Bazaar transformations: networks, reputations and solidarities.

Law and order arise out of the very processes they govern. But they are not rigid, nor due to any inertia or permanent mould. Solidarity has to be constructed out of little pieces, rather than found already waiting, in the form of an ur-langauge which all of us recognize when we hear it. I cannot remember the number of times that bazaaris complained to me that they could not trust their exchange partners, but it seemed to me to be the grandest of tropes. Their protests were articulated through a comparison between the past and the present. “The past” was a time when a man's word was as good as gold. It was a time when the maxim that a truly honest bazaari “places his mustache as collateral” (or even “places a strand of his mustache as collateral”) was a fact of daily life. No contracts or checks were signed. Instead a handshake was exchanged and honor was placed as a security deposit. Then came “the present,” when even checks and legal documents are not honored, and the threat of shaming and gossip is not a viable sanction. The refrain was “all the checks bounce.” The social scientist in me doubted this nostalgic narrative of a lost golden past and sought some form of independent, if not direct, verification. Even though non-bazaaris and the secondary literature reaffirmed these narratives, I was still skeptical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]