Informal Practices

Blood revenge – a custom implying that a grave insult has to be avenged by either killing the offender or his male relatives – has for centuries been the landmark of the Caucasus. Various terms have historically been used across the Caucasus to designate blood revenge or blood feud, that is, a cycle of subsequent blood revenges: ch'ir in Chechen, ch'ir or pkhä in Ingush, bidul k'isas in Avar, öttul kisas or badal in Lak, kanga kan (literally blood for blood) or kanly (literally bloody) in Kumyk and Noghai, litsvri in Svan, qanli qisas in Azerbaijani, etc. Owing to the processes of modernisation and urbanisation, this social practice expired in most of the region in the course of the 20th century. However, it is still commonplace in Chechnya and Ingushetia.

The present study uncovers various types of everyday informal mechanisms through which the effectiveness of the Soviet-type communist censorship was maintained. The analysis shifts the conventional perspective on the ambiguity of censorship norms as an opportunity for political intervention to a way of regarding it as an administrative challenge. It also implies breaking with the dichotomous approach prevailing in the literature concerning the relationship and interactions between the “censors” and “authors”, and looking beyond the stereotypical “oppressors” vs. “victims” interpretive framework, and their “fight” respectively. Instead of focusing on the strains and conflicts between the controllers and the controlled, or describing their behavior based on the instructions enclosed in official documents, the analysis focuses on cooperation, positive relationships and the informal practices emerging out of their personalized ties. Interview data, memoirs and contemporary documents concerning editorial life and censorship practices in Romania (1949–1989), as well as examples from other state socialist countries, reveal that the administrative structures of censorship were heavily shaped by informal practices; furthermore, people involved in publishing tended to develop similar and rather stable responses to uncertainties and dangers related to formal censorship norms and practices. These informal practices however had double and diametrically opposite outcomes: intervening through personalized networks on behalf of the manuscripts could slacken the borders between permitted and forbidden topics (competing informal practices), but they could also reinforce the censorship norms. For instance, informal practices built on trust-centered relationships provided extra information about official expectations and the employment of ambiguous censorship norms (complementary practices). Censors might have even infringed formal rules in an attempt to “help” editorial offices by disclosing classified internal information (accommodating practices). Similar effects resulted in the preventive strategies employed by editors-in-chief – consultation with the censors, and trying to obtain advance approval–, which worked in parallel to formal control and ultimately doubled official command (substitutive practices).

The present study uncovers various types of everyday informal mechanisms through which the effectiveness of the Soviet-type communist censorship was maintained. The analysis shifts the conventional perspective on the ambiguity of censorship norms as an opportunity for political intervention to a way of regarding it as an administrative challenge. It also implies breaking with the dichotomous approach prevailing in the literature concerning the relationship and interactions between the “censors” and “authors”, and looking beyond the stereotypical “oppressors” vs. “victims” interpretive framework, and their “fight” respectively. Instead of focusing on the strains and conflicts between the controllers and the controlled, or describing their behavior based on the instructions enclosed in official documents, the analysis focuses on cooperation, positive relationships and the informal practices emerging out of their personalized ties.
Interview data, memoirs and contemporary documents concerning editorial life and censorship practices in Romania (1949–1989), as well as examples from other state socialist countries, reveal that the administrative structures of censorship were heavily shaped by informal practices; furthermore, people involved in publishing tended to develop similar and rather stable responses to uncertainties and dangers related to formal censorship norms and practices. These informal practices however had double and diametrically opposite outcomes: intervening through personalized networks on behalf of the manuscripts could slacken the borders between permitted and forbidden topics (competing informal practices), but they could also reinforce the censorship norms. For instance, informal practices built on trust-centered relationships provided extra information about official expectations and the employment of ambiguous censorship norms (complementary practices). Censors might have even infringed formal rules in an attempt to “help” editorial offices by disclosing classified internal information (accommodating practices). Similar effects resulted in the preventive strategies employed by editors-in-chief – consultation with the censors, and trying to obtain advance approval–, which worked in parallel to formal control and ultimately doubled official command (substitutive practices).

