Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China

Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China PDF Author: Susanne Fehlings
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811952051
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The book is about the economic practices of traders and businesspeople from the Caucasus and China who work in local bazaars in Tbilisi and Beijing. It describes their activities, their motivations, their socio-cultural backgrounds, their work environments, and their interactions with one another. Contributing to a broader debate on the nature and role of informal economic practices in the post-Soviet periphery and processes of “globalization from below”, the book aims at providing a thick description of the embeddedness of bazaar traders’ economic behaviors and strategies in local and global political, economic, and cultural contexts, markets and supply chains.

Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China

Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China PDF Author: Susanne Fehlings
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811952051
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The book is about the economic practices of traders and businesspeople from the Caucasus and China who work in local bazaars in Tbilisi and Beijing. It describes their activities, their motivations, their socio-cultural backgrounds, their work environments, and their interactions with one another. Contributing to a broader debate on the nature and role of informal economic practices in the post-Soviet periphery and processes of “globalization from below”, the book aims at providing a thick description of the embeddedness of bazaar traders’ economic behaviors and strategies in local and global political, economic, and cultural contexts, markets and supply chains.

Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus

Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus PDF Author: Susanne Fehlings
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000594025
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
This edited book introduces new research on informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The research presented in this volume is based on recent field research in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Beijing, Guangzhou, Yiwu and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. The nine chapters in this book illustrate how informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus have provided space for millions of people across the region to negotiate changes in state and society in the three decades since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the emergence of successor states. Collectively, the book suggests that informality should be seen as a normative order for polities in Central Asia and the Caucasus for three reasons: (1) The inability – or unwillingness – of the states to measure commercial transactions. (2) The highly personalized nature of small business operations that rest on networking and social relations, oral agreements and trust. (3) Markets and bazaars being embedded within states in which clientelism frequently thrives. This book is a significant new contribution to the study of trade and informal markets in Central Asia and the Caucasus, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers and advanced students of Sociology, History, Politics, Business, Economics, Social Anthropology and Geography. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Central Asian Survey.

Politics of Regionalism in Central Asia

Politics of Regionalism in Central Asia PDF Author: JeongWon BOURDAIS PARK
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819940796
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book addresses how to mitigate regional tensions and enhance cooperative opportunities through well-designed regional institutions and organizations among countries in geographical proximity. We use the case of Central Asia (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to employ our conceptual framework of ‘externally guided regionalism.’ The following questions guide the study: How and by what forces has Central Asian regionalism evolved, and what are the main characteristics and political implications of the continuously evolving regional institutions? We discuss not only the extra-regional influential actors (i.e., Russia, the United States, the European Union, and China), but also intra-regional initiatives, strategies, and struggles in securing stability and sovereignty. Extra-regional actors’ growing competition over molding their own kind of multilateralism involving this region has contributed to the current direction of Central Asia’s regionalization. Concurrently, Central Asia’s political conditions and constraints interactively contribute to ever-increasing institutional sprawl.

