Madeleine Reeves, Black Work, Green Money: Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Madeleine Reeves, “Black Work, Green Money: Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan,” Slavic Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (SPRING 2012), pp. 108-134

Agenda: to study postsocialist change in Southern Kyrgyz communities by looking into economic and social aspects of labor immigration to Russia.

Growth of Russian economy => increased importance of immigrant labor for local communities which is materialised through remittances (primarily) as well as other social ties (e.g., photos sent home to wives and parents). This financial flow is often spent for life-cycle ceremonies, i.e. to reinforce local lifestyles. “In the context of protracted absence,… the conduct of rituals and the exchange of gifts becomes a crucial means for affirming social presence.”

“migration itself is changing the nature of what constitutes economic “need,” just as it is transforming conceptions of appropriate expenditures on bride-price, wedding parties, circumcision feasts (sünnöt toilar), and other life-cycle ceremonies that structure social and ritual life.”

Remittance money, thus, transform the entire social fabric of the Kyrgyz village, although they simultaneously reinforce old (i.e., regarded as ‘old) identities and social places. “They play a crucial role in marking gendered membership in a lineage and village community and in materializing social presence. Yet they also serve to enact and reproduce social interdependence, the importance of which is heightened precisely in contexts where other forms of social provision are in radical retreat.”