Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
123
Eeva Kesküla
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Defended December 2012
Mining Postsocialism: Work, Class and Ethnicity in an Estonian Mine
My thesis is a study of what happens to the working class in the context of postsocialism,
neoliberalisation and deindustrialisation. I explore the changing work and lives of Russian-
speaking miners in Estonia, showing what it means to be a miner in a situation in which the
working class has been stripped of its glorified status and stable and affluent lifestyle, and has
been stigmatised and orientalised as Other. I argue that a consequence of neoliberal economy,
entrepreneurialism and individualism is that ethnicity and class become overlapping
categories and being Russian comes to mean being a worker. This has produced a particular
set of practices, moralities and politics characterising the working class in contemporary
Estonia, which is not only a result of its Soviet past and nostalgia, but also deeply embedded
in the global economy following the 2008 economic crisis, and EU and national economic,
security and ethnic policies.
Miners try to maintain their autonomy and dignity. Despite stricter control of miners’
time and speeding up of the labour process, workers exercise control over the rhythm of work.
The ideas of what it means to be a miner and ideals of a good society create a particular moral
economy, demanding money and respect in return for sacrificing health and doing hard work.
Increasing differences in consumption patterns are levelled with leisure activities such as
drinking and sport that are available to all. New management practices such as outsourcing
labour and performance reviews assist class formation processes that increase workers’
precarity and the differentiation between workers and engineers in a previously relatively
equal community. Despite this, management practices often have unexpected outcomes in
everyday situations in which actors with different worldviews and ambitions meet. Miners’
labour politics might not correspond to Western ideas of strong unionism, but show that trade
unions can take different shapes depending on local context.
Dr Eeva Kesküla defended her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London at 2012. She has
published articles about the changing workplace practices of Estonian miners in European
Review of History and Journal of Baltic Studies. Currently she is a postdoctoral research
fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in a research group Industry and
Inequality. Her new project will concentrate on the changing work and lives of miners in
Kazakhstan. Her research interests include anthropology of work and industry, class
relations in postsocialism and economic anthropology.
