From Workplace to a Space of Labor: The Case of Seasonal Contract Wild Berry Pickers in Karelia

Abstract

Why do employees work so hard, agreeing to their own exploitation? For a long time, this issue, which has become classic for anthropology of labor, involved conducting an ethnography of labor practices in an industrial workplace. However, what if we take as a starting point the patchwork means of livelihood and the social classes whose members do not have permanent employment? This article, based on current discussions in the anthropology of labor and ethnographies of commercial picking of wild berries, offers an analysis of labor discipline among seasonal workers involved in “non-standard” labor relations. The article attempts to challenge the idea of spatial autonomy of the workplace, analyzing disciplinary power in the labor process in the context of several sources of livelihood. Drawing on a field study among a group of seasonal workers, I demonstrate how the discipline of short-term nonstandard work can be examined in the context of a seasonal labor cycle.