Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to investigate into the principles of reconstruction of certainty through formation of informal norms and rules in regulating economic activities outside of the state system.

Paper long abstract:

The paper aims to investigate into the principles of reconstruction of certainty through formation of informal norms and rules in regulating economic activities outside of the state system. The collapse of the Soviet Empire has brought much of uncertainties which resulted from the break of the Soviet welfare system and employment market. These uncertainties led people to rethink their survival strategies and security has become number one concern in every day lives of ordinary people. “Even doctors went into streets”, I was told, which was described as tirikchilik. The paper will decipher the principles of ordering of the spaces within the realm of tirikchilik. These norms and forms of order are influenced by kinship, friendship and other relations as well as other regulating forces such as religious belief and gender roles including, for example, issues of status and familial and kinship responsibilities. These spaces of micro-orders are the alternative forms of normative ordering where normative rather than legal means of sanctioning applied. In these conditions of legal pluralism people found themselves in the situation of uncertainties about trust, authority and shared responsibilities outside the realm of state control.