Eeva Kesküla
Biographic Data
| ID | 177635 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eeva Kesküla |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eeva |
| FAMILY NAME | Kesküla |
| SIGNATURE | KESKÜLA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tallinn University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5359-5584 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Selective intersectionality: Far-right populist Re-casting of social discontent in Europe’s green transition
European regions long reliant on fossil-intensive energy are undergoing change driven by the European Green Deal, yet the green transition remains uneven across regions. In Estonia’s Ida-Virumaa, one of Europe’s most carbon-intensive regions, the green transition intersects with ethnic diversity, economic precarity, and far-right populism, generating uncertainty in communities whose deep regional ties are rooted in the oil-shale industry and shap…
Connected Horizons: Exploring Online Work Aspirations Among Western Digital Nomads and Lao Youth
This article explores the aspirations for digital work among two seemingly disparate groups: Lao rural-urban migrant youth and Western digital nomads. Based on ethnographic research in Laos and Thailand, we argue that despite differing socioeconomic backgrounds, both groups share strikingly similar aspirations for autonomy and self-reliance through online work. This challenges existing theories that emphasize the local context of aspirations, sug…
Tribute to Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962-2024)
Remembering Thomas Hylland Eriksen: A Legacy of Intellectual Curiosity Thomas Hylland Eriksen was a renowned social anthropologist and a formidable public intellectual in Norway and beyond, but above all, he was, he is and he will always remain a very dear friend
Of hopeful narratives and historical injustices – An analysis of just transition narratives in European coal regions
In recent years, the public discourse on the phase-out of carbon-intensive technologies and practices has come to a near consensus that a “just transition” is required. Yet, this term seems to have as many meanings as there are stakeholders using it. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the different meanings that regional stakeholders assign to it and the underlying dimensions of in(justice) that they invoke in their political communication. T…
Antropoloogiline vaade tööle: Mõtisklusi kaevuritest ja diginomaadidest
This article gives an overview of how to research work and labour from an anthropological perspective. Based on the examples of my ethnographic research with miners, teachers and digital nomads, I show how the anthropology of work is based both on the dark anthropology of suffering and the dispossessed as well as the anthropology of the good. Anthropology of work, like anthropology in general, is characterised by a holistic approach, cultural rel…
Challenging the dominant work ethic: Work, naps, and productivity of location-independent workers
This paper critiques the centrality of work in capitalist societies and looks at people who have abandoned their location-bound jobs for the lifestyle of a digital nomad. Five months of fieldwork in Thailand during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that digital nomads aspired to have autonomy over their work, including reducing their work time. However, pursuing their ideal meant negotiating the desire to minimise labour hours on t…
Perspectivas antropológicas sobre o trabalho: Conceitos, Abordagens Clássicas E Transformações
Neste artigo é apresentado um balanço sobre o conjunto de estudos sobre o trabalho, em especial, das abordagens antropológicas sobre o tema. O trabalho é um dos aspectos mais importantes da vida humana e é, ao mesmo tempo, produtor de sobrevivência, sistema de significados, moralidades e princípios organizadores da sociedade. Antropólogos estudam o trabalho em múltiplos contextos, desde sociedades pré-industriais a indústrias altamente tecnológic…
Austerity, skill, and gendered work in Kazakhstan's heavy industry
Earlier analyses have demonstrated the loss of industrial worker autonomy and the rise of deskilling after production is automated. But what happens to autonomy and skill in times of austerity, when automation breaks down? Through studying the labour process in a Kazakhstani coal processing plant, I explore how the lack of investment in machinery and staff influences the way female workers conduct their everyday work. Workers are simultaneously r…
Everyday barricades: Bureaucracy and the affect of struggle in trade unions
Employees in global workplaces commonly suggest they are being failed by trade union representatives that betray the political ideals of their institutions. The tenacity of this discourse requires interrogation, since the notion persists even in contexts that lack evidence of such practices occurring. Based upon a comparison of Kazakhstan and India, we suggest that there is a fundamental slippage between the emotive aspect of union politics and t…
Labor, Employment, and Work
