Opis
LIVED GEOPOLITICS. RE-SCALING MARKET INFRASTRUCTURES IN ODESA AND BISHKEK FROM SOVIET COLLAPSE TO IMPERIAL BACKLASH Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan became sites of profound geopolitical competition and ongoing post-imperial effects. While existing scholarship on the region emphasizes macro-scale strategic power dynamics, research often overlooks the micro-scale effects and localized responses to geo-economic/political instability. Using extensive, multi-sited ethnography, this study bridges the nexus of macro-scale power politics and everyday life at two major post-Soviet trade hubs: the 7Km Market in Odesa and Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek. Despite assumptions of their demise, these markets function as vital nodes in Eurasian supply chains linking goods from China and Turkey. To operate successfully, traders must continually navigate shifting state regulations and border regimes. Spanning 1990-2025, the work traces these adaptive practices, revealing the deep entanglement of local economies with global forces and their embeddedness in regional history. The core conceptual contribution is 'lived geopolitics,' which frames these adaptive and improvisational practices - known locally as krutit'sya - as methods for navigating the logistical, regulatory, and ethical complexities of transnational trade from Soviet collapse to imperial backlash. Claudia Eggart is a social anthropologist with a PhD from the University of Manchester. Currently, she is a recipient of the First Book Grant from the Independent Social Research Foundation at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. Before that, she was part of LimSpaces, a group project at the Centre for East European and International Studies, focusing on cross-border logistics and infrastructures in the border triangle between Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. Her research combines the anthropology of geopolitics, infrastructure, and political economy to study markets, logistics, and customs regimes in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Her work has been published in Europe-Asia Studies, Third World Quarterly, Geopolitics and Anthropological Theory.
LIVED GEOPOLITICS. RE-SCALING MARKET INFRASTRUCTURES IN ODESA AND BISHKEK FROM SOVIET COLLAPSE TO IMPERIAL BACKLASH Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan became sites of profound geopolitical competition and ongoing post-imperial effects. While existing scholarship on the region emphasizes macro-scale strategic power dynamics, research often overlooks the micro-scale effects and localized responses to geo-economic/political instability. Using extensive, multi-sited ethnography, this study bridges the nexus of macro-scale power politics and everyday life at two major post-Soviet trade hubs: the 7Km Market in Odesa and Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek. Despite assumptions of their demise, these markets function as vital nodes in Eurasian supply chains linking goods from China and Turkey. To operate successfully, traders must continually navigate shifting state regulations and border regimes. Spanning 1990-2025, the work traces these adaptive practices, rev...