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Abstract

This paper studies how small and medium-sized meat and dairy processors in the Jetisu region of south-eastern Kazakhstan create relative stability under conditions of institutional volatility. Drawing on social and economic anthropology, it asks how producers sustain processing and small trade when regulations are unevenly enforced, market opportunities shift, infrastructure remains fragile and access to formal support is inconsistent. Rather than treating institutions as fixed rules imposed from above, the paper shows how they are interpreted, negotiated and reworked in everyday practice. The analysis is based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews, participant observation and conversations with processors, traders and local officials. It shows that business decisions are formed not only by prices or formal regulation, but also by trust, debt, kinship ties and moral obligations. In this context, formal compliance rarely operates as a self-sufficient system. For example, documentation such as SES certification often works less as a mechanism of full product traceability than as a practical requirement for entering bazaar trade.

The paper argues that capacities for stabilization are unequally structured by scale. Medium sized processors regularly depend on outsourced supply from small-mid size farmers while building private infrastructures that stabilize production, trade, including milk and meat collection systems, trusted supplier networks and informal lending arrangements. Smaller processors, many of whom are also farmers, absorb a disproportionate share of seasonal, climatic and biological risk, commonly prioritizing herd expansion over investment in processing capacity. The paper thus demonstrates that under conditions of institutional volatility, relative stability depends not simply on formal rules, but on how actors mobilize informal institutions, social networks and private organizational arrangements to reduce uncertainty.