To be happy in a Mercedes: Tropes of value and ambivalent visions of marketization
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JENNIFER PATICO
Haverford College
To be happy in a Mercedes:
Tropes of value and ambivalent visions of marketization
ate one evening in December 1998, the teachers and administra-
L
A B S T R A C T
tors of St. Petersburg, Russia’s English Specialization School
The disintegration of Soviet social contracts has
No. 25 were enjoying their annual New Year’s celebration ban-
provoked, for many Russians, a continuing
quet.1 As the night drew on, some flew home to children and
deliberation over the tense interrelation between
dinners to prepare, and the remaining revelers piled leftover
material embodiments of value (wealth and
food and alcohol onto one central table and crowded around it. Into the
commodities) and moral ones (respectability,
stream of toasts and anecdotes, someone interjected a question for group
education, and kindness). By contrast with
discussion: Was it better to be happy or to have a Mercedes?2
previous anthropological tendencies to locate
Several votes were offered for happiness. The head of the English
value production primarily within exchange
department pointedly asked me to contribute: I was the American, so what
transactions, in this article I identify two
did I think? I concurred that certainly to be happy was better. Another
historically specific tropes of value (‘‘culturedness’’
teacher piped up triumphantly that it would be best to ‘‘be happy in a
and ‘‘civilization’’) and show how their
Mercedes!’’ Whereupon another corrected her, saying that, no, those who
articulation illuminates positioned experiences
had Mercedes were not happy, because they ‘‘aspired’’—they were never
of large-scale change and social displacement.
satisfied but were always aiming for more (oni ne raduiutsia potomu
From the particular vantage point of St. Petersburg
chto stremliaiut).
schoolteachers, I consider everyday deliberations
The Mercedes question provided several minutes of distracting party
about value and social difference as they take
conversation. It had an assumed answer, to be sure. But in the middle of
form within both local and global frames of
an evening full of good wishes for 1999 and toasts praising the talents
reference, examining how these two contexts
and hard work of the teachers’ kollektiv, the debate also addressed nag-
frequently produce divergent—but only seemingly
ging doubts and key dissatisfactions of the moment. The ritual of play-
contradictory—visions of marketization, its
ing out possible responses allowed participants to come to an unusually
desirability, and its sociomoral significance.
unequivocal conclusion, more reassuring than those likely to be found
[value, consumption, postsocialism, capitalism,
in their workaday lives. Questions about who deserved what and why—
globalization, Russia]
evaluations teachers made according to scales of comparison both local
and global—had a special urgency and poignancy just then, in the wake
of the August 1998 ruble crash (popularly known simply as the ‘‘kriziz’’)
that had devalued salaries radically and made getting by suddenly much
more exhausting. Around the toasting table, the revelers had found that
one could at least be glad not to have a Mercedes because having one
would mean sacrificing too much of oneself, endangering future happiness
and the sustenance of any meaningful social relationships.
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 479 – 496, ISSN 0094-0496, electronic
ISSN 1548-1425. A 2005 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
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rights.htm.American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
The debate’s outcome that night did not mean that of interrogating the correspondences between collective
the question was really closed, however. Mercedes were and private interests and between material and moral
not entirely dismissed as not worth having; neither was indices of value. Thus, postsocialist Russia offers a fresh
their lack—and the lack of a world of other luxuries being opportunity to revisit and resituate relatively familiar an-
consumed by a few Russians but inaccessible to most—so thropological questions concerning how social actors con-
easily understood or accepted. Rather, in the context of ceptualize value and social difference and how these
rapid marketization and other forms of institutional and conceptualizations are imbricated within both global capi-
social change, the very meanings of material prosperity talist processes and national experience.
and privilege have come into question: What is their rela- Among the urban Russians who were part of this
tionship now to other familiar and trusted measures of study, a sense of loss and of struggle has commingled
personal worth and moral standing? What are the corre- with a particular kind of investment in what many see,
lations, both desired and perceived, between the nature nonetheless, as processes of progress, modernization, and
of an individual’s productive activity (esp. gainful employ- positive change—with implications for how individuals
ment) and his or her share of the material resources dis- consider various ways of being and envision their own
tributed among members of a larger social body? Is one’s places vis-à-vis multiple and potentially conflicting scales
level of material privilege supposed to correspond roughly of value. In this article, I identify two key, parallel tropes
to one’s moral legitimacy and how well one is respected by of material and moral value—‘‘culture,’’ or ‘‘cultured-
one’s peers or to some other measure? On what kinds of ness,’’ and ‘‘civilization’’—that help to provide a frame-
resources can one rely for what kinds of sustenance? In work for understanding the tense deliberations over value
a situation of rapid change and social displacement, how that, I argue, have been so central to lived experiences
do people conceptualize their own value vis-à-vis various of marketization and social displacement. ‘‘Culturedness’’
social others—whether according to market or other scales? evokes Soviet norms of propriety and has been used to
Active deliberation over such questions is not unique critique post-Soviet class developments and crass nouveau
to postsocialist Russia. Rather, I view it as more gener- riche materialism; ‘‘civilization’’ more directly articulates
ally indicative of periods of socioeconomic crisis, upheaval, the anxieties attending globalization and the desires for
or transition (Newman 1999; Weber 1992). Indeed, many greater access to expensive consumer commodities from
of the narratives I describe here resonate with the de- the West. Thus, such everyday commentaries condense
scriptions of commodification, resignification, and social historically specific logics of value in particular and some-
restructuring that anthropologists and historians have pro- times divergent ways, pointing up painful tensions with-
duced of colonial and postcolonial contexts (e.g., Burke in teachers’ and others’ post-Soviet lives: desires for both
1996; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Foster 2002). During happiness and a Mercedes or, less metaphorically, for cul-
the past decade or so, postcolonial industrialization and the turally legitimated forms of social security as well as the
growing dominance of transnational capitalist markets lifestyle possibilities presented by global capitalist integ-
have turned questions about commodity choice and the ration. Understanding these commentaries as situated
cultural significance of mass-produced goods into key visions of social justice and power that people frame on
themes of anthropological research around the world both local and international scales, however, I ask finally
(e.g., Abu-Lughod 1993a, 1993b, 1995; Appadurai 1990; whether one really needs to see the multiple desires they
Berdahl 1999; Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; Davis 2000; express as contradictory at all.
