Food crisis in fast-growing Turkmenistan

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Turkmenistan’s economy has been growing very fast, which has been primarily generated through the extractive sector and construction industry. After the energy price collapse in mid-2014, the country has recorded a shortage of foreign currency. The authoritarian regime passed currency and economic problems onto the society. As a result, the country has experienced the most severe food crisis in its history. The main aim of the paper is to identify the reasons behind the food crisis in Turkmenistan. The paper tries to answer the following question: how did it happen that people in one of the fastest-growing countries in the 21st century have been suffering from food shortages? The study is based on data retrieved from the World Bank Open Data, ILOSTAT, and Observatory of Economic Complexity, as well as a critical review of independent news websites. The food crisis in Turkmenistan was primarily caused by hyperinflation and rationing basic groceries at preferential prices, wage arrears, cutting salaries of state employees to fund construction projects in progress, group layoffs of state employees, growing difficulties in running a private business, and depriving people of the possibility to exchange the currency at the official rate. The end of a free provision of Turkmenistan’s population with electricity, gas, and drinking water has further deepened the crisis.

Islamic Economics’ Perspective on Labor Relations

The situation when employees are not paid wages is more common nowadays, and labor conflicts are mainly related to this. In the Islamic economy, wage arrears and all issues related to it are of fundamental importance, since the relationship between the manager and employees is much closer than with counterparties or creditors. In addition, there are specific aspects that should be taken into account when analyzing these kinds of questions. The purpose of this article is to explore the Islamic economics view of labor relations.

FEATURES OF CONDUCTING FORENSIC AND ECONOMIC EXAMINATIONS RELATED TO THE FINANCIAL POSSIBILITY OF ENTERPRISES AND ORGANIZATIONS TO REPAY SALARY

The article is devoted to the generalization of approaches to conducting expert examinations and expert studies of late payment of wages. The main problems of non-payment of wages were discovered and identified and cases of illegal payment of wage arrears in violation of labor law norms were considered. The features of conducting forensic economic examinations related to the determination of the financial ability of enterprises to repay wage arrears have been studied. Based on the expert practice, the questions are summarized that are often posed to experts, pre-trial investigation bodies and the court during the investigation of criminal proceedings initiated under Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the subject of expert examinations of this category is formulated and the classification of objects and the purpose of expert research is given. A list of documents has been determined that must be provided to an expert for conducting a study in accordance with the applied methods and selected methods.

The Cliffhangers

Over the last couple of decades, workers in China’s vast and poorly regulated construction industry have increasingly turned to suicidal performance as a radical means of securing wage arrears. These so-called suicide shows have drawn attention as expressions of escalating labor unrest in China, and thus have mostly been read through a political science prism. But these displays, precisely in their dramatic dimension, also open themselves up to a culturalist, even aesthetic analysis: they braid together mixed threads, from the Chinese tradition of suicide as righteous remonstrance to present-day forms of creatively embodied protest in the era of Occupy. At the same time, though, these workers have also fashioned an aesthetic intervention that is very much of their own devising. This article draws on an empirical base of two dozen suicide shows posted on video-sharing sites to argue that these performances force a visual rupture in the narcotically identikit Chinese cityscape, as the nation’s new poor, so often invisible to their social others on the street, climb to the highest urban summits and command extreme attention. Once there, they turn the rooftop into a site of performance that acts out the excruciating distinction between those who belong within the polis and the dispossessed: those who are cast out from the circle of humanity and are thus excluded from all avenues to legal and economic redress when they are wronged. As such, “cliffhanging” in China exemplifies what I call the fractious form, in which a tense encounter between different class actors under the regime of precarity becomes the genesis for a volatile cultural practice.

From Betrayal to Resistance: Workingclass voices in Russia today

This article analyses three aspects of working-class life in Russia that add to the debate about global working-class responses to disenfranchisement and ‘crisis’. Firstly, it highlights how traditionally workers have been atomised as a group due to the demotivating effects of postcommunist transition itself. Nonetheless, there remains a coherence of shared values and grievances rooted in the still-living memory of the communist-era ‘social contract’, and workers’ current experience of harsh anti-labour industrial relations and state indifference. Thirdly, despite seemingly no outlet in oppositional politics, there are signs of resistance, if not revolt. These range from the informal ‘black’ economy as ‘exit’ from formal work, smallscale labour protests and the organising of new independent labour unions in transnational companies, and the rising political consciousness of working-class voters who look for any ‘alternative’ to the ruling party – including the popular-nationalist far right, and abstention from voting all together. The conclusions highlight the convergence of workers’ and ordinary people’s grievances in Russia in an unpredictable environment where multiple issues may coalesce and then spiral out of control. Recent examples of such issues have included labour unrest due to wage arrears, political corruption, road taxes on truckers, and the demolition of housing in city centres.