This study explores the persistence and adaptive resilience of the informal “toi (feast) economy” in Kyrgyzstan—a deeply embedded cultural institution that not only structures life-cycle ceremonies like weddings and funerals but also sustains kinship networks, enacts political patronage, and reproduces symbolic capital. The toi economy, estimated to circulate nearly $3 billion annually—approaching half of the country’s external debt—persists despite waves of political upheaval, economic crises, and a global pandemic. While Kyrgyz governments repeatedly attempt to curtail “lavish” feasting through moralizing populist campaigns and regulatory threats, these interventions often fail, revealing the limitations of state power when confronting culturally embedded economic practices.
To investigate how the toi economy sustains itself amid crises and formal pressures, I adopt a multi-scalar, ethnographically grounded methodology centered on practice-oriented participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews with key actors: tamadas (ceremonial hosts), feast hall owners, event managers, and related service providers in Bishkek, the capital and epicenter of this economy. Fieldwork (forthcoming 2025–2026) is designed with situational consent and flexible access strategies due to the private, quasi-exclusive nature of toi ceremonies.
Methodologically, this research grapples with informality not only as an empirical object but as an epistemological challenge. Gaining access to the “invisible” infrastructures of economic resilience—ritual spending, informal credit lines, reciprocal obligations—requires reflexivity, sustained presence, and ethical negotiations of trust. By situating the toi economy as a dynamic, performative institution that both monetizes tradition and mediates precarity, this study contributes to a critical ethnographic understanding of informality as a mode of governance, cultural reproduction, and post-pandemic survival. It further reflects on the tensions between researcher positionality, community secrecy, and the interpretive frameworks through which anthropologists approach the informal.