This article was downloaded by: [Nipissing University]

On: 03 October 2014, At: 23:18

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,
London W1T 3JH, UK

Ethnos: Journal of
Anthropology
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/retn20

Consumers Exiting
Socialism: Ethnographic
Perspectives on Daily Life
in Post-Communist Europe
Jennifer Patico & Melissa L. Caldwell
Published online: 02 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Jennifer Patico & Melissa L. Caldwell (2002) Consumers
Exiting Socialism: Ethnographic Perspectives on Daily Life in Post-
Communist Europe, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 67:3, 285-294, DOI:
10.1080/0014184022000031176

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0014184022000031176

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all
the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our
platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors
make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,
completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any
opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and
views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor
& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information.
Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
 proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in
connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access
and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014
 Consumers Exiting Socialism 285

Consumers Exiting Socialism:

Ethnographic Perspectives on Daily Life
in Post-Communist Europe

Jennifer Patico & Melissa L. Caldwell

Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

Haverford Co llege & Harvard University, usa

S
ince the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1 98 9 and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union in 1 991 , the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe have undergone striking transformations. Among the most com-
prehensive has been the development of new economic systems and market
conditions, w hich have facilitated in turn the proliferation of global com-
modities and consumer trends. Throughout postsocialist Europe, the realm
of the commercial has been transformed from a sphere dominated by state
production interests to one that carefully appeals to consumers’ needs and
desires. Where scarcity and relative homogeneity were once the norm (Hum-
phrey 1 995 ; Verdery 1 996 ), shoppers are now confronted at every turn by
advertisements extolling the virtues of any product conceivable: food prod-
ucts, cellular telephones, appliances, electronics, fur coats, fertilizer, and home
health products. State-owned factories and stores compete with privately owned
and operated shops, sidewalk stands, self-contained shopping malls, and one-
stop ‘hypermarkets’ that offer everything from groceries and clothing to electron-
ics and automotive equipment. By the late 1 990s, shopping districts in both
large cities and small towns display ed an eclectic, postmodern style, com-
bining flashy ‘Eurostandard’ architecture with faded, crumbling, apartment
buildings and generic shop fronts more reminiscent of the Soviet period.
Such jarring juxtapositions provide poignant commentaries on the uneven,
contradictory processes of change still underway in contemporary East Eu-
rope and Eurasia. Yet, it is precisely these disjunctures – these aw kward con-
figurations of old and new cultural products and practices, and the complex
articulation of global commodities in local settings – that have captured an-
thropological imaginations in the past few decades and have renewed en-
thusiasm for the study of consumption as a vital aspect of culture. Sociocul-

ethnos , vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

© Routledge Jo urnals, Taylor and Francis Ltd, on behalf of the National Museum of Ethnography
is s n 001 4-1 8 4 4 print/ is s n 1 469-5 8 8 x o nline. doi: 1 0.1 08 0/001 41 8 402 2 00003 1 1 7 6
 286 jennif er patico & melissa l. caldwell
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

Just a few short blocks from the Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow’s Central Telegraph Office has become
a prime commercial location. Photo: Melissa L. Caldwell.

tural anthropology has long recognized that material goods figure centrally
in the construction and maintenance of social relations, particularly the com-
munication and reification of difference and inequality (Appadurai 1 986 ; Bour-
dieu 1 98 4 ; Douglas & Isherwood 1 996 ; Dumont 1 97 0; Goody 1 98 2 ; Kopytoff
1 986; Mauss 1 967 ; Mintz 1 98 6). Nonetheless, detailed ethnographic atten-
tion to the lives and practices of consumers has been generated only rela-
tively recently (notably , Miller 1 995 a, 1 995 b, 1 998 ), and primarily in dialogue
with debates about globalization and the creation of consumer cultures.1 The
most significant contribution from these studies has come from anthropolo-
gists such as James Watson (1 997 ) and David Howes (1 996 ) who have ar-
gued that despite many fears to the contrary, commodities that circulate through
increasingly globalized, de-nationalized commercial channels neither ‘invade’
traditional, autochthonous cultures, nor single -handedly transform local life
or threaten cultural diversity. Rather, consumers appropriate novel goods and
practices and make sense – and use – of them through habituated practices
and interests. Consequently , these resources may be situated into preexist-
ing social relationships, moral codes, and w orldviews; or they may directly
contribute to new, y et no less ‘locally ’ unique, conceptualizations of national
or community identity (Miller 1 992 , 1 994) .