Gillette 2000; Howes 1996; Inda and Rosaldo 2002; Miller
1994, 1997; Watson 1997).
Can a teacher be happy in a Mercedes?
Yet Russia—having stood for centuries as a colonial
And other questions of value
power in its own right—constitutes a different kind of
periphery of the global economy than do the moderniz- This article is based primarily on 12 months of ethno-
ing, postcolonial societies more commonly the subjects graphic fieldwork in St. Petersburg in 1998 – 99, supple-
of ethnographic research (cf. Foster 2002; Gewertz and mented by follow-up work in 2003 (see Figure 1). The
Errington 1991, 1996; Howes 1996; Liechty 2003). This sta- research included a series of in-depth, semidirected in-
tus gives rise to particular brands of ambivalence on the terviews with each of about two dozen teachers as well
part of many Russians, perhaps especially those of the old as extensive participant – observation in two schools (in-
professional classes who are likely to share particular sen- cluding participation in classes, school assemblies, and
timents of social entitlement as well as resentment at workplace gatherings) and in less formal contexts (includ-
having been left behind by market reforms. Furthermore, ing shopping trips and off-hours socializing with teachers
I would argue that the rather abrupt nature of political and their families). The overall project was planned as a
and economic transformation in Russia since perestroika study of postsocialist consumer practice and ideology,
has provoked, for many, an especially intensive process concentrating on the kinds of daily provisioning for which
480To be happy in a Mercedes n American Ethnologist
Figure 1. St. Petersburg: Russia’s European capital and the ‘‘Venice of the North.’’ Photo by J. Patico.
Russian mothers and wives tend to be disproportionately intellectual elite. These strata enjoyed a certain kind of
responsible. Among my reasons for focusing on teachers, ‘‘middle-class’’ lifestyle—although they were never partic-
then, was the high degree of feminization of the teaching ularly well paid in relation to other categories of workers
profession. Thus, most of the perspectives reflected here and bureaucrats (not coincidentally, both the teaching
are those of women, although male teachers’ and family and medical professions were highly feminized; Jones
members’ perspectives were taken into account whenever 1991; Shlapentokh 1999).4 More recently, these groups
possible.3 These specific views were supplemented by my have been among those most negatively impacted by the
attention to local and national mass media’s treatment of disintegration of Soviet administrative and economic
related questions of consumerism, class, and social change structures, offering a poignant and charged perspective
and by time spent in a variety of public consumer and shop- from which to consider how rapid marketization provokes
ping environments in the city. crises of value and legitimacy for those caught up in it.
Teachers are also one of a number of social – profes- The world of these ‘‘old’’ professional classes, as I came to
sional constituencies who can provide pointed critical understand it through the lens of St. Petersburg teachers’
perspectives on contemporary processes of cultural trans- experience, was one in which the very logics according to
formation in Russia—by virtue of their professional roles as which people once set goals, evaluated prestige, and re-
providers of public services as well as the specific ways in ceived their material rewards had been largely upended,
which they and other highly educated, still state-employed resulting in no small measure of disorientation and in the
professionals have been situated in socialist and post- need to adapt the bases of practical knowledge and frame-
socialist economies. In the recent Soviet past, schoolteach- works for perceiving social reality.
ers (as well as, e.g., medical doctors and engineers) were Although teachers had been positioned uniquely
part of what Vladimir Shlapentokh (1999) has called a as socializing transmitters of knowledge to the younger
‘‘mass intelligentsia,’’ in distinction to the more exclusive Soviet generation, by the late 1990s some among them felt
481American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
painfully aware of an erosion of the social recognition and tion has been devoted to the dynamics of gift versus com-
respect that their work was accorded, not to mention of modity exchange systems, building on the legacies of Karl
the remuneration by which it was materially rewarded. Marx (1990) and of Marcel Mauss (1967; see also Eiss and
Casting themselves as relatively impoverished but at least Pedersen 2002; Gregory 1982; Thomas 1991; Weiner 1992).
cultured professionals, the teachers with whom I worked Particularly since Arjun Appadurai’s 1986 examination of
in St. Petersburg tended to be both eager consumers and the politics of value, a key objective has been to problem-
vociferous critics of the Russian market economy. They atize the relatively strict division sometimes supposed to
commented on the irony that they, educated citizens of inhere between ‘‘gift’’ (affective, ongoing, and socially ori-
what was so recently considered a world superpower, now ented) and ‘‘commodity’’ – money (impersonal, fleeting,
seemed to be living in just another ‘‘Third World country.’’ and individualistic) exchange (Keane 2001; Kopytoff 1986;
These judgments speak directly to the subjects’ precarious Miller 2001; Myers 2001; Patico 2002). This scholarship
positionings as professionals still dependent on the sink- has highlighted the fluidity and tensions at work in any
ing ship of state-sponsored institutions within a privatiz- given context of exchange, emphasizing that only through
ing former world power, suggesting that although teachers struggles over value do objects and social relations come
are not necessarily representative of urban Russians, they to be defined in one way or another. Analytical emphasis
present a vantage point that is structurally revealing of cer- has tended to be pitched toward economic transactions
tain processes of institutional decline and marketization. as the primary locus at which the production of value
To make useful anthropological sense of the teachers’ is examined.
