Order at the bazaar power and trade in central asia

In addition to traders who populate the bazaars and engage in the daily work of commerce, private owners of bazaar land and municipal officials play important roles.. By mobilizing their

ORDER AT THE BAZAAR

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Spector, Regine A., 1976– author.

Title: Order at the bazaar : power and trade in Central Asia / Regine A

Spector.

Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017 | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017004753 (print) | LCCN 2017006146 (ebook) | ISBN

9781501709326 (cloth : alk paper) | ISBN 9781501712388 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501709746 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Bazaars (Markets)—Kyrgyzstan—Bishkek |

communism—Economic aspects—Kyrgyzstan—Bishkek | Bishkek

(Kyrgyzstan)—Commerce.

Classification: LCC HF5475.K982 B57 2017 (print) | LCC HF5475.K982

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Cover: Scene in the Karasuu bazaar, Kyrgyzstan, August 2007

Photograph by the author.

List of Illustrations ix

Conclusion Rethinking Policy, Politics, and Development 179

Table

Figures

Photos

ORDER AT THE BAZAAR

THE POSSIBILITY OF ORDER

Tatiana has worked at Dordoi bazaar selling Chinese-made children’s clothing for over fifteen years Dordoi is located on the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital city

of the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan Rising early to arrive at the bazaar by 7:00 a.m., she serves wholesale clients from all over Eurasia; they come by bus and minivan in the wee morning hours and leave later that day or the next with their wares In this way, for over fifteen years, she has grown her business and provided for her children Reflecting on the role of the bazaar in society, she described it

as a spring that feeds and gives life to an entire river Looking around Bishkek and the rest of the country today, she observed that many of those who built new homes and founded businesses such as beauty salons and cafés began at Dordoi bazaar “It all started with Dordoi,” she said “That’s why Dordoi is a spring.”

By 2007, Dordoi bazaar had become a crucial Eurasian reexport hub and a foundation for Kyrgyzstan’s reputation as a trading state 1 Prior to the country’s independence in 1991, a smaller number of bazaars existed in cities and towns as collective farm markets Throughout the Soviet Union, these markets provided primarily local fresh produce and other food products After the Soviet Union’s collapse, bazaars mushroomed in size and number, offering any consumer good imaginable—most made in neighboring China Some expanded from their ori-gins as collective farm markets; others were founded anew In addition to people selling goods, such as Tatiana, customers, cart pushers, and other service provid-ers such as café operators and money changers converged on these territories daily, forming a core pillar of economic activity within the country

This dynamism appears puzzling given what a casual observer might see at

or hear about the country’s bazaars It could appear to be chaos—consumers competing with cart pushers to get through loud and crowded alleyways, traders complaining of the summer heat and the winter cold, visitors being warned of those who mug and swindle hovering unseen within the bazaar, officials ran-domly demanding bribes of traders and consumers Such observations comport with Kyrgyzstan’s low scores on global indicators related to rule of law and secu-rity of property rights The country’s weak state capacity, frequent political insta-bility, and high levels of corruption regularly relegate the country to the bottom

of major global rankings 2 Typically, such conditions are presumed to lead to economic decline or stagnation and are reflected in discourses of market disorder and dispossession

Yet closer investigation reveals that while many bazaars are indeed crowded and exposed to the elements, the challenges related to disorder presupposed by these indicators—corruption, predation, instability—had largely disappeared at

some bazaars in the two decades since the country’s independence Order at the

Bazaar seeks to explain how this happened In short, in the absence of a coherent

national government apparatus and a bureaucratic state that provide such order, those involved at the bazaar create it themselves The findings have relevance beyond the bazaars and borders of this small country; they teach us how eco-nomic development operates in weak rule-of-law contexts, and more specifically how a variety of organizational forms come to constitute the order that under-pins market economies within such countries

This book begins from the premise that national-level economic statistics and governance indicators in this region are at times not only unreliable; they also conceal islands of order, including those that undergird bazaar dynamism 3 Fur-thermore, many existing analyses of the post-Soviet region focus on narratives of crisis, chaos, and conflict, and in doing so miss the important sociopolitical work that constitutes the creation and ongoing maintenance of order at the bazaar

In this book, I identify who has stakes in Kyrgyzstan’s bazaar economy, what problems they face over time, and how they articulate and work to realize their visions of order at the bazaar In addition to traders who populate the bazaars and engage in the daily work of commerce, private owners of bazaar land and municipal officials play important roles This book tells the story of how trad-ers, owners, and officials interacted in an often fluid and crisis-ridden context

to define and establish what they believed to be appropriate relationships, rules, norms, rights, and responsibilities that provided the foundation for their work

at the bazaar

The book contrasts these processes in the two largest bazaars in stan’s capital, Bishkek I find that differences in their geographic location and

Kyrgyz-integration into Soviet governance institutions shape the divergent privatization processes and subsequent relations between traders, owners, and officials Dor-doi bazaar’s location on the outskirts of the city and its status as an occasional flea market during Soviet times set the stage for one main owner to quickly privatize and expand the bazaar to service foreign consumers In contrast, Osh bazaar’s central location in the city and its integration into collective farm market gov-ernance structures during the Soviet period led to myriad owners in an opaque, fragmented privatization process

Traders worked and maneuvered in these two different bazaar environments initially navigating highly uncertain, dangerous, and risky commercial relations with suppliers, buyers, and transport and travel companies This book puts the spotlight on older, more established traders and the crucial roles they played in creating islands of order at bazaars By mobilizing their ideas and experiences, they adapted different Soviet-era and pre-Soviet organizational practices to the new market-based setting, laying the foundation for a variety of legitimate orders

at bazaars against the backdrop of initial domination of traders by private bazaar owners and the state These older traders engaged in a range of activities in their roles, including deliberating and advocating favorable policies and bazaar condi-tions, mediating disputes, channeling information, and serving as role models for traders

At Dordoi bazaar, these senior leaders are called starshie in the Russian language

They are informally elected from each trading row at the bazaar and constitute the core leadership of the trade union at the bazaar, founded in the mid-1990s This

trade union’s governance system via starshie draws on labor and residential norms

and organizational forms established under the Soviet Union At Osh bazaar, a

different type of leadership emerged in some trading areas, known as aksakals (males) or baibiches (females) in the Kyrgyz language While the starshie have their origins in Soviet-era governance arrangements, the aksakals and baibiches have

their origins in rural, pre-Soviet, nomadic Kyrgyz society

Through an analysis of these older traders and their roles, we see that despite common structural conditions in the country’s capital city—a weak state and privatized bazaar land with owners who collect rental fees from traders—different forms of authority undergird legitimate order at these bazaars While the core power dynamics have not changed over the last quarter-century of independence, this book argues that traders have been able to create and work through organizational forms that make for bazaar workplaces that have grown and thrived throughout this period

