ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on health and class by investigating interview data in which ordinary St. Petersburg citizens reflect on issues concerning health and the changing Russian society. It aims to the vast economic and political changes that occurred in post-Soviet Russia, focusing specifically on the demographic and health crisis, which manifests itself most clearly in the dramatic decline of life-expectancy of Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The chapter then approaches class as a subjectively felt category and an analytical concept, which captures the ways in which people define themselves and their positions in relation to other people around them. It focuses on interview episodes in which the interviewees talked about social status and health and the inter-connections between them. The chapter explores all contexts in which the interviewees discussed social hierarchies based on income, money, education and other forms of status, and how they saw these characteristics to be linked with health and health-related practices.