deliberations, this article attends to some of the most con- A sense of struggle and doubt over legitimate mean-
crete, ‘‘deceptively frivolous’’ (Abu-Lughod 1990) instances ings and privileges is unquestionably salient in the con-
of consumer judgment while also taking into account the temporary Russian milieu, and it is this foregrounding of
relatively unpredictable episodes that become occasions contingent and discomfiting transformation that makes
for people to question and comment on the comparative the anthropological notion of ‘‘value’’ an appropriate place
worth of different individuals and their endeavors, popula- to begin an analysis of postsocialist life. Yet, rather than
tions and their development, and commodities and their fixing analytically on things in motion or moments of
qualities. These elements of comparison are fundamental transaction, my approach here is more explicitly subject
to the way in which I mean to invoke ‘‘value’’ here: to refer centered, asking how particular people explain to them-
to the evaluative terms in which actors judge the signifi- selves, and thereby engage in, processes of structural and
cance and worth of persons as well as things (and how cultural change. If people, indeed, are deliberating over
these reflect on one another). This is a mode of com- how measures of material prosperity and of moral legiti-
parison whereby the objects’ socially salient qualities are macy correspond to one another in contemporary Russia—
framed (explicitly or implicitly) according to scales of re- how they, for example, oppose, shore up, or serve as nega-
lative valorization. Culturedness and civilization, as dis- tive or positive proof of one another—I am also proposing
cussed here, are examples of such scales. In addition, I am that people’s shifting and strained conceptualizations of
interested in how what would seem to be qualitatively these correspondences, as expressed here through ideals
different measures of value—most notably, assessments of such as ‘‘culture’’ and ‘‘civilization,’’ are exactly what
people’s moral rectitude or social usefulness, on the one anthropologists should be looking at to better understand
hand, and their material prosperity or access to desired the ramifications of such (so-called) transitions to capi-
commodities, on the other hand—are made to correspond talism as lived and jarring realities.5
to one another, as actors articulate logics of value, that
is, visions of how various kinds of resources and rewards
Soviet culturedness, civilization,
are or should be distributed among members of a larger
and consumption
social body. Listening closely to how these questions were
treated and noting the contexts in which they arose, as the Although the juxtaposition of ‘‘culturedness’’ and ‘‘civiliza-
undercurrent of people’s discussions and decisions about tion’’ as teachers discussed these themes points to socio-
(most notably) consumption and work, brings into relief economic tensions and deep ambivalence in contemporary
a politics of social difference that was being negotiated in experiences of marketization, I note at the outset that they
everyday life during a period of rapid institutional change are, in fact, closely linked, both conceptually and histo-
and cultural transformation. rically. Hence, a brief consideration of the Soviet back-
My framing of these questions is partly inspired by, but ground to teachers’ postsocialist conceptions is warranted.
also diverges from, previous anthropological approaches Shifting conceptions of ‘‘culturedness’’ have been
to value, its representation, and its reproduction. Within particularly well documented by cultural historians of the
this provocative body of work (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Soviet era, and their intersections with notions of ‘‘civili-
Graeber 2001; Munn 1986; Myers 2001), particular atten- zation’’ are significant. Although the Russian word kul’tura
482To be happy in a Mercedes n American Ethnologist
can signify ‘‘an achievement of the intelligentsia in the the entrenchment of social inequalities within Soviet so-
sense of high culture, a synthesis of ideas, knowledge, and ciety (Boym 1994:105; Fitzpatrick 1992:218).6
memories’’ (Dunham 1976:22), kul’turnost’ (culturedness) Ideals and incentives notwithstanding, the 1930s and
came to refer in the early 20th century to a code of public immediate postwar period were characterized by constant
conduct and a template for the proper relationship of in- shortages and a dearth of consumer products (Buchli 1999:
dividuals to material possessions, denoting a combination 93; Hessler 1996; Osokina 1998). Even after the postwar
of polite manners, hygiene, and basic knowledge of high economy had stabilized—and later stagnated, as the period
culture. Scholars suggest that it sanctioned a particular of slowed economic growth and general social malaise (the
kind of acquisitiveness that took root in the 1930s and re- zastoi) experienced under Leonid Brezhnev is popularly
mained a central aspect of social and moral life from that described—hierarchically allocated access to goods and
time forward (Dunham 1976; Fitzpatrick 1999). The masses privileges remained a lasting feature of the Soviet mode
to whom the Soviet Union was to bring culture included of governance and administration, persisting for the dura-
not only Russia’s peasants, many of whom were moving tion of communist rule.7 The emphasis on acquisitiveness
into urban areas, but also the peoples of other republics was amplified in the post – World War II era, when new
and regions (including Central Asians and the nomadic material comforts (‘‘crepe-de-chine dresses, old-fashioned
groups of the Siberian north) considered backward in dinnerware’’) were cited as indicators of improving stan-
their development (Fitzpatrick 1999; Slezkine 1994). ‘‘Beds, dards of living and even an increase of good cheer in Soviet
gramophones, sewing machines, watches, and radios were life: just desserts for the wartime hardships survived by
all goods that helped raise their possessors out of ‘Asiatic’ ‘‘the marching enthusiasts of the new Stalinist order’’
backwardness and into ‘European-style’ modernity and (Boym 1994:105; see also Dunham 1976).8 Although short-
culture’’ (Fitzpatrick 1999:103). A Stalin-era worker from ages continued under Brezhnev in the 1960s, consumer
the Soviet republic of Tadjikistan boasted that ‘‘I don’t commodities and sought-after domestic conveniences
live in a my old mud hut anymore—I was awarded a gradually became more widely available as greater priority
European-style house. I live like a civilised person’’ (Fitz- than ever before was given to their production.9 ‘‘Their
patrick 1999:103). Excellencies the Refrigerator, the Washing machine, the
Thus, culture was a matter not only of social distinc- Television set, the Record player, and most coveted, the
tion but also of progress and civilization (cf. Elias 1978; ‘Volga’ [automobile] made their appearance. . . . Cook-
Frykman and Lofgren 1987), whereby European Russian books with tempting color plates, featuring jellied stur-
urban lifestyles were posited as the standard to which other geons festooned in radish rosettes and live daisies, were
Soviet peoples were to aspire (even as cities like Moscow followed by chapters on kulturnost [sic]’’ (Dunham 1976:
and St. Petersburg were themselves rapidly industrializ- 244). Even in the last decades of Soviet power, official
ing, urbanizing, and becoming civilized). In other words, discourses strove to frame materialist preoccupations in
the project of becoming respectable and cultured (urban) terms of particular personal virtues, including simplicity,
citizens through the adoption of particular material life- modesty, moral purity, and mutual respect.10
styles and modes of behavior overlapped with the ideas Being cultured in the late 20th century, then, meant
of civilization that more explicitly concerned questions of both consuming in a tasteful manner and being a knowl-
