Abel Polese

Johan Rasanayagam

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

English

PurposeIn the Soviet Union, the official command structure for economic production and distribution gave rise to, and depended upon, what has been described as a “shadow” economy. In the post‐socialist context, the unregulated, often extra‐legal activities of production and exchange, encompassing the survival strategies of the poor, the emergence of post‐socialist “Mafias”, and much entrepreneurial activity, has been described using the concept of the “informal economy”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on long‐term participatory research over a period of three years.FindingsThe paper argues that what we might think of as informal economic activity in Uzbekistan cannot be understood in relation to a formal economy, but is rather an expression of a more general informalisation of lifeworlds following the end of the Soviet Union. Unlike the situation in the Soviet Union, the informal does not emerge from and exist in relation to formal political and economic structures. The state itself is experienced in personalised terms, as a “Mafia”, and the informal is all that there is.Originality/valueThis article provides an original perspective on the informal economy and informalised lifeworlds in Uzbekistan.</jats:sec

Crossref

Informal economy, informal state: the case of Uzbekistan

Rasanayagam, J.

MPG.PuRe

Rasanayagam, Johan

Aberdeen University Research

(N)Ostalgie' for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things.

20 of 21 International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 60For Peer Review Werner,

Anthropology as a Moral Science of Possibilities.

Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption,

Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia.

Everything was Forever, until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

Factory, Family and Neighbourhood: The Political Economy of Informal Labour in Sheffield.

From the Second Economy to the Informal Economy.

How Far do Analyses of Postsocialism Travel? The Case Of Central Asia.

If I receive it, it is a gift; if I demand it, then it is a bribe': On the Local Meaning of Economic Transactions in Post-Soviet Ukraine.

Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana.

Islam in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience. Cambridge:

Labour and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia.

Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization.

Market and State after the Cold War: The Informal Economy Reconsidered.

Marx Went Away but Karl Stayed Behind. Ann Arbor:

Money Makes Us Relatives: Women's Labor in Urban Turkey Austin:

Morality, Self and Power: The Idea of the Mahalla in Uzbekistan.

Notes on the difficulty of Studying the State.

Papers on Economic Activity

Partia ili Mafia Paris: Les Éditeurs Réunis.

Poverty in Transition: An Ethnographic Critique of Household Surveys

Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange. Cambridge:

Shanghaied by the Bureaucracy: Bribery and Post-Soviet Officialdom in Russia and Mongolia.

Shirkats, Dekhqon Farmers and Others: Farm Restructuring in Uzbekistan.

Society, Economy and the State Effect.

Sotsial’nye korni sredneaziatskogo islamizma (na primere odnogo seleniya). In Identichnost’ i konflikt v postsovetskikh gosudarstvakh (eds)

Spheres of Communal Participation: Placing the State within Local Modes of Interaction in Rural Uzbekistan.

Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity,

State and Community in Uzbekistan: Reworking the Concept of the Informal Economy: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Paper

Surrogate Currencies and the ‘Wild Market’ in Central Siberia.

The 'Uzbek Model' of Farm Economy: Formal and Informal Aspects. Paper presented to the Informal Economies and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Eurasia, Centre for Russian Research and East European Studies,

The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices. Berkeley:

The Cry for Land: Agrarian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan.

The Informal Economy in the Former Soviet Union and in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Materiality of State-Effects: An Ethnography of a Road in the Peruvian Andes. In State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives (eds)

The Past Imperfect: Remembering as Moral Practice.

The reality of communism (trans.)

The Reshaping of Inequality in Uzbekistan: Reforms, Land and Rural Incomes.

The Second Economy of the USSR.

The Transformation of the Second Economy into the Informal Economy.

The Unofficial Economy inTransition.

Traders, “Disorder”, and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia.

Transacting and Enacting: Corruption, Obligation and the Use of Monies in Mongolia.

World Underneath: The Origins, Dynamics, and Effects of the Informal Economy.

Informal economy, informal state : the case of Uzbekistan

https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/2547/1/pre_pub_version.pdf

Informal economy, informal state : the case of Uzbekistan

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Crossref

MPG.PuRe

Aberdeen University Research