ethnos, vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 Consumers Exiting Socialism 287

As important as these interventions have been, such approaches may prove

insufficient for understanding the recent processes unfolding in the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Consumerism is neither new nor unfamil-
iar to postsocialist citizens, but has long occupied a key role in consumers’
relations to each other, the state, and the world. Accordingly , the authors in
this issue want to examine the very categories of ‘global,’ ‘local,’ ‘Western,’
and ‘modern’ as they come into play in social life, such that we can see how
these value systems are historically produced and how they continue to evolve,
operating as dynamic frames through which people interpret and address
large -scale transformation.2 Even more compelling is the idea that consumer
adjustments represent the most tangible manifestations of more extensive so-
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

cietal upheavals; and that these, when viewed in their full social contexts,
can effectively bring to light shifting structures of authority , responsibility ,
privilege, and personhood. This last possibility has only recently begun to be
explored in significant depth by ethnographers, w hether w orking in the
postsocialist world, the postcolonial world, or the ‘West.’
The centrality of consumerism among the many way s in w hich everyday
life has been performed and transformed in the former Soviet Union and East
Europe, combined with the scope and rapidity of these changes, make this
region an especially satisfy ing, albeit challenging, setting for such analyses.
In the logic of the socialist planned economy, officials attempted to antici-
pate and provide for the needs of both the state and its citizens through cen-
tralized control of production and distribution. Supplies of goods were dic-
tated by plant managers and politicians, rather than generated in response to
the needs and demands of consumers. The effects of this emphasis on pro-
duction over consumption, and on heav y rather than light industry , were ex-
acerbated by infrastructural problems; goods were neither produced in ade-
quate supply nor circulated efficiently to the consuming public. Meanwhile,
ideologies of national progress and preoccupation with the Soviet bloc’s su-
periority over the West led to official insistences that the region’s living standards
were among the highest in the world and ever-improving (e.g., Verdery 1 996;
Fitzpatrick 1 992 ). As early as the Stalin era, the regime promoted ideals of
‘cultured’ respectability dependent upon tasteful home decorations, fashion-
able dress, personal hygiene, and comely behavior (Crowley 2 000; Dunham
1 97 6 ; Fitzpatrick 1 992 ; Kelly 2 001 ). Consumerism, then, was key in state ef-
forts to cultivate and enforce public mores and to regulate the most intimate
spaces of daily life (see also Buchli 1 999; Reid & Crowley 2 000). Citizens
responded to these provocations and constraints with a rich repertoire of

ethnos , vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 288 jennif er patico & melissa l. caldwell

strategic social relations based upon principles of mutual assistance. Exten-

sive informal networks offered an alternative economy that provided com-
modities and services that were unavailable in state shops or to customers
without special connections (Grossman 1 97 7 ; Ledeneva 1 998 ; Humphrey
1 999 ; Verdery 1 996 ; Woodruff 1 999; Rivkin-Fish 1 997 ; Sampson 1 985 –8 6) .
Thus, in contrast to conventional wisdom from the perspectives of estab-
lished capitalist market societies (a view that typically interprets shopping
and sty listic choices as the prerogatives of autonomous consumers determined
to fulfill individual needs, desires, or self-images 3 ), the immediate and irre-
ducibly social, interpersonal contexts of consumption are nearly impossible
to ignore in socialist East Europe and the ussr. Today , in the early twenty-
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