relative national and ethnic development. The tropes dif- edgeable, well-behaved, and ideologically correct kind of
fer primarily in their most immediate scales of reference, Soviet citizen. Kul’turnost’ was a shifting but essentially
then, as post-Soviet teachers’ commentaries still reflect. persistent coding or logic of social values, wherein the
In many ways, the roles played by commodities in this proper use of objects indexed professional achievement as
Soviet civilizing project are strikingly similar to those that well as moral – ideological correctness. Such ideals main-
have been observed in empire-building projects elsewhere tained a more international significance, as well, as mate-
in the world (Burke 1996; Comaroff 1996). Specific to the rial prosperity was held as evidence of Soviet progress and
communist case was a particular kind of emphasis on col- superiority—even if such materialism was also in tension
lective and individual labor as the basis for access to goods with the explicitly antibourgeois goals of the ‘‘dictatorship
and a special insistence that great prosperity was or would of the proletariat’’ and if enthusiasm for Soviet progress
soon be universal within the Soviet Union. Although ma- was tempered by warnings against the kind of spiritual
terial prosperity was most accessible to the new adminis- degradation proclaimed to characterize the capitalist West
trative elite, the ideology of kul’turnost’ stressed that the (e.g., Zamoshkin 1969). Mass media in the Soviet Union
goods people desired were available to anyone in exchange and throughout the Eastern Bloc touted the material stan-
for hard work—or that they would surely be accessible to dards of living enjoyed in their countries as among the
all citizens soon, even if reserved for some members of best in the world and as rising all the time, leading citizen-
the front guard now (Dunham 1976; Kelly and Volkov 1998: ries to think of consumer goods as their right (Crowley and
295). In this sense, kul’turnost’ masked and legitimated Reid 2000; Humphrey 1995; Verdery 1991, 1996).
483American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
Still, this ‘‘right’’ was continually frustrated as con- grounds of the teachers and social players were various:
sumer shortages persisted, such that acquisition of desired Some of them had been trained at pedagogical institutes
goods actually required continual social networking and and had been teaching in public schools for as long as 20
considerable stores of knowledge, ingenuity, and exper- or 30 years; others had fled professions such as engineer-
tise.11 Travel to other socialist countries in Eastern Europe ing and applied sciences, for which funding and demand
along with occasional images from Western Europe and had dried up in 1990s St. Petersburg, choosing the field
the United States through tourists or the Voice of America of education because of a consistent need for teachers.
fed a growing sense that Soviet conditions compared un- The most immediate roles played by all of these women
favorably with those elsewhere and were no longer im- and men as teachers and within the schools, however,
proving (Bushnell 2003). Yet expectations of increasing shaped their experiences of socioeconomic upheaval in
prosperity and of linear progress toward higher levels of significant ways.15
civilization have continued to resonate, contributing to the They often felt that Russia’s more respectable, knowl-
way at least some citizens contemplate their shifted posi- edgeable, useful, and hard-working subjects were not able
tions vis-à-vis local and global hierarchies of value and to consume in the cultured if modest manner that really
material distribution.12 In the following two sections, I ex- befit them, whereas sketchier characters were consum-
plore teachers’ talk about questions related to cultured- ing far beyond what they appeared to deserve.16 The nou-
ness and to civilization in turn. veaux riches of the 1990s, popularly known as the ‘‘New
Russians,’’ embodied the discrepancy most clearly, at
least in the common stereotypes, according to which they
Contemporary struggles over culturedness
had immodest and conspicuous taste in clothes; spent
and commodification
money extravagantly and pointlessly; possibly engaged in
In the late 1990s, everything one might desire had become criminal activities; and showed a lack of proper respect
readily available in St. Petersburg’s shops, and money (as for others and a dearth of intelligence, education, and
opposed to social contacts) had become more primary to culture. These stereotypes were widespread, mirrored
the fulfillment of everyday needs. Yet people were uncer- and coproduced by the media (e.g., in stories in the daily
tain how much of it they would have from month to month Peterburg-Ekspress), and were the subject of myriad pop-
or how another sudden jolt of inflation might suddenly ular anekdoty, or jokes (Krylova 1999; Patico 2000). Even
devalue their salaries and savings.13 Although teachers and, while the New Russians were roundly ridiculed, however,
indeed, most families still very much depended on public the continuing need for kul’turnost’ articulated in the
education (the former for their livelihood, the latter for anekdoty was also being eclipsed in public fora such as
their children’s educations and professional futures in a the most popular glossy women’s magazines (Cosmopoli-
highly literate society), schools now received only scant tan, Domashnii Ochag) by more explicitly consumerist
financial support from federal and local governments, admonitions to be ‘‘super-fashionable’’ (super-modnyi)
squeezing teachers between forces of structural change and highly conscious of one’s ‘‘image’’ (imidzh), represent-
and the need to provide for their households and pre- ing a partial shift away from the calls for modesty and so-
cipitating conflicts between teachers and their students’ cial centeredness that had characterized an earlier era.17
families. Without a doubt, the level of their state salaries Many St. Petersburg public school teachers were sus-
(usually barely enough for the subsistence of one person, ceptible to these kinds of encouragements; among my
let alone a family) gave them little reason to feel appreci- acquaintances, this was especially true of younger, child-
ated or privileged—especially in the year following the less, or unmarried women in their twenties and thirties
ruble’s plunge (Patico 2001a). ‘‘No one is thinking about who had relatively more time and money to spend on their
us,’’ one teacher summarized, asking rhetorically: ‘‘Who individual desires for self-improvement. Yet many also
lives better here (u nas)? Someone who produces or sells, found culturedness to provide a meaningful frame for
or works in a bank. We [teachers] don’t produce anything thinking about contemporary matters of social difference
concrete. [The attitude] works out to: go ahead and live, and worth. Unsurprisingly, given their own professional
however you want.’’ commitments, teachers associated kul’turnost’ with edu-
Although teachers’ specific roles as educators and cation, interest in high culture (museums and literature),
transmitters of culture are salient here, their more signifi- and being intelligentnyi (knowledgeable, part of or re-
cant commonality of experience in the late 1990s (at least lated to the intelligentsia)—although such attributes could
in terms of the questions considered by this study) was also be, at least rhetorically, declared nonessential to
based not so much in a shared professional identity or culturedness. For, beyond those qualities, the adjective
calling but, rather, in their shared structural positions as kul’turnyi referred to someone who was respectful of
well-educated, relatively poor state employees.14 Mean- others and, as one teacher put it, ‘‘[knew] how to behave
while, the professional as well as family and financial back- in a given situation.’’
