Crafts

This chapter focuses mainly on the informal household economy. This is where informal economic activity opposes the formal economy in many respects. At the same time, it is hardly or inadequately described, especially in terms of specific forms of economic behavior of households and particularly on the microlevel of individual local communities and settlements. Therefore, herein I focus on the crafts and trades practiced by individual households in one and a half hundred settlements of several dozen local communities throughout provincial Russia. Using direct observation methods, we have identified numerous crafts and classified them by the type of resources involved. We have distinguished five types of resources, which determine the procurement method, labor intensity, consistency, seasonality, prevalence, and effectiveness of specific types of crafts and trades: natural, household, infrastructural, human, and social resources. In addition, we have also classified the crafts into archaic (traditional) and modern depending on how long they have been practiced locally. An analysis of the prevailing archaic and modern crafts based on different types of resources has allowed us to formulate the concept of the commercial evolution of local societies. Households are always looking to move from available but labor-intensive archaic crafts to modern ones that are not as time-consuming. However, this makes them less resistant to unfavorable external circumstances. Therefore, in the event of force majeure, households generally switch back to archaic crafts. They are the starting and end point of self-sufficient existence of any local society. I conclude the chapter by associating the diverse crafts and trades people practice with six types of local communities distinguished by the degree of spatial isolation and the manner of their emergence and development.