Everyday Post-Socialism Working-Class Communities in the Russian Margins [Paperback]

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 todays 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.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 Womans 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. 

Morriss 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. (MalãÊ