ABSTRACT
The transformation of the former Soviet Union is to a large extent defined by changes in material culture, or in other words by changes in the culturally constituted relationships to objects. The desire for consumption tends to be taken for granted in the West, albeit often with the added assumption that the increased availability of goods constitutes a kind of banalization, or vulgarization, of culture.1 This chapter, focusing on a local and specific context, constitutes an investigation of the appropriation of Western objects on a former collective farm on a remote peninsula in Estonia. I shall argue that the present transformations of the notions of exchange, material success and national identity are to an important extent articulated in terms of the relationships to Western objects, within the wider context of the move towards independence and a market economy.