Instead of attributing the dynamism and order at the country’s bazaars solely

to the adoption of neoliberal economic reforms, the strengthening of formal rule-of-law institutions, or the persistence of age-old cultural norms, I argue

that we must recognize how those with stakes in the bazaar economy engaged in intensely political processes, often adapting preexisting ideas and organizational forms to new contexts as part of their efforts Trade unions, presumed to be weak, corrupt, or coopted in post-Soviet and other developing-world contexts, have been founded and reconstituted with new meanings and practices in a society undergoing radical socioeconomic change Rural elders, presumed to flourish

in rural, village pastoral life, have become intertwined with the urban market economy

The book’s findings suggest that we look beneath national-level analyses and engage in comparisons of islands of order in places we would least expect Doing

so uncovers local understandings and practices as situated in particular historical

contexts that change over time Order at the Bazaar thus serves as a corrective to

teleological perspectives on the primacy and effectiveness of formal rule-of-law institutions that predominate in the development literature In the aftermath

of the failures of market reform and structural adjustment, one strand of the development literature has touted the importance of improving governance by strengthening formal institutions as a prerequisite to market reform and devel-opment Instead, I offer a view of institutions that constitute market economies

as being created and mobilized, adapted, and imbued with authority and ity by people on the ground, not moving from weaker to stronger, or from infor-mal to formal, with the aid of international donors

1 VARIETIES OF ORDER IN

A NEW MARKET CONTEXT

Kyrgyzstan is a country in which we would least expect to find thriving nesses and economic dynamism according to institutionalist development paradigms This small country of roughly five million people in Central Asia has been widely regarded as poor, politically unstable, and corrupt 1 My first research trip to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in summer 2005 coincided with the ouster of the country’s first president, Askar Akaev, earlier that year In the aftermath of his departure, scandals surrounding ownership of cell phone companies, grocery stores, hotels, resorts, and mining companies captured newspaper headlines and analyst reports at the time 2 Many of these assets had been either directly or indi-rectly held by President Akaev’s family members and were up for grabs after he was overthrown

These ownership conflicts only confirmed what observers of politics and the economy in Kyrgyzstan had pointed to over the previous decade: constant property redistributions resulting from weak formal rule-of-law institutions and continued political instability An analyst cogently summarized the common perception as of 2008: “Not only do we live in an unlawful state, we live in a state

in which the law has died There are no normal mechanisms of protection.” 3 Kyrgyzstan’s apparent reality mirrored a broader conventional wisdom in post-Soviet political economy, which has characterized property as undergoing “per-manent redistribution” since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 4 Against this backdrop, about a million citizens of Kyrgyzstan sought work overseas depend-ing on the season, and upwards of 40 percent of the population lived in poverty

This national-level view of Kyrgyzstan’s economy confirms Hernando de Soto’s worst nightmare For this Peruvian economist and his new-institutional economist followers, the absence of private property rights defined, adminis-tered, and enforced by states inhibits growth and development 5 According to this logic, without deeds to property that are widely recognized and protected, indi-viduals are unable to use their property for collateral and thus grow and expand their businesses De Soto would not be surprised to find that Kyrgyzstan’s weak legal, administrative, and enforcement capacity, combined with continued politi-cal instability, have relegated this post-Soviet country to the bottom of major global property rights and investment rankings

Yet the hype at the time surrounding property redistributions and general nomic chaos masked an alternative empirical reality: the country had become

eco-a regioneco-al treco-ading hub, eco-a dyneco-amic entrepôt steco-ate for the re-export of made consumer goods throughout Central Asia and the post-Soviet region more broadly Sprawling wholesale bazaars received customers from Kazakh-stan, Russia, and other Central Asian countries throughout the 1990s and 2000s, while smaller bazaars in cities served clientele from other regions of Kyrgyzstan and from neighboring villages Take, for example, Dordoi bazaar By 2011, this bazaar had become renowned as a “city within a city,” a physical space not linked

foreign-to bribery, corruption, and organized crime, at least as undersforeign-tood by traders at the bazaar Such governance maladies had become associated with the first two authoritarian presidents of the country after independence in 1991: Askar Akaev (1991–2005) and Kurmanbek Bakiev (2005–2010) Professor Emil Nasritdinov at the American University of Central Asia confirmed this exceptional situation in

an exposé on Dordoi bazaar: “There are a few independent economic sectors in Kyrgyzstan Dordoi is one of them and an escape from any predators The large number of bazaaris and the ownership structure made it somehow untouchable.” 6 This book investigates the sociopolitical work at the level of both traders and bazaar owners that made this “somehow” possible at Dordoi bazaar and com-pares processes and forms of order with another major bazaar in central Bishkek, Osh bazaar Shifting the spotlight to the question of order at the bazaar through the lens of those experiencing and creating it unsettles the predominant litera-ture that views Kyrgyzstan through memes of chaos and conflict, or predation and patronage It reveals that the empirical reality on the ground is simultane-ously more varied and orderly than national-level narratives indicate

Rethinking Post-Soviet Bazaars

Bazaars represent a crucial pillar of the economy in Kyrgyzstan, and this book shifts the focus of existing scholarship on the country’s economy to these entities

To date, the literature details the ways in which the ruling families in the 1990s and 2000s coopted and controlled the country’s gold resources and military con-tracts Regarding the latter, Kyrgyzstan grew in geostrategic importance over the course of the 2000s because of the role of the Manas transit center supporting the NATO campaign in Afghanistan 7 In many ways, Kyrgyzstan came to resem-ble the small African country of Djibouti, which is “cursed” by not only natural resources but also its strategic location and the significant amounts of military-based foreign aid 8

These capital flows favored primarily individuals, their families, and their associates in the country’s leadership Everyday people have earned their income through other means, including at the bazaar While sectors such as manufactur-ing, agriculture, banking, and natural resources have garnered significant scholarly attention in the post-Soviet political economy literature—particularly focusing

on Russia and Ukraine—the trade sector has provided the basis for survival and capital accumulation for many and has received less systematic attention from a sociopolitical perspective 9 Indeed, in a subset of the post-Soviet world, the decline

of wages for those in manufacturing and state-based employment coincided with the relative growth in importance of commerce, including bazaar trade

A comparison of major capital flows demonstrates the importance of bazaars

to Kyrgyzstan’s economy In 2008, the World Bank estimated the value of annual bazaar imports in Kyrgyzstan to be close to $4 billion To put this in perspec-tive, the country’s 2008 GDP in current dollars totaled about $5 billion Other major capital flows in Kyrgyzstan in 2008 include foreign aid ($360 million), gold exports ($464 million), and remittances from Kyrgyzstani laborers work-ing primarily in Russia and Kazakhstan ($1.2 billion) 10 Simply put, we cannot understand politics, economics, and development in this country without con-sidering bazaars

Existing literature on bazaars in the region falls into three groups, each of which provides a different perspective on how we might understand the emer-gence of order at bazaars The first conceptualizes bazaars in Central Asia as cultural forms in the region, existing along the multiple Silk Roads connecting Europe and Asia long before the Soviet reign that dominated much of the twen-tieth century According to these perspectives, bazaars are governed by culturally inscribed routines and patterns of exchange Economic reformers have adopted this strand of thinking, proclaiming that traders in the region resemble natural entrepreneurs who had been stifled by the Soviet command economy 11

