Everyday Corruption and Social Norms in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the scholarly debates and efforts to understand and diagnose corruption and its societal implications. It probes the ways in which certain informal, nonlegal practices and transactions are driven not always by kleptocracy, individual greed,or survival strategies; they may also reflect people’s desire to fulfill their family and kinship obligations, socialize and maintain membership in their networks and community, avoid gossip and social sanctions, gain or preserve social status and reputation, or obtain more moral and effective support from those around them. This implies that informal, nonlegal practices and transactions may encompass a wide range of moral and effective repertoires that go beyond mere economic interest and cannot be sufficiently explained by a mainstream view of corruption that tends to see any unrecorded transactions as corrupt.

This paper puts forward the claim that informal practices and transactions should be understood not simply as illegal, immoral,or illegitimate, but rather as parallel legal orders in their own right, because they are not just spontaneous actions—they represent institutionalized social practices that are part and parcel of everyday life. Understanding and accepting the existence of such legal orders implies not necessarily that they are socially beneficial, but that they may be structures that deserve empirical and theoretical investigation.My approach is to focus on society’s informal norms, everyday micro-level power relations,and non-monetary considerations as an additional lens for understanding the emergence, explanation, persistence, and ubiquitousness of corruption

Keywords: Uzbekistan, social norms, corruption, social ties