Balihar Sanghera

“Currying favour with the locals”: Balti owners and business enclaves

The often‐dynamic presence of South Asians in particular economic activities has prompted ambivalent responses from policymakers. For some, there is encouragement to “break out” from ethnic niche businesses like lower‐order retailing and catering. Another ploy is to promote a strategy of “‘ethnic advantage” by exploiting “cultural” features of a particular community. Examples include the marketing of what can be termed “ethnic enclaves” like “Chinatown” in Manchester and “Little Italy” in Boston (USA). This paper reports on an initiative to exploit the tourist potential of South Asian cuisine by developing a “Balti Quarter” in Birmingham. The results highlight a number of key issues involved in operationalising this increasingly popular strategy. First, the unitarist conceptualisation of the notion of an ethnic enclave obscures the harshly competitive environment that small ethnic minority firms like those in the “Balti Quarter” have to operate in. Second, the often ad hoc way in which such inner city areas are regulated (through planning guidelines) can intensify the competitive pressures facing many firms in the area. Finally, the “external” focus of the initiative runs the risk of masking chronic issues within the firm (e.g. poor working environments) which policymakers should be equally concerned with.

Training and ethnic minority firms: the case of the independent restaurant sector

Through the medium of a case study of Birmingham’s ethnic minority‐owned independent restaurant sector, the nature of training in the firms, the reasons for informal training, and employees’ tolerance of harsh working conditions are examined. The reluctance of many small businesses to utilise formal programmes of training is confirmed. However, even in this sector, which is characterised by poor personnel practices, the importance of informal approaches to training and learning is noteworthy. Moreover, from the perspective of workers, employment in the ethnic minority business sector can be seen as a form of training in itself; it can constitute an “apprenticeship” for entrepreneurship rather than permanent entrapment in low‐paid work. However, the capacity to realise this goal is contingent upon the availability of class resources. Further research is needed to explore approaches to training in other sectors that ethnic minorities are engaged in.

Microbusiness, household and class dynamics: the embedding of minority ethnic petty commerce

Microbusinesses are embedded in wider social processes, and it is the nature of this social embeddedness that is the principal focus of the article. In particular, ‘domestic embedding’ of petty commerce is crucial, and involves a mixture of competition, domination, negotiation, and custom (Wheelock and Mariussen, 1997). Furthermore, as a socio-economic group, petty traders and producers occupy an ambivalent position in the class structure, as they are vulnerable both to upward and downward social mobility. While the petty capital class has the advantage of possessing property assets, many members lack significant symbolic and cultural assets. Nonetheless, property assets offer the most robust bases for class formation (Savage et al., 1992). In addition, the embedding of petty commerce can be both ‘identity-sensitive’ and ‘identity-neutral’ (Sayer, 1995; 2000; Fraser, 1995). Extra-ethnic factors are significant in this process. The research uses formal interviews and ‘quasi-ethnographic’ methodology to explore the different contexts in which restaurateurs and market traders operated in Birmingham, UK. The article draws critically on several literatures on industrial organisation, economic sociology, family businesses and minority ethnic businesses. One aim is to give the rather indifferent concept of ‘embedding’ substantive content, and in this way to make an empirically informed contribution to ‘new economic sociology’.

Ethics of property, illegal settlements and the right to subsistence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how illegal settlers and poor families struggle for basic necessities through land invasions, covert practices and illegal sabotage, examining how fundamental rights to subsistence and dignity are superior to private property claims.Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines two qualitative research projects that examined property rights in Kyrgyzstan, conducting semi‐structured interviews with poor groups, elites and state officials. One project was conducted between 2009‐2010, examining two illegal settlements and a squatted building in the capital Bishkek, and the other project took place between 2007‐2008 in four villages in Osh region.Findings – It was found that illegal settlers and poor families deliberate upon the moral aspects of land and property, though sometimes their judgements are distorted by nationalist feelings and racialised identities. Poor and propertyless groups struggle for basic necessities, lacking access to social rights and ...

The social embeddedness of professions in Kyrgyzstan: an investigation into professionalism, institutions and emotions

Abstract The article examines how professions are socially constructed in Kyrgyzstan, paying particular attention to the moral sentiments and organisational capabilities of people working in the professions. It is suggested that the moral sentiments approach captures the tensions and conflicts of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani professions, and identifies how professional practices can become ‘corrupt’. The article shows how professionals operate in difficult political and economic conditions, and how far they possess positive sentiments for effective action.

