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Introduction: Markets, Trade, and the Study of the Post-Soviet Economy
Abstract
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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This chapter draws attention to the trends of decline recently taking place at the traditional marketplaces of Eastern Europe. An ethnographically rich account relates patterns of socio-material and spatial re-ordering of people, practices and relationships at the open-air markets of Sofia (Bulgaria) to a neoliberal restructuring of the public marketplace institution. The chapter follows how a new policy of public tenders championed by the city administration instituted a regime of continuous commodification of the marketplace space. Several resulting “patterns of decline” are identified, such as the departure of the traditional small-scale food growers. Further, it is argued that to understand how patterns of decline set in at Eastern European marketplaces, one needs to consider how citizens are constrained to specific economic niches, social milieus and regions of space in the city. To this end, Venkov theorises processes of “socio-spatial sorting” and explores what concrete forms the sorting of people, places and practices could take in Sofia and its marketplaces.
This article looks at Georgians' perception of Chinese businesspeople in Tbilisi. Although Chinese communities can be found almost everywhere across the globe-including in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the Americas, South and East Asia, etc.-the Chinese presence in the Caucasus is a relatively new phenomenon. My analysis of case studies in Georgia, where the Urumqui-based Hualing Group is perhaps most powerful Chinese investor, challenges the assumption that differences between groups predominately create conflict and mistrust. It also challenges the hypothesis that trade and business networks is built on cooperation of ethnic and religious ties and communities. Instead, it gives examples of how common economic interests and shared social practices create a mutual understanding, and how this understanding is explained and experienced by Georgians.
Nowadays Georgia is a comfortable transit passage for Asian oil and gas to the European market. “Transcaucasian” pipelines have increased political sympathies towards the country and continue to contribute to its economic growth. The modern vision of Georgia as a transit hub, however, emerged in ancient times and though the intensity of transit ebbed and flowed, the idea of the Georgian corridor has persisted. The paper traces the the dynamics of the silk roads from ancient to modern time indicating the changes along the way and underlining the current geopolitical importance Georgia holds both for the collective West as well as the rising China.
The book is devoted to post-Soviet «ethnic markets» as the most important phenomenon of the post-socialist transition. The recent situation in «ethnic market» studies is analyzed along with some theoretical approaches in this field. The research is based on case studies carried out in Russia, China, Germany, and Czech Republic. Authors demonstrate the impact of «ethnic markets» on the urban space and urban communities and analyze the impact of Russian migration policy on the dynamics of formation and functioning of the «ethnic markets». A number of texts are devoted to a retrospective analysis of ethnic entrepreneurship in late imperial Russia.
This article analyses the trajectories of two transnational networks present in the Chinese city of Yiwu: Afghan merchants who trade goods in and out Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan; and Uzbek traders (citizens of either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan) who commercialize their merchandise in and out Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Our aim is to capture an ethnographically grounded understanding of informal markets and economies by analysing the notion of trade ‘outside the law’, including the contested yet widely used category of the ‘smuggler’. By paying attention to the fluidity of trading practices ‘outside the law’, we also address the uses and limitations of metaphors widely used in scholarly analysis of informal markets: notably those of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ forms of globalization, and the transposition of formal-legal and informal-illegal exchanges onto the notions of economic ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’.
For many ordinary people responding to ongoing post-Soviet precarity, domestic and transnational trade has become a common choice of livelihood. This article is about the small and medium sized traders who deal in cheap Chinese commodities in the Caucasus-particularly in Georgia and Armenia. It introduces the notion of 'trade formations' to account for the multiple ways in which cross-cultural trade and microfinance practices, as well as stereotypes about national and regional groups and trading minorities, highlight the role of trust, reputation and everyday diplomacy in long-distance commercial networks. While current trade networks are rooted in the cultures of trade practised under the Soviets, dispositions of pragmatic cosmopolitanism and defensive nationalism often determine who may or may not respond to post-Soviet precarity by turning to transnational trade, embracing political and religious diversity, and overlooking hostilities, past and present.
This introductory article revisits cross-border shadow exchanges in a comparative perspective and reflects on their theoretical implications. It explores the diversities and complexities of shadow operations and critically examines the concept of informality that is commonly used to describe such non-state-sanctioned practices. It further underlines the key role played by checkpoint politics in border governance. Border checkpoints serve both as a state institution in regulating border crossings as well as a political site where material and power exchanges among state and non-state actors are negotiated. Such negotiation of selective passage through state-controlled gateways is often predicated upon the skilful manipulation of time and space by experienced traders and brokers.
