No abstract
Historically, Latvia has been integrated into several (multi‐) national state formations that have shaped agricultural practices. Beginning in 1991, newly independent Latvia reintroduced a family farming model and prepared to join the European Union. The ability of small farmers to adapt to and implement the new EU regulations that support farming either as efficient food production or alternatively as cultural landscaping has been contingent upon many socio‐economic and cultural factors. Today, most family farmers have only reluctantly formalized their practices to satisfy the requirements of the EU, while others have readily embraced the current discourses, policies, and laws to strategically access agricultural funds and scale up operations. We discuss these agricultural tensions by contrasting two forms of selective formalization: the reluctant “projectification” of a subsistence farm by founding a cultural NGO vs. the strategic founding of an “entrepreneurial” cooperative of sea buckthorn producers to access transnational markets and development subsidies.
One-person household is the dominant type of household in today’s Latvia. Research on kinship in contemporary Europe suggests that weak kinship ties are characteristic of institutionally strong countries that provide an individual with social security when he or she becomes incapacitated. However, the statistical data on Latvia show that of all household types, one-person households are the most exposed to the risk of poverty, especially those of people over 64 years of age. The article provides an insight into the ways in which the policies implemented by various political regimes in Latvia over the last one hundred years have promoted the formation of an economically independent individual, thus directly and indirectly weakening family and kinship ties. Drawing on our ethnographic data, we explore the situations when the state's welfare system no longer ensures an individual's social security: are family and kinship ties likely to be re-established in such circumstances? The fieldwork findings suggest that those whose next of kin needs additional assistance or care, face a dilemma: either to provide support to the vulnerable relative while compromising their own economic stability, or to delegate their responsibility for the relative to the state. However, our data also show: while the state does not guarantee social security for some vulnerable groups, its social insurance system nevertheless has to a great degree impacted the sense of moral obligation in intergenerational relationships.
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