To be happy in a Mercedes: Tropes of value and ambivalent visions of marketization:
Jennifer Patico
ABSTRACT
The disintegration of Soviet social contracts has provoked, for many Russians, a continuing deliberation over the tense interrelation between material embodiments of value (wealth and commodities) and moral ones (respectability, education, and kindness). By contrast with previous anthropological tendencies to locate value production primarily within exchange transactions, in this article I identify two historically specific tropes of value ("culturedness" and "civilization") and show how their articulation illuminates positioned experiences of large-scale change and social displacement. From the particular vantage point of St. Petersburg schoolteachers, I consider everyday deliberations about value and social difference as they take form within both local and global frames of reference, examining how these two contexts frequently produce divergent—but only seemingly contradictory—visions of marketization, its desirability, and its sociomoral significance.