Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: barter networks and ‘information islands’
- I Theory
- II Large-scale empirical studies
- III Ethnography
- 10 How is barter done? The social relations of barter in provincial Russia
- 11 Shadow barter: economic necessity or economic crime?
- 12 Surrogate currencies and the ‘wild market’ in Central Siberia
- 13 Bear skins and macaroni: the social life of things at the margins of a Siberian state collective
- Conclusion: what is to be done?
- Index
13 - Bear skins and macaroni: the social life of things at the margins of a Siberian state collective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: barter networks and ‘information islands’
- I Theory
- II Large-scale empirical studies
- III Ethnography
- 10 How is barter done? The social relations of barter in provincial Russia
- 11 Shadow barter: economic necessity or economic crime?
- 12 Surrogate currencies and the ‘wild market’ in Central Siberia
- 13 Bear skins and macaroni: the social life of things at the margins of a Siberian state collective
- Conclusion: what is to be done?
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The post-Soviet story of Katonga, a Central Siberian collective farm with mixed indigenous and Russian population, is in many ways typical for rural areas in the Russian North. Katonga's economy was heavily subsidised during the Soviet period, and these subsidies quickly evaporated in the early 1990s when Russia entered the economic crisis (also euphe- mistically known as the ‘transition’). In a sharp contrast to the late Soviet situation when collective farmers had money but very few commodities were on the store shelves, money started to disappear in daily transactions at the same time – and almost at the same rate – as goods became available for purchase. After 1991 direct, non-monetary trade proliferated: reindeer meat, fish and fur were routinely exchanged for flour, tea and hunting equipment; potatoes and other vegetables were swapped for petrol for motor boats; clothes for medicine; and almost anything for alcohol.
What happens in such demonetised spaces? On the one hand, it is clear that they are hardly residual locations of Soviet or even pre-Soviet exchange practices that are ‘not yet’ integrated into the market. On the other hand, they cannot be seen as market exchange continued by other means. I show in this chapter that these transactions articulate multiple exchange logics – such as those of monetary and barter trade, but also of sharing, gift and tribute.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Vanishing RoubleBarter Networks and Non-Monetary Transactions in Post-Soviet Societies, pp. 345 - 361Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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