Skills of Subsistence and Reproductive Labour in the Post-productivist Rural

Case Study of Self-sufficiency Institute in Rasimäki

Abstract

In this article, we study focal skills of subsistence and reproductive labour. As a research case, we had the recently founded Self-sufficiency Institute in Rasimäki, North Karelia, Finland. According to the research data and its analysis, self-provisioning entails many practical skills, but also processual skills of which the management of the whole, improvising, and resource knowledge were identified as focal ones in the study. Thus, the skills of self-provisioning are diverse capabilities that combine varied sets of practices and processes that are tied to local environments. The skills are adopted through example, repetition, and trial and error amidst mundane practices, where the skills are gradually nurtured and refined as the neo-self-provisioners become more experienced. For the interviewees, self-provisioning meant producing life’s necessities with their own hands. This entailed learning many new things, from understanding of categories of practices and processes, which were previously unfamiliar to them, to various physical and emotional affects, as well as encountering personal limits.