“Because I Can’t Sit Still”: Analyzing the Agency of Modern Russian Youth Based on the Case of Craft Entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2024.1.2450Keywords:
youth, agency, young entrepreneurs, craft movement, lifestyle entrepreneurship, entrepreneur of the self, successAbstract
The article analyzes the agency of modern Russian youth basing on the case of craft entrepreneurs. The craft movement is part of the modern global creative economy and includes craftsmen (primarily young) engaged in the manual production of authentic products or services, guided by their own values — creativity, ethics, and awareness in the field of consumption, implementing the project of «entrepreneurship as a lifestyle». The theoretical framework of the study is the post-structuralist redefinition of the concept of agency as subjectivity, discursively produced in frame of neoliberal economy, as well as the critical optics of anthropocentrism studies, which challenge the dominant position of a rationally acting and autonomous «adult» actor.
Based on the results of the analysis of qualitative interviews with young craftspeople of St. Petersburg, collected in the autumn of 2022, the authors found that the agency of young people in this group is carried out at three interrelated levels, namely: personal level (through constant self-development), the level of their business (through the development of their business), and at the level of community united by common cultural consumption and production, as well as common values and a shared lifestyle. It was also found that instead of conventional ideas about markers of success associated with certain social and economic achievements by a certain life stage, young craft entrepreneurs set their own criteria, rules, and values in the created community of like-minded people and consumers of their goods and services. Finding a balance between the production of an active developing self and a comfortable lifestyle in accordance with their own values becomes a key goal for their lifestyle. This balance, which involves gaining a sense of control over their lives and the formation of agency, they find in their business and craft. Entrepreneurship makes it possible to implement the ideas of young people, to bring to life their values, and to redefine the concept of success and self-realization, which manifests their life choice, and freedom in action and decision-making.
Acknowledgments. The article was prepared in frame of the strategic project “Success and independence of a person in a changing world” of the university development program as part of the program of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science “Priority 2030” of the national project “Science and Universities”. The authors express their gratitude for the support to the HSE University, colleagues from the Centre for Youth Studies, as well as Albina Garifzyanova and Kladova Anastasia for their help in collecting data.
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