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas PDF Author: Manja Stephan-Emmrich
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743360
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This collection brings together a variety of anthropological, historical and sociological case studies from Central Asia and the Caucasus to examine the concept of translocality. The chapters scrutinize the capacity of translocality to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link places, people and institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates. Illuminating translocality as a productive concept for studying cross‐regional connectivities and networks, this volume is an important contribution to a lively field of academic discourse. Following new directions in Area Studies, the chapters aim to overcome ‘territorial containers’ such as the nation‐state or local community, and instead emphasize the significance of processes of translation and negotiation for understanding how meaningful localities emerge beyond conventional boundaries. Structured by the four themes ‘crossing boundaries’, ‘travelling ideas’, ‘social and economic movements’ and ‘pious endeavours’, this volume proposes three conceptual approaches to translocality: firstly, to trace how it is embodied, narrated, virtualized or institutionalized within or in reference to physical or imagined localities; secondly, to understand locality as a relational concept rather than a geographically bounded unit; and thirdly, to consider cross‐border traders, travelling students, business people and refugees as examples of non-elite mobilities that provide alternative ways to think about what ‘global’ means today. Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas will be of interest to students and scholars of the anthropology, history and sociology of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as for those interested in new approaches to Area Studies.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2 PDF Author: Alena Ledeneva
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787351890
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world, yet underestimated in policy. Entries from the five continents presented in this volume are samples of the truly global and ever-growing collection, made possible by a remarkable collaboration of over 200 scholars across disciplines and area studies. By mapping the grey zones, blurred boundaries, types of ambivalence and contexts of complexity, this book creates the first Global Map of Informality. The accompanying database (www.in-formality.com) is searchable by region, keyword or type of practice, so do explore what works, how, where and why! Praise for Global Encyclopaedia of Informality ‘The Global Informality Project unveils new ways of understanding how the state functions and ways in which civil servants and citizens adapt themselves to different local contexts by highlighting the diversity of the relationships between state and society. The project is of great interest to policymakers who want to imagine solutions that are benefi cial for all, but sufficiently pragmatic to ensure a seamless implementation, particularly in the field of cross-border trade in developing countries.’ - Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General of the World Customs Organisation, Brussels ‘An extremely interesting and stimulating collection of papers. Ledeneva’s challenging ideas, first applied in the context of Russia’s economy of shortage, came to full blossom and are here contextualized by practices from other countries and contemporary systems. Many original and relevant practices were recognized empirically in socialist countries, but this book shows their generality.’ - János Kornai, Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard and Professor Emeritus at Corvinus University of Budapest ‘Alena Ledeneva’s Global Encyclopedia of Informality is a unique contribution, providing a global atlas of informal practices through the contributions of over 200 scholars across the world. It is far more rewarding for the reader to discover how commonalities of informal behavior become apparent through this rich texture like a complex and hidden pattern behind local colors than to presume top down universal benchmarks of good versus bad behavior. This book is a plea against reductionist approaches of mathematics in social science in general, and corruption studies in particular and makes a great read, as well as an indispensable guide to understand the cultural richness of the world.’ - Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin ‘Transformative scholarship in method, object, and consequence. Ledeneva and her networked expertise not only enable us to view the informal comparatively, but challenge conventionally legible accounts of membership, markets, domination and resistance with these rich accounts from five continents. This project offers nothing less than a social scientific revolution… if the broader scholarly community has the imagination to follow through. And by globalizing these informal knowledges typically hidden from view, the volumes’ contributors will extend the imaginations of those business consultants, movement mobilizers, and peace makers who can appreciate the value of translation from other world regions in their own work.’ Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Aff irs, Brown University and author of Globalizing Knowledge ‘Don’t mistake these weighty volumes for anything directory-like or anonymous. This wonderful collection of short essays, penned by many of the single best experts in their fields, puts the reader squarely in the kinds of conversations culled only after years of friendship, trust, and with the keen eye of the practiced observer. Perhaps most importantly, the remarkably wide range of offerings lets us “de-parochialise” corruption, and detach it from the usual hyper-local and cultural explanations. The reader, in the end, is the one invited to consider the many and striking commonalities.’ Bruce Grant, Professor at New York University and Chair of the US National Council for East European and Eurasian Research

The Eurasian Connection

The Eurasian Connection PDF Author: Cordula Rastogi
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821399136
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
The Modern Silk Route is critical to the development and integration of Central Asian countries. The book argues that to overcome current supply chain inefficiencies the traditional focus on physical corridors needs to be complemented by a consistent and ambitious set of national reforms in trade and transport facilitation.

Regulatory and Procedural Barriers to Trade in Georgia

Regulatory and Procedural Barriers to Trade in Georgia PDF Author: Hana Daoudi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Since 2010, the ECE has been undertaking demand-driven national studies of regulatory and procedural barriers to trade, with a view to: helping countries achieve greater regional and global economic integration; informing donors as to where assistance might be required; and supporting policy discussions within the Steering Committee on Trade Capacity and Standards (previously, the Committee on Trade) and its subsidiary bodies on where additional work is required. This study summarizes the key findings of the seventh study, which focuses on Georgia. It was prepared by the ECE secretariat in close consultation with public and private sector stakeholders. The study integrates the outcome of the stakeholder meeting, which was organized in Tbilisi, Georgia on 23 April 2018 by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development to discuss the initial results and recommendations.

Conflict Areas in the Caucasus and Central Asia

Conflict Areas in the Caucasus and Central Asia PDF Author: Arda Özkan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793651264
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
The Caucasus region and Central Asia covers a large part of the Eurasian. Both regions, where Russia and China have a serious influence and visibility, also have a location that reflects the hegemonic expectations of both these actors. In this context, domestic political developments and even internal conflicts in the region can be linked to the policies of Russia and China to a certain extent and have the potential to affect the motives of these two powers. Although Central Asia is rich in natural resources, it is landlocked and has lagged other nations in terms of agricultural production and industrial development. Although the Caucasus is divided into the North, the territory of Russia, and the South, where three independent states are located, it is insufficient in terms of production and development. The Caucasus stands out especially with energy projects and its feature of being a commercial corridor.

The Xinjiang Problem

The Xinjiang Problem PDF Author: Graham E. Fuller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780974329208
Category : Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description


Subverting Borders

Subverting Borders PDF Author: Bettina Bruns
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 353193273X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Small-scale trade and smuggling are part of everyday life at many borders. These trading activities often compensate for economic shortage that many households are suffering from in consequence of e.g. political transformation processes. Despite of the diversity of transborder small-scale trade and smuggling and their wide dispersion, not only in Europe, their reception within social sciences is relatively low. The contributions shed therefore light on research in geography and neighboured disciplines. On the basis of empirical research findings from borders all over the world, the authors thrive to analyse mechanisms and conditions of the informal activities and to detect parallels and differences of informal economic structures from different perspectives. This book is valuable reading for researchers in geography, sociology, ethnography, and in political science.