PRODUCTION OF POVERTY IN RUSSIAN COMPANY TOWN:

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PRODUCTION OF POVERTY IN RUSSIAN COMPANY TOWN

• AGENTS, REASONS, CONSEQUENCES

Olga Echevskaya Central European University,
Novosibirsk State University
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Research details

• Research project
• Poverty in Russia local dimensions
• Georgraphy
• StPetersburg, Samara, Uljanovsk, Saratov,
  Novosibirsk, Irkutsk case studies.
• 1 urban and 1 rural case in each region.
• This paper is based on materials from the
  Novosibirsk region urban case.
• Research materials
• Interviews with experts, ordinary people,
  the poor
• Observations
• Archival materials
• Local press

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Company town the project and its trajectory

• Company town a place with specifics of economic
  and structural conditions
• community is chiefly inhabited by the employees
  of a single company or group of companies
• This company (companies) also owns substantial
  part of the real estate and houses (Crawford
  1995 1).
• Therefore, company town is a locality centered
  around one enterprise in all aspects of community
  life being strongly dependent on the enterprise
  and its dynamics.
• in Soviet Russia it was a specific political
  project

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The main features of a company town

• Presence of one key enterprise (or a chain of
  technologically connected enterprises).
• High proportion of local population employed by
  the key enterprise/s (25 ).
• Low diversification of employment of local
  population.
• Quite distant location of the town from other
  larger cities which affects the opportunities for
  mobility for local population.
• This type of locations is quite typical and
  important for Russian economy - in 2008, there
  are 460 company towns in the country, which makes
  40 of all Russian cities and towns (Bakharev
  2008)

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Discourse and de-politicization logic of poverty
production in Company Town

• Specific type of dispossession after the collapse
  of key enterprises (lost jobs, main source of
  employment, income, solidarities and community
  ties) as basis for both objective deprivation
  and universalizing labeling
• Specific underdevelopment rhetoric not
  modernization- but market-based (people seen as
  incapable of fitting into the market economy,
  lacking the market-type skills)

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Production of poverty key agents of nomination
State institutions and alliances

• Dominant definition of poverty bases on
  incapability of fitting into the new condition
  because of the structural reasons and lacking
  key competences)
• Measures for poverty reduction
• Monetary
• Qualification-based

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Key agents of nomination 2 NGOs

• Not yet widespread
• Base their work on individual approach and
  complex definition of poverty (life situations,
  various characteristics of material and social
  conditions of living).
• Importance of expert knowledge
• Help with money and other resources foods,
  clothes, help in home maintenance and gardening,
  etc

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Community nominations multiple faces of poverty

• 1. Almost always an out there phenomenon, and
  rarely and identity.
• 2. Concepts borrowed from the official
  definitions but framed in all kinds of
  justifications
• Braving and Excusing
• Blamed and Respected
• Rejected and Alternatively beneficial, etc.
• Therefore, in lay definition poverty has million
  faces.

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Directions for poverty research

• These optics seem to be productive for
  understanding poverty in CT based on the
  materials we collected
• Trajectories
• Practices
• Competences

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A story Garbage redistributors
Example from StPetersburg Case
Description Redistribution Professionalization
Mutual support of the rich and the post-poor
Dump becomes a tool of successful communication
and managing differences.
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Thank you for your attention ?