Introduction—Re-imagining Economies (after Socialism)

This article identifies relationships that dominate small and medium businesses in Mongolia. Unlike other parts of Asia, these relationships are not necessarily hierarchical, nor are they purely market-driven. Rather, they are characterized by groups of people who sustain each other's businesses and the social relations that hold them in place. In identifying such relations, we extend questions raised in the 'economy of favours' literature. If favours granted between known individuals are not simply about economic transactions, we ask, then what does this say about the kind of capitalist economy prevalent in Mongolia? Not simply an outcome of external forms of financialization, nor a remnant of the socialist planned economy, these relations open up the possibility for a range of ways of doing business in a climate that does not guarantee economic and social security in the sense that we may be familiar with. Attending to the way business deals and people are made and remade within networks and groups, capitalism is opened up to an economic diversity that shapes it from within.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Network Of Relations: Enactions Transactions and Favoursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Networks and the negotiation of risk: making business deals and people among Mongolian small and medium businesses

Chuluunbat

Empson

2018

“…Farhod and several other informants often argued that producing this type of packaging and labels, as well as the counterfeit brands themselves, represented 'the only way' they could sell and make a profit from products purchased in Yiwu. In Tajikistan, Farhod and other informants told us that only by paying bribes could they import to the country the merchandise they purchased in Chinaa common dimension of the region's 'informal economies' (see introduction in this issue; Rasanayagam 2011;Morris and Polese 2013;Makovicky and Henig 2017;Ibañez-Tirado 2018).…”

Section: A Note On the Fieldworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade ‘outside the law’: Uzbek and Afghan transnational merchants between Yiwu and South-Central Asia

Ibañez-Tirado

Марсден

2020

This article analyses the trajectories of two transnational networks present in the Chinese city of Yiwu: Afghan merchants who trade goods in and out Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan; and Uzbek traders (citizens of either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan) who commercialize their merchandise in and out Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Our aim is to capture an ethnographically grounded understanding of informal markets and economies by analysing the notion of trade 'outside the law', including the contested yet widely used category of the 'smuggler'. By paying attention to the fluidity of trading practices 'outside the law', we also address the uses and limitations of metaphors widely used in scholarly analysis of informal markets: notably those of 'lower' and 'higher' forms of globalization, and the transposition of formal-legal and informal-illegal exchanges onto the notions of economic 'centres' and 'peripheries'.

“…Navigating the murkiness between 'transactions' versus 'enactions' and favours produces particular spaces in which morality and ethics play an extremely important part (Makovicky and Henig 2017). Naraa and Chimgee's experience of the emerging economic landscape in the district is one of intense speculation (a form of uncertainty and guessing about the future) and watching, in order to take the best course of action.…”

Section: Speculation and The Making Of Urban Economies In Ulaanbaatarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiation, social indebtedness, and the making of urban economies in Ulaanbaatar

Plueckhahn

Terbish

2018

This article explores the types of actions that are dramatically shaping the formation of the peri-urban economic landscape of the ger areas in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Drawing from numerous interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in and around a bus stop on the northern edge of the city, we trace the experience of two different women who each carve out a life and livelihood on this urban fringe. Examining the types of strategies they employ to secure land and employment, we argue that negotiations, speculation and enactions of relationships are vastly influential in shaping Ulaanbaatar's urban economy from the ground up. Drawing from the anthropology of generative capitalism and the fungibility and heterogeneous nature of money, we discuss how the making of capitalist urban economies in Ulaanbaatar implicates a variety of decisions and materials, perceptions of the state, and local economies of exchange and reciprocity. Central to the shaping of these urban economies, we argue, are emerging moral quandaries and ethics arising out of these entanglements.