This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Keller, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Needs, Desires and the Experience of Scarcity

Representations of recreational shopping in post-Soviet Estonia

University of Tartu, margit.keller{at}ut.ee

This article contributes to the new field of post-Soviet consumer culture studies by exploring the meanings of recreational shopping carried by the Estonian notion of s <caron>oppamine, adapted from the English word ‘shopping’. It draws on empirical data derived from 71 original interviews with Estonian-speaking consumers. Underlying these respondents’ normative judgements of their own and others’ shopping behaviour is a system of moral concepts in which ‘need’ and ‘restraint’ are continually juxtaposed against ‘desire’,‘pleasure’ and ‘excess’. This opposition, while common to a range of consumer contexts, takes a specific form in the post-Soviet conditions of Estonia, marked by a shift from a collectively experienced absence of consumer goods in general to an individually perceived scarcity - either material, in the form of the money to buy available goods, or symbolic, based on an opinion that the new commodities are insufficiently sophisticated.

Key Words: consumer culture • desire • pleasure • post-Soviet • (recreational) shopping

Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1, 65-85 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1469540505049844


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?