Real estate speculation: volatile social forms at a global frontier of capital

Abstract

This paper provides an anthropological perspective on speculation in housing by using the idea of ‘social form’ as the analytical lens. Instead of seeing speculation as a matter of individual orientation to risk/profit, or as a statistical tendency in a market, the advantage of ‘social form’ is that it introduces the dynamic complex of relations in which actors’ decisions are made. The case examined here is the purchase of housing ‘off plan’ in contemporary Russia, which is a variation of the form found elsewhere in the world. Both developers and purchasers of real estate are engaged in speculation and the main tension in their relations derives from their mutual dependency while having different goals, rationalities and visions of the future. In the wider political-economic context, speculation in housing clashes with two differently organized social forms: the virally spreading protest associations of ruined purchasers and the regional power hierarchies of the business-cum-government world.