'Without Friends, You Don't Exist': The Value of Favours in Istrian Winemaking

Situated in northwest Istria, Croatia, a region characterized by family businesses and prolific volumes of wine, favours by established winemakers to their neighbours are the norm. This chapter shows how winemaking favours are reflective of an ethics of care and part of what constitutes one’s ethical personhood. In the context of their common struggle to make ends meet in farming, favours often seem to defy market logic. The favours of winemakers reflect their value of being a good neighbour, even at personal financial expense, and recognition that were it not for the strange twists of recent history, they would likewise be in dire straits. Their favours complicate our understanding of formal and informal economies as distinct, demonstrating their interwoven and interdependent nature in everyday village life. And while farming and the market are uncertain, their shared ethics of care is not, contributing an important measure of security for this rural economy.