“Oni est’, no ikh net”: “kitaiskie” teplitsy v prostranstve prigoroda

Abstract

The article discusses the phenomenon of “Chinese” greenhouses in suburban areas of large Siberian cities from the standpoint of the actor-network theory. The author takes the case of Irkutsk’s suburbia to examine the scale of the phenomenon and its presence in the local social discourse. He considers the “Chinese” greenhouses both as a complex actant through which suburban localities are merged into translocal networks, and as a mechanism of suburban modernization.