ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three types of social capital, community involvement, sense of fit in the village and social networks that have bearing on a Russian peasant household's economic and psychological adaptation to the emerging market economy. Community attachment has a greater impact on the mental health of rural than urban residents in America. In addition, the personal helping networks of rural residents are much more "dense" and contain more kin than the networks of urban residents. The informal economy of peasant household production is largely outside of the formal economy and depends on the maintenance of informal exchange relationships. The relationship between household labor and community involvement was linear and the relationship between household labor and the subjective sense of fitting into the community was curvilinear. The significance of the growth in peasant household social networks has to be evaluated in light of the decline in community involvement.