This article explores informal practices in the food sector. The practices of St. Petersburg consumers who buy food directly from local farmers via various short food supply chains (on-farm sales, collective purchasing, street trade, etc.) are analyzed in the framework of James Scott’s concepts of “everyday resistance” and “moral economy” and Michel de Certeau’s notion of “tactics.” Consumers’ tactics are explored, and informants’ attitudes toward conventional retail chains and state agencies are compared to their attitudes to local farmers.

Une partie des étudiants provenant de la République Soviétique Socialiste Moldave (de l’URSS) de la première promotion (année académique 1990/1991) en Roumanie a tenté de tirer parti d’avantages « secondaires » de la libéralisation des frontières en transportant et vendant des biens de consommation divers. La réalisation d’une telle activité d’« économie secondaire » entrait en conflit avec les attentes communes liées au statut d’étudiant et avec l’éthique idéaliste d’austérité personnelle en faveur d’un supposé bien-être collectif, promue dans le discours officiel du régime communiste. Avec le changement des régimes politiques et la délégitimation des anciennes autorités et idéologie, cette activité informelle acquiert de nouvelles significations sociales, morales, symboliques, idéologiques et identitaires. À travers un comportement et un discours que l’on peut qualifier d’immoral à cette époque, cette « minorité active » d’étudiants a contribué à sa manière à la reformulation de modèles rigides de valeurs et de pratiques (considérés comme idéalistes et/ou idéologiquement manipulés), qui ont perdu leur efficacité, tandis que l’Etat réduisait son « monopole sur la violence légitime » et que les libertés individuelles éclataient au grand jour.

Georgian hospitality is widely regarded as an essential part of national tradition, a timeless feature inherent to the whole national community.
However, far from being a mere folkloric manifestation, Georgian hospitality is underpinned by contingent and pragmatic dynamics. Georgian hospitality is an informal economic exchange, developing alongside with, but also separately from, planned economy in Soviet time, and capitalist market nowadays. Informal exchanges taking place in hospitable moments, involving material and non-material items, tie people to each other in ongoing relationships through links of reciprocity and mutual obligation. Thereby, social networks made up of kin, friends, and neighbours, are created and widened. Such networks provide people with psychological, social, and economic support against the shortcomings of official institutions.
Drawing on relevant anthropological literature, and on narratives from Georgians living in London, this paper analyses main dynamics and values of hospitality from late Soviet times to nowadays post - Rose Revolution Georgia. The ambivalence inherent to hospitality practices is primarily highlighted. This ambivalence is to be understood both as an inner feature of hospitality itself and in relation to the systems in which hospitality develops. The paper points out the tension between tradition and pragmatism, generosity and calculation, unquestioned reproduction of cultural institutions and rational agency, which underpins hospitality practices. In addition, the paper focuses on the ways in which such practices are simultaneously supportive and subversive of official institutions in which they take place. Being a way of “getting things done” through the use of unofficial channels, on the one hand, hospitality challenges formal socio-political and economic institutions. On the other hand, such practices support people with resources that official institutions cannot provide; therefore hospitality enables people to get by in systems of scarcity, at the same time perpetuating these systems themselves.

This article provides an empirical analysis of
the South Caucasus’ post-communist blat – a system of
informal inter-personal networks operating on principles
emphasizing reciprocal exchanges of favors. An intricate
web of blat networks emerged in the Soviet Union
as a result of the communist takeover of the public
sphere, which in conjunction with the chronic shortage
of goods and commodities gave birth to an immense
shadow economy in which favors were a key currency.
This study argues that blat in the contemporary South
Caucasus, far from being a vestige of the communist
past, occupies a significant part in political, economic
and social life of the region. While there is little doubt
that the contemporary informal networking is a legacy of
the Soviet era, the blat-culture in the South Caucasus has
evolved since the end of Soviet rule from commodities
to services. In contrast to blat networking in Russia and
other parts of the former Soviet Union, blat in Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia is deeply entangled in the
kinship and clan politics that pervade the region’s elitist
and hierarchical structures. As this study concludes,
although blat-based informal networking generates
social capital and provides its participants with material and social benefits, it presents a serious challenge for
efforts aimed at building democracy and invigorating
civil society in the South Caucasus.

