From private to ritual economy. Family income from individual plot and from craft activities in the history of everyday economic life in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1970-1980’s

Expenditures on ritual sociability in Uzbekistan increased in the 1970s to the point of becoming overwhelming in the 1990s and inducing relations of obligations and competition between families. This project aims at documenting this phenomenon and understanding its correlation to the increase of income generated by “private” agriculture and covert craftsmanship in the Soviet Uzbek society. The (state of) structural deficit of the procurement of consumer goods in the USSR can explain, to a certain extent, that families chose to “invest” their resources into their social network. Is this phenomenon also a reflection of a general distrust of Soviet institutions, deemed to have failed in their mission to supply everyday needs and services? In order to find answers to these questions, a team of French and Uzbek scholars of history and anthropology will be conducting an analysis of material from the archives and a field survey on oral history in three regions of Uzbekistan.