first century , postsocialist citizens have begun the task of reorganizing these
social worlds. This endeavor includes the gradual reformulation of what it
means to be an individual and a citizen in the new nation, and the navigation
of shifting boundaries between such roles. Meanwhile, marketization has fostered
an increasingly stratified class system, sharpening material and social differ-
ences and complicating local ethics of collective responsibility. As the postsocialist
state cedes its ability and willingness to guarantee the basic necessities of
daily life, consumers must reconcile the precariousness of everyday survival
with the new culture of commercialism that has sw ept the region.
Such negotiations are the focus of the articles in this special issue of Ethnos.
Although change has unfolded variously in each of the national settings and
social contexts described in the four studies, several common themes unite
our approaches. First, the authors share the conviction that commodities pro-
vide a productive prism for critically examining historical trajectories as they
are experienced by citizens in every day life. Here various modes of consump-
tion – whether viewed at the point of purchase, in the enactment of rituals
such as weddings, in practices of exchange, or as an assertion of one’s per-
sonal space through home renovation – frame larger convergences of the
categories meaningful to social actors as they construct their own histories
and futures: ‘traditional’ and ‘modern,’ ‘abnormal’ and ‘normal,’ socialism and
capitalism. These approaches do not reinforce the accustomed dichotomies
of capitalist triumphalism, however. They do not argue for the inevitable at-
traction of all peoples to laissez-faire consumerism, nor do they view the ‘transi-
tion to capitalism’ as a unilinear process or cross-cultural certainty.4 Rather,
by examining consumption in fine-grained ethnographic detail, as it is both
enacted and idealized by practitioners, the authors have found a productive,
common framework for showing that these ‘transitions’ are not completed

ethnos, vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 Consumers Exiting Socialism 289
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

Photo: Melissa L. Caldwell

Pedestrians shop for pastries and ice cream outside the department store GUM, Moscow.

historical truths but rather projects on which people are continually work-
ing (see also Stry ker & Patico 2 001 ).
Drawing on case studies from Hungary, Lithuania, and Russia, the authors
demonstrate quite tangibly how deeply processes of commercialization are
embedded in citizens’ evolving political commitments and ongoing efforts at
self-improvement. Melissa Caldwell considers how Muscovite consumers link
personal and public display s of nationalism with their purchase of foodstuffs.
Gediminas Lankauskas situates his study in an evangelical wedding ceremony
in Lithuania, w here he explores how Lithuanian y outh manipulate transna-
tional products to break with their parents’ traditions and to represent them-
selves instead as ‘modern’ and ‘Christian.’ Jennifer Patico looks at the gift ex-
change practices of teachers in St. Petersburg and asks how the items that
are exchanged mediate different levels of social relationships and ideas about
value and morality. Finally , Krisztina Fehérváry describes how urban Hunga-
rians articulate visions of themselves as ‘normal’ – that is, European – through
household architecture and furnishings, particularly ‘American-sty le’ kitch-
ens and luxury bathrooms. Together, the authors show how seemingly famil-
iar tropes of modernity , global capitalism, and the West are inflected through
practice with significances particular to the experiences of socialism and of
sy stemic transformation. More importantly , they offer new perspectives on

ethnos , vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 2 90 jennif er patico & melissa l. caldwell

these categories as dynamic frameworks that are themselves also reposito-

ries of particular social, historical, and economic trajectories, and thus wor-
thy of analytical scrutiny.
Second, each of the papers critically interrogates how juxtapositions of
the global and the local, particularly as they are framed as ideologies about
the nature of the ‘West’ (w hich at times is ‘European’ and at others ‘Ameri-
can’) and the ‘domestic,’ shape consumers’ experiences in today’s post-com-
munist societies. At times these contrasts are made explicit, such as when
Hungarian consumers thoughtfully reflect on the different values and life-
sty les associated with American architectural sty les; when Lithuanian evan-
gelicals publicly break with their parents’ lifesty les by choosing soft drinks
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