Work is a cultural universal that exists in all human societies. Work is a means of producing a livelihood, a system of meanings and moralities, and a principle for structuring societies. The term “employment” refers to wage labor. Anthropologists study work from preindustrial societies to contemporary high‐tech industries. The key questions when studying work are related to how industrialization shapes relations between home and work, restructur…
Miners and Their Children: The Remaking of the Soviet Working Class in Kazakhstan
Oasis in the steppe: Health and masculinity of Kazakhstani miners
This article studies the masculinities of Russian-speaking miners in Kazakhstan through an ethnographic study conducted in a miners’ sanatorium, a place of heightened sociality. Studies of gender in Central Asia have mostly focussed on women, and both masculinity and femininity are studied in relation to Islam and the nation-state. This article aims to make a contribution to the study of working-class masculinities in Northern Kazakhstan, arguing…
Informal economies in post-socialist spaces: Practices, institutions, and networks
Informal economies in post-socialist spaces: practices, institutions, and networks." Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 25(1), pp. 149–150
The value of and values in the work of teachers in Estonia
This article considers how the status of teachers relates to a changing value system, and how the perceived worth of a profession depends on the values its practitioners carry. The article analyses the work of teachers as both productive and reproductive, needing both material and non-material recognition. It argues that in times of radical social change, social groups struggle to determine what value is. The rapid introduction of a neoliberal ma…
Temporalities, time and the everyday: New technology as a marker of change in an Estonian mine
This paper explores the relationship between men and mining technology in an Estonian oil shale mine. It traces the linear time of socialism and postsocialism, arguing that for Estonian miners, the end of socialism might not have been as radical of a change as changing the mining technology in early 2000s. The introduction of the new technology changed the nature and perception of miners’ work, as well as the opportunities of controlling the ever…
Reverse, restore, repeat
In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of E…
Fiddling, drinking and stealing: Moral code in the Soviet Estonian mining industry
This article explores workplace cheating taking place in the oil-shale mines in the north-eastern part of Soviet Estonia from the 1950s to 1980s. The author focuses on four different types of workplace cheating and misbehaviour: fiddling with production numbers; fiddling with health and safety; drinking and absenteeism; and stealing. These were not the only types of cheating taking place, but were more significant in the mining area and most prev…
Reproducing Labor In The Estonian Industrial Heritage Museum
I would like to thank Frances Pine and Mao Mollona, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Aet Annist and the two anonymous reviewers for commenting on the earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the staff of Kohtla Mining Museum for helping me with my research. Notes 1. The engineers told me that they had white helmets because, if there were an accident or critical situation in the mine, everyone would see the highly visible helmet of the …
Temporalities, time and the everyday: New technology as a marker of change in an Estonian mine
This paper explores the relationship between men and mining technology in an Estonian oil shale mine. It traces the linear time of socialism and postsocialism, arguing that for Estonian miners, the end of socialism might not have been as radical of a change as changing the mining technology in early 2000s. The introduction of the new technology changed the nature and perception of miners’ work, as well as the opportunities of controlling the ever…
Reverse, restore, repeat
In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of E…
Of hopeful narratives and historical injustices – An analysis of just transition narratives in European coal regions
In recent years, the public discourse on the phase-out of carbon-intensive technologies and practices has come to a near consensus that a “just transition” is required. Yet, this term seems to have as many meanings as there are stakeholders using it. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the different meanings that regional stakeholders assign to it and the underlying dimensions of in(justice) that they invoke in their political communication. T…
Oasis in the steppe: Health and masculinity of Kazakhstani miners
This article studies the masculinities of Russian-speaking miners in Kazakhstan through an ethnographic study conducted in a miners’ sanatorium, a place of heightened sociality. Studies of gender in Central Asia have mostly focussed on women, and both masculinity and femininity are studied in relation to Islam and the nation-state. This article aims to make a contribution to the study of working-class masculinities in Northern Kazakhstan, arguing…
Austerity, skill, and gendered work in Kazakhstan's heavy industry
Earlier analyses have demonstrated the loss of industrial worker autonomy and the rise of deskilling after production is automated. But what happens to autonomy and skill in times of austerity, when automation breaks down? Through studying the labour process in a Kazakhstani coal processing plant, I explore how the lack of investment in machinery and staff influences the way female workers conduct their everyday work. Workers are simultaneously r…
