After the fall of the Soviet Union, political and economic developments in five Central Asian republics have evolved around two parallel and contradictory patterns. On the one hand, Central Asian countries opened up to the outside world and declared their ambition to attract FDI. On the other hand, Central Asian countries are plagued by ubiquitous corruption and informal business practices which hinder and limit the role of foreign companies in the region. As a result, the Central Asian region continues to be a challenging environment when it comes to navigating and understanding its legal culture, including its legal pluralism and informality. The Central Asian Law project panel at the Law and Society Association’s 2022 conference tried to address this knowledge gap by bringing together paper contributions from project members which focuses on various aspects of law and society relations in Central Asian region.
The Central Asian Law project panel at the LSA conference took place on the 16th of July 2022 in a virtual format and was titled “Legal pluralism and colonial legacies in Central Asia”. 3 research articles were presented during the panel session, which were discussed by Rustamjon Urinboyev, principal investigator of the Central Asian Law project.
- “Correlation of Social Resilience and Legal Pluralism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan” by Tolibjon Mustafoev (Lund University, Sweden);
- “Legal Informality and Debt-Based Trade in Uzbekistan” by Elmurod Sobirov (Lund University, Sweden);
- “Central Asian countries before, during, and after the Soviet Union: analysis of selected indicators of socio-economic development” by Berdymyrat Ovezmyradov (Tebigy Kuwwat Public Association, Turkmenistan).
The Law and Society Association is an interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. For sociolegal scholars, law consists not only of the words of official documents. Sociolegal scholars also address evasions of law, resistance and defiance toward law, and alternatives to law in structuring social relations.
