Working Class Subjectivities and Neoliberalisation in Kyrgyzstan: Developing Alternative Moral Selves

Abstract

This article investigates the subjectivities of working class people in Kyrgyzstan, examining their boundary work produced in response to neoliberal changes. While working class people are depicted as unenterprising and 'backward' by the rich and the middle classes, they often react with anger and lament the colonisation of life by market values, usually invoking non-market norms and nostalgia for the Soviet era of labour, solidarity and equality. Most importantly, they draw upon alternative cultural resources and discourses, such as traditional morality and Islam, to develop alternative 'caring' and 'pious' selves, which dissociate wealth from moral worth and provide other sources of self-esteem. But these counter-values can also be problematic, as they are ineffective in countering market forces and hardening class divisions.

Justice, power and informal settlements: Understanding the juridical view of property rights in Central Asia

“…The mass media often framed illegal settlers in disparaging terms, such as 'invaders ', 'grabbers' and 'barbarians' (Schroder 2010). The media portrayal of their wanton destruction of private property was contrasted with the orderly and honest conduct of some urban residents, who waited patiently to be accommodated by the state (Satybaldieva 2018a). Bourdieu (1987) explains that the juridical field is a site of social struggle over the law's relation to society, and interpretations of legal texts.…”

As dimensões morais de classe social: Avaliações do mercado de trabalho e das experiências de vida de recém-diplomados em Direito

“…Muitos autores da literatura internacional têm tratado o neoliberalismo como fonte de definições dominantes de respeito por apreciação (Lamont;Hall, 2013;Ball, 2016;Satybaldieva, 2018;Francombe-Webb;Silk, 2016;McKenzie, 2016). Segundo essa literatura, o capitalismo contemporâneo é caracterizado por instituições e por um imaginário social que definem respeito em termos de consumo, posição no mercado de trabalho e qualificação.…”

“…Ela afirma que as classes populares adotam um self de cuidado, preocupadas com o caráter e com as relações familiares, como uma estratégia de resiliência (Lamont, 2000). A literatura também mostra a existência de um self piedoso entre as classes populares, centrado na religião (Souza, 2009;Skeggs, 2014;Satybaldieva, 2018). No entanto, as heterarquias estão sujeitas a processos de subordinação às culturas dominantes.…”

An agenda for research on work and class in the postsocialist world

“…Kesküla () and Rotkirch, Tkach, and Zdravomyslova (), provide details of the actual organizational and relational processes of labour disembedding and alienation in the postsocialist period as well as documenting the encounter of transnational capital, postsocialist workers and re‐embedding processes of governmentalization more closely (Tóth, n.d.). Some studies link governmentalization and its rejection to alternative cultural resources and discourses of class identity (Morris, ; Satybaldieva, ). In addition, a new historicism of labour and working classes under late socialism is underway (Barta, ), and others focus on the continuing salience in the present of nostalgia and memory—or mnemonic resources of class—intersecting with classed identities and the meaning of work (Levinson, ; Schwartz & Morrison, ).…”