One World Bank analysis, for example, conveys an air of inevitably that bazaars would again thrive in Central Asia after the Soviet Union’s collapse, given people’s cultural predisposition to engage in trade and entrepreneurial activity:

“Bazaars in Central Asia date back hundreds of years, demonstrating a cated logistics infrastructure, exemplifying the highly developed entrepreneurial

sophisti-skills of Central Asian people.” 12 According to this view, the new governments’ liberalization of borders and tariffs provided the opportunity for a pent-up entrepreneurial spirit to be unleashed and for Central Asians to return to their culturally inscribed professions: as traders along the recomposing twenty-first-century Silk Road Among the Central Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan adopted the most liberal economic policies under the first president, Askar Akaev, making its rise as an entrepôt state seemingly inevitable From this reified Smithian perspec-tive, bazaars thrive because the “free market”—open borders and liberal tariffs—facilitates the fulfillment of culturally imbued entrepreneurial potential 13 Yet such broad generalizations defy historic reality Ethnic Kyrgyz never dominated trade and merchant culture in Central Asia The main cities associ-ated with Silk Road trade are located in modern-day Uzbekistan (for example, Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkand)—and the groups historically associated with this trade are traditionally sedentary Uzbeks and Tajiks, not nomadic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs Moreover, these perspectives trumpeting “entrepreneurial spirit” say nothing of the real challenges with state breakdown of the command economy, the evaporation of social safety nets, and the proliferation of laws, decrees, and border closures that characterized the 1990s In other words, to categorize trad-ers and others associated with this sector as natural businesspeople or “willing entrepreneurs” would be to mischaracterize the profound socioeconomic crises and dislocations that unleashed this trade 14 These perspectives further neglect the meanings of this trade in the region and the sociopolitical work new traders engaged in to build authority and institutions that govern markets, key foci of this book

A second, more critical, perspective locates the rise of bazaars and the rooming of trade as a violent form of dispossession resulting from rapid neo-liberal transformations In this narrative, women and highly educated Soviet intellectuals, teachers, doctors, and other professionals were forced into petty trade of Chinese-made goods to survive Rapid liberalization of the economy amid state breakdown unleashed “poverty shocks” for many 15 For example, an

mush-analysis of Uighur traders in Almaty’s barakholka bazaar invoked David Harvey’s

conceptualization of late capitalism, specifically that “the compression of time and space has produced a complex and dynamic world capitalist system which incorporates various modes of exploiting labor.” 16 Traders became the victims, pushed into this form of survival without alternative work opportunities in their trained professions Order from this perspective is governed by the force of the unbridled market and the drive for profit in the absence of a social safety net Feelings of shame, uncertainty, and lack of alternatives do characterize many traders’ perceptions of trade in the early years Yet this story of dispossession in the 1990s presupposes a constant understanding of trade and bazaar work over

time and discounts changes in the meaning and practices of those engaged in bazaar trade It also misses the important role of bazaar landowners and govern-ment authorities as key actors shaping and responding to the trading environ-ment Narrating the story of bazaar growth in the region through this perspective strips traders of their agency and the complex negotiations of meanings, resis-tances, and capabilities they wrestled with over time

Third and finally, bazaars across the post-Soviet region quickly became ated with havens for mafias and protectors, who capitalized on their monopoly over the use of violence in the context of new countries with weak state capacity Over the past century, many countries have embarked on the privatization of state-owned assets in the post-Soviet region, or the privatization of communally held property in other parts of the world However, this twin birth of new states and market economies called into question the possibility that institutions of the state could protect private property and more broadly govern markets and shield people from social dislocations of market creation Even in the most advanced industrialized states and economies, for example, privatization and the creation

associ-of markets entails politically fraught reregulation and the creation associ-of new rules and regulatory agencies; freer markets demand more rules 17 Many governments have not possessed the authority or the capacity to provide the legal, regulatory, extractive, enforcement, and redistributive mechanisms that undergird modern markets 18

In this anarchic, Hobbesian environment throughout the post-Soviet region, the state could not prevent expropriation of new businesses or predation of their profits, including those of kiosk-workers and traders 19 Bazaars and borders became associated with chaos and international traders denounced as “smug-glers, profiteers, speculators, racketeers, and ‘criminal-genic elements.’” 20 Mafias and bandits filled the void left by the collapse of state enforcement organizations

by offering protection and preventing other hungry predators from encroaching

on property and profits 21 Order at the bazaar as seen through this lens is erned by the use or threat of force by private violence-wielders in the absence of

gov-a coherent stgov-ate

This characterization holds elements of truth, especially in the 1990s In the popular press in Central Asia, bazaars at this time were associated with such trends For example, a newspaper article in 2000 from neighboring Kazakhstan, which experienced a similar boom in bazaars throughout the country, sums

up the conventional wisdom: “Together thousands of consumers, hundreds of swindlers, racketeers, pickpockets, and other conmen head for the bazaar.” 22 Another press article from 2000 refers to bandits in Kyrgyzstan’s bazaars in the title: “One bazaar and forty bandits.” 23 Yet over time, studies have demonstrated that state bureaucracies rooted out mafias and other such groups throughout the

post-Soviet region, and chaotic institutional environments sowed the seeds for the mafias’ own demise 24 In Russia, by the 2000s, businesses and traders reported

a decline in threats and confrontations from these groups 25

While mafias dissipated over time, the presence of government bureaucrats remained an important concern for traders 26 They fed off of the bazaar trade by demanding a host of fees and fines at almost every node in the system, whether

at the bazaar itself or at the country’s border where goods enter Formal legal codes in the country only contributed to the problem: laws governing inspec-tions, licensing, taxes, and land ownership were developed in an ad hoc manner

in the 1990s, leading to ambiguities that government officials and agencies often used to their own personal benefit Because of this weak state capacity to imple-ment coherent laws as well as to communicate and enforce them in Kyrgyzstan, those with stakes at the bazaar confronted continual challenges in doing business, and worked to remedy them 27

In sum, all three of these perspectives hold kernels of truth Yet narratives that rest on reified and static conceptualizations of culture, market forces, dis-possession, and violence fail to pay heed to the sociopolitical work of traders and other participants at the bazaar in founding, adapting, and working through institutions to achieve order Any market, including a bazaar, must be governed

by relative consensus surrounding an institutional framework specifying what to

do and what not to do 28 This includes beliefs, norms, rules, behaviors, practices, and discourses such that only “when there is order can we talk of a market.” 29 Without such an institutional framework, we have its opposite—chaos, or the absence of predictability and stability Bazaar actors worked to create and control such a predictability that served as the foundation for their ability to not only accumulate wealth but also achieve their goals of clothing, feeding, and educating their children, investing in homes and other items that improve their quality of life, and creating a meaningful work environment This book, thus, investigates the different forms and processes leading to the creation of islands of order in a country we would least expect to have them 30

