Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

ABEL POLESE
Recently, mainly anthropologists have started
questioning the imposition from the top of
such normative categories that limit domestic
initiatives and are bound to shame politicians
or people for failing to line up with capitalist
standards. When talking of gift exchange
practices in Kazakhstan, hurriedly classified as
corruption by Western organizations (Transparency
International or the World Bank),
Werner (2003) suggested that it might be useful
to compare the definition of international
organizations with local and cultural standards,
agreeing with other scholars that a contextual
analysis is needed when theorising informal
economies (Rasanayagam 2003). This might
ultimately lead to an acceptance that standards
depend on a particular economic situation
(Wanner 2005) before trying to separate the
formal from the informal, the legal from the
illegal.
In a context where decisions are imposed from
above, informal economies become a way to
react to economic measures with which citizens
cannot comply. Once an unorganized struggle
challenges an economic policy, by simply failing
to comply with the economic instructions of
the government, this failure may become a sign
or way to respond to decisions and have a voice
in the political arena (Gupta 2005, Thompson
2003, Scott 1977, 1985, Tarrow 2005) to oppose
too abstract rules that would make life
impossible to anyone willing to survive. In a
number of countries, registering a business
following the official legal procedures could
take several years and is much more expensive
than remaining in the shadow. The drawback
is that even accumulation of capital becomes
informal and, thus, the country remains ‘poor’.
In Ukraine, as in many other countries, laws
often contradict themselves and come to reject
social practices that people need to survive.
Social and economic interactions, with the
subsequent indebtedness, become a way to
maintain relations and be able to ask for help
when needed (Lolinka 2002, White 2004).
On their side, international organizations,
by proposing an international standard to all
contexts, sometimes come to deny historical
practices and the very social fact of the gift,
as Werner (2003) has remarked for the World
Bank.
NOTE
1
Perhaps the most striking example is quoted by
Robert Whiting in his book Tokyo Underworld. The
authors describe tensions between American and Japanese
anti-corruption authorities due to the fact that in Japan
corruption involves a direct favour and a counterfavour by the
other part, otherwise it is a simple gift that helps maintain social
relationships.
page 213