The Myth of the Urban Peasant

Abstract

This paper explores, the `myth of the urban peasant', the widespread belief that urban Russian households are surviving the collapse of employment and money incomes by turning to subsistence agriculture. On the basis of the analysis of official and survey data the paper shows that although many urban households grow food in their garden plots, those with low money incomes are the least likely to do so, while subsistence production is a complement rather than an alternative to paid employment. Moreover, those who do grow their own food work long hours for very little return, spending no less of their money income on buying food than do those who grow nothing. The implication is that dacha use is a leisure activity of the better-off rather than a survival strategy of the poor. Regional data suggests that urban agricultural production persists in those regions in which commercial agriculture and monetised relations are least developed which, it is surmised, retain memories of past shortages

An inspired collaboration with Russian sociologists: An interview with Simon Clarke

“…Some of the most striking findings came out of the household survey that we carried out in 1998, which gave us high-quality quantitative data on which to test various hypotheses. One of these, suggested by Lena Varshavskaya of Kemerovo, was that domestic agriculture did not provide the lifeline for the poor that many commentators claimed because the costs of domestic agriculture in time and money far outweighed the returns in agricultural produce, but rather it was a leisure activity of the better off that exemplified the Soviet work ethic, idealisation of nature and traditions of exchange (Clarke et al 2000). Another very significant finding was that of the dominance of institutional over market determinants of wage differentiation, strongly supportive of the traditional, although largely forgotten, argument of industrial relations specialists against labour economists and, in a similar vein, of the complete inability of labour economics to explain the domestic division of paid and unpaid labour.…”

From coping strategy to hopeful everyday practice: Changing interpretations of food self‐provisioning

“…Second, the diversity of motivations for FSP beyond simple economic or cultural impetuses is recognised. Clarke et al (2000) argued that FSP was rather a leisure activity than a coping strategy even in Russia during the transition in the 1990s while at the same time being an important source of food for a large part of the population. Sharashkin (2008) reported almost equal importance among four motives for FSP: auxiliary source of food, connection to nature, hobby/recreation and time spent with other people, all being identified as important by 70%-77% of respondents in his survey in the Vladimir region in Russia.…”

Searching for the plot: narrative self-making and urban agriculture during the economic crisis in Slovenia

“…Researchers challenged claims that urban agriculture offered survival to those too poor to participate in postsocialist economies. They showed that those who grew food continued to rely on market produce, while those at the very bottom of the economic scale possessed neither skills, tools, nor time to produce sustenance themselves (Clarke et al 2000 ). Instead, vegetables from urban plots were understood as pathways to boosting meagre incomes (Round et al 2010 ); accessing community mutual aid (Czegledy 2002 ); or restoring one’s sense of dignity and preparedness (Hervouet 2003 ; Zavisca 2003 ; Ries 2009 ).…”