The value of and values in the work of teachers in Estonia
This article considers how the status of teachers relates to a changing value system, and how the perceived worth of a profession depends on the values its practitioners carry. The article analyses the work of teachers as both productive and reproductive, needing both material and non-material recognition. It argues that in times of radical social change, social groups struggle to determine what value is. The rapid introduction of a neoliberal ma…
Challenging the dominant work ethic: Work, naps, and productivity of location-independent workers
This paper critiques the centrality of work in capitalist societies and looks at people who have abandoned their location-bound jobs for the lifestyle of a digital nomad. Five months of fieldwork in Thailand during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that digital nomads aspired to have autonomy over their work, including reducing their work time. However, pursuing their ideal meant negotiating the desire to minimise labour hours on t…
Fiddling, drinking and stealing: Moral code in the Soviet Estonian mining industry
This article explores workplace cheating taking place in the oil-shale mines in the north-eastern part of Soviet Estonia from the 1950s to 1980s. The author focuses on four different types of workplace cheating and misbehaviour: fiddling with production numbers; fiddling with health and safety; drinking and absenteeism; and stealing. These were not the only types of cheating taking place, but were more significant in the mining area and most prev…
Reproducing Labor In The Estonian Industrial Heritage Museum
I would like to thank Frances Pine and Mao Mollona, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Aet Annist and the two anonymous reviewers for commenting on the earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the staff of Kohtla Mining Museum for helping me with my research. Notes 1. The engineers told me that they had white helmets because, if there were an accident or critical situation in the mine, everyone would see the highly visible helmet of the …
Fiddling, drinking and stealing: Moral code in the Soviet Estonian mining industry
This article explores workplace cheating taking place in the oil-shale mines in the north-eastern part of Soviet Estonia from the 1950s to 1980s. The author focuses on four different types of workplace cheating and misbehaviour: fiddling with production numbers; fiddling with health and safety; drinking and absenteeism; and stealing. These were not the only types of cheating taking place, but were more significant in the mining area and most prev…
Reproducing Labor In The Estonian Industrial Heritage Museum
I would like to thank Frances Pine and Mao Mollona, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Aet Annist and the two anonymous reviewers for commenting on the earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the staff of Kohtla Mining Museum for helping me with my research. Notes 1. The engineers told me that they had white helmets because, if there were an accident or critical situation in the mine, everyone would see the highly visible helmet of the …
Reverse, restore, repeat
In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of E…
Temporalities, time and the everyday: New technology as a marker of change in an Estonian mine
This paper explores the relationship between men and mining technology in an Estonian oil shale mine. It traces the linear time of socialism and postsocialism, arguing that for Estonian miners, the end of socialism might not have been as radical of a change as changing the mining technology in early 2000s. The introduction of the new technology changed the nature and perception of miners’ work, as well as the opportunities of controlling the ever…
Informal economies in post-socialist spaces: Practices, institutions, and networks
Informal economies in post-socialist spaces: practices, institutions, and networks." Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 25(1), pp. 149–150
The value of and values in the work of teachers in Estonia
This article considers how the status of teachers relates to a changing value system, and how the perceived worth of a profession depends on the values its practitioners carry. The article analyses the work of teachers as both productive and reproductive, needing both material and non-material recognition. It argues that in times of radical social change, social groups struggle to determine what value is. The rapid introduction of a neoliberal ma…
Labor, Employment, and Work
Work is a cultural universal that exists in all human societies. Work is a means of producing a livelihood, a system of meanings and moralities, and a principle for structuring societies. The term “employment” refers to wage labor. Anthropologists study work from preindustrial societies to contemporary high‐tech industries. The key questions when studying work are related to how industrialization shapes relations between home and work, restructur…
Miners and Their Children: The Remaking of the Soviet Working Class in Kazakhstan
