Berdysheva, Elena;
Ledeneva, Alena;
(2019)
Interview with Alena Ledeneva: To Control a Level of Informality You Need the Targeted Therapy of Informal Practices.
Journal of Economic Sociology – Ekonomicheskaya Sotsiologiya
, 20
(3)
pp. 12-24.
10.17323/1726-3247-2019-3-12-24.
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Abstract
In the interview, Professor Alena Ledeneva discusses her research experience, current projects, and plans, and essentially presents her own programme for studying the worlds of informal economies through context-sensitive comparative ethnographic analysis. Beginning in the mid-1990s with a PhD dissertation on the role of blat in the functioning of the planned Soviet economy, today this research programme forms the basis of a unique empirical project for compiling the Encyclopaedia of the Informal World, involving 223 scholars from various countries. The case database collected in the Encyclopaedia… describes national versions of particular shadow practices, includes a list of the latest sociological and anthropological literature for analysing such practices, and is freely accessible to researchers. The interview makes it clear how sensitivity to the methodological challenges of ethnography allows the author to move from retrospective study of a local empirical phenomenon to theorising. The conceptual insights that Professor Ledeneva reaches help to evaluate the quality of liberal reforms, including anti-corruption measures. She shows that when rigidity and double standards lie behind the façade of formal institutions, informal practices simultaneously contribute to both the formation and the destruction of social systems. Until the conflict between rules imposed from above and the responses from below is properly accounted for in socio-political transformations, speaking about minimising corruption will remain very difficult.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Interview with Alena Ledeneva: To Control a Level of Informality You Need the Targeted Therapy of Informal Practices |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.17323/1726-3247-2019-3-12-24 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.17323/1726-3247-2019-3-12-24 |
| Language: | Russian |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10212671 |
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