Product Description

In order to understand today's Russia and former Soviet republics, it is vital to consider their socialist past. Caroline Humphrey, one of anthropology's most highly regarded thinkers on a number of topics including consumption, identity, and ritual, is the ideal guide to the intricacies of post-Soviet culture. The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten of Humphrey's best essays, which cover, geographically, Central Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia; and thematically, the politics of locality, property, and persons.

Bridging the strongest of Humphrey's work from 1991 to 2001, the essays do a great deal to demystify the sensational topics of mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism by locating them in the lived experiences of a wide range of subjects. The Unmaking of Soviet Life includes a foreword and introductory paragraphs by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries that precede each essay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61937 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 265 pages

From the Back Cover
"Caroline Humphrey is the world's foremost anthropological student of the socialist and postsocialist Soviet Union. The socialist past is critical to understanding Russia today, and Humphrey shows why better than anyone I know."--Katherine Verdery, University of Michigan

"The Unmaking of Soviet Life offers a rich, nuanced, and thought-provoking analysis of the extra-legal side of Russian economic life in the 1990s, including barter, bribery, and the privatization of protection and conflict-resolution." Peter H. Solomon Jr., Political Science and Law, University of Toronto and author of Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin

"A welcome collection of essays by the noted British anthropologist Caroline Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life should be compulsory reading for everyone studying post-Communist transition or simply interested to know how life has changed in the former Soviet Union since 1991."- Sheila Fitzpatrick,Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History, University of Chicago

About the Author
Caroline Humphrey is Professor of Asian Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, author of several books, and winner of the J. I. Staley Prize for her landmark book The Karl Marx Collective: Economy and Society in a Siberian Collective Farm.