Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China
... Traders and truck drivers managed to circumvent restrictions dictated by the old-standing international political tension related to Armenia on the one side and Turkey and Azerbaijan on the other. This fits in with an extensive literature on informal trade, conflict and borders (Blakkisrud et al. 2021), peripheries (Mattheis, Russo & Raineri 2019) and shadow economy practices (Dabaghyan & Gabrielyan 2008;Fehlings 2022). ...
In many Middle-eastern and former Soviet spaces, informal trade is a common way to avoid blockade-related restrictions. However, the institutionalization and diversification of trade can create a space where formally conflicting actors can carry out informal trade. Responding to the emergence of a new market economy and to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, informal economic relations became a marker of social change in post-Soviet Armenia. Turkey has since then prevented the passage of aid destined to Armenia to cross over its borders. Armenia's eastern and western borders are closed. Thus, the country is left with two trading routes, via Georgia and Iran. However, informal Armenian Turkish trade relations persisted as of the early 1990s. Yet, the blockade does not allow Armenian exports to Turkey via legal routes. Meanwhile, Turkey's exports to Armenia, albeit facing the Turkish government's legal obstructions, are possible in practice. Indeed, many vehicles bearing Turkish number plates carry goods to Armenia over Georgia every year. With such a scenario as its backdrop, this empirical paper aims to explore the following question: How do informal practices become a tool of relations between the two states, able even to resist conflictual events? L'informalità tra Stati che ufficialmente non si parlano. I camion turchi che entrano in Armenia In molte aree medio-orientali e post-sovietiche, l'economia informale è pratica diffusa per ag-girare restrizioni legate agli embarghi. Tuttavia, istituzionalizzazione e diversificazione dei commerci possono creare spazi dove financo attori formalmente in conflitto mettono in pra-tica scambi informali. Nell'Armenia post-sovietica, per rispondere all'emergere di una nuova economia di mercato e alla prima guerra del Nagorno Karabakh, le relazioni economiche Arsen Hakobyan, Marcello Mollica 78 informali divennero indicatori dei mutamenti sociali. La Turchia ha dalla prima guerra nel Nagorno Karabakh impedito il passaggio, attraverso i suoi confini, degli aiuti destinati all'Armenia. Mentre i confini orientali e occidentali dell'Armenia restano chiusi. Pertanto, al paese rimangono solo due vie commerciali, attraverso Georgia e Iran. Vero però che rela-zioni commerciali informali tra armeni e turchi persistevano sin dai primi anni '90. Ma se l'embargo non consente esportazioni dall'Armenia verso la Turchia via itinerari legali, le esportazioni dalla Turchia verso l'Armenia, sia pur soggette a controlli da parte delle autorità turche, sono invece possibili nella pratica. Infatti, veicoli con targhe turche sono soliti traspor-tare merci in Armenia via Georgia. Tenuto conto di un tale scenario, questo contributo vuole rispondere alla seguente domanda: in che modo le pratiche informali diventano strumento nelle relazioni tra i due stati, e sono addirittura capaci di sopravvivere ad eventi bellici? Parole chiave: Armenia, informalità, embargo, Turchia, conflitto e sicurezza.
... Traders are expected to register, to keep accounting records, and to deal with written checks and bills. My observations suggest that the real volume of transactions is substantially higher than reported (Fehlings 2020). Also, only about half of the traders had bank accounts and used written contracts -which is not illegal but suggests that business is managed face-to-face and through personal contacts, which enable side agreements. ...
This article is about practices of borrowing and lending money in the context of Georgian bazaar trade. While many anthropological studies focus on debtors or individual moneylenders, this article starts from the perspective of microcredit experts, who grant loans to traders on behalf of their companies and thereby engage in complex relationships. Borrowing money from a microcredit institution consists of an administrative act, which is sealed by formal procedures such as signing a contract, but the bazaar is a sphere that is, at least partially, structured by informal practices and personal relationships. To make a profit, microcredit experts must play a risky and sometimes existential game. They must decide whether to trust or not to trust a client. In order to assess and minimize risk, they immerse themselves into the world of their clients and rely on social values and moralities. This article describes their strategies and thus gives insights into the nature of debts, obligations, relationships, institutional frameworks, and informal practices in the context of microfinance in the Georgian bazaar trade sector.
The classic dichotomy of urban studies is the confrontation between residents / local activists and authorities / capital in the struggle for urban areas. But under this approach many elements of production of space such as practices, representations, tools of participation in urban management, and stakeholders with other interests can be lost. The article attempts to overcome this dichotomy through analysis of the urban conflict around the Preobrazhensky Market (Moscow), which has been preserved in the conditions of the reconstruction and gentrification of marketplaces for the last ten years. The author draws on the Strategic Interactive Perspective (SIP), which considers conflict as a complex interaction of different players whose goals, strategies and moves need to be untangled. The article focuses on the specificity of the Preobrazhensky Market as a bazaar (relying on Clifford Gееrtz’s concept). It is shown that the preservation of the market is ensured by a complex configuration of relations between the players with an interest in the marketplace — the authorities, the Old Believers (the market is located on the territory of a former Old Believer monastery), local and political activists, legal and illegal entrepreneurs, as well as the specificity of the bazaar influencing the strategies of all players.