Understanding the Creation of

Order at the Bazaar

We can think of bazaars as both physical spaces as well as a complex set of tions that govern a dizzying array of transactions and social interactions; they are not abstract spaces where goods, people, and information flow in a frictionless market setting Regarding bazaars as physical pieces of land, they are composed

institu-of a variety institu-of types institu-of property, including pavilions, stalls, streets, sidewalks,

and containers, thus requiring us to understand who owns this bazaar erty Unlike in other parts of the world, where marketplaces are often located in city squares and designated as municipal property, bazaars in Kyrgyzstan do not rest solely on public land Instead, when the Soviet Union collapsed, they were enclosed, or privatized, just like factories and farms were across much of the post-Soviet space They are similar to these other assets in that they were trans-ferred to elite members of society and fell into opaque and complex ownership struggles, as has been well documented in Russia 31

Most bazaars that existed during the Soviet period were collective farm kets governed by cooperative societies Enclosures of bazaars in the 1990s after the Kyrgyz Republic became an independent country differ from enclosures of commons in past centuries In his analysis of the parliamentary enclosures in eighteenth-century England, Polanyi describes government-led privatization of common pastureland that unleashed major social dislocations among people displaced from the land 32 Commoners fled agricultural subsistence and local production economies to begin working as wage laborers in privately owned fac-tories in urban areas Instead, the enclosure of bazaars in Kyrgyzstan took place

mar-as people flocked from collapsing state-supported industrial and government jobs into commercial trade at the bazaars Specifically, the evaporation of state budgets and production networks compelled many factory workers and employ-ees of the state (school teachers, doctors, and others) to the bazaar as former wage earners Workers became responsible for their own incomes and survival

as “traders,” and they did so in physical spaces—bazaars—that were ously being privatized by newly minted owners These emergent property-based inequalities between traders and owners form the foundation on which bazaars grew and thrived throughout the 1990s and 2000s

In addition to analyzing bazaars as privatized physical spaces populated by different types of actors, I also investigate how they articulated the challenges they faced and worked to create order in a rapidly changing environment For example, some traders united and created a trade union at the bazaar, where one had never existed before, and became the senior leaders of the governance

of the union, drawing on Soviet ideas and organizational structures in other spheres of life ( chapter 3 ) Others acted more individually, over time translating the experience and respect they had acquired as long-time traders to become bazaar elders, drawing on their understandings pre-Soviet village authorities and embodying them in a new market context ( chapter 6 ) We can learn about such processes by investigating who spearheaded or initiated these efforts, what prior ideas or understandings they drew on, and how they came to embody the practical authority to address problems and influence outcomes in these new contexts 33

These processes were not preordained after the collapse of the Soviet Union as spontaneous “double movements” that naturally emerged as people demanded state protection from market dislocation in a conventional Polanyian sense Instead, traders worked individually, as families, and as groups in the midst of socioeconomic crisis, and created some semblance of order by reappropriating organizational forms in new contexts and becoming local authorities themselves

at the bazaar 34 Stated in Weberian terms, in the face of socioeconomic tion and the magnification of unequal power dynamics in society resulting from opaque privatization processes, we see very different mixes of pre-Soviet and Soviet ideas and institutions that operate to legitimate the domination of new property owners and the state 35 That is, for example, instead of contesting the existence and authority of new private owners or state officials, traders sought to demand from them better infrastructure, more rights, favorable policies, and less predation, as well as carve out spaces within the bazaars where their own example and actions could serve as legitimate authority to help resolve conflicts and create the types of communities that traders valued in their work spaces

Political economy scholarship from the regions as varied as the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America illuminate such syncretic possibilities that people have created in the face of great challenges, involving “reflective imagina-tion” to solve problems and think up new solutions using preexisting knowledge and ideas, often in the midst of seemingly immutable, hegemonic processes 36 In rural Senegal, locals adapted to changes imposed from outside actors not by sim-ply acquiescing to adopting a land market as colonial administrators had desired but rather by creating their own land pawning system based on cash while retain-ing customary inalienability of land In this way, local actors fashioned “discrete ingenious recombinations of institutional elements that offer a sense of continu-ity with the historic past, as well as a tool to address the practical demands of making a living in a liberal capitalist order.” 37

Such examples can be viewed as the purposeful recombination by actors of old and new, and the renarration of understandings and meanings in the pro-cess This approach reveals that in addition to examining the response to capital-ist domination by property owners through hidden transcripts, 38 quiescence, 39 and social protest demanding welfare and protection from the state, 40 we must also put the spotlight on how individuals use and reshape institutions to their purposes Especially when confronted with rapid change and significant ambi-guities, people seek to create in their work environments senses of “normativity, regularity, and certainty ” to counter the “perceived unruliness, uncertainty, and irregularity of people’s everyday realities.” 41

This book, then, is framed both around a puzzle and a set of problems 42

The puzzle emerges from the presence of a booming and orderly bazaar trade

in an environment that we would least expect, characterized by weak law institutions and significant corruption and political instability To illumi-

rule-of-nate this puzzle, I pay close attention to the problems that people on the ground

faced in the region as they articulated them and responded How did traders come to terms with the stigmas and stereotypes associated with trade? How did they perceive state bureaucrats and bazaar owners, and solve problems related to the trading environment? How did directors of bazaar land legitimate holdings and battle others who sought to challenge them? How did municipal authorities address traffic and safety issues at the crowded central bazaars in the city center?

By answering these questions, I demonstrate how different bazaar actors rated their past and current situations, sought to solve problems and address challenges, and founded and became leaders in ways that would address the challenges they faced throughout the 1990s and 2000s Institutions in these con-texts are best understood as hybrid “assemblages” that reflect a “combination of diverse logics and rationalities that responds to local perceptions of needs within this political economy.” 43 Taking seriously people’s understandings and experi-ences, and their political work through institutions, allows us to see islands of order and the possibility for bazaar dynamism in an unexpected context

Studying Order at Bazaars:

The Approach and Method

The goal for this book is not to arrive at a universal, generalizable theory of the ditions under which islands of order emerge in weak rule-of-law contexts I instead offer a causal story limited to a particular time, place, and context—a contribution

con-to botcon-tom-up understandings of “situated knowledge.” 44 Yet the broader approach and conceptual apparatus I use to investigate local manifestations of order is gen-eralizable and portable to other contexts For example, how people narrate their understandings of disorder and order, and mobilize ideas and resources through prior understandings and experiences within organizations to address challenges, thereby recombining and reconfiguring them, can be studied elsewhere, both within the post-Soviet region and beyond, as discussed in the chapter 7 In short, while causality is context-dependent, analytic generalization is possible

