Between profitability and subsistence

This paper analyzes the contemporary economic transformations of the khoziaistva nacelenia under the impetus of market expansion in post-Soviet Russia. Based on an ethnography of marketing processes and inspired by “ethno-accounting,” the author examines the multitude of reference systems involved in establishing a fair price for agricultural goods sold from the home. While economic imperatives and profitability play an indisputable role in the calculation of a fair price, this study also highlights the use of a set of non-economic imperatives attached to the sharing of a precarious common situation, to the food-producing origin of agriculture, and to the social significance of the act of selling.