Czary, klątwy, amulety i pieniądze: o racjonalności magicznej i działaniu ekonomicznym

Abstract

The paper presents some results of the author’s long-term ethnographic fieldwork on petty trade in post-Soviet Russia. It focuses on magical practices and their role for entrepreneurial strategies, and recalls the stories of two tradespeople who worked at an open-air market in Krasnoyarsk, Central Siberia. In order to interpret the stories. I follow the ideas of Bronis³aw Malinowski, who argued that usage of magic can bring measurable economic effects. The claim Iput forward here is that economic magic constitutes a rationality that is launched by people when their ordinary modes of acting have failed. Deploying magic is linked to an order of hope, and emerges as a consequence of individual entrepreneurs occupying an underprivileged position at a Russian market. Practising magic constitutes an example of the embeddedness of economic action in the social world, and as such characterizes not only the Trobrianders but also contemporary, highly-developed societies.