Where Are All Our Sheep? ― Kyrgyzstan, a Global Political Arena

After the collapse of the USSR, Kyrgyzstan chose a path of economic and political liberalization. Only a few years later, however, the country ceased producing anything of worth and developed a dependence on the outside world, particularly on international aid. Its principal industry, sheep breeding, was decimated by reforms suggested by international institutions providing assistance. Virtually annihilated by privatization of the economy and deserted by Moscow, the Kyrgyz have turned this economic "opening up" into a subtle strategy to capture all manner of resources from abroad. In this study, the author describes the encounters, sometimes comical and tinged with incomprehension, between the local population and the well-meaning foreigners who came to reform them.

Boris Petric is a Social Anthropologist and a Senior Researcher at the CNRS in Marseilles. His first book Pouvoir, don et reseaux en Ouzbekistan post-sovietique (2002), was awarded the Le Monde prize for university research. He recently edited Democracy at Large: NGO’s, Political Foundations, Think Tanks and International Organisations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).