Sunday, 3 July 2016

Rural gentrification in Russia: Renegotiating identity, alternative food production and social tensions in the countryside

Journal of Rural Studies
Volume 42, December 2015, Pages 154–165

  • a International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands
  • b Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Group, The James Hutton Institute, Scotland, UK
Received 27 October 2014, Revised 16 October 2015, Accepted 19 October 2015, Available online 30 October 2015

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2015.10.008
Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Changes to dacha life reflect capitalist developments in post-socialist society.
•
New Russian elite and middle class dachniki renegotiate Soviet dacha practices.
•
Land and rural property inheritance make gentrification possible ‘from within’.
•
Dachas are sites of social and cultural capital creation and reproduction.
•
Rural residents are directly and indirectly displaced by the dacha growth.

Abstract

In this paper, processes of rural gentrification are assessed in the post-Soviet context. In-depth, qualitative interviews were undertaken with 22 dacha (second country home) owners and 11 rural dwellers in two Russian regions. We draw on Bourdieu's concepts of capital exchange to assess processes of capital investment, social-up grading, landscape change and population displacement. Findings demonstrate a diverse range of approaches to dacha occupation, grounded in the Soviet legacy of elite and subsistence dacha cultures. Gentrification processes are distinguished in three types of dacha settlement: (1) the spread of gated communities through supergentrification and the ‘new dachniki’ movement, (2) transformations within dacha and garden comradeships through inheritance and reorientation of dacha food practices, and (3) gentrification in traditional villages, which features seasonal migration of urban offspring and a growing ‘back to the land’ movement. We focus on the ‘demand side’ of Russian gentrification and distinguish multiple pull factors, such as acquisition of a status symbol, access to rural pursuits, spaces for family reunion, production of ‘ecologically clean food’, and an escape from consumerist society. The authors argue that the analysis of the Russian case identifies areas for further development of rural gentrification literature more broadly, particularly ‘super-gentrification’, alternative food production movements in the countryside and the potential for gentrification from within locales through inheritance and rural wealth creation (in multiple forms).

Keywords

  • Dachas;
  • Counterurbanisation;
  • Gated communities;
  • Back to the land movement;
  • Suburbanisation
☆
The authors would like to thank Dr Sharon Flanigan of the James Hutton Institute for useful feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript and three anonymous reviewers, whose helpful comments helped us to further strengthen the article. The research was co-funded by the European Research Council (the project “Land Grabbing in Russia: Large-Scale Investors and Post-Soviet Rural Communities” 2013–2017, grant number 313781) and the Scottish Government's Strategic Research Programme (2011–2016).
Corresponding author.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
at