The Role of Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet World

9    The internal economies of the household

Introduction

It has been often assumed that self-provisioning is a leftover from a previous mode of accumulation and that the small vestiges that remain will eventually disappear as the formal market economy becomes ever more dominant (e.g. Smuts 1971). Over the last decade or so, however, there has been an emergent recognition that self-provisioning is not some minor practice in post-Soviet societies and beyond, but is extensively used by the vast majority of households in their everyday livelihood practices (Bennholdt-Thomson 2001; Bittmann et al. 1999; Gershuny 2000; Marcelli et al. 2010; Williams 2003, 2005b, 2007, 2008; Williams and Nadin 2010; Williams and Round 2008, 2010). To explain this, ...