This Element shows China has assumed a historical role in shaping a new turn in globalization. It has assertively engaged in the open globalizing process through its Belt and Road Initiative as well as in the clandestine process through its shadow networks. These networks have incorporated millions of common people who are unwitting agents of transnational exchange in a global shadow economy. In contrast to the neoliberal phase, the shadow turn in globalization is driven by a plurality of individual, corporate, and state actors with unique divisions of labour, hierarchies of control and domination, and modes of operation. By virtue of being a nodal centre for shadow operations, China is exerting its shadow power in regrouping global city networks, redefining global value chains, and reconfigurating state borders and power.
This book addresses how to mitigate regional tensions and enhance opportunities for cooperation through well-designed regional institutions and organizations among countries in geographical proximity. We use the case of Central Asia (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), to explore the following question: How and by what forces has Central Asian regionalism evolved? Contrary to the prevalent epistemic discourse on the skeptical explanations of regional cooperation in Central Asia, regionalism as a political program that mobilizes and materializes collective region-wide agendas has continuously evolved. Conceptualizing key terms, this chapter provides an analytical tool to explain Central Asian regionalism structured around the four intertwined elements: positionality in the wider international community, motivation for regionalization, functionality as a region, and the collective vision.KeywordsCentral AsiaKazakhstanKyrgyzstanTajikistanTurkmenistanUzbekistanRegionalismRegional cooperation
This chapter discusses why local bazaar traders do not formalize their businesses according to official and Western standards. It describes the broader local economic field in the Caucasus and explains different aspects of Caucasian biznes (бизнec), providing an overview of activities subsumed under that rubric and suggesting parameters that help classify economic activities and forms of small entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship. These parameters include (a) the location where business is done (ranging from public pavements to bazaars, shopping malls, and private spaces); (b) personal background (e.g., age, gender, education, personal skills, and ethnic and religious affiliation); (c) social networksnetworks along which business is organized (which may originate in the criminal sphere, in local networks conceptualized as friendshipfriendship, brotherhoodbrotherhood, ethnic community and kinshipkinship, or in the interaction within business activities); (d) the mobilitymobility of traders, (e) the goods that are traded, and, finally, (f) the amounts of goods and capital, means of transportation, and the frequency of the activity. Ideology is another parameter that must be considered, embracing ideas, beliefs, and values. Ideology, parameter (g), is an integral part of the sociocultural setting, and, among other things, provides the framework within which economic activity is assessed. The author suggests considering three overlapping value systems, which together constitute a set of ideas. These value systems respectively relate to (1) value systemlocal society, culture, and cosmology, (2) Soviet ideologyideology, and (3) the neoliberal market economy. Which of these value systems is taken as the point of reference depends on the context, situation, and the actors involved. By giving detailed descriptions of all these parameters and their combinations, the author depicts the variety of the local businesses’ environment, or ecology. She defines the place of long-distance and bazaar tradebazaar trade within the local social hierarchy and socioeconomic context, which, again, results from a specific entanglement of the aforementioned parameters. She visualizes this entanglement by adapting Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt’s Naturgemälde,Naturgemälde to reflect on the organic causalities between different factors composing an environment. These causalities create specific niches, which constitute the ecosystems of specific kinds of trade. Forms of trade and entrepreneurship linked to these niches can be viewed as sophisticated adaptations, which do not work in other niches or contexts. Normative definitions of entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship thus do not capture local realities, especially those of bazaar traders. This is also why these traders do not formalize and/or meet the expectations linked to the Western definition of entrepreneurship associated with innovation and the discovery and exploitation of opportunities, described as “one of the primary drivers of industrial dynamism, economic development, and growth” (Carlsson et al. in Small Business Economics 41:913–930, 2013). This chapter thus reviews a variety of themes related to the economic activity of the traders studied and of the Caucasus in general. Above all, it describes the position of bazaar and long-distance traderslong-distance traders within a broader local economic system.
In the introduction, the author outlines the topic of long-distance trade, bazaars and traders in Eurasia and discusses theoretical concepts such as “informality” and “globalization from below”, the starting point for this study’s theoretical framework. The author introduces her research partners, research sites, methods, sources and motivations and gives an overview of anthropological research and theory on markets, marketplaces, long-distance trade and the role of such studies for the understanding of human society. She then turns from a global to a post-Soviet perspective and presents three marketplaces—Yabaolu Market (Ябaoлy; 雅宝路) in Beijing; Lilo Bazroba (lilos bazroba) on the outskirts of Tbilisi; and the Chinese Hualing Sea Plaza Market (Hualingi Tbilisis Zġvis Plaza, hualingi Tbilisis zRvis plaza) in a new Chinese-built quarter in Tbilisi—as representative examples for different but interlinked types of bazaars and bazaar trade. She also reviews the relevant literature related to trade, traders and markets in the post-Soviet space and introduces some of the major works that have shaped the debates on the post-Soviet economy. By presenting the field methods applied and describing the type of data collected and the range of questions studied, the author explains her contribution to current debates in anthropology and post-Soviet studies. Furthermore, the introduction includes an overview of the book’s chapters and summaries of their contents, familiarizing the reader with the structure and the philosophy of writing that characterize this book.
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