ABSTRACT Trading in Astana’s Central Bazaar rests on mutually beneficial people-to-people contacts, or personal networks. Twenty-five years after the Soviet collapse, personal networks are pivotal in whether one succeeds in an informal market economy. I argue that networks cannot be disassociated from trader motivation, which serves as a measure of how these networks evolve over time. I describe how those traders who were driven primarily by lifting themselves out of economic precarity tended to build strong social networks; these strong social networks sometimes evolved into ‘unconditional’ social networks, by which I mean a trader supporting others even though doing so has no commercial benefit. At the other extreme were traders driven by ambition and goal attainment. I argue that such traders are less likely to establish and maintain social networks. Between these two extremes is a middle ground, where traders alternate between strong and weak social networks.

中文翻译：

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阿斯塔纳中央集市的商人：动机和网络

摘要 阿斯塔纳中央集市的贸易依赖于互利的人与人之间的联系或个人网络。苏联解体 25 年后，个人网络对于一个人能否在非正式市场经济中取得成功至关重要。我认为网络不能与交易者的动机分离，这是衡量这些网络如何随时间演变的指标。我描述了那些主要靠摆脱经济不稳定来推动自己的交易者如何倾向于建立强大的社交网络；这些强大的社交网络有时会演变成“无条件”社交网络，我的意思是交易者支持他人，即使这样做没有商业利益。另一个极端是受雄心和目标实现驱动的交易者。我认为这些交易者不太可能建立和维护社交网络。在这两个极端之间是中间地带，交易者在强弱社交网络之间交替。