Bazaar Governance: Legal Pluralism and Economic Order in an Afghan Marketplace

Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Afghanistan, this presentation explores the legal, social and relational practices in the everyday life of Afghanistan’s central money exchanger bazaar.

The bazaar plays a central role in the running of the country’s entire economy despite operating with a high degree of autonomy from the state. The presentation explores the various governance mechanisms within the bazaar, which bring together overlapping and interpenetrating elements of state law, non-state law and extra-legal practices based on based on trust. I employ the term entangled governance to capture the convergence of varied practices. Entangled governance turns attention to the hybrid assemblage of diverse logics and rationalities employed by individuals that contributes to the overall maintenance of order. It highlights the messy, inconsistent and contingent nature of order within a social setting. Ethnographic insights help to provide a granular account of the “organized chaos” or “patterned contingency” that characterizes the continued success of the bazaar.

Dr Nafay Choudhury is Assistant Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work sits at the intersection of socio-legal studies, legal pluralism, economic development, private law, and the rule of law. He studies the fragmented and plural forms of order that exist within the state, alongside the state, and beyond the state. His book manuscript (which forms the basis of this presentation) examines non-state legal ordering through an ethnographic study of Afghanistan’s money exchangers.

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