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- Title
What Does a "Thank you" Cost? Informal Exchange and the Case of "Brift" in Contemporary Russia.
- Authors
Listrovaya, Liudmila
- Abstract
The following article addresses the complex nature of informal exchange in contemporary Russia. I borrow the term "brift" from Abel Polese in order to analyze a hybrid nature of informal transactions that have a ternary nature embodying bribery, gift-giving, and a mechanism of building social capital. While there exists a wealth of studies on informal exchange in Post-Soviet states and modern Russia, the question of how participants of the exchange make sense of the transactions and conditions of the exchange, how they morally and mentally estimate the value and price of the favors, and how they choose appropriate items for reciprocating for the favors still remains understudied. The study addresses this theoretical dilemma and provides a detailed investigation of the meaning-making process intrinsic to this type of informal transactions. The article provides analysis of the in-depth interviews with citizens of St. Petersburg and demonstrates the complexity of the cognitive work of calculating the right price and estimating the proper value and fitness of the items to be used in the brift transactions. This research generally points to the need for a greater sensitivity to intricacies of meaning, practice, and cognitive work that saturate informal exchange, and further calls for a wider acceptance of the concept of brift.
- Subjects
RUSSIA; SAINT Petersburg (Russia); SOCIAL capital; DILEMMA; BRIBERY; GENEROSITY; COST
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 2021, Vol 44, Issue 4, p479
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11133-021-09485-0