over vodka; or when Muscovites carefully seek out domestically produced

food goods. At other times, these contrasts are more implicit and testify that
‘outside’ commodities can become just as embedded as ‘domestic’ products
within local social worlds, as in the use of imported cognacs as a special genre
of gift in St. Petersburg. Thus to different degrees and to different ends, these
themes of ‘the foreign’ and ‘the local’ permeate the volume. Yet, as each author
also demonstrates, practices and discourses centering on foreign products
are not always (or primarily ) best understood as fetishizations of the ‘Other’;
rather, these commodities often become reference points for larger negotia-
tions in which national or local social issues are the most salient concern.
Finally , these papers take the materiality of goods and the social proc-
esses in which they are embedded as critical points of departure for excavat-
ing larger discourses about national identity, class categories, and moder-
nity. In each of the four ethnographic contexts explored in these papers –
urban Hungary, a Lithuanian evangelical wedding, St. Petersburg teachers,
and Moscow public culture – the authors consider specific commodities not
as arbitrary sy mbols for cultural processes that could unfold autonomously ,
but rather as the very media through which social actors reconfigure their
relationships to the world around them. The concrete qualities that consum-
ers ascribe to these commodities are informed by – and in turn inform – the
types of selves that people construct. The flavor and freshness of food prod-
ucts on the Moscow market contribute both to their successful marketing
and to people’s constructions of national identity; and for St. Petersburg teach-
ers, the imperishability of liquor and chocolates, as well as their long-stand-
ing association with hospitality, contribute to their suitability for maintain-
ing social networks. The airiness of rooms and sturdiness of furniture is im-
portant to Hungarians who are renovating their apartments to be ‘normal’

ethnos, vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 Consumers Exiting Socialism 2 91
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

Food shopping inside the elegant and glittering Eliseevskii Gastronom, Moscow. Photo: Melissa L.Caldwell.

and ‘Western.’ Lithuanian Christian y outh with aspirations to cosmopolitan-

ism privilege Coke over vodka not only because the former is ‘Western’ while
the latter is ‘Soviet,’ but also because the former denotes concrete charac-
teristics the youth want to embody – namely, physical and financial sobriety.
In short, postsocialist consumption helps reveal the inner workings of an
entire range of relationships and institutions in transformation. The inter-
face of state socialism and global capitalism has produced shifting structures
of rights, obligations, authority , and freedoms. Yet the ‘exit from socialism’ is
far from unitary or complete, nor is it truly a radical departure from the past.
Rather, as these ethnographies show , the ‘exit’ is effected and reflected upon
daily by actors, particularly in their capacities as consumers. At the same time,
social practices and consumer histories of a previous era continue to shape
powerfully the participation of these play ers in a more globalized market-
place. Perhaps most fundamentally , then, this volume aims to illuminate the
key cultural forms through w hich rapid change has been produced, medi-
ated, and understood in a particular, and intriguing, historical context. In this
sense, we hope that these works on postsocialist consumption might spur in
readers – even those comparatively unfamiliar with post-communist Europe
– new ways of thinking about change from a critical ethnographic perspective.

ethnos , vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 2 92 jennif er patico & melissa l. caldwell

Acknowledgments
This special issue emerged from numerous conversations about the similarities
and differences in postsocialist consumption in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Those
conversations in turn produced a panel, ‘Consumers Exiting Socialism: Ethnographic
Perspectives on the Reconfiguration of Post-Soviet Social Life,’ at the American
Anthropological Association Meetings in San Francisco, CA, in 2 000. We are
grateful to our discussant, Nancy Ries, our fellow panelists, and members of the
audience for their questions, suggestions, and enthusiasm. We would also like to
thank Krisztina Fehérváry for reading an earlier draft of the introduction. Finally ,
this special issue would not have been possible without the generous encouragement
and support of D. Kulick and W. Östberg, the patient assistance of Ann-Cathrine
Lagercrantz, and the behind-the-scenes work of the Ethnos language editor.
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