This article aims to understand how local communities affected by protracted conflicts could maintain a capacity for agonistic interactions in their everyday encounters on the margins of the hegemonic control of conflict-inducing narratives. The article analyses the Sadakhlo bazaar on the border between Georgia and Armenia as a possible example of such interactions. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was the setting for daily encounters of Armenians and Azerbaijanis, whose ethnonational identity narratives have been polarised and heavily securitised due to the Nagorno–Karabakh conflict. The authors suggest that the bazaar in this case appeared as a concrete space of embodied practices of thin recognition of the otherwise antagonised other where the antagonism was not contested but suspended. The article conceptualises the bazaar as a local site of situated agonistic peace by undertaking a critical assessment of theoretical calls concerning the ‘ontological security dilemma’ and ‘transformative power’ of mundane experiences.
Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary historical novel presents an aspiring scholar’s efforts to write an idealized life of Julius Caesar twenty years after his death. But the historian abandons his planned biography, confronted by a baffling range of contradictory views. Was Caesar an opportunist, a permanently bankrupt businessman who became too big for the banks to allow him to fail – as his former banker claims? Did he stumble into power while trying to make money, as suggested by the diary of his former slave? Across these different versions of Caesar’s career in the political and economic life of Rome, Brecht wryly contrasts the narratives of imperial progress with the reality of grasping self-interest, in a sly allegory that points to the Weimar Republic and perhaps even to our own times.
Brecht reminds his readers of the need for constant vigilance and critical suspicion towards the great figures of the past. In an echo of his dramatic theories, the audience is confronted with its own task of active interpretation rather than passive acceptance -- we have to work out our own views about Mr Julius Caesar.
This edition is translated by Charles Osborne and features an introduction and editorial notes by Anthony Phelan and Tom Kuhn.
In 1992, there was an explosion of 'stock fever' in Shanghai. 'From the moment I set foot in Shanghai until my last day there, people from all walks of life wanted to talk to me about the market', Ellen Hertz writes. Her 1998 study sets the stock market and its players in the context of Shanghai society, and it probes the dominant role played by the state, which has yielded a stock market very different from those of the West. A trained anthropologist, she explains the way in which investors and officials construct a 'moral storyline' to make sense of this great structural innovation, identifying a struggle between three groups of actors - the big investors, the little investors, and the state - to control the market.
Porta Palazzo, arguably Western Europe's largest open-air market, is a central economic, social, and cultural hub for Italians and migrants in the city of Turin. Open-air markets like Porta Palazzo have existed for centuries in Europe; although their function has changed over time—traditional markets are no longer the primary place to buy food—they remain popular destinations. In an age of supermarkets and online commerce, markets offer unique social and cultural opportunities and bring together urban and rural worldviews. These factors are often overlooked in traditional economic studies of food distribution, but anthropologist Rachel E. Black contends that social relations are essential for building and maintaining valuable links between production and consumption.
From the history of Porta Palazzo to the current growing pains of the market, this book concentrates on points where trade meets cultural identities and cuisine. Its detailed and perceptive portraits of the market bring into relief the lives of the vendors, shoppers, and passersby. Black's ethnography illuminates the daily work of market-going and the anxieties of shoppers as they navigate the market. It examines migration, the link between cuisine and cultural identity, culinary tourism, the connection between the farmers' market and the production of local food, and the urban planning issues negotiated by the city of Turin and market users during a recent renovation. This vibrant study, featuring a foreword by Slow Food Movement founder Carlo Petrini, makes a strong case for why markets like Porta Palazzo are critical for fostering culinary culture and social life in cities.
Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new property developments and the imposition of new rent regimes. In doing so, I argue that fire – a form of ruination that not only destroys property but also severs networks and people's relationship to a place – is illustrative of how the bazaar, as a new institution within an emerging post-Soviet market economy, was moulded by private interests, and repeated, often ruinous assertions of control over property. I also argue that this process was embedded in a larger political economy that sought to ‘civilize’ the earlier marketplaces. This article is based on ethnographic interviews and repeated visits to the Barakhola between 2016 and 2018, and media accounts of the fires.
