Paper Short Abstract:

This paper looks at family relations in Riga’s mass housing districts over the course of the 1970s, 80s and 1990s through the lens of moral economy. It shows how complex negotiations within kinship networks regarding the provision of housing came into being that shaped gender and family dynamics.

Paper Abstract:

This paper looks at family relations in Riga’s urban mass housing districts over the course of 1970s, 80s and 1990s through the lens of moral economy. It shows that kinship ties managed to informally distribute resources beyond the market and state. Building on housing distribution lists of the municipality of Riga, I argue that the late Soviet state created and sustained this moral economy and was, then, kept within kinship ties. What sort of intimacies, gender and family relations did this moral economy produce in the late Soviet period and in the transition of the 1990s?

By analyzing court cases and interviews, I demonstrate that a moral economy meant that intimate family relations were inherently about access to housing, living space and proximity. However, this engendered complex negotiations within kinship networks. Sentiments about who deserved and earned to have access to housing and who did not were essential within this moral economy. Instead of understanding moral economy as simply a progressive force, I show that the intimacies that came into being often reinforced strained and paternalistic social relations. Rights and claims to privacy were delicate matters from where conflict emerged on many levels. I conclude by arguing that overtime the community and solidarity beyond the nuclear family regarding the provision of housing and the importance of proximity within family networks turned families inward. Housing became accessible almost exclusively through intimate family ties and social life within the districts became fixated on private and internal kinship relationships.