ABSTRACT
The issue of whether a sense of ‘privacy’ exists in Russia (and if so, from what date) has been extensively debated. This article looks at the problem from a new angle, taking issue with the rigid division into public and private ‘spheres’ propounded in post-Habermasian social theory. Using material from interviews and participant observation, it argues that the creation of private/intimate situations and relationships takes place in a performative way. Thus, a shop-keeper (someone inhabiting what would usually be understood as ‘public space’) may ‘privatise’ relationships with some customers, e.g. by supplying from his or her own household stocks goods that are not for sale. Privacy (or conversely, publicness) 2 becomes a matter of social practices, rather than of social institutions or ingrained social structures.