484To be happy in a Mercedes n American Ethnologist
These virtues were often taken to be lacking in con- ing improvements. ‘‘When you are wearing the same out-
temporary civic and social realms. In fact, dealing with fit all year,’’ another regretted, ‘‘you want something
unpleasant people who had money was a recurring aspect new. Looking noticeably worse than the students is some-
of life for teachers at the two schools I studied (the link how unpleasant.’’
between money and unpleasantness often was seen as A young teacher and active English tutor, Anya, ex-
causal: most likely, well-to-do people had accumulated plained that she made sure to ‘‘look after herself’’ very
their money thanks to a lack of scruples). Both schools carefully so that she would be attractive in every detail
were relatively prestigious and well-reputed public insti- (hair, nails, etc.) when she went to people’s homes to give
tutions, so that entrance was difficult to gain. Here, finan- lessons; she had noticed that people liked it. But fashion-
cially struggling teachers came into regular contact with conscious Anya had also been taken aback by a blatant
the parents of their students, many of whom teachers de- example of the evaluation of teachers according to their
scribed as quite ‘‘well-off’’ (obespechenie). Some of the attractiveness rather than their teaching. A student’s
families were also members of the ‘‘intelligentsia,’’ as mother (herself displeased about the incident) had told
teachers characterized them; and teachers sometimes Anya about a comment that her young daughter had
established friendships and exchanged favors with those made about another teacher at their school. ‘‘Mama,’’ the
parents with whom they felt they could see eye to eye girl had said, ‘‘how can I respect my teacher if she has a
(Salmi n.d.). Others did not; one woman, who enjoyed a run in her stocking?’’ In another context, the run itself
relatively secure financial position thanks to her husband’s might have been treated as a form of unculturedness. But
earnings from multiple jobs, said that she preferred not to although Anya would scarcely have been caught dead with
feel obligated to parents who might later demand favors a run in her own stocking, the tone in which she recounted
such as higher grades for their children. the story suggested that the girl’s judgment illustrated
On a darker note, teachers (and, notably, a school psy- the cold, precocious materialism of a new generation of
chologist) also correlated the wealth of children’s families young people who might discount a well-intentioned
with a range of psychological, behavioral, and academic mentor on the basis of an impoverished wardrobe.
problems: obsession at a very young age with comparing Beyond these image concerns, at issue in relations
their peers’ possessions and social status; suffering neglect between teachers and parents was a certain unease con-
because their parents were more interested in money- cerning their mutual obligations and the role of money in
making than child rearing (a view I saw repeated in St. mediating those relationships. One group of colleagues
Petersburg’s popular press and in nationally distributed told of a small boy from a rich family who had seen a
women’s magazines); difficulty with their class work and workman doing repairs in a school hallway and had re-
dependence on private tutoring. ‘‘They get used to doing ferred publicly to him as ‘‘my worker.’’ Teachers inferred
nothing in school and then go for their private lessons that having gotten used to his family’s employment of
and everything is explained to them,’’ teacher Nadezhda various individuals (such as carpenters who might come to
complained; ‘‘the tutor explains and their parents pay.’’ do fancy renovations in their apartment—a sign of privi-
Teachers and others criticized private schools for allegedly lege), the child must have found it natural to think of
espousing a starker kind of grades-for-cash approach. any such laborer as ‘‘my’’ worker and of any teacher, one
The teachers’ poverty in comparison with most of woman bemoaned, as ‘‘my’’ teacher. In their telling, the
their students’ economic standing was sometimes a source personal pronoun my came across as offensive because
of embarrassment in interactions with both pupils and it was interpreted rather literally to express possession, or
their parents. Teacher Lena described how her young perhaps simply—and no less offensively?—personal em-
students had taken note of things she did not have, asking ployment of a teacher by a family rather than by the state
questions such as, ‘‘You don’t have a watch??’’ implying or by a particular educational institution.
that they were shocked she could not afford one (which, What kinds of attitudes toward the commodification
Lena explained, was not strictly true; she had already lost of cultured labor and the revaluation of different subject
or broken a few watches and could not afford to keep positions can be seen here, at this intersection of public
buying them). A particularly insulting incident had arisen institutions and private capital? The women and men who
when uniform jackets were being made for the children taught at these schools were not really opposed to the
in her class. A parent helping to organize the making of idea, in itself, of working privately for other individuals.
