Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan
| Author | Gulzat Botoeva |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619880344 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
880344TCR0010.1177/1362480619880344Theoretical CriminologyBotoeva
research-article2019
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(2) 268 –283
Multiple narratives of il/legality
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619880344
DOI: 10.1177/1362480619880344
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small-scale hashish harvesting
in Kyrgyzstan
Gulzat Botoeva
University of Roehampton, UK
Abstract
The aim of this study is to contribute to the current literature concerning the social
acceptance of illegal practices. Using legal pluralism as a general framework of analysis,
this study discusses the relationship between state law and alternative perspectives
concerning its legitimacy. It presents the experience of people involved in hashish
harvesting in one of the regions of Kyrgyzstan, how the state defines it as an ‘illegal
practice’ and how the local population subsequently invokes normative systems based
on local spiritual knowledge and the local moral economy of hashish production. It
argues that acceptance of hashish harvesting as a legitimate means of support is not
a straightforward process. Despite the predominant legitimating narrative of hashish
harvesting, it enters into a conversation with state defined notions of ‘illegality’ and is
also shaped by the customary understanding of the spiritual power of cannabis plants
that requires caution when making hashish.
Keywords
Corrupt law enforcement, customary law, illegal drug production, legal pluralism,
legitimation of illegality, moral economy, neutralization techniques
Introduction
During the summers of 2008 and 2009, I stayed with a family in Toolu village1 in the
Tyup region of Kyrgyzstan. This region was known for its wild-growing cannabis
plants with a higher concentration of tetracannabinol2 than elsewhere in the country.
Corresponding author:
Gulzat Botoeva, University of Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London, SW15 5SL, UK.
Email: gulzat.botoeva@roehampton.ac.uk
Botoeva
269
Hashish and marijuana3 made in Tyup had a wide-reaching reputation even during
Soviet times, especially among members of the criminal underworld who came to the
region during summertime to process the plants. However, hashish-making only
became widespread among the local population following the dissolution of the Soviet
Union when former kolkhoz and sovkhoz4 workers turned to illegal hashish and mari-
juana production alongside other economic activities. During the 2000s, hashish-mak-
ing became an informal source of economic and social security among Kyrgyzstan’s
cannabis harvesters. Toolu inhabitants understood that hashish-making was illegal but
came to accept it as a means of income in the context of rapid impoverishment, weak-
ened state welfare services and a limited job market.
My research is based on a mixed method study undertaken in the Tyup and Ak-Suu
raions5 located in the Karkyra valley of Issyk-Kul oblast6 in Kyrgyzstan. I collected 64
informal interviews and conducted a survey from 147 structured interviews. Fieldwork
took place over nine months during which I visited the main research site, Toolu, on two
separate occasions. The trips took place from July until December 2009 and from July
until September 2010. While ethnographic research allowed me to learn about local resi-
dents’ attitudes towards the illegal drug economy, which would have been impossible
through a more formalized and structured approach, the survey allowed me to obtain
general information on the socio-economic conditions of Toolu households.
Using the example of illegal hashish harvesting in Toolu, this article explores the
everyday responses to illegality and perceived im/morality. Many studies of the post-
Soviet region argue that state authorities were themselves involved in illegal activities
as a result of the infiltration by criminal groups or the predatory tendencies of the
state itself (Beck and Chistyakova, 2002; Gans-Morse, 2012; Kupatadze, 2014;
Stephenson, 2015). They remind us of the ambivalent nature of the state, where ille-
gality does not necessarily threaten it and in some cases the state uses illegal practices
to strengthen its position (Reeves, 2014).
More recently, the local community standpoint has emerged as a defining feature in
studies of illegality. Alternative viewpoints towards what was defined as il/legal allow us
to understand the multifaceted morality of illegal transactions (Humphrey, 2002), accept-
ance of informal practices (Ledeneva, 2006) and the discrepancies between local, cul-
tural and state understandings of bribery (Polese, 2008; Werner, 2000). This literature
demonstrates that some activities defined as illegal by the state could be defined as
appropriate and ethical according to the ‘living law’ guiding quotidian perceptions and
moral codes (Urinboyev and Svensson, 2013).
