The Politics of Monotony and the Proletarianization of Sleep: The Case of Contract Seasonal Wild Berry Pickers in Karelia | Sibirskie Istoricheskie Issledovaniia – Siberian Historical Research. 2025. № 2. DOI: 10.17223/2312461X/48/3

The Politics of Monotony and the Proletarianization of Sleep: The Case of Contract Seasonal Wild Berry Pickers in Karelia

The article analyses the effects of seasonal berry picking workers repeating the same activities over several months? Based on field research among contract wild berry pickers in Karelia (fieldwork was conducted during the berry seasons from 2021 through 2024), the article argues that monotony as a special form of labor is at the base of contemporary seasonal commercial picking. What technologies and disciplines are used to organize and sustain this form of labor? The author demonstrates how the transformation of wild berry picking into capitalist agricultural labor requires, on the one hand, a specific way of perception of the environment among workers and, on the other hand, a specific spatial configuration of labor that breaks the dichotomy of dwelling (dormitory) and workplace (forest). It is suggested that these processes correspond to a blurring of the boundaries between labor and non-labor and, less obviously, between sleep and awakening. The author declares no conflict of interests.

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Keywords

anthropology of labor, commercial picking, seasonal labor, late capitalism, monotony, political economy of sleep, Karelia

Authors

Name	Organization	E-mail
Petryakov Stepan I.	European University at St. Petersburg	spetryakov@eu.spb.ru

Всего: 1

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