Translocality, Entrepreneurship and Middle Class Across Eurasia is a stellar book on an under-researched topic that deserves the attention of humanities and social science scholars who study a range of issues. The book, which is based on intense field work Philipp Schröder conducted in Russia, China, and Kyrgyzstan, explains diverse experiences of Kyrgyz bazaar traders in Novosibirsk during the late 1980s and 90s, Kyrgyz middlemen in Guangzhou during the 2000s, and entrepreneurs in Bishkek during recent times. Schröder’s fieldwork and its presentation throughout the book generate an interesting, thought-provoking analysis. I particularly like the way each chapter begins with a story from the lived experiences of one of Schröder’s protagonists, as this illustrative data presentation method provides the reader of a sense of what is to come in the following pages.

Schröder’s book, which concerns “commercial journeys,” relies on the concept of translocality to answer a central research question: how did commercial journeys unfold for these very different types of actors in very different time periods? Translocality asserts the following: “less tangible boundaries than the political ones between nation-states might prove significant for mobile actors” (7). Schröder applies this concept to economic anthropology, his specialization, to examine translocal livelihoods (understood to embody material and immaterial aspects of everyday life), and translocal value chains (understood to embody unique attempts of the protagonists to improve their economic performance).

The book is organized in three parts, each one detailing the livelihoods of a particular type of actor. Part I explores the livelihoods of Kyrgyz bazaar traders in Novosibirsk, as well as the “ethnicized” service industry that developed to cater to the Kyrgyz diaspora residing in the city. Schröder finds that the most serious hardship these traders experienced was not overcoming Soviet-era biases regarding spekulatsiya (speculation) in the barakholka (flea market) locale, but rather overcoming uiat (shame) associated with their economic activities among their relatives in the locale from which they originated. The barakholka—a local filled with strangers—rendered trading bearable. One protagonist, Elzat, told her parents she had gone into trading only after she was successful and, crucially, after trading had become a fairly common, visible occupation among women in Kyrgyzstan.

Part II of the book explores the livelihoods of Kyrgyz middlemen in Guangzhou as well as the obstacles and freedoms the ethnic diaspora residing in the city confront on a regular basis. The protagonists in this chapter earn income by arranging business deals between trader clients who come from various former Soviet states and Chinese manufacturers. If Kyrgyz bazaar traders in Novosibirsk are the first “capitalist generation” to emerge in the last 1980s, then the Kyrgyz middlemen are the second “capitalist generation.” In contrast to the first generation, comprised of accidental traders, members of the second generation chose their professions. Schröder finds that the middlemen identify certain values or personal qualities like reliability, politeness, and professionalism, as what distinguishes their advancement from the Kyrgyz bazaar traders.

Part III of the book explores the livelihoods of Kyrgyz entrepreneurs in Bishkek in the apparel, manufacturing, and agricultural economic sectors, as well as the effect of Kyrgyzstan’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union in 2015 on such entrepreneurs. A fascinating chapter looks at several Kyrgyz entrepreneurs with businesses that in some way cater specifically to contemporary urban Kyrgyz society. Nargiza, a fashion designer for “Bishkek urban women,” designs clothing for women with office jobs and/or women who socialize in cafes on a regular basis. Gulnura, the founder of Mary Poppins, caters to the same clientele—the capital’s urban middle-class women—but in a different way. Mary Poppins is a service that provides domestic services, including childcare and housekeeping.

Translocality, Entrepreneurship and Middle Class Across Eurasia is, as Schröder says in its conclusion, about identifying critical shifts in capitalist development and how new actors emerge, engage, adapt, and impress upon those shifts. The book is excellent. It raises important theoretical questions about economic survival in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, new economic opportunities in the aftermath of the command economy’s collapse, and unique specifically Kyrgyz-oriented economic opportunities catering to the capital’s recently born urban middle-class.