Oasis in the steppe: Health and masculinity of Kazakhstani miners
This article studies the masculinities of Russian-speaking miners in Kazakhstan through an ethnographic study conducted in a miners’ sanatorium, a place of heightened sociality. Studies of gender in Central Asia have mostly focussed on women, and both masculinity and femininity are studied in relation to Islam and the nation-state. This article aims to make a contribution to the study of working-class masculinities in Northern Kazakhstan, arguing…
Everyday barricades: Bureaucracy and the affect of struggle in trade unions
Employees in global workplaces commonly suggest they are being failed by trade union representatives that betray the political ideals of their institutions. The tenacity of this discourse requires interrogation, since the notion persists even in contexts that lack evidence of such practices occurring. Based upon a comparison of Kazakhstan and India, we suggest that there is a fundamental slippage between the emotive aspect of union politics and t…
Austerity, skill, and gendered work in Kazakhstan's heavy industry
Earlier analyses have demonstrated the loss of industrial worker autonomy and the rise of deskilling after production is automated. But what happens to autonomy and skill in times of austerity, when automation breaks down? Through studying the labour process in a Kazakhstani coal processing plant, I explore how the lack of investment in machinery and staff influences the way female workers conduct their everyday work. Workers are simultaneously r…
Perspectivas antropológicas sobre o trabalho: Conceitos, Abordagens Clássicas E Transformações
Neste artigo é apresentado um balanço sobre o conjunto de estudos sobre o trabalho, em especial, das abordagens antropológicas sobre o tema. O trabalho é um dos aspectos mais importantes da vida humana e é, ao mesmo tempo, produtor de sobrevivência, sistema de significados, moralidades e princípios organizadores da sociedade. Antropólogos estudam o trabalho em múltiplos contextos, desde sociedades pré-industriais a indústrias altamente tecnológic…
Of hopeful narratives and historical injustices – An analysis of just transition narratives in European coal regions
In recent years, the public discourse on the phase-out of carbon-intensive technologies and practices has come to a near consensus that a “just transition” is required. Yet, this term seems to have as many meanings as there are stakeholders using it. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the different meanings that regional stakeholders assign to it and the underlying dimensions of in(justice) that they invoke in their political communication. T…
Antropoloogiline vaade tööle: Mõtisklusi kaevuritest ja diginomaadidest
This article gives an overview of how to research work and labour from an anthropological perspective. Based on the examples of my ethnographic research with miners, teachers and digital nomads, I show how the anthropology of work is based both on the dark anthropology of suffering and the dispossessed as well as the anthropology of the good. Anthropology of work, like anthropology in general, is characterised by a holistic approach, cultural rel…
Challenging the dominant work ethic: Work, naps, and productivity of location-independent workers
This paper critiques the centrality of work in capitalist societies and looks at people who have abandoned their location-bound jobs for the lifestyle of a digital nomad. Five months of fieldwork in Thailand during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that digital nomads aspired to have autonomy over their work, including reducing their work time. However, pursuing their ideal meant negotiating the desire to minimise labour hours on t…
Connected Horizons: Exploring Online Work Aspirations Among Western Digital Nomads and Lao Youth
This article explores the aspirations for digital work among two seemingly disparate groups: Lao rural-urban migrant youth and Western digital nomads. Based on ethnographic research in Laos and Thailand, we argue that despite differing socioeconomic backgrounds, both groups share strikingly similar aspirations for autonomy and self-reliance through online work. This challenges existing theories that emphasize the local context of aspirations, sug…
Tribute to Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962-2024)
Remembering Thomas Hylland Eriksen: A Legacy of Intellectual Curiosity Thomas Hylland Eriksen was a renowned social anthropologist and a formidable public intellectual in Norway and beyond, but above all, he was, he is and he will always remain a very dear friend
Selective intersectionality: Far-right populist Re-casting of social discontent in Europe’s green transition
European regions long reliant on fossil-intensive energy are undergoing change driven by the European Green Deal, yet the green transition remains uneven across regions. In Estonia’s Ida-Virumaa, one of Europe’s most carbon-intensive regions, the green transition intersects with ethnic diversity, economic precarity, and far-right populism, generating uncertainty in communities whose deep regional ties are rooted in the oil-shale industry and shap…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (5 works) · Work (physics (5 works) · Estonian (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works)