Economies of Favour after Socialism

by David Henig, Nicolette Makovicky

Overview

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, activists, policy makers, and social scientists have been searching for alternative paradigms through which to re-imagine contemporary modes of thinking and writing about economic orders. These attempts have led to their re-engagement with fundamental anthropological categories of economic analysis, such as barter, debt, and the gift. Focusing on favours, and the paradoxes of action, meaning, and significance they engender, this volume advocates for their addition to this list of economic universals. It presents a critical re-interrogation of the conceptual relationships between gratuitous and instrumental behaviour, and raises novel questions about the intersection of economic actions with the ethical and expressive aspects of human life.

Scholars of post-socialist politics and society have often used 'favour' as a by-word for corruption and clientelism. The contributors to this volume treat favours, and the doing of favours, as a distinct mode of acting, rather than as a form of 'masked' economic exchange or simply an expression of goodwill. Casting their comparative net from post-socialist Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe; to the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and post-Maoist China, the contributors to this volume show how gratuitous behaviour shapes a plethora of different actions, practices, and judgements across religious and political life, imaginative practices, and local moral economies. They show that favours do not operate 'outside' or 'beyond' the economic sphere. Rather, they constitute a distinct mode of action which has economic consequences, without being fully explicable in terms of transactional cost-benefit analyses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199687411
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2017
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Henig, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent,Nicolette Makovicky, Lecturer in Russian and Eastern European Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford

Nicolette Makovicky is Lecturer of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. She is the editor of Neoliberalism, Personhood, Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies (Ashgate, 2014) and has published extensively on informal economic activity in Central Europe.

David Henig is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent. His research, conducted mainly in the Balkans and Central Asia, focuses largely on vernacular Islam, sacred landscape, exchange theory, and more recently on linking anthropology with global transnational history, diplomacy, international relations, and geopolitics. He has authored numerous publications on Islam, dervish orders, Muslim politics, and post-socialism.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Re-imagining Economies after Socialism: Ethics, Favours, and Moral Sentiments, Nicolette Makovicky and David Henig2. The Ambivalence of Favour: Paradoxes of Russia's Economy of Favours, Alena Ledeneva3. A New Look at Favours: The Case of Post-Socialist Higher Education, Caroline Humphrey4. Giving, Taking, and Getting By: Help and Indifference in Moscow's Temporary Housing Market, Madeleine Reeves5. The Anti-Favour: Ideasthesia, Aesthetics, and Obligation in Southwest China, Katherine Swancutt6. The Human Economy of Palinka in Hungary: A Case Study in Longue Duree Lubrication, Chris Hann7. Making History, Making Politics: Post-Socialist Elite Economies of Favour in Bulgaria and the Ukraine, Deema Kaneff8. Interior Spectacles: The Art of the Informal among the Former Miners in Wałbrzych, Poland, Tomasz Rakowski9. A Good Deed is not a Crime: Moral Cosmologies of Favours in Muslim Bosnia, David Henig10. The 'Shadows' of Informality in Rural Poland, Nicolette Makovicky11. Afterword: The Social Warmth of Paradox, Martin Holbraad

Editorial Reviews

",,,innovative and inspiring" — Matías Dewey, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, the european electronic newsletter

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