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This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers' everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the 'other life' in today's Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of 'habitability', commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.
List of contents
Part I. Spaces and Places.- Introduction: The 'Worthless' Dowry of Soviet Industrial Modernity.- 1. Blue-collar Personhood after the Factory.- 2. Informal Economy: going underground but coming out of the shadows.- 3. A Woman's Kingdom? Affect, care and regendering labour.- Part II: Unhomely Presents - Uncertain Futures.- 4. Unhomely Presents: Trauma and values of endurance among older people.- 5. No Country for Young Men: encountering neoliberalism in transnational corporations.- Part III: On Personhoods in Place.- 6. Intimate Ethnography and Cross-cultural Research.- Conclusions. Making Habitable Lives in Small-town Russia.
About the author
Jeremy Morris is Co-director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham, UK. A disciplinary pluralist, his research aims to capture the actually lived experience of neoliberal and post-socialist transformation in Russia. He is co-editor of
The Informal Post-Socialist Economy (2014) and
Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces(Palgrave, 2015).
Summary
This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers’ everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the ‘other life’ in today’s Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of ‘habitability’, commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.
Additional text
“Morris’s ethnographic approach is an immersive one. … this book can confidently be placed on undergraduate and graduate reading lists for courses that relate to contemporary Russia and its recent past across many different disciplines, as well as general courses on comparative post-socialism or informal practices.” (Mark B. Smith, Slavonic and East European Review SEER, Vol. 97 (2), April, 2019)
Report
"Morris's ethnographic approach is an immersive one. ... this book can confidently be placed on undergraduate and graduate reading lists for courses that relate to contemporary Russia and its recent past across many different disciplines, as well as general courses on comparative post-socialism or informal practices." (Mark B. Smith, Slavonic and East European Review SEER, Vol. 97 (2), April, 2019)