uniforms had said to her, ‘‘Why don’t we have a jacket Neither did they seem particularly resistant to the private
made for you too? It will be all of 300 rubles.’’ ‘‘All of funds that were flowing into public schools. Rather, what
300 rubles,’’ Lena repeated to me, indicating that the appeared really troubling to them was the thought that
parent’s remarks had been particularly offensive to her: a wealthy family might try to ‘‘employ’’ them; that is, that
they implied that her appearance was poor as well as a family would assume it could control a teacher because
called attention to the difficulty she would have afford- it had money to pay, in effect, hiring the teacher as its
485American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
own private employee. In Soviet Russia, as one teacher put This version of events is, of course, framed exclusively
it, ‘‘a teacher was [treated] something like a tsar or lord . . . by the perspectives of teachers; others I encountered com-
whereas now it is like working for a family. Even if the plained about the money that was continually demanded
parents know nothing about the educational process, they by public schools for tutoring, exam preparation, additional
will allow themselves to criticize it . . . at private schools after-school English courses, unofficial school entrance
teachers work under even closer parental control, because fees, ‘‘voluntary’’ contributions for special events and class
people who are paying money want successes, results’’ presents to teachers, and so on. I heard teachers acknowl-
(emphasis added). edge the need for ‘‘sponsors’’ (sponsory), that is, wealthy
The idea that teachers were ever treated like tsars in parents who contributed money to supply the schools with
the Soviet Union is rather a stretch (Jones 1991). Still, the new furniture, building renovations, or teaching materials
respect and deference they had been granted as educators not covered by state funds. (Often, these were unofficial
and as socializers of Soviet youth contrasted starkly—at payments that secured places for donors’ children at the
least in the minds of some teachers themselves, and par- schools. Most teachers were less directly involved in the
ticularly in retrospect, in the nostalgic light that has been collection of such fees by school administrators, higher-
cast by post-Soviet processes of marketization—with the ups who functioned at some remove from the rank and
less-attractive notion of ‘‘working for a family,’’ being re- file.) Meanwhile, many, especially English teachers whose
tained, as it were, as domestic labor. Liza, a young teacher in linguistic expertise was in great demand, worked as hourly
her twenties, developed this thought, explaining (by way of tutors in the evenings and on weekends, receiving pupils
elaborating what it meant to her to be intelligentnaia) that: at home or paying house calls. Although they were chroni-
cally overworked, being able to take extra students and to
I give knowledge and upbringing (vospitanie) to chil- set their schedule and fees as they liked provided a wel-
dren. If I work as a governess (guvernantka) and come opportunity and an important source of supplemen-
give it to just one child—this is a different matter. tal income.18
That is called a servant (prisluga)! . . . I have the need In other words, teachers themselves were involved to
to be useful to society (potrebnost’ byt’ nuzhnoi varying degrees in certain forms of private enterprise and
obshchestvu). That’s why I didn’t become a sales- money transactions even within the domain of the school;
person at a shop (lavka)—it’s not a way to realize what is striking is their own accountings of their con-
my possibilities. strained power to determine the terms on which they and
their services would be consumed. Legitimized author-
In short, although many teachers were willing or at least ity and professional integrity, on one hand, and cash re-
financially compelled to offer their services to individuals sources, on the other, could be variably understood either
for cash in certain contexts, in the classroom they were as mutually exclusive and competing value forms (a
supposed to be doing something different. Their work wealthy person was likely to be unpleasant) or as mutually
there was understood to have a special kind of social jus- reinforcing ones (good pay begetting good quality of
tification and legitimacy. service and vice versa). The question of how these two
That legitimacy they now felt to be in question, as forms corresponded (and in whose favor), then, was just
circumstances mostly beyond their control were pushing what teachers (and parents) were struggling to define.
them up against divergent scales of value, scales on which
parents’ money would be weighed against the other po-
The state of Russian civilization: Globalized
tential but threatened bases of cultural authority. For
consumerism as a parallel scale of value
teachers, it was the suggestion that wealthy parents might
and desire
be able, with their cash, to dictate coercively the terms of
the exchange—what their money would buy, where, and Turning to the more explicitly cross-cultural scale of
when—that was most upsetting because it seemed to put value represented by standards of civilization, I do not
teachers in a position of greatly weakened institutional mean to say that teachers represented a conservative old
authority, able to do little to challenge the power of other guard that was resolutely, naively defending kul’tura and
people’s money. The immediate setting of the school the institutions of a bygone era from seemingly inevitable
was an important stage for these dramatizations of value: forces of commoditization. To assume so would be to ob-
Here, the presumptuousness of the rich dealt a penetrating scure many of their motivations and hopes for the future,
blow to teachers’ sense of the worth of their hard-earned because the teachers and their families were mostly in
professional knowledge and qualifications, at least as favor of the most emblematic changes of the past decade.
conferred by their official positions if not also by a more They wanted to improve their homes, wardrobes, and
universal kind of value they believed to inhere in educa- diets, and they more or less accepted the idea that build-
tion and in kul’tura. ing a Western-modeled market economy was the only
486To be happy in a Mercedes n American Ethnologist
conceivable path toward such progress, for themselves ‘‘behind’’ the United States and Western Europe (Figures 2
and for the nation as a whole. Such attitudes must signifi- and 3).20
cantly complicate an understanding of the resentfully anti- Often the situations that prompted these comments
commercial sentiment teachers appeared to espouse from were not ones I could anticipate, as these examples from
their positions as neglected and cultured representatives the field illustrate.
of public institutions.
As I have noted, not only was Russia a center of in- A friend asked me what I thought of Mary Kay cos-
dustrial modernization within the Soviet Union but Soviet metics. They had appeared in St. Petersburg and she
mass media also proclaimed the Union to be a world wondered whether they were popular in the United
leader in terms of its technological and consumer sophis- States. I told her that I thought that they had been
tication and the citizenry’s comfort and prosperity. These more popular a decade or so ago. ‘‘Of course,’’ Olga
replied. ‘‘We are ten years behind in everything.’’
claims were not entirely persuasive to the population
(Humphrey 1995; Lapidus 1983; Verdery 1991).19 Nonethe-
‘‘Here everything is simpler’’ [u nas vse po-proshche],
less, the deluge of attractive and previously unfamiliar com-
a woman told me when I likened her plant, which I did
modities that flowed into Russia from the United States,
not recognize by appearance or name, to wheat grass
Europe, and throughout the world in the early 1990s I had seen in the United States. Hers, it turned out,
proved to be unnerving and even insulting (obidno) as was oat grass; wheat grass, she explained, ‘‘is a more
people struggled to ‘‘catch up’’ on developments they had expensive [plant] culture,’’ and, thus, she deemed my
missed (‘‘We didn’t know there could be a bathroom like familiarity with it a reflection of U.S. sophistication.
that!’’ as one woman recalled). In all kinds of contexts,
the teachers, their families, and other acquaintances told Responding to a question about ‘‘civilization breaking
me—sometimes with a smile or laugh—that Russia was out all over the world’’ (the question posed by her
Figure 2. Generic, Soviet-style storefronts (such as the one that announces this shop simply as a ‘‘Bakery’’ to passers-by) persist in the postsocialist era.
Photo by J. Patico.
