ABSTRACT
Drawing together the main insights from the three parts of the book, the Conclusion reflects more broadly on the evolution of a post-1990s capitalism from the Kyrgyz vantage point, highlighting formalization, diversification and professionalization as critical patterns within the shifting regional value chains connecting China, Russia and Kyrgyzstan. Reviewing the commercial journeys of Kyrgyz traders, middlemen and entrepreneurs allows to identify them as an emergent middle class with a particular ‘entrepreneurial spirit’. Conceptually, this serves to illustrate from yet another angle the merit of a translocal perspective for capturing the manifold ways – material, immaterial, instrumental, emotional, mobile, emplaced – in which present-day livelihoods unfold in time, geographic and social space.
