by a linear, forward‐looking gaze, experiences of modernity are not always marked by this progressive ‘onward’ sense. Modernity can be simultaneously past, present, and future. Résumé Quand Mukadas Kadirova a changé de tenue vestimentaire pour manifester sa dévotion religieuse, elle‐même et sa famille, incarnation autoproclamée (mais révolue) de la citoyenneté soviétique moderne, se sont trouvées face à un conflit de leurs systèmes normatifs. Mukadas était‐elle encore une femme moderne ? Sa famille était‐elle moderne ? Et pour commencer, qu’est‐ce que la modernité : les idéaux socialistes, le consumérisme capitaliste ou des femmes pieuses qui nouent coquettement leur foulard ? Basé sur quatorze mois de travail de terrain au Kirghizstan, l’article examine la transformation religieuse de Mukadas, ses tentatives d’ajuster ce changement aux réalités discursives et matérielles mouvantes de l’ère postsoviétique, et son maniement de différentes notions de la modernité. Le dilemme de Mukadas montre, en fin de compte, que bien que la modernité soit souvent présentée comme un regard projeté vers l’avant, elle n’est pas toujours marquée, en réalité, par cette impression progressive de « marche en avant ». La modernité peut tout à la fois être le passé, le présent et l’avenir.