"The book makes an important contribution to the emerging analyses of middle-class culture in Russia, and highlights issues such as the shame associated with poverty that have been under-examined in previous works."
Michele Rivkin-Fish, University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill
"Patico has produced a richly textured analysis that rings true for a wider swath of society than that simply comprising her teachers."
Foreign Affairs "[F]resh and fascinating . . . Although many studies have shown that middle-class culture cannot be fully understood without examining consumption and consumerism, Patico's book is one of the few that makes a serious effort to theorize this linkage . . . [T]his is an ethnographically grounded and theoretically informed book that deepens our understanding of postsocialist transformations through the lens of a Russian middle-class culture. I would recommend it highly."
Li Zhang
Dialectical Anthropology
"This ethnographic study of Moscow public schoolteachers ... is a fascinating exploration of the teachers' perceptions of their place in the emerging market economy and resentment of the ostentatious, 'uncultured' post-Soviet nouveau riche. Well written and accessible, this book will be useful for anthropologists, economists, cultural historians, and scholars as well as student in Russian and postcolonial studies."
A.H. Koblitz
Choice
"By unpacking consumption as a simultaneously pragmatic and emotional activity, Patico intervenes in current debates about how new post-Soviet persons are constituted, how consumers exercise choice and evaluate those choices, and the new meanings that commodities and practices of consumption acquire in rapidly changing societies. Ultimately, she offers a fascinating and timely glimpse into a Russia that is undergoing profound changes."
Melissa L. Caldwell, University of California
Santa Cruz