Notes
1 . Even now, key anthropological analyses of global consumerism primarily endeavor
to resolve broad conceptual and theoretical problems concerning globalization’s
impact on human cultural diversity (Appadurai 1 986, 1 990; Hannerz 1 989, 1 996;
Howes 1 996; Watson 1 997 ; Wilk 1 999).
2. The unique nature of the postsocialist experience with consumption is gradually
emerging as a critical field of inquiry concerning how societies and their citizens
navigate the structural, social, and symbolic changes that have accompanied the
transition from state socialism to global capitalism. Representative studies in
Russia, Central and East Europe, and China include Berdahl 1 999; Bunzl 2000;
Caldwell 1 998 ; Davis, ed. 2000; Dunn 1 999; Gillette 2 000; Humphrey 1 995 ; Jing
2 000; Patico 2001 ; Rausing 1 998 ; Yurchak 1 999.
3 . See Graeber 2 001 for a critical discussion of this perspective.
4. See Burawoy & Verdery 1 999 and Verdery 1 996 for two of the most influential
critiques of the ‘transition’ concept.

References
Appadurai, Arjun. 1 98 6. Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value. In The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai,
pp. 3 –63 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—. 1 990. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Public Culture,
2 (2 ):1 –2 4.
Berdahl, Daphne. 1 999. Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the
German Borderland. Berkeley : University of California Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1 98 4. Distinction: A Social Critique of the J udgement of Taste. Richard
Nice, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Buchli, Victor. 1 999. A n A rchaeology of Socialism. New York: Berg.
Bunzl, Matti. 2000. The Prague Experience: Gay Male Sex Tourism and the Neo-
colonial Invention of an Embodied Border. In A ltering States: Ethnographies of
Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, edited by D. Berdahl, M.
Bunzl, & M. Lampland, pp. 7 0– 95 . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Caldwell, Melissa L. 1 998. Pepsi, Pensioners, and Peter the Great: Performing Temporality
in Russia. The A nthropology of East Europe Review, 1 6 (2 ):1 9 –25 .
Crowley, David. 2 000. Warsaw’s Shops, Stalinism and the Thaw. In Style and Socia-

ethnos, vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 Consumers Exiting Socialism 2 93

lism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, edited by Susan
E. Reid & David Crowley, pp. 25 –47 . Oxford: Berg.
Davis, Deborah S. (ed.). 2000. The Consumer Revolution in Urban China. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Douglas, Mary , & Baron Isherwood. 1 996. The World of Goods: Towards an A nthropology
of Consumption. New York: Routledge.
Dumont, Louis. 1 97 0. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Mark
Sainsbury, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dunham, Vera. 1 97 6. In Stalin’s Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet Literature. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dunn, Elizabeth. 1 999. Slick Salesmen and Simple People: Negotiated Capitalism in
a Privatized Polish Firm. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the
Postsocialist World, edited by Michael Burawoy & Katherine Verdery , pp. 1 2 5 –
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