I adopt a strategy of paired comparison at the subnational level, 45 focusing on the two biggest bazaars in the capital city (Bishkek) in the north of the country: Dordoi bazaar and Osh bazaar Both bazaars have thrived throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the former as the largest wholesale bazaar, and the latter as the larg-est retail bazaar in the country They both demonstrate patterns of growth and dynamism that challenge conventional narratives of what we might expect in

a country with weak rule-of-law institutions and a predatory state By tacking

“back and forth between or among cases to leverage difference and similarity,”

I find different patterns of order based on the appropriation of different nizational forms 46 The subnational comparison of two bazaars within the same country and city reveals the complex and spatially uneven nature of adaptations

orga-to common political and economic transformations

I arrive at this finding through analysis of texts (primarily newspaper articles), interviews research assistants and I conducted, and observations at bazaars and more generally in the country over time I sought to understand how traders and others associated with bazaar life understood disorder and order in a market economy and addressed problems they associated with their work I place these subjective understandings at the core of the analysis to arrive at causal mecha-

nisms and broader outcomes Order at the Bazaar is premised on this notion that

“causality-oriented work in the social sciences simply must attend to making processes if it is to be credible.” 47 Language is crucial to understand-ing meaning-making In Kyrgyzstan, people speak both Russian and Kyrgyz in the north of the country 48 Russian was the predominant language of politics, bureaucracy, education, and official life during the Soviet period After indepen-dence, Russian continued to predominate especially in the capital city; people

meaning-in the villages and outside the urban areas, however, meaning-increasmeaning-ingly speak Kyrgyz only 49 In the Russian language, traders, journalists, bazaar owners, and munici-pal officials referred to the absence of order in multiple ways, using three main

words: besporiadok (disorder), bardak (disorder or mess), and bespredel

(lawless-ness, often related to mafias and organized crime) They articulated and acted

on a variety of understandings of order, or poriadok, to rectify these challenges,

which changed over time as contexts also evolved

In the Kyrgyz language, disorder or chaos was often referred to as

bashala-mandik or bashalaman, literally meaning head disorder The words tartipsizdik

or tartipsiz are associated with a certain social disorder, with people who have no manners or ethics Finally, iretsiz generally refers to being out of order closest to

the Russian besporiadok In Kyrgyz, the two words most associated with order

are tartip, meaning specifically to bring discipline and respect norms, and iret, as

implementing the law 50

The title of this book— Order at the Bazaar, or Poriadok Na Bazare as it would

be translated in Russian—is imbued with a particular paradox In some settings and contexts, the word “bazaar” itself implies chaos or disorder For example, while I was attending a forum to address challenges confronting traders at Dor-doi bazaar in 2006 held in the Russian language, the then-director of the trade union—the convener of the forum—first welcomed everyone and then asked the participants to engage in a civilized conversation, talking one at a time, as

he literally said, “so that we don’t get a bazaar.” 51 Newspaper article titles such as

“On the Way From a Bazaar towards a Market” imply a transition from a otic and disorderly economic space to one that is more civilized and orderly 52 Respondents would recount jokes related to bazaars, such as: “Why aren’t we [as

cha-a country] developing? Beccha-ause we hcha-ave mcha-arket prices cha-and bcha-azcha-acha-ar relcha-ations.” 53

In Kyrgyz, a similar understanding reigns For example, a common and widely

understood idiom is as follows: If you have kids, it’s like a bazar (chaos); if you don’t, it’s like a mazar (cemetery) 54 A newspaper article title also reflects the presumption that bazaars are related to chaos: “Bazaar at the Bazaar.” 55 There is

a certain association, then, of disorder or chaos at the bazaar in both the Russian and Kyrgyz languages, which makes the question of how people understand and work to enact order even more perplexing and salient

Crucial to my analysis is the observation that five main understandings of order come to the fore at different times and for different people First, order can mean orderliness or cleanliness of the physical environment Disorder for traders could involve leaking roofs or dirty alleyways and spaces, while municipal govern-ment officials were concerned with the disorder related to traffic congestion near bazaars and challenges with garbage/waste removal (see chapters 3, 5, and 6 ) Second, order can relate to lawfulness and the defense of rights Traders and bazaar owners, for example, understood disorder to be when bureaucrats sought bribes or extralegal fees from them Order thus becomes the curtailment of bureaucratic predation and the practice of paying taxes and operating legally ( chapters 3, 4, and 6 ) Municipal officials viewed street traders as illegal since they often did not pay any tax or license fees, thus justifying law enforcement officials

to make sure that there is order by removing them (see chapters 5 and 6 ) Third, order can be understood as the state’s effective regulation of private bazaar owners Disorder from the perspective of traders is thus when owners continually raise rental fees and do not provide rest times or days at the bazaar; traders sought the government to impose order on them by mandating fee ceil-ings or closing the bazaar regularly for rest days ( chapters 3 and 6 )

Fourth, order can be related to personal behaviors such as discipline and restraint Disorder in this view involves littering, smoking, spitting, or drinking at the bazaar Traders wanted to see individuals adhere to social mores and be respect-ful of the ways their behavior impacted those around them ( chapters 3 and 6 ) Fifth and finally, order related to the absence of conflict Disorder in this understanding is heated arguments and verbal showdowns Traders and owners sought to create respectful and honorable social relationships, including norms

self-of not cheating customers or getting into arguments, and they turned to tion and negotiation to address problems before they became bigger conflicts ( chapters 3, 4, and 6 )

As exemplified throughout the book in more detail, order at the bazaar has been associated with cleanliness, rights, lawfulness, regulation, discipline, respect, and peace I investigate these understandings of order, paying careful attention

to the context and the situation, both in newspaper articles and through views with traders, bazaar administrators, and municipal officials Further details

inter-on how I analyzed texts and cinter-onducted interviews, in additiinter-on to my approach

to observing and participating in life in the country, are in the methodological appendix at the end of this book

In addition, preceding each chapter, beginning with the next, are what I call research encounters that describe how I came to study the region, and refine my research topic, questions, and processes 56 They employ first-person reflections that explicate my own thought processes and position in relation to the research environment As political scientists increasingly seek greater transparency and openness in the research process, the appendix and research encounters offer insights into how I arrived at the questions I did and how I came to the observa-tions and findings in each chapter 57

Drawing Implications: Appropriating

Ideas in New Contexts

Islands of order at bazaars in Kyrgyzstan were created by the political and social work of different types of actors—including traders—through the adaptation

of Soviet and pre-Soviet organizational forms I contribute to the literature on Soviet and Communist legacies by specifying which forms of “preexisting knowl-edge and ideas” that undergird these organizations become reappropriated in new contexts 58 Given Kyrgyzstan’s long colonial history—first in the nineteenth century under tsarist Russia and later in the twentieth century as part of the Soviet Union—we must pay careful attention to which knowledge and ideas are part of the process of creating order

Crucially, we must not assume that institutions of the past (whether Soviet or pre-Soviet) look, perform, and are experienced the same way in the present by asking, “How do we know that the phenomenon in the post-communist period is the same phenomenon as the one that existed before communism?” 59 Answering this entails researching how different societal actors mobilize their prior experi-ences and understandings in response to new contexts characterized by massive socioeconomic dislocation and opportunity

