Paper long abstract:

Since the 1970s, after the oil boom, the Islamic economy has grown significantly. Through the transformation and confessionalization of solidarity groups in Kazakhstan, we will try to see if the islamized economy offers a new framework of economic organization and redistribution of wealth, valuing and mobilizing both, private initiative and solidarity, on the scale of the whole social body. This paper, based on fieldwork research conducted in the South of Kazakhstan between 2014-2017, explores how Halal economies and Muslim entrepreneurs are being driven not only by market demands and economic opportunities, but also by religious thinking and contest, which leads progressively to the emergence of new forms of non-institutionalized organization, nourished by Soviet morality and Islamic values.