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ID: 138249

How can I be post-Soviet if I was never Soviet?’ rethinking categories of time and social change – a perspective from Kulob, sou / Ibanez-Tirado, Diana

Ibanez-Tirado, Diana	Article
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Summary/Abstract

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Kulob region of southern Tajikistan, this paper examines the extent to which the existing periodization ‘Soviet/post-Soviet’ is still valid to frame scholarly works concerning Central Asia. It does so through an analysis of ‘alternative temporalities’ conveyed by Kulob residents to the author. These alternative temporalities are fashioned in especially clear ways in a relationship to the physical transformations occurring to two types of housing, namely flats in building blocks and detached houses. Without arguing that the categories ‘Soviet’ and ‘post-Soviet’ have become futile, the author advocates that the uncritically use of Soviet/post-Soviet has the unwanted effect of shaping the Central Asian region as a temporalized and specialized ‘other’.

Key Words

Soviet ; Housing ; Time ; Post - Soviet ; Temporality

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ID: 171131

Trade outside the law: Uzbek and Afghan transnational merchants between Yiwu and South-Central Asia / Ibanez-Tirado, Diana; Marsden, Magnus

Marsden, Magnus	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

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’.

Key Words

Globalization ; Smuggling ; Markets ; Trade ; Informality ; Illegality

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