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To pay and not to pay: Symbolic meaning and structure of debt relationships in a Russian town

To pay and not to pay: Symbolic meaning and structure of debt relationships in a Russian town. Ivan Pavluytkin and Greg Yudin Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology Higher School of Economic, Moscow. Debt: Interdisciplinary considerations of an enduring human passion

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To pay and not to pay: Symbolic meaning and structure of debt relationships in a Russian town

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  1. To pay and not to pay: Symbolic meaning and structure of debt relationships in a Russian town Ivan Pavluytkin and Greg Yudin Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology Higher School of Economic, Moscow Debt: Interdisciplinary considerations of an enduring human passion 12 may 2011, CRASSH

  2. Debt: Neither gift nor market • There is a problem of tension and border lines between logic of gift and logic of utilitarian exchange in modern societies. • Debt as an institutional answer to the uncertainty of framing

  3. Kologriv, Kostroma region, Central Russia, 640 km from Moscow “Kologriv - in pre-revolutionary satirical articlesconsidered to be a symbol of provincial backwoods and  backwater”. Ilf I. and Y. Petrov “The Twelve Chairs ” (1928)

  4. Kologriv profile • Isolated community: • Nearly 3400 inhabitants • Depressive region, industry completely shut down • District center, but 80 km from nearest railway station • Goods supplied from three sources: • 28 local shops (food, household chemistry, mobile phones, building materials) concentrated on reselling • periodic bazaar (every Thursday) • few farmers

  5. Kologriv profile • Abandoned community: • 60% of population live on benefits (public administration, schools, hospital, wildlife sanctuary, museum, pensioners etc.) • People feel deceived by the state (‘There is a sense of being deceived… a grievance. That was a time when people didn’t get what they had earned’)

  6. Structure of debt relationships Material infrastructure: Debt books (registers of debtors) • Time costs nothing but becomes a strategic resource • Monetary equivalence Debt - money that “belongs” to community • Every vendor is aware of customers’ earnings • Vendor earns 5-7% from shop revenue • Being well-off is a dangerous reputation

  7. Problem of settlement • Debts should be paid back • Inverted misrecognition • It is unwise to pay back in time • Strategic manipulations with time • Buying on credit functions as a way of borrowing money • ‘You can borrow only in shops. Otherwise you have to look for somebody to owe you. You won’t probably find anybody to borrow from… Look, there’s nobody to borrow from. Everyone is as poor as we are.’

  8. Conclusions • Pursuing profit-seeking motives in an abandoned community creates structural tension • Debt mediates between gift and market exchange • Debt only defers framing of transaction and reproduces ambiguity • Debt: • NOT reducible to the logic of gift or market, • NOT an independent logic, • an institutional tool for balancing different logics?

  9. Local shops

  10. Local shops

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