Paper short abstract:

I will explore the intersection of the times and spaces of crisis by looking at how mobile cross-border traders at two post-Soviet markets negotiate their market experiences and strategies in the context of multiple intersecting crises (economic, political, pandemic).

Paper long abstract:

Crisis has often been conceptualized according to its historicity (Koselleck, 1973), or its temporality (Roitman, 2014). To more fully understand the plurality of explanations for and meanings of crisis for different people, I suggest expanding the retrospective or future-oriented approach by exploring how crisis-reasoning also produces a spatial dimension. The entanglement of space and time in crisis-talk is well reflected in the claim of my informants – market traders at the gigantic retail bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – that we are experiencing a ‘global crisis’ (mirovoy krizis). Responsibilities varied from local politicians, the Chinese government, the demise of the Soviet Union, or global capitalism. The explanatory means of crisis extensions are related to one’s specific position within larger, yet shifting paradigms of power and possibility. The sudden standstill of international mobility in the face of SARS-CoV-2 creates a hazard for cross-border traders, who are dependent on the circulation of goods, people, and capital. But ‘Do Bazaars Dye?’, as the anthropologist Hassan Karrar (2017) provocatively asked in a study of the condition of trade at the Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek. Traders at both markets are hardy to crisis and have a complex understanding of its personal and economic assets and drawbacks. I will explore the intersection of the times and spaces of crisis by looking at how mobile cross-border traders at the two post-Soviet markets, Seven Kilometer Market (Sed’moi) in Odessa, and Dordoi Bazaar negotiate their market experiences and strategies in the context of multiple intersecting crises (economic, political, pandemic).