Literature on historical legacies has helped us move beyond the general notion that “to fully understand the present it is necessary to take account

of the past” by more clearly articulating the conditions under which a legacy

argument holds 60 At a minimum, a legacy must exist over at least of two time periods (for example, during Communism and after Communism) 61 Yet what

is interesting in the examples revealed throughout this book is that while tutions such as trade unions from the Soviet period and village elders from the pre-Soviet period persist in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, they do so in a very different market and state context The question, then, becomes understanding who carries these experiences into the new time period, and how and in what context they do so

As demonstrated throughout the book, to the extent they even existed in these previous times, bazaars prior to independence were associated with neither trade unions nor village elders Yet in the post-Soviet period, we see the emergence

of both trade union leaders ( starshie in Russian) and village elders ( aksakals in

Kyrgyz) as embodying significant authority and playing important roles in erning and creating order at these bazaars The origins of these reappropriations

gov-of Soviet and pre-Soviet organizations in a new market context must be traced

to individuals with particular experiences and understandings that lead them

to found or constitute them For example, Bishkek-born ethnic Russian starshie

at Dordoi bazaar initially mobilized and deliberated via the trade union they founded They had to modify their understanding of its role and impact given their Soviet-era understandings of trade unions Moreover, they drew from their role as senior leaders in Soviet housing complexes and schools to govern the trade union internally In contrast, ethnic Kyrgyz men and women originally hailing from villages around the country brought to the capital city’s Osh bazaar under-standings of the role of pre-Soviet aksakals by becoming aksakals themselves only after decades of experience in trade at that bazaar

Through these examples, I demonstrate the process through which local adaptations of preexisting ideas become intertwined in new contexts, 62 contrib-uting to the broader call for greater understanding of how and why actors “create and communicate” what have become termed informal institutions, or “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels,” 63 and also how the somewhat artificial distinction between the informal and the formal are recomposed and interwoven

in new market contexts 64

This approach differs from studies of private order that focus exclusively on relationships, trust, and other informal mechanisms that allow economic activity

to thrive in “dysfunctional public settings.” 65 Indeed, such private and informal dynamics are part of the story But where state bureaucrats are actively preda-tory, where state authorities in city centers have significant interests in bazaar order, where bazaar owners become state officials (MPs), and where traders and owners interact with representatives of the state, such private order and informal

institution stories cannot capture the sociopolitical and power-laden dynamics that are part of the process of creating order 66

I thus also diverge from theories of “spontaneous order,” which begin from the premise that patterns of order are the result of nonintentional, norm-based action 67 I argue instead that people involved in economic life at the bazaar cre-ate organizations and become local authorities themselves as a result of everyday actions, deliberations, experience, and negotiation—at times collective and at times individual They draw on their own understandings of what appropriate market relationships look like that include seeking profits but are not limited

to this goal Even within small geographies—in this case, at bazaars in the same city—we see significant differences in forms of order at the bazaar that result from the ways in which those at the bazaar draw on ideas and experiences—both Soviet and pre-Soviet—to create and maintain it

Making Visible Local Islands of Order: Beyond Predatory and Developmental States

This book’s findings also have implications for the literature on the state and nomic development One major strand of this literature identifies the relative capacity and autonomy of a state’s bureaucracy in guiding the private sector as a crucial determinant of a country’s ability to mobilize capital and engineer indus-trialization In contrast to the relative success of such developmental states in East Asia, many postcolonial countries in Africa, Latin America, and Eurasia inherited weak or captured bureaucracies, where a handful of leaders in the country used state positions and resources for personal gain Predatory states in Africa, for exam-ple, stagnated and failed to follow trajectories of their East Asian counterparts 68

I build on alternatives to binaries such as developmental or predatory states by refocusing our attention to local manifestations of economic activity and order For example, in Brazil, political leaders created “pockets of efficiency” to pro-mote relatively successful and efficient sectors, such as petrochemical and elec-tricity generation, within the country 69 In Saudi Arabia, there exist islands of bureaucratic efficiency within a traditionally understood rentier state 70 Finally, within the post-Soviet region, Russia has its own “post-Soviet developmentalist” strands There, both regional and federal state officials mobilized resources and consolidated state authority as they enlisted oligarchic conglomerates in achiev-ing social and development goals in a new market environment, including the creation of crucial electricity markets 71

These studies help us reframe the traditional conceptualization of the state’s role in development in Kyrgyzstan The dominant conceptualization of

Kyrgyzstan in the literature of the 1990s and 2000s views an authoritarian leader and his family governing political life; patrons—either presidents themselves or other political elite—provide both public and private goods to the population 72 State positions within the bureaucracy and government are up for sale, leading

to the marketization and corruption of the state, resembling prebendal politics

in Africa of earlier decades 73 According to this view of the state, it is the tory, patronage-based system that prevents countries such as Kyrgyzstan from developing economically and politically

No doubt Kyrgyzstan has exhibited signs of predatory familial rule, cratic corruption, and a weak state Yet it is precisely in this context that we see the emergence of bazaar growth and some semblance of local order By shifting the focus to market actors such as traders and bazaar owners, we see how they struggled to create and defend order at the bazaar, and in doing so, reconstituted state institutions and sociopolitical authority 74

One alternative approach to understanding the possibility for local orders derives from the literature on predatory or stationary bandits 75 According to these top-down new institutional economic and rational-choice approaches to order, rulers, often conceived of as leaders of countries, seek to maximize their revenue—in the form of tax collection—in exchange for providing other services and protection to people While rulers do work under constraints, such as pres-sure from associations, unions, or other groups, the main goal is to extract as much revenue as possible under these constraints One could argue that those who come to own bazaars—and extract rents from traders—could similarly be considered stationary bandits who have beaten out other, roving, bandits com-peting for these rents and creating order at the bazaar on their terms

No doubt bazaar owners seek to profit off traders at the bazaar through the lection of rental fees and foster the continuation of these monetary flows However, this top-down perspective presupposes their “stationary” status Instead, when we look more closely at their actions and behaviors, we see that they are constantly negotiating, working, shifting, and adapting to defend their control over these flows Moreover, the presumption in this literature is that their sole goal is to amass rents and profits Instead of beginning with profit-oriented, self-interested logics,

col-I instead focus on the changing moral and social drivers of those at the bazaar, including owners They desire particular types of order that value social relations, honor, professionalism, and dignity in the workplace, in addition to profit

A bottom-up perspective illuminates that traders come to understand that they have a role to play in creating meaningful environments based on previously learned understandings of how labor and social relations should look Those at the bazaar are driven as well by logics of appropriateness and survival in this weak rule-of-law setting 76

