From Stable “Temporality” to Permanent Variability: The Role of Reciprocity in the Formation of Communities in the “Private Housing Sector” of Russian Cities

Abstract

The article is devoted to the specifics of local communities’ self-organization in the “private housing sector” of a Russian provincial city. It is shown that a significant part of the urban space of the Russian territory is made up of low-rise single-family houses, known as the “private housing sector”. The organization of living space and the way of life in such localities can be defined as “non-urban”. It is shown that reciprocity was the basis for the formation of such communities in Soviet times. Having spread as a mechanism for adaptation and survival in the urban environment, reciprocity has become the most important mechanism for securing the marginality (“temporary”) of communities in the “private housing sector”. Changes in the “private housing sector” in the post-Soviet period led to a decrease in the role of reciprocity in the organization of such communities, which in turn led to their fragmentation and the emergence of various variants of local communities. The article is based on the observation, including participant, of the evolution of local spaces and communities of the “private sector” of Irkutsk, Omsk and Khabarovsk during 2007–2019 and a series of interviews from 2016–2020.