Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at the ways in which opportunities that opened in the postsocialist period intensified desires and prompted many individuals to adopt high level consumption practices. The dream of owning a private house, however, was bound to be challenged.

Paper long abstract:

An active property development in Pieriga, the suburban zone surrounding the capital city of Latvia, Riga, began at the turn of the new millennium. This paper aims to find out what desires, dreams and ideas of good life Latvians associated with acquiring a private house in the suburb.

Acquisition of a private house in the suburb is here regarded as a model that is being implemented through a series of social practices, including consumption practices. Family desire for a 'normal life' and aspirations to be included in the middle class have called forth a dream of a respectable home.

In summer 2011 and 2012 the author visited a number of households in Pierīga and conducted semi-structured interviews with their dwellers. "Private house as an emotional and vital necessity" emerges as a central category in the analysis of interview data. 'The house' (māja) refers both to a building and to an emotionally charged place shared by family members. At times the same concept refers to a household of an extended family; the narratives about such a form of residency, however, bear a mark of disappointment. Another category, "Memories motivating quest for an appropriate house", reveals how thoughts, values and behaviour have changed in the course of time. Attempts to reclaim one's self-respect once humbled by the socialist state have given rise to a new, nearly irresistable desire to consume. Moreover, having confronted failures and disappointments they admit that emotions rather than knowledge have dominated their consumption practice.