Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the changing consumption practices of the new middle classes in Russia as the medium through which they negotiate their political subjectivities and position themselves vis-à-vis the state under the condition of embargo on food imports and the economic crisis.

Paper long abstract:

The embargo on food imports (introduced in 2014) coupled with the mounting economic crisis has jeopardized the lifestyles of the new middle classes in Russia. The future of these groups - which were largely acknowledged through their westernized consumption practices -, seems now uncertain. Drawing on fieldwork data collected during the period 2015-2016, in Moscow and Smolensk, this paper explores changing consumption practices of the new middle classes and the interplay between their political subjectivities, citizenhood and strategies of positioning within socio-economic hierarchies as well as vis-à-vis the Russian state.

The ethnographic material questions the widespread assumptions about the middle classes in Russia as vanguards of social change and as consumerists preoccupied with the satisfaction of their needs and desires; in short, it allows us to rethink the concept of new middle classes rather than taking it for granted or reifying it. Although "middle classness" remains ostensibly silent as a basis of self-identification in daily practices, I argue that new middle class positions remain influential in shaping people's subjectivities, the ways they interpret, represent and act in the world they live in. These positions are entangled with relations and practices of work and consumption at the specific conjunction of state and capital within post-socialist dynamics.