* * *

In sum, islands of order are not visible in national-level economic indicators The fluid nature of economic regulations and political change in the country—often assumed to be a weakness—in fact provides a set of possibilities for actors

in certain contexts who can adapt and recompose prior ideas and institutions

to their benefit This book demonstrates the possibilities for solving problems and engaging politically not only in democratic contexts but also in predatory, electoral authoritarian regimes As such, it contributes to a literature that argues that we should look for politics not only in elections and other formal processes normally considered part of the “democratic” process but also in battles over economic order and market arrangements 77

The emphasis on order and possibility in Kyrgyzstan also provides an tive to existing literature that takes predatory states and corrupt neopatrimonial relations as a starting point Moreover, in light of the country’s domestic political turmoil and its geographic position near Afghanistan and as a forward operating base for the NATO campaign in Afghanistan after 2001, narratives of chaos, dan-ger, and conflict have come to predominate Whether referring to multiple revo-lutions (2005 or 2010), ethnic conflicts (1990 and 2010), ongoing border skir-mishes, or internal domestic political violence, to some extent, these discourses cannot be denied 78 Yet the premise of this book is that we must understand not only how local populations view and experience conflict and danger 79 but also how they understand and articulate order and strive to achieve and enact it in their lives

I turn now to the first research encounter that tells the story of how I came to the topic of this book, and then continue in chapter 2 with the changing mean-ings of bazaars and trade among those living in the region Chapters 3 and 4 examine the creation of order at Dordoi bazaar, and chapters 5 and 6 at Osh bazaar Chapter 7 summarizes the argument and extends the approach to other bazaars beyond Bishkek and Kyrgyzstan, and the conclusion offers implications for policy and the study of comparative politics and development

2 CHANGING MEANINGS OF BAZAAR

TRADE IN CENTRAL ASIA

Research Encounter: Arriving at a Topic

In the late 2000s, I had the opportunity to dine with senior diplomats from

Georgia and Azerbaijan in Berkeley, California In discussing my recent field research trips in Central Asia, one official expressed confusion about the topic of bazaars in Kyrgyzstan He inquired, perplexed, “Aren’t bazaars

in Central Asia prominent among the settled peoples—like the Uzbeks?”

My answer surprised him: while bazaars thrived in past centuries along historical Silk Road cities such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva in what

is now Uzbekistan, today, the biggest bazaars in the region were located in mountainous, neighboring Kyrgyzstan After two decades of independence, Kyrgyzstan had become known throughout Eurasia as the country to go to for the best deals on consumer goods made around the world The premise that bazaars in Kyrgyzstan could be an important topic of research clashed with his historic understanding of the region

I initially conceived of this project in Uzbekistan on my first

explor-atory trip to the region as a participant in a summer language program in

2003 Questions I considered related to the political dynamics surrounding shuttle, or suitcase, trade, a form of individualized cross-border economic exchange prevalent in the post-Soviet region and other parts of the world Yet during my stay in Tashkent, these questions quickly morphed into ones that focused on the bazaar itself—the heart of the trade Who

traded at these bazaars, how did they arrive there, and what were their understandings of their roles at bazaars? Who owned the bazaars and how were these owners tied to politics (or, as I later learned, con- stitutive of political authority)? These questions rose to the fore of my evolving project

My plans for continued research changed abruptly in 2005 After the

Andijon events in May of that year, in which hundreds of innocent ians were massacred at the hands of Uzbek government forces in the cen- tral square of this southern Ferghana Valley city, it was no longer feasible

civil-to conduct research in Uzbekistan on such civil-topics The Uzbek government tightened borders and increased scrutiny on foreign sources of funding, non-governmental organizations, and researchers—a trend that continues

to this day My research trajectory shifted to focus on bazaars in boring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where the political and social climate proved more conducive to this type of research

The change in my research location conflicted with initial academic

readings of bazaars in the region, which broadly comported with the ceptions shared by the diplomats at that dinner in Berkeley: could I study bazaars and trade in parts of Central Asia not traditionally associated with this form of economic activity? What would such a site tell me about politi- cal economy and politics in the region more broadly?

As I traveled throughout Kyrgyzstan and southern Kazakhstan between

2005 and 2007, I observed the booming trade in consumer goods, and encountered traders everywhere, not only at the bazaar itself Everyone,

it seemed, knew someone who worked in a bazaar Parents of student research assistants at the American University of Central Asia traded; co- passengers on taxi rides within Kyrgyzstan and between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan traded; and relatives of my local colleagues working in research institutions and development agencies traded

While it was not difficult to find people who worked at bazaars, the

lan-guage of the bazaar proved puzzling initially For example, one afternoon

in spring 2006, I was sitting in a small grocery shop in one of the back alleys

of a bustling bazaar in Kazakhstan’s southern financial capital, Almaty

A women entered, inquiring about a “mini-titanic.” The shopkeeper did not have one She quickly left Perplexed at that moment, I registered the question and later asked of its meaning As the shopkeeper explained, the “mini-titanic” was one of the sizes of the plastic red, blue, and white checkered shuttle trade bags carried by traders Only the titanic and super- titanic outdid the mini-titanic; the super-titanic was big enough to hold a small refrigerator 1

Traders were often forthcoming and eager to tell me their stories at

bazaars, although the way that I introduced myself changed over time

My first visit to Central Asia in 2003 revealed the importance of tionality: I quickly learned that my ethnicity was as much a question in people’s minds as my identity as a researcher or American citizen My darker skin tone and seemingly mysterious yet familiar Asian features did not comport with their characterizations of an “American” scholar, likely presuming someone with fairer skin and blond or brown hair As I intro- duced my research project and questions, I quickly began to include more about myself, my background as half Asian, born in the United States

posi-to a mother who came posi-to the United States in her early twenties as an exchange student from Japan This conversation often broke the ice and eased tensions It even proved to be the source of jokes and humor Some

in Bishkek shared that they thought I was Indian or Southeast Asian, and others thought I looked Central Asian, but just not Kyrgyz Multiple people in Tashkent created their own joke surrounding my identity: “So when an American marries a Japanese? You get an Uzbek!” My mixed ethnic background, known in the region as a metiska, provided an often- inviting entry point into conversations in the region

PHOTO 2.1 A variety of bags used by shuttle traders in the 1990s and 2000s Osh bazaar in Bishkek, April 2006

This is not to say that certain individuals did not have assumptions about

me and my intentions based on my citizenship While scholars in the 1990s embarked on field research against the backdrop of Cold War stereotypes,

my experience as an American in Central Asia was colored in the mid-2000s

by the events of September 11, 2001, and U.S foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan 2 On multiple occasions, especially in the south of Kyrgyzstan, I

found myself being interrogated about U.S actions in the international arena

or about the treatment of Muslims in America The underlying assumptions and premises of these questions were often decidedly negative or colored by regional conspiracy theories A number of traders opted not to talk to me, likely due to personal shame as discussed in this chapter And another small subset thought that I would steal customers or threaten their businesses They replied to my general introduction of the topic with statements such

as, “So, do you want to get into this business, too?” likely presuming I was some type of “local” based on my looks 3 After reiterating my intentions as

a researcher—and emphasizing the confidentiality of the interview—these people often spoke quite openly throughout the 2000s

