Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: the case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics

The Transformation of Askar Akaev, President of Kyrgyzstan

This paper follows the transformation of Kyrgyzstan’s president, Askar Akaev, over the course of the 1900s from an initial path of liberalization to more authoritarian tendencies. Akaev’s role in Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet trajectory is largely neglected in current scholarship, and this paper analyzes how the role of leadership compares with existing literature. This analysis focuses on how Akaev builds authority with various audiences and the constraints he had faced during his tenure. This paper explains the evolution of Akaev’s leadership strategy during 1989 to 1993 and then the period following the 1993 crisis, up to the present (2003). Next are given five alternative approaches to understanding the country’s trajectory over the 1990s and summarizes the benefits of incorporating leadership as a variable in understanding Kyrgyzstan’s transition. Finally, the president’s leadership helps to explain the country’s initial liberal path, but a full explanation of his shift to authoritarian tendencies must address other variables discussed in existing literature