New shop owners in old buildings: spatial politics of the apparel industry in Kyrgyzstan

This article adopts a political economy approach with insights from the political geography literature to illuminate how the apparel manufacturing sector in Kyrgyzstan has thrived in a region known for significant challenges in electricity access and availability. In contrast to studies that have analyzed the role of state policies and informal relations in promoting industrialization, we focus on how myriad shop owners gain access to elite-controlled, privatized urban infrastructure through owner–tenant relations in a new market economy. Drawing upon original interviews with Bishkek-based shop owners, we find that despite the challenges associated working in these spaces, including poor infrastructure and exploitative relationships with owners, they remain due to the constant provision of electricity and convenient location. We contribute to understanding how everyday shop owners make sense of and grapple with production challenges in a new market context, against the backdrop of Soviet infrastructural legacies and post-Soviet privatization processes.     

Sewing to satisfaction: craft-based entrepreneurs in contemporary Kyrgyzstan

This article focuses on the reassembling of apparel production in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. We contribute to this special issue on well-being in Central Asia by examining how individual craft-based apparel producers (a subset of producers in the apparel industry) describe the process through which they built upon their Soviet past and reoriented their professional trajectories in a new competitive market environment. These producers locate professional satisfaction in their ability to draw upon and creatively re-employ local knowledge and experience learned in Soviet institutions, ultimately – as they articulate and perceive – deriving pride and well-being from the process of selling highly regarded ethnically inspired apparel products both at home and abroad.     

The monetization of social celebrations in rural Kyrgyzstan: on the uses of hashish money

This article focuses on the embeddedness of hashish production in the local economy of Toolu, a village in Kyrgyzstan. It explores how transformations in social relationships and the monetization of gift giving put constant pressure on families to find cash in a semi-subsistence agricultural economy. Although not produced on an industrial scale in the community, hashish is used as a cash crop in times of deficit. Based on a mixed-methods study combining ethnographic fieldwork with survey data, I show how the hashish economy is intertwined with different forms of reciprocal relationships based on gift-giving practices and the monetization of social relationships. In doing so, I illustrate how the hashish economy is embedded in local livelihoods and shapes emerging forms of economic morality in Kyrgyz society.