Productive Bodies, Care, and Destruction

Back in 2021, I published an essay based on my article for the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies in the No Niin student magazine. Here is the beginning of that text, accompanied by the amazing illustrations of Zacharias Holmberg.

This essay addresses the paradoxical parallels between more-than-human care and self-destruction in the realm of heavy industries. Through everyday engagement with industrial materials and machines, workers often develop strong attachment and a sense of pride towards industries. However, increased care about the industry may influence workers’ estrangement from their bodily needs. As a result, they start prioritizing productivity over their health and well-being. I define intertwined relations of industrial attachment and self-damage as “destructive care.” This notion encompasses the potentially harmful effects of caring attitudes in industrial settings.

To analyze the problem of destructive care, I discuss the example of Veps, an indigenous ethnic minority residing in Karelia, Northwestern Russia, along the shores of Lake Onega and not far from the Russian-Finnish border. This analysis is based on my ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Karelia in several instalments between 2015 and 2021. Due to the long-term tradition of decorative stone mining, Veps in Karelia have developed strong connections with stone that symbolically dominates their villages’ landscapes and the workers’ life cycles. In Veps villages, the strong emotional attachment of mining workers towards stone influences local visions of health risks and environmental damage associated with mining.

Read the full essay here