1 5 0. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1 992 . The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Rus-
sia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gillette, Maris. 2000. Between Mecca and Beijing: Modernization and Consumption among
Urban Chinese Muslims. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Goody, Jack. 1 982 . Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Graeber, David. 2 001 . Toward an A nthropology of Value: The False Coin of our Own
Dreams. New York: Palgrave.
Grossman, Gregory. 1 97 7 . The ‘Second Economy’ of the ussr. Problems of Communism,
2 6(5 ):2 5 –40.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1 989. Notes on the Global Ecumene. Public Culture, 1 (2): 66–7 5 .
—. 1 996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. New York: Routledge.
Howes, David. 1996. Introduction: Commodities and Cultural Borders. In Cross-
cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities, edited by David Howes. New
York: Routledge.
Humphrey, Caroline. 1 995 . Creating a Culture of Disillusionment: Co nsumption in
Moscow, a Chronicle of Changing Times. In Worlds A part: Modernity through the
Prism of the Local, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 43 – 68 . London: Routledge.
—. 1 999. Traders, ‘Disorder,’ and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia. In Uncertain
Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World, edited by Michael
Burawoy & Katherine Verdery, pp. 1 9–5 2. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc.
Jing, Jun (ed.). 2000. Feeding China’s Little Emperors: Food, Children, and Social Change.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kelly , Catriona. 2001 . Refining Russia: A dvice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender
from Catherine to Yeltsin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kopy toff, Igor. 1 98 6. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Pro-
cess. In The Social Life of Things, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 64–91 . Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ledeneva, Alena V. 1 998. Russia’s Economy of Favours: ‘Blat,’ Networking and Informal
Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mauss, Marcel. 1 967 . The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in A rchaic Societies.
Ian Cunnison, trans. New York: Norton.

ethnos , vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )

 2 94 jennif er patico & melissa l. caldwell

Meneley, Anne. 1 996. Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town.
Toro nto: University of Toronto Press.
Miller, Daniel. 1 992 . The Young and the Restless in Trinidad: A Case of the Local
and the Global in Mass Consumption. In Consuming Technologies: Media and In-
formation in Domestic Spaces, edited by Eric Hirsch & Roger Silverstone, pp. 1 63 –
1 8 2. New York: Routledge.
—. 1 994. Modernity – A n Ethnographic A pproach: Dualism and Mass Consumption in
Trinidad. Oxford: Berg.
—. 1 995 a. A cknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies. London: Ro utledge.
—. 1 995 b. Worlds A part: Modernity through the Prism of the Local. London: Routledge.
—. 1 998 . Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Mintz, Sidney W. 1 97 5 . Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 23:18 03 October 2014

New York: Penguin Books.

Patico, Jennifer. 2 001 . Consumption and Logics of Social Difference in Post-Soviet Russia.
Ph.D. dissertation presented to the Department of Anthropology , New York
University.
Rausing, Sigrid. 1 998. Signs of the New Nation: Gift Exchange, Consumption and
Aid on a Former Collective Farm in North-west Estonia. In Material Cultures:
Why Some Things Matter, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 1 8 9–21 3 . London: ucl
Press.
Reid, Susan & David Crowley (eds). 2000. Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material
Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. New York: Berg.
Rivkin-Fish, Michele. 1 997 . Reproducing Russia: Women’s Health and Moral Education
in the Construction of a Post-Soviet Society. Dissertation submitted to the Depart-
ment of Anthropology , Princeton University.
Sampson, Steven. 1 985 –8 6. The Informal Sector in Eastern Europe. Telos, 66: 4 4– 66.
Stryker, Rachael & Jennifer Patico. 2 001 . The Paradoxes of Progress: Globalization
and Postsocialist Cultures. The Kroeber A nthropological Society Papers, 8 6:1 –8.
Terrio, Susan. 2 000. Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate. Berkeley :
University of California Press.
Verdery , Katherine. 1 996. What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Watson, James L. 1 997 . Golden A rches East: McDonald’s in East A sia. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Wilk, Richard. 1 999. ‘Real Belizean Food’: Building Local Identity in the Trans-
national Caribbean. A merican A nthropologist, 1 01 (2):244–2 5 5 .
Woodruff, David. 1 999. Barter of the Bankrupt: The Politics of Demonetization in
Russia’s Federal State. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Post-
socialist World, edited by Michael Burawoy & Katherine Verdery , pp. 83 –1 2 4.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Yurchak, Alexei. 1 999. Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity ,
and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife. In Consuming Russia: Popular Culture,
Sex, and Society since Gorbachev, edited by Adele Marie Barker, pp. 7 6 –1 09. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.

ethnos, vol. 67 :3 , 2 002 (pp. 2 8 5 –2 94 )