Nello scenario post-crisi attuale, che ha visto la sensibile riduzione delle risorse pubbliche per i progetti di rigenerazione urbana, in molte realt\ue0 urbane italiane e non solo, stiamo assistendo alla crescita di una serie di pratiche urbane micro-spaziali che stanno ridisegnando gli spazi urbani. In questo quadro generale, particolarmente significative risultano le esperienze di rigenerazione avviate a Palermo in cui lo spazio pubblico urbano risulta essere l\u2019esito di pratiche informali avviate dagli abitanti e, successivamente, \u201criconosciute\u201d dalle politiche urbane ufficiali dell\u2019Amministrazione comunale. In particolare, il contributo presenta l\u2019esperienza di Piazzetta del Mediterraneo, un'area abbandonata dello storico mercato di Ballar\uf2 nel Centro Storico di Palermo e che le narrazioni dominanti descrivono come un'area marginale caratterizzata da fenomeni di microcriminalit\ue0 diffusa e precarie condizioni socio-economiche.Nello scenario ...

Le borgate ufficiali costruite a Roma durante il fascismo rappresentano dei luoghi fortemente connotati dal punto di vista simbolico. Il racconto sulla loro nascita, frutto di una complessa costruzione sociale, ha dato forma compiuta alle autorappresentazioni identitarie degli abitanti, legittimandone i motivi di rivendicazione politica. Tale versione, tuttavia, oltre ad imporsi nell’immaginario collettivo della popolazione, è la più accreditata nell’ambito della produzione scientifica. Si pone dunque la necessità di una ricognizione della materia, a partire dalla sequenza cronologica degli interventi, un buon punto di partenza per una rimessa in discussione degli assunti tradizionali. Nel complesso, fondamentali appaiono due cesure, la prima intervenuta dal punto di vista della produzione edilizia, a metà degli anni Trenta, l’altra nelle pratiche abitative poste in essere dagli abitanti, nel periodo compreso tra guerra e dopoguerra.

The official borgate built in Rome during the Fascism period are places strongly characterised from the symbolic perspective. The story of their birth, the result of a complex social construction, gave an accomplished form to the self-representations of the inhabitants, legitimizing the reasons their political claim. However this version as well as impose itself in the population's collective imagination, is the most accredited in the field of science production. The need arises the recognition of the matter, starting from the chronological sequence of the construction projects, a good starting point for calling into question the traditional assumptions. Overall there are two fundamental caesurae: the first intervened from building prodution's standpoint in the mid 30's, the other one intervened in the housing practices put in place by the inhabitants, in the period between World War II and the post World War II.

Using data compiled during extensive survey research carried out in the societies of the Western Balkans, we attempt to contribute to the discussion on whether informality, which in this region is largely present even in formal settings, is a consequence of a specific culture brought about by particular historical circumstances – several centuries of Ottoman rule, delayed modernization, and the legacy of socialism – or whether it is a manifestation of a contextualized rational choice, embodied as a response to the transitional environment in which citizens live. Trying to contribute to these deliberations and create a new basis for the better understanding of these ‘informal ways of getting things done’, we operationalize two sets of indicators that speak in favour of one or the other standpoint. We apply Multiple Correspondence Analysis and regression methods, but the complexity of the analysis produced results that defy simple oppositions. However, we identified perceptions of the level of informality, lack of trust in institutions and readiness to justify informality as the strongest predictors of informal practices, with a non-linear relationship between the age of respondents and their involvement in informal practices, and a rather weak correlation with indicators of their economic, social and cultural capital.

The paper is devoted to the study of the main features of the political process in post-socialist Mongolia. Despite the
formal democratic institutions there are some controversial and informal practices within Mongolia’s political process. One of
them is an ineffective check and balances system that creates a weak government. Another one is a bunch of self-interested
politicians and business factions that dominates in the domestic politics. The third feature is an absence of government’s ability
to make the long-term policy because it has been weakened by politicization of public service. As a result, key policy-making
areas are understaffed with career technocrats while overall posts were filled with party-affiliated officials chasing benefit within
the four-year election cycle. It leads to weakening of state institutions, and inefficiency of state policy, including the social and
economic problems.