Conversations and encounters with traders quickly led me to question

existing frameworks that view traders in the global south as either ral entrepreneurs or vulnerable peddlers barely surviving in a new market context My goal in conversations with traders was to understand how they viewed their roles in this changing environment, and how they reacted and adapted to what I learned were deeply held pre-Soviet and Soviet-era biases against bazaar trade as a profession

Following the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, trading in gyzstan’s bazaars became one of the most important sources of income for families

Kyr-in the country, and it remaKyr-ined so for decades Twenty years later, Kyr-in 2011, one nalist wrote: “It seems like our whole country has become an enormous bazaar.” 4 For some economists, the rise of commerce validated the importance of promoting entrepreneurial small-business activity and free trade in the transition from social-ism to capitalism For critical postcolonial thinkers, precisely the same commercial activity became associated with violence, loss, and the relentless march of capitalism Indeed, trade afforded opportunity and rendered dispossession Yet both

jour-of these perspectives overgeneralize the ways in which global processes act with local actors such as traders and presuppose their understandings and motivations based on prior theoretical frameworks Instead, this chapter ana-lyzes the particular context in which traders of various ethnicities—Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek—articulated and experienced this transition from a command economy to a market one Kyrgyzstan is a multiethnic country composed of a majority of ethnic Kyrgyz, as well as other minority groups

inter-such as Russians, Uzbeks, Koreans, and Dungans 5 The Soviet socialist legacy spanning seventy years imbued certain common biases against trading for profit; yet at the same time, despite a common Soviet past, differences among ethnic groups emerged in how they framed and understood their new roles

as traders

Through a close analysis of texts, local newspaper articles, and interviews with traders of different ethnicities, this chapter finds that understandings of bazaars and trade are both initially embedded in a particular pre-Soviet and Soviet context, and they change over time in relation to the rapidly evolving socioeconomic and political environment of the 1990s 6 Before elaborating

on these changing understandings of trade, I first recount how state actions—including a combination of economic liberalization and favorable trade policies as well as state collapse—drove the conditions for bazaar growth in Kyrgyzstan

Mushrooms after a Rain: Traders and

Bazaars after Independence

The quiet, tree-lined streets of Bishkek transformed into sprawling bazaars in the 1990s, a stark contrast to the Soviet past, when trade largely occurred in state stores and a smaller number of collective farm marketplaces—locally known as

kolkhoz markets or bazaars—selling fresh produce While about one hundred

kolkhoz marketplaces existed in the Kyrgyz Republic at the end of the Soviet period in 1989, by 2005 the number of bazaars had quadrupled (see figure 2.1 ) 7

FIGURE 2.1 Number of bazaars in Kyrgyzstan (1980–2005)

Bazaars in Kyrgyzstan remained the primary retail outlet in cities and rural areas alike throughout the 2000s (see figure 2.2 ) 8 While a limited number of retail establishments such as malls, chain stores, and shopping centers appeared

in the 2000s, they were located primarily in the capital city of Bishkek and played

a limited role in the overall economy 9 Popular accounts of the rise in the number

of bazaars and traders suggest a natural and spontaneous process initiated by the liberalization of the Soviet-style command economy One quote from the local press in Kyrgyzstan from 1996 typifies this presumption: “In 1992, the president

of the country, Askar Akaev, gave the order to liberalize prices And immediately, like mushrooms after rain, spontaneous mini-markets began to emerge.” 10 Indeed, Kyrgyzstan ranked among the most rapid economic reformers in the post-Soviet region 11 While some post-Soviet countries pursued autarkic strate-gies (Uzbekistan) or regional reintegration strategies (Russia), others such as Kyrgyzstan embarked on a program of rapid liberalization culminating in the country’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1998 12 In part as

a result of president Askar Akaev’s ideas about the importance of liberalization and economic reform, the country’s borders opened to trade immediately after independence, a new currency was established in May 1993 signaling the official exit from the ruble zone, and privatization of small and medium businesses pro-ceeded quickly 13 Early in independent Kyrgyzstan’s history, the international community dubbed the country the “Switzerland of Central Asia,” a model for other regional countries in the adoption of democratic and liberal economic reforms 14 Both Switzerland and Kyrgyzstan are relatively small, landlocked, and mountainous, and many hoped Kyrgyzstan would “overcome its geographical disadvantages by having a freer economy than its neighbors.” 15

FIGURE 2.2 Retail turnover in Kyrgyzstan: bazaars vs stores (1994–2005)

People in Kyrgyzstan began to take advantage of the country’s newly opened international borders; the opportunity to trade and travel coincided with the rise

of manufacturing export hubs in South Korea, China, and Turkey, among other countries in the 1990s As a result of policies supporting export-oriented indus-trialization, cheap labor, and decreasing costs of transportation and communi-cation infrastructure, consumers around the world increasingly bought textiles, electronics, and other household goods from these manufacturing hubs 16 Thus, on independence, Kyrgyzstan opened its borders to products manu-factured elsewhere, and the government promoted policies to encourage trade Throughout the region, traders initially relied on frequent crossings of porous borders, carrying small amounts of cash or in-kind goods: “Borders create eco-nomic opportunities to be exploited by those who are able to cross them regu-larly, and to take advantage of differences in the supply, demand and price of various goods and services existing on either side of the border.” 17 This type of trade became known as shuttle trade, or suitcase trade, and is characterized by

individuals called chelnoki traveling across national borders to purchase goods

and taking those goods back with them for resale 18 Estimates of the number of such traders in Kyrgyzstan indicate that in 1996, five years after gaining inde-pendence, over five hundred thousand people were engaged in trade—a full 10 percent of a population of less than five million people At its height in the mid-1990s, one in every three families survived on this business in some regions 19 Profits were initially very high given relatively small incomes in the region, with the possibility to pocket $500–3,000 in profit on each trip 20 According to survey data from neighboring Kazakhstan, in 1995–1996, traders could make

up to 100–200 percent profit on the goods that they brought back and sold in Kazakhstan, and could start up the trade with as little as $500–1,000 capital As the market became increasingly saturated, profit margins dropped to 30–70 per-cent and start-up costs ranged from $2,000 to $4,000, although a smaller group brought tens of thousands of dollars on each trip By the late 1990s, wholesale shuttle trade emerged, whereby traders would pool their capital and send one person to buy goods and transport them back, often with their own transport vehicle or container For these groups, total value spent on a single trip was at least $20,000 Wholesale traders often hired between two and ten retail sellers

in different trading spots in the city’s bazaars selling the goods 21 According to Akyikat Djolu, a Kyrgyz association for the protection of the interests of small- to medium-sized businesses, by 2001, this type of trade comprised 70 percent of the foreign trade turnover of consumer goods in the country 22

Over time, shuttle traders with successful businesses and high trade turnover began to forge direct linkages with manufacturers in China—instead of buying goods at malls and other warehouses Traders recounted how it was necessary to