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- Convenors:
-
Rano Turaeva
(Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich)
Isabelle Ohayon (CNRS)
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- Chair:
-
Isabelle Ohayon
(CNRS)
- Discussant:
-
Rano Turaeva
(Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Anthropology & Archaeology
- Location:
- Room 104
- Sessions:
- Thursday 23 June, -
Time zone: Asia/Tashkent
Short Abstract:
The interdisciplinary panel will discuss the issues of debt relations and indebtedness in different contexts. The Panel also shows that independently from diverse situations of indebtedness the role of kinship and social control plays major role in the maintenance of debt relations.
Long Abstract:
The panel brings together both anthropologists and public health experts to discuss the theme of debt relations and diverse situations of indebtedness bringing case studies from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgistan approaching the same issues from very different angles. Debt relations and economic exchange based on debts became more and more important within social relations in the context of shortage of money (mostly cash) and income in the countries of transition economies such as in post-Soviet countries as well as eastern Europe. Debt came out to be often discussed matter among people in the same region. Debt relations are not only the matter of economic exchange but rather is embedded into the social networks, dependencies, shared norms, identities, trust networks and power relations. Various situations of debt relations such as in managing finances and debts within marriage ceremonies, trade of basic food sold for debt, drug users managing their debts or drug taken for credit, or other economic activities involving debts among others has been largely neglected and is nearly absent in the scholarly works. Guéorgui Mory will discuss bonds among kins and friends resulting from debts and indebtedness in Kyrgystan whereas the similar issues will be discussed from a public health perspective by Turaeva Muyassar among drug users in Uzbekistan. Zarina Adambussinova will discuss the examples of indebtedness and debt based trade in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan which will complement the material on debt relations and indebtedness among traders and women networks. All three contributions will address and discuss the following questions:
1. What is debt making for persons involved in the process?
2. What are the implications of debt for kinship, and other social relations on the ground?
3. How are debt relations connected to wider socio-economic and political context?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 23 June, 2022, -Guéorgui Mory (EHESS (Paris) Napoli l'Orientale)
Paper short abstract:
Cynthia Werner argued that life-cycle rituals enabled Kazakh households to cope with the social crisis of the 1990s by maintaining ties of “indebtedness”. On the grounds of an ethnography of Kyrgyz weddings, I will challenge this claim by means of Mauss', Levi-Strauss' and Graeber's theories.
Paper long abstract:
From the 1960s onwards, Central Asian life-cycle rituals (toi) have been described as an “economy of favours”. In the 1990s, Cynthia Werner argued that these ceremonies enabled Kazakh households to even out the risks stemming from the social and economic crisis that succeeded the collapse of the Soviet Union by maintaining ties of “mutual indebtedness”. This paper will discuss this hypothesis on the grounds of an ethnography of marriage ceremonies celebrated by Kyrgyz villagers in the Issyk-Kul region. I intend to expose the number of gifts and services exchanged by the participants and describe how the expenses related to the funding of these ceremonies are distributed between guests. The gifts given as matrimonial benefits will be compared to the contributions received from the various guests. Upon relying successively on the theoretical frameworks of Mauss’s gift economy, Levi-Strauss’s generalised exchange and Graeber’s human economy, I will argue that these various gifts promote heterogeneous forms of sociability. The asymmetry of matrimonial benefits will be explained by the structural inferiority of wife-takers to wife-givers. Furthermore, I will compare the bonds between distant relatives and friends, which are contingent on reciprocal gifts, to those between close relatives, which exclude debt, given the relevance of family communism and hierarchies related to seniority and kinship.
Muyassar Turaeva (Nürnberg School of Public Health)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines how debtors manage their time and security exploring the relations of trust and social status among drug users in Uzbekistan . The role of families and the status of the family members who have debts will also be discussed.
Paper long abstract:
Coming to power of Taliban in Afghanistan will have major security and political implications in Central Asia which is considerable for the general epidemiological situation in Central Asia in general. Drug trafficking routes is of another importance to consider to analyse drug abuse and availability of drugs in the region. Although the early Soviet skyrocking of drug abuse in Central Asia has been stopped and stabilised there are still problems related to public heath issues and other problems drug users face today which is largely understudied. The paper examines how debtors manage their time and security exploring the relations of trust and social status among drug users. The role of families and the status of the family members who have debts will also be discussed. The concepts of cooperative governance and adversarial governance by Kim and Sanberg (2017) will be discussed. The importance of social control among the same group will also be discussed.
Zarina Adambussinova (American University of Central Asia in Bishkek) Rano Turaeva (Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation is based on the paper I co-authored with Turaeva Rano. The paper details people’s concrete experiences of debt in post-Soviet economies drawing on substantial ethnographic materials from Uzbekistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
Paper long abstract:
The paper details ordinary people’s concrete experiences of debt, solidary social relations, and various forms of economic exchange based on debt relationships in post-Soviet economies drawing on substantial ethnographic materials presented in three case studies from Uzbekistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan. In particular, the paper is organized around three case studies followed by an extensive review of the scholarly works related to informal economies and economical survival mechanisms in post-Soviet space, debt in anthropology, and the relationship between debt and (dis)trust.