Unnoticed Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Latvia’s Rural Economy

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the constructive and detailed feedback given by Guntra Aistara, Dace Dzenovska and the two anonymous referees who reviewed this manuscript for Journal of Baltic Studies.

Notes

^1. The website of European Network for Rural Development. Accessed 3 August 2012. http://enrd.ec.europa.eu/themes/entrepreneurship/rural-entrepreneurship-gateway/en/rural-entrepreneurship-gateway_en.cfm.

^2. The estimated number of small farms in Latvia is about 79,000, of medium-sized farms approximately 5000 (Tamuļeviča 2012).

^3. A more comprehensive depiction of life and work on smallholdings in Latvia has been presented in a monograph (Cimdiņa and Raubiško 2012b).

^4. “Innovation is a process whereby the new ideas, developments and technologies in scientific, technical, social, cultural or any other area are materialised in a competitive product or service which has a market demand” (EM 2003, 4).

^5. Other publications on this research: Cimdiņa (2011), Cimdiņa and Raubiško (2012a), Cimdiņa and Raubiško (2012b).

^6. The name of the bath-house master is anonymized.

^7. Historically in Latvian farmsteads, the bath-house has been a place for the farmers to wash themselves after hard work using various herbal whisks; the bath-house was not intended for the provision of a paid bath service to others.

^8. Interview with the bath-house master Jānis recorded at his farm, 11 March 2010. All subsequent quotes from Jānis in this section are from the same interview.

^9. Latvia’s national currency.

^10. The work of Schumpeter referred to in this article as (Schumpeter 2000) is the second chapter of the The Theory of Economic Development (1934) – the translated version of the second German edition. The typology of entrepreneurial behaviors Schumpeter offers is: (1) the introduction of a new good, (2) the introduction of a new method of production, (3) the opening of a new market, (4) the conquest of a new sort of supply of a raw material, (5) the creation of a new organization on an industry (Schumpeter 2000, 51).

^11. Conversation with the bath-house master Jānis recorded at his farm, 26 March 2010.

^12. Indriķa Hronika [Chronicle of Indrikis] 1993. Translated by Ābrams Feldhūns. Rīga: Zinātne.

^13. In the works by Anna Brigadere, Ilze Indrāne, Harijs Gulbis, Vladimirs Kaijaks, Kārlis Ieviņš, Kārlis Skalbe, Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš among others.

^14. Conversation with the bath-house master Jānis recorded at his farm, 26 March 2010.

^15. During the year, 284 villages were struck off the register in Latvia. Diena.lv. 19.4.2012. Accessed 5 June 2012. http://www.diena.lv/latvija/gada-laika-latvija-likvideti-284-ciemi-13942801; http://www.tm.gov.lv/lv/jaunumi/pi_info.html?news_id=4150.

^16. Conversation with a regional rural development consultant at his office, 20 August 2012.

^17. Conversation with the bath-house master Jānis recorded at his bath-house, 4 August 2012.

^18. Conversation with the bath-house master Jānis recorded at his bath-house, 4August 2012.

^19. The flower business in the final decades of the Soviet era was a well-known source of money-making; when independence was won back, inherited lands were recovered by many Latvians to use them for agricultural purposes; together with the development of a market economy many cooperatives were organized; as borders could be freely crossed many an adventurer travelled to Germany to trade with machines; and today the bath-house farm has swept all over rural Latvia.

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Agnese Cimdiņa

Agnese Cimdiņa holds a PhD and Masters’ degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. She currently works as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Latvia, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology. Her main research interests: economic and business anthropology, development anthropology.