487American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
Figure 3. Soviet-style establishments coexist now with local and international franchises such as this café, one of several popular chains in St. Petersburg,
2003. Photo by J. Patico.
teachers really referred to civilization’s ‘‘breaking up,’’ technology and material culture as well as in its social
but she misunderstood the idiom), a serious and col- relations—than Europe (esp. the western and northern
lected high school girl taking an oral English exam countries) and the United States. Humorous, ambiguously
asserted that civilization comprised technology and disparaging evaluations of Russian development took
‘‘polite relations among people,’’ including the ability part in a kind of ‘‘cultural intimacy’’: ‘‘the recognition of
to make contracts and to depend on others. The girl
those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a
judged that civilization was not flourishing in Russia,
source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless
in which, although it was trying to emulate the West,
such ‘‘polite relations’’ were not prevalent as yet. provide insiders with their assurance of common social-
ity’’ (Herzfeld 1996:3). They were often tinged with notes
of irony, poking fun at ‘‘Western’’ as well as Russian life, at
On a national television talk show, a bachelor who
times pointedly. Some evaluations acknowledged down-
liked to spend all of his time traveling to exotic places
sides to civilization (my neighbor took my lack of inge-
around the world discussed the difficulty of finding
a wife willing to share this unconventional lifestyle. nuity with electrical wiring as an example: ‘‘Civilization
His next planned journey would take him to see how has spoiled you’’) and, conversely, some found worth in
a Stone Age tribe in Africa lives. Russian girls are used the skills and hardiness that come from living under more
to civilization and are not interested in that kind of adverse conditions.
life, the young man regretted. In response, the host of More importantly, these commentaries were premised
the show proclaimed that ‘‘if you want to see the on the notion that a well-developed material culture was
Stone Age, you can stay here!’’ integral to, and an indicator of, any normal or standard,
civilized society. Likewise, kul’turnost’ was linked with a
In short, in more sober conversations as well as jokes, people well-groomed, dignified, and appropriate material presen-
portrayed Russia as less civilized and sophisticated—in its tation of self: a kind of ‘‘self-civilization’’ (Dunham 1976)
488To be happy in a Mercedes n American Ethnologist
that paralleled Russian civilization writ large, even as it with which the speaker thought I—my Americanness fore-
critiqued the excesses of the nouveaux riches brought into grounded—would be uncomfortable. A makeshift door
being by the post-Soviet market economy. By these lights, handle, crafted from a stick; a broken-down, messy house
the national self-denigration and ‘‘self-peripheralization’’ (the hostess invited me to visit even though it was not in
(Liechty 1995:186) implied in such comments, and the very presentable shape—I could visit it as exotica); a
positive value attached to lifestyles perceived as Western, traditional-style oven at the family dacha—all of these
should be taken seriously (if not quite at face value) as were placed in the category of ‘‘Russian exotica.’’ The first
indicators of how many people were construing differ- time I met teacher Maria, she asked me why I had chosen
ences and inequalities on a global scale.21 to come to Russia. ‘‘For something different, wild?’’
As in the New Year’s Mercedes debate, these charged Exotica modeled a relationship of inferiority and dif-
comparisons were sometimes articulated with special ference configured in time as well as space: It comprised
clarity at ritual moments of communal stocktaking. In a artifacts and lifeways understood (or hoped) to be on their
birthday toast to me, one teacher, Larisa, said that per- way into the past.25 Against the backdrop of Russia’s and
haps at some time in the future the situation in Russia the Soviet Union’s historical civilizing projects, it rein-
would be better than it was now so that I would want to forced a familiar model of linear development that evalu-
come back not to work but prosto tak, just to visit. Another ated peoples and places by relating them to one another
guest, a teacher’s husband and a former naval officer who in a hierarchical way. (It also, tongue-in-cheek, placed
had sailed around the world, commented that conditions Russia somewhere much lower on the civilizational scale
were not so bad in Russia; in other places life was much than speakers would be likely to locate it in full seriousness
worse. ‘‘Where?’’ Larisa asked challengingly. Africa, he or than they would have been likely to locate it just a few
argued, China. Larisa looked at him, nodded, smiled, and years ago in the last days of the Cold War.) To a certain
said, to the amusement of the other guests: ‘‘Yes, if we extent, people distanced themselves from exotica by joking
were only blacker, it would be just like Africa here!’’ The about it, effectively declaring that they were not worthy
joke presented a pointed critique of the current state of of their degraded material position in the world or perhaps
things in Russia. No concrete parallels were drawn be- simply pointing out that they were personally savvy
tween people’s lives in the two locales, but the point was enough to have an idea about what they were missing.
clear: Living conditions were so poor in St. Petersburg that The jokes both dramatized and leavened situations of fi-
they could be compared to those of blacks in Africa, who nancial hardship and the humiliation they entailed.
stood for the most primitive lifestyle of all. On another Such ambivalence was mediated, furthermore, in
day, the same naval officer compared my modest kitchen teachers’ more concrete consumer judgments. One often
favorably to rooms in which he had seen entire families heard that expensive ‘‘Western’’ goods (from the United
living in Africa; hearing this, a companion declared, ‘‘Com- States, western Europe, Italy, and Scandinavia) were high
pared to Africa, we feel good about how we live!’’22 in quality (clothes and electronics were especially desir-
Thus, as they evaluated the conditions of their own able). A pointed example of this sensibility is people’s re-
lives and events in Russia, more generally, Russians used ference to the ‘‘Eurostandard’’ as a way of distinguishing
regional and national shorthands (‘‘Russia’’ vs. ‘‘Europe’’ among the many goods from around the world that are
or ‘‘Africa’’) to measure and compare standards of techno- readily available in shops and marketplaces. When they
logical advancement, economic development, and polite cited this standard, they situated below European goods
relations, conceived as interrelated aspects of cultural and both Russian goods (many of which were apparently held
civilizational advancement. (Nevertheless, that some re- in higher regard before the opening of the market ‘‘en-
marks were humorous drew attention to the distance in lightened’’ everyone) and the products of Asia and areas
culture and sophistication normally assumed to exist be- marginal to Europe: Turkey as well as Korea and China.
