The Role of Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet World

3    Re-theorising the economic

Introduction

Every society has to produce, distribute and allocate the goods and services required by its citizens. All societies, in consequence, have an economy of some type. Economies, however, can be organised in various ways. To depict how an economy is structured, three modes of delivering goods and services have been commonly differentiated, namely the ‘market’ (private sector), the ‘state’ (public sector) and the ‘community’ (informal or third) sector (Boswell 1990; Giddens 1998; Gough 2000; Polanyi 1944; Powell 1990; Putterman 1990), even if different labels are sometimes attached to these realms, with Polanyi (1944) referring to ‘market exchange’, ‘redistribution’ and ‘reciprocity’, and Giddens (1998) ...