Peter Finke

DOES PRIVATISATION MEAN COMMODITISATION? MARKET EXCHANGE, BARTER, AND GIFT GIVING IN POST-SOCIALIST MONGOLIA

This paper compares the ways in which different livestock and agricultural products are exchanged in post-socialist Mongolia. It tries to explain why some goods are more commoditised than others. The hypothesis is that when marketing or barter exchange with professional merchants entail high opportunity costs, the chosen modus will rather be gift giving or personal barter within local networks. High opportunity costs, in turn, may arise because of the importance goods have for domestic consumption, because of the transaction costs connected with their exchange, or because of a high prestige value, which is not reflected in high market prices.

On A. Ilkhamov's "Archeology of Uzbek identity"

A. Ilkhamov’s article “Archeology of Uzbek Identity” is an attempt to describe the creation during the Soviet period of the Uzbek nation and identity from earlier groups and identities. The author takes a position opposed to the common view that nations develop naturally from earlier ethnic and tribal components. He does not share the “radical” constructivist position and emphasizes the role that existing pre-Soviet ethnic or social groups played in nation building. This commentary emphasizes the article’s anthropological aspects and theoretical implications, leaving to other specialists a critique of the weaknesses of his theoretical concepts. Ilkhamov’s argument includes three closely related threads. The first claims that contemporary Uzbeks were formed from three separate ethnic or social communities, which mingled with each other over the centuries but were recognizable and independent in the early twentieth century. The second defines nation building as primarily a political process initiated by the Soviet elite and implemented by local intellectuals. The third—the theoretical conclusion based on the other two threads—is a skeptical treatment of teleological explanations of any national development, as if ethnic or tribal groups of various origins did nothing but wait to be unified from their birth. The three communities mentioned above are Kipchak tribes following Muhammed Shaybani during his conquest of Maverannakhr; earlier Turkic tribes (speaking Oguz and Karluk languages); and long-settled populations, Turkicor