tween the two environments and their inhabitants—a They also suggested that the ‘‘European’’ was not merely
difference represented here through the imagery of race.)23 a fashion, preference, or cachet but, rather, a standard of
In a similar manner, the less-than-satisfactory material quality, sophistication, and propriety.26 Young, fashion-
world of St. Petersburg was vividly described through the conscious women tried to eschew garments from Turkey,
language of ‘‘exotica.’’24 Korea, and China—even if an inspection at first glance
Conversations about exotica were especially active suggested to the eye that a particular item was actually
during the financial crisis of 1998 and its aftermath and attractive and durable. Anya fretted as we walked to a shop
had somewhat subsided in 2003, during a period of rela- where she was comparing the fit of several different leather
tive economic recovery. In the late nineties, in a variety of skirts, comparable in price but some from Germany and
analogous contexts, the term exotica (ekzotika) was offered others from India and other points east. ‘‘If the price is
up, always with a wry smile or laugh, but also, seemingly, the same,’’ she reasoned, ‘‘why would I want to buy some
as part of an actual apology to me about an environment Indian trash (drian’)?’’ (Patico 2001b). (In the end, Anya, in
489American Ethnologist n Volume 32 Number 3 August 2005
fact, purchased the Indian one as its cut and fit were the also was tempered by a more explicit degree of support
most appropriate for her—but not without some worry for the progress—however slow and uneven—such trans-
and extra consultations with salespeople.) formations were understood to represent.
Yet, at the same time, a perceived risk was attached
to buying some imports—primarily imported foods—
Tropes of value, visions of the good life, and
because, as teacher Kseniia said, ‘‘Europe throws [its un-
the politics of social difference
wanted, shoddy, or stale] goods out here, as to the Third
World.’’ Kseniia’s phrasing is telling because in the com- Maria, a woman who was fairly pessimistic and bitter
mon parlance of the Soviet era, it was the state that ‘‘threw about the post-Soviet state of affairs in Russia, noted that
out’’ goods to the shops for people to buy. ‘‘ ‘They’ threw out she was in favor of the market—she professed to harbor
(vybrosili) or chucked out (vykydivali) goods to people in little nostalgia for the old centralized socialist economy—
stores. This was recognition that shops and markets but would prefer a ‘‘civilized’’ capitalism to the ‘‘wild’’ one
were lower-priority parts of the same system as the spe- Russia had now. Jumping straight ahead to the civilized
cially distributed packages of luxuries to officials and version would be nice, Maria concluded.
the nameless, closely curtained buildings that contained Her contrast of the civilized with the wild was meant,
foreign-currency stores’’ (Humphrey 1995:47). The idea that I think, to evoke the contrasts of poverty, criminality, and
commodities from around the world could make sense, striking new wealth and the general impressions of chaos
on some level, in terms of their allocation to the Russian that have so disrupted Russians’ senses of order and con-
poor brings into sharper focus the particular kinds of con- tinuity in the past decade. As the teachers’ bitterness
nection people were making between populations’ worth about ‘‘employment,’’ as discussed above, makes clear,
and the material conditions in which they lived: For, seem- part of what makes the post-Soviet economy feel so wild
ingly, a new seat of authority had assigned and released to people is the discomfiting way in which bases of author-
these goods to Russians, thereby assessing their places in ity are unnervingly vulnerable and terms of exchange can
a hierarchy of merit and priorities. Indeed, the analogy become startlingly fluid. This indeterminacy has to do with
suggested that capitalism had introduced new ‘‘thems’’ contested forms of value and struggles over their inter-
from the wealthy ‘‘West’’: agents vaguely imagined but relation in both immediate, social and much grander,
more locatable than any ‘‘invisible hand,’’ higher-ups who ‘‘civilizational’’ terms. At certain junctures, such as the
‘‘allocated’’ to those down below. uncomfortable confrontation of a teacher with a demand-
Ultimately, then, the denigration of local conditions ing and wealthy parent or the purchase of an expired
did not translate directly into a desire for goods from civi- imported commodity, tangible conflicts were instantiated
lized places so much as it pointed to a set of more dynamic between actors differently situated vis-à-vis nation, state,
relations of power and correspondences of value being and market to define the worth of different kinds of ac-
negotiated (cf. Berdahl 1999; Caldwell 2002).27 Accordingly, tivities and people—to determine, indeed, on what basis
people had developed a pragmatic sense of what the new their needs and priorities were to be weighed against one
pitfalls to the consumer might be and of how to predict another in a postcommunist milieu. But the fluidity of
potential problems and make meaningful links among these scales of value was also the stuff of ongoing con-
observed cases to avoid future missteps.28 One needed to versations in all kinds of contexts, from skirt shopping to
watch out for particular markers, such as nation and fac- classroom instruction to birthday toasts.
tory of origin, unfamiliar new labels, or faked expiration To return now to the story with which I opened: The
dates—on any food products, but especially imports.29 Re- debate’s outcome that night did not mean that the ques-
gardless of whether any or all of the particular suspicions tion was really closed. Rather, the teachers were engag-
of deception and judgments of low quality were legitimate ing in a deliberation about social difference (measured
(and at least some seem to have been), the more important in terms of professional activities and visibly divergent
point is that such careful consumer discernments also consumer styles) and its relation to dignity and social
tended to produce knowledge about the relative position- worth, on the one hand, and material prosperity, on the
ings of individuals, populations, and lifestyles along a other hand. On that evening, worthy, cultured individuals
civilizational scale of value and power.30 were hoped—if not expected—to be the proper benefi-
As in the school conflicts, then, shifting measures of ciaries of higher standards of living, such that one merry
value and authority were being interrogated as unsettling holiday party conversation decided that Mercedes were
questions were raised about why an ostensibly deserving really undesirable, by virtue of their association with
public was not receiving its legitimate rewards. Talk about the troubling people who currently owned them. By the
civilization and exotica reproduced a particular sense of same logic, however, another conversation might well
place and subjectivity: one that, like ideas of forsaken cul- vociferously criticize the conditions (such as a general
turedness, expressed the shocks of marketization but that lack of culture in society) that keep worthy subjects from
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