Many studies outside the post-Soviet region demonstrate how illegal practices, despite
pressure from states and social institutions, become legitimated locally (Galemba, 2012,
2013; Webb et al., 2009; Westermeyer, 2004). For De Sardan (1999), some cases high-
light the local context and specific conditions that enable a practice which is grounded in
native cultural norms and legal regulations and contrasts with western criminal justice
and definitions of corruption. Galemba’s (2013) work illuminates how the contraband
sale of corn from Mexico to Guatemala was legitimated by the everyday working prac-
tices of poor people who were trapped by neoliberal market conditions. Engwicht (2017)
also found that illegal mining and the sale of diamonds in Sierra Leone were considered
as moral by local miners. In Dewey’s (2012) research, illegal practices of car thefts and
270
Theoretical Criminology 25(2)
their trading in Buenos Aires was legitimated, or at least tolerated, due to the protection
provided by the police.
While providing good explanation for the existence of legitimating narratives for vio-
lation of legal rules, these studies have mostly focused on informal economic activities
exchanging or producing otherwise legal goods. According to Beckert and Wehinger
(2012) illegal economic activities also include violation of legal regulations while
exchanging or producing illegal goods. Legitimation of activities involving illegal goods
is much more difficult compared to ‘informal’ ones, and varies depending on people’s
perception of such goods (Beckert and Wehinger, 2012). Thus, more studies focusing on
legitimating narratives of ‘illegal’ activities that do not only violate the legal rules but
also involve illegal goods are needed. This article, aims to contribute to this literature, as
hashish itself and its production and sale are illegal in Kyrgyzstan.
In this article, I argue that the persistence of illegal hashish harvesting in Toolu
should be understood in relation to a wider legitimating narrative, which refers to work
ethics and moral judgements about the corrupt behaviour of state officials. This wider
narrative is further complicated by local understandings of the spiritual power of can-
nabis plants. I will begin by reviewing the literature concerning the co-existence of
local and state responses to hashish-making. This will be followed by a description of
the hashish-making process and the main actors in Toolu. I then turn my attention to
the process of legitimation used by the local population, by first discussing the right to
subsistence and work, and how cases of corruption among law enforcement officers
lead to changes in the perception of the law and the role of the state. With these dynam-
ics in play, some residents still denied that hashish-making was part of their strategy to
overcome the psychological tensions between the legal rules and the harsh reality of
rural life in a neoliberal state. The last section presents how money earned through
hashish is also seen as ‘bitter money’.
Plurality of il/legality and im/morality
To explain how an activity that is illegal in the eyes of the state, and had been popularly
considered to bring bad luck, became an acceptable practice at a certain juncture, I will
draw on concepts from otherwise disconnected fields of study. First, I focus on the notion
of ‘moral economy’ initially coined by EP Thompson (1971) when writing about the
bread riots in the 16th and 17th centuries in England. This concept is widely used in stud-
ies focusing on the legitimation of certain extra-legal activities (De Sardan, 1999;
Engwicht, 2017; Steinberg et al., 2004) as it explains how people may resist state-defined
notions of illegality. Scott (1985) analysed riots in East Asia during the mid-20th century
through the prism of the moral economy. Riots occurred not because people were inher-
ently deviant, but because of how they perceived justice as a result of the state/elite no
longer following the rules that once governed relationships. Betrayal by the state, or
common perceptions of feeling betrayed, are key here as they justify ‘deviant’ and ‘ille-
gal’ behaviours in the context of the changing dynamic between state (elite) and popula-
tion and the shift in law/regulations. Other studies apply this concept in their analyses of
persistent corruption (De Sardan, 1999) and illegal drug production (Steinberg et al.,
2004) in countries where laws changed in the wake of European/western domination and
Botoeva
271
associated neglect of local traditions, culture...
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