Introduction (This article appears in:Special focus: Moral Economy and Development Economics)

‘Moral economy’ is a form of inquiry that examines how ordinary economic practices and relationships embody or affect moral dispositions, evaluations, rules, values, customs and norms. Although ethical concerns, responsibilities and encounters pervade our daily life, often political economists reduce them to personal tastes, fixed preferences, vested interests, social conventions or political ideologies, as if everyday practices were an unreflexive process (Sayer, 2000). The following three papers on moral economy challenge orthodox economics and are critical of disciplinary boundaries. We discuss what moral questions arise from the expansion and the structure of the commercial economy, and what counts as human well-being and development.The three papers on development economics and moral economy were presented at a conference on Perspectives on Moral Economy organised by Andrew Sayer at Lancaster University in 2005. The conference explored moral economy from different disciplinary and transdisciplinary points of view. Normativity is implicit in social sciences but requires better understanding and theorising, and we attempt this by undertaking a broad analytical and empirical inquiry into social practices and relationships in developing countries. The first paper by Olsen (2009) studies overlaps and linkages between schools of thought within economics. Olsen covers four main schools of thought ranging from neoclassical to feminist. She shows that all four have normative orientations, but that these vary from highly hidden to very explicit. Then she moves to looking at the reasoning strategies used for making normative judgements. Her work on Indian rural contexts suggests that rural transformation has been judged not only for its emancipatory content, or its growth impact, but also in terms other impacts on human well-being. In the paper, Olsen surveys land tenure in rural India to compare the moral reasoning strategies that are used there. The paper concludes that reasoning tends to imply value judgements even if it is attempting to be value neutral at a cognitive level. Orthodox economics make numerous broad value judgements, while heterodox economics make more explicit value judgements, and tend to weave into their work an appreciation of different standpoints. Most economists are interested in discussions about their normative orientations, whether or not they agree that their research could be normative in itself. In moral economy, the expectation is that the author of research is a normative agent and that economics has a role to play in spelling out the complexities of a moral scene (Ray and Sayer, 1999).

Contributive Injustice and Unequal Division of Labour in the Voluntary Sector

This article examines how the unequal division of unpaid labour within voluntary organisations can produce contributive injustice. Contributive injustice occurs when people are denied the opportunity to have meaningful work and the recognition associated with it. The unequal social division of labour affects people’s opportunities to access complex and routine tasks, shaping their capacity to develop their own abilities, respect, and self-esteem, and hence the meaningfulness of their work. The study uses the moral economy of labour perspective to understand and evaluate how the unequal division of labour can shape people’s capabilities and well-being. While the article is sympathetic to Eliasoph’s symbolic interactionist approach to volunteering, which seeks to focus on the quality of civic engagement and public dialogue, it reveals this framework to have some shortcomings. This empirical study is based upon an analysis of 41 participants’ volunteering activities.

Charitable giving and reflexive individuals: How personal reflexivity mediates between structure and agency

This article examines how individuals are reflexive beings who interpret the world in relation to things that matter to them, and how charitable acts are evaluated and embedded in their lives with different degrees of meaning and importance. Rather than framing the discussion of charitable practices in terms of an altruism/egoism binary or imputing motivations and values to social structures, the article explains how reflexivity is an important and neglected dimension of social practices, and how it interacts with sympathy, sentiments and discourses to shape giving. The study also shows that there are different modes of reflexivity, which have varied effects on charity and volunteering.

Attachment, emotions and kinship caregiving: an investigation into separation distress and family relatedness in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani households

This article examines how children relate to birth parents after separation and reunion, which often produce negative emotions and distort family support in adolescence and adulthood. In Kyrgyzstan, large-scale migration to urban areas and overseas, widespread poverty and a weak welfare state have generated the practice of informal kinship caregiving that enables primary caregivers living in poverty to temporarily migrate, leaving their babies and young children in the care of grandparents or other close relatives. A prolonged period of time passes before birth parents and children are reunited. Attachment theory is employed to understand and explain how under informal kinship caregiving, children can have varying emotional bonds with birth parents that affect social relationships later in life. The article aims to contribute towards an understanding of the dynamics of emotions in family relationships.