Not by bread alone : social support in the new Russia / Melissa L. Caldwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caldwell, Melissa L., 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soup kitchens--Russia (Federation)--Moscow.

Soup kitchens.

Social networks--Russia (Federation).

Social networks.

Russia (Federation).

Food relief--Russia (Federation).

Food relief.

Poor--Russia (Federation).

Poor.

Russia (Federation)--Social conditions--1991-.

Social conditions.

Russia (Federation)--Moscow.

Physical Description:

xv, 242 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2004]

Summary:

What Muscovites Get in A Soup Kitchen run by the Christian Church of Moscow is something far more subtle and complex -- if no less necessary and nourishing -- than the food that feeds their hunger. In Not by Bread Alone, the first full-length ethnographic study of poverty and social welfare in the postsocialist world, Melissa L. Caldwell focuses on the everyday operations and civil transactions at CCM soup kitchens to reveal the new realities, the enduring features, and the intriguing subtext of social support in Russia today.

In an international food aid community, Caldwell explores how Muscovites employ a number of improvisational tactics to satisfy their material needs. She shows how the relationships that develop among members of this community -- elderly Muscovite recipients, Russian aid workers, African student volunteers, and North American and European donors and volunteers -- provide forms of social support that are highly valued and ultimately far more important than material resources. In Not by Bread Alone we see how the soup kitchens become sites of social stability and refuge for all who interact there -- not just those with limited financial means -- and how Muscovites articulate definitions of hunger and poverty that depend far more on the extent of one's social contacts than on material factors.

By rethinking the ways in which relationships between social and cconomic practices are theorized -- by identifying social relations and social status as Russia's true economic currency -- this book challenges prevailing ideas about the role of the state, the nature of poverty and welfare, the feasibility of Western-style reforms, and the primacy of social connections in the daily lives of ordinary people in post-Soviet Russia.

Contents:

Transnational soup

Making do : everyday survival in a shortage society

From hand to hand : informal networks

The forest feeds us : organic exchange

Strategic intimacy : communities of assistance

The mythology of hunger

Socialism revisited.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-234) and index.

ISBN:

0520238753

0520238761

OCLC:

52495567

Online:

Publisher description