Among the many ‘businesspeople’ whom the promise of commercial success has drawn to southern China in recent years one can find a small number of Kyrgyz middlemen. Working mostly with Russian-speaking clients, their job is to organize buying trips, coordinate with local manufacturers, translate, and oversee cargo shipments. Based on ethnographic fieldwork since 2013, this article examines in detail the careers, work routines and business model adopted by Kyrgyz middlemen in Guangzhou. I argue that in contrast to the early bazaar or shuttle traders, who have been operating across Eurasia since the 1990s, these Kyrgyz middlemen constitute a next kind of economic actor within more diversified, service-oriented and formalized value chains across post-Socialist Eurasia (referred to here as Business 2.0). One of these middlemen’s most salient contributions is to translate between the informal and formal domains of national economies as well as within cross-border economic transactions.
This article approaches ‘informal’ modes of organization among Uyghur bazaar traders in Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan in a complex context of increasing state regulatory measures and strong social networks. It captures this organization as a ‘formal side of informality’. The practices comprising it are deemed ‘informal’ from a state-centred perspective, as they are not regulated by the state law or bureaucracy, but they still display a non-state formalization in the sense of being codified, regular and predictable to the traders. The article explores areas and examples of such ‘informal’ formality in the bazaar trade that are built around notions of morality, piousness, pride and shame. It pays special attention to oral contracts, purchase on credit, go-betweens and the status of profit. The article draws on participant observation and interviews in Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan as well as on descriptions of trade morals and trade customs in ethnographic and folkloristic publications by local Uyghur scholars in Xinjiang.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in China and Georgia, this article traces the origins and describes current practices of post-Soviet tourist trading in Yabaolu Market in Beijing. While traders from across the Caucasus visit Yabaolu, my focus is on Georgian traders who today perceive themselves as biznesmeny. Focusing on a typical trade visit, the article explores the role of ethnic and kinship ties in the organization of this trade. It questions the notion of ethnic entrepreneurship and the idea that ethnic cooperation itself may serve a basis of trust and underpin traders’ activities. Instead, the article illustrates how enduring transnational linkages are built on other forms of reliability and reputation. These are framed in the lexicon of friendship, as well as kinship and pseudo-kinship vocabulary, and facilitate commercial transactions between traders of different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds in an environment where state regulation and legal law enforcement are almost absent.
Trading in Astana’s Central Bazaar rests on mutually beneficial people-to-people contacts, or personal networks. Twenty-five years after the Soviet collapse, personal networks are pivotal in whether one succeeds in an informal market economy. I argue that networks cannot be disassociated from trader motivation, which serves as a measure of how these networks evolve over time. I describe how those traders who were driven primarily by lifting themselves out of economic precarity tended to build strong social networks; these strong social networks sometimes evolved into ‘unconditional’ social networks, by which I mean a trader supporting others even though doing so has no commercial benefit. At the other extreme were traders driven by ambition and goal attainment. I argue that such traders are less likely to establish and maintain social networks. Between these two extremes is a middle ground, where traders alternate between strong and weak social networks.
A significant part of China-Pakistan cross-border trade falls within the category of shadow economy. Most Pakistani traders in Xinjiang cannot afford to ship containers through the Khunjerab Pass and rather carry the goods purchased in China with them on the daily buses to Sost, Pakistan, thus avoiding customs duties. This form of border economy, though falling outside of the regulatory regime, is far from being informal. Rather, it is based on a network of contacts on both sides of the border and made possible by the particular institutional and infrastructural setting of the area. Based on long-term fieldwork in both Xinjiang and Pakistan, this article shows the complexity of these transactions, their transnational nature and the performativity that characterises them. It also highlights the role of online technologies and social networks in the cultivation of those relations, and the ability of traders to navigate often-changing norms and the flows that characterise the market. Eventually, the article suggests a new definition for “the market” as it emerges from the experience of traders in Xinjiang. For them the market is neither simply based on trust, social relations and the continuous flow of information; nor does it correspond to the global, culture-free market economy
Anthropologists generally agree that markets are embedded in wider social and political institutions, albeit to differing degrees and in historically and culturally distinct ways. Their perspectives on markets thus differ from those of neoclassical economists and challenge the view that human economic behavior is guided by universal principles. Anthropological studies of markets are typically grounded in research conducted in actual marketplace settings that range from peasant marketing systems in agrarian societies to urban street markets in the global South. Recent works have also turned their attention to global capital markets. In their variegated forms and dynamics, markets and marketplaces provide an effective lens through which anthropologists have addressed a panoply of issues, including market–society–state dynamics, rural development, urban transformation, gender, morality, and neoliberal subject formation.