This issue is devoted to the anthropology of work and labour. The introduction attempts to outline some of the most general trends in anthropologists’ discussions of labour, tracing them back to the important socio-political and epistemological contexts in which the discipline developed. We begin with understandings of labour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the works of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber. These classic accounts of labour have played a key role in ethnographic studies of labour and production. We then focus on the role of labour in functionalist and Marxist anthropology, pointing out the political and epistemological limitations of the discipline in the twentieth century, notably its Romantic origins and its blindness to Western colonialism. We then consider the place of postmodern and feminist critiques in anthropologists’ discussions of labour, and briefly review the main themes in labour studies at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The works included in the special issue will be presented in more detail as our narrative unfolds.

Historically, corporatist arrangements have been seen as a way of representing interest groups — in both democratic and non-democratic contexts. Furthermore, social cohesion can be thought of in terms of supply and demand side resources and mechanisms for which corporatism represents a possible vehicle of expression. While the Russian state has generally only paid lip-service to corporatist forms, this article explores the generation ‘from below’ of ersatz work-place incorporation of citizens — attempts to address their needs for representation through the dramatic front and back-stage work within enterprises short of trade unionism. After sketching the history of paternalistic, enterprise relations, the article focusses on the post-2022 context. Based on long-term ethnographic evidence, the author proposes a variety of types of quasiincorporating moments in contemporary waged work in Russia. Three case studies reflect a desire among workers to evoke fictive kinship with their enterprises and the differing stances of employers. These are categorized as possibly generalizable types, from ‘supplicant incorporation’ in new workplaces after 2022; Neoliberal paternalism as ‘fictive kinship’, and ‘realist scepticism’ about corporatist offerings. Articulation of devolved corporatism via metaphors of, or approximating relations of fictive kinship is strongly inflected by paternalist models of interaction extant from the Soviet period. The particular labour paradox in Russia (structural strength yet associational weakness) may lead to the emergence of a devolved corporatism. The paradox, understandable to both workers and employers alike may provoke further the articulation through symbolic interaction and affective modes of fictive kinship.

The article analyzes materials on the nature of labor in the context of informal waste utilization in the two neighboring countries of Southeast Asia — Cambodia and Vietnam. Based on a qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources, it is shown that this type of labor falls under the category of “peripheral employment” and that its participants form a part of the precariat, i.e. a group of workers permanently engaged in temporary work in the shadow sector of the labor market. In the studied countries, this type of employment has gender, age, ethnic, territorial specificities and often stems from a conscious choice of many adult participants in favour of a degree of independence from the employer and a certain freedom in organizing their work and private life. The voluntary marginalization of some garbage collectors can be compared with the life strategies of Zomia inhabitants: they use every means of getting economic and social autonomy — creating business relationships and self-organized communities outside the formal economy whilst also adapting to changes quite easily. Despite the lack of social guarantees and stigmatization, persistence and entrepreneurial spirit enable some of them to get closer to the middle class in terms of income through autonomous business projects. While informal employment in the waste management sector of Southeast Asian countries occurs mainly in cities, it also deeply affects village life. Involvement in the “waste business” has increased the mobility of many rural residents and their connection to cities. Besides that, the case of Vietnam demonstrates the emergence of new “craft villages” which are specialized on collecting and recycling certain types of waste.

The article examines how — due to certain infrastructural, bureaucratic, legislative, regional conditions, and contexts — territories, communities, biographical trajectories, and temporalities that do not obey rural social logic emerged in the Middle Ob region in the 2010s–2020s. The focus is on a layer of little-studied spaces — huts, fishing bases, farmsteads outside settlements. The temporal logic within which these spaces develop is the logic of expectation, preparation for life in retirement. The originality of the situation under study is determined by the gap that manifests itself in various forms of social tension. In the same year, both 40- and 65-year-old men can retire, each of whom spend time in huts, but differently estimate the remaining time of active life in the space between the village and the hut. The frustration of the older generation, often not hidden in conversation, and the young generation’s questions about their plans for retirement make one wonder what is “wrong” with this situation — apart from the inequality of opportunities. A place in the structural hierarchy, a place that pays for a living, is not the ultimate goal of my interlocutors; such unfreedom turns out to be an instrument for liberation in retirement. In order to describe how, thanks to different types of decelerations and accelerations, a special retirement time emerges, created by the expectations of the owners of the huts, I consider what the work that men do in the huts consists of. These questions are in counterpoint to what men’s work looks like in rural institutions: the perception of work in a position as “delirious” confirms the specificity of the two-part strategy of young pensioners. They seek work “dependence” in order to gain “independence” and freedom, which they invest in life and work in the huts.

Using the example of currant gathering, the article explores the hierarchical relationships revealed in the labor practices of an Orthodox monastery in the Russian North. It also discusses the position of an anthropologist who uses at least two models of labor interpretation: religious Christian and secular research. Labour in a monastery is seen as a way for the labourers to transfer their will to God, rather than secular work that aims for results; it is a spiritual activity that leads to Christian salvation. Labourers, laypeople who volunteer to work in the monastery, learn about spirituality from the hegumen and more experienced disciples. This article analyzes both the religious and secular techniques of self-transformation. It also explores what happens when an anthropologist uses the method of autoethnography. This involves acting as the main informant for her research, connecting personal experience with field observations. Methodologically, the article explores the correlation between various concepts: it examines Foucault’s hermeneutics of the subject, pastoral power, and their application to analyzing power relations in a modern Orthodox monastery. The key category of Christian salvation in this context is humility before a superior. The article raises the question of what gives rise to different interpretations and how they relate to the Christian concept of spiritual work and the internal hierarchies within the monastery. These hierarchies are designed not only for the personal salvation of each individual but also for the collective salvation of the entire monastic community, which is managed by a pastor-hegumen within the framework of the monastic economy.

This paper examines the characteristic features of contemporary left-wing cultural critique of social media on an example of the writings of Geert Lovink, a Dutch media theorist and founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. The first part of the paper scrutinizes the connection between the author’s professional trajectory and the dystopian rhetoric underlying his critique of technology. The second part explores the main theses of ‘Stuck on the Platform. Reclaiming the Internet’, Lovink’s most recent monograph. I use it as a starting point for a discussion on the specific place of activism in the academy and the combined roles of researcher and activist. Turning to a number of issues of platform capitalism — from the collection and trading of data to the conversion of all workflows to Zoom during the pandemic — Lovink frames platform capitalism in the context of the well-known critique of neoliberalism. He constructs social media users as totally inactive and no longer able to resist the ‘platform capitalism’ on their own. I show that this assumption contradicts the existing anthropological and ethnographic studies published at the time of Lovink’s work. In actuality, user relationships with platforms are in most cases far more complex and non-obvious. I suggest that the shortcomings of Lovink’s theoretical reasoning are directly related to the author’s institutional position as a left-wing activist within the academy, who, at the same time, produces journalistic texts.