Marx Went Away - But Karl Stayed Behind: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm

Synopsis

When it appeared in 1983, Caroline Humphrey's Karl Marx Collective was the first detailed study of the Soviet collective farm system. Through careful ethnographic work on two collective farms operated in Buryat communities in Siberia, the author presented an absorbing--if dispiriting--account of the actual functioning of a planned economy at the local level. Now this classic work is back in print in a revised edition that adds new material from the author's most recent research in the former Soviet Union. In two new chapters she documents what has happened to the two farms in the collapsing Russian economy. She finds that collective farms are still the dominant agricultural forms, not out of nostalgic sentiment or loyalty to the Soviet ideal, but from economic and political necessity. Today the collectives are based on households and small groups coming together out of choice. There have been important resurgences in "traditional" thinking about kinship, genealogy, shamanism and mountain cults; and yet all of this is newly formed by its attempt to deal with post-Soviet realities.

Copyright:

1998

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780472027194

Related ISBNs:

9780472096763, 9780472066766

Publisher:

University of Washington Press

Date of Addition:

02/02/12

Copyrighted By:

University of Michigan

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Religion and Spirituality, Business and Finance, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.