Domesticating Property: Moral Economies of Post‐Socialist Homeownership Through Rental and Neighbour Relations

Abstract

This article analyses property relations in post-socialism through the analytical lens of moral economy, specifically, in the context of tenancy and neighbour relations in the urban apartment buildings. It draws on 50 in-depth residential biographies of the residents of St. Petersburg, Russia, collected between 2017 and 2021. The interviews represent a diversity of tenures, as well as direct and indirect voices of homeowners and non-owners. The article begins with the socio-historical context of the privatisation and commodification of housing in Russia, which I interpret as a crucial background for understanding of current housing trajectories and everyday property relations in apartment blocks. Based on the stories of the origin of property and the intensity of attachment to it, I analyse how owners imagine and enact their homes through daily interactions with other owners and non-owners who act as their tenants and neighbours. Focusing on the privatised, mortgaged, and inherited property ownership, I identify three trajectories of complex relationships between owners and non-owners in the urban buildings. Looking at housing as a nexus of home and asset, I disclosed different moral economies of housing, driven by the insecurities of marketable relationships of ownership or rent. I argue that, in the context of weak institutions and uncertain futures, the dominance of home ownership as the cultural norm and almost the only officially approved tenure makes vulnerable both those who try to conform to it, and those who opt for more flexible housing trajectories.