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 passion12 may 2011, CRASSH

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

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)

Kologriv profile

o Isolated community:Nearly 3400 inhabitantsDepressive region, industry completely shut downDistrict center, but 80 km from nearest railway

stationGoods supplied from three sources:

28 local shops (food, household chemistry, mobile phones, building materials) concentrated on reselling

periodic bazaar (every Thursday) few farmers

Kologriv profile

o 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’)

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

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.’

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?

Local shops

Local shops