In the beginning of this newsletter focusing on Transformative work, I set up to write about science, creativity, and relations of transformative work. This post is about the relations of transformative work. But instead of reviewing what has been said by others, I start this topic by elaborating these relations from my own experiences as an aspiring transformative worker in polycrises. Polycrises refers to intertwined challenges of our times, including social, ecological, economic, and cultural problems, such as the warming climate, biodiversity loss, increasing inequality, and geopolitical instability.
This autumn is marked by many civil society gatherings to consider, for example, sufficiency, social movements, land relations, and care. I highly value the work of the organisers, since such spaces are important for coming together and finding (enough) common ground. Prioritising demands is often required from civil society actors to be considered in decision making processes, so coming together is needed, constantly.
I have considered whether to attend to these events, especially since I was invited to join some of them as a participant, a panel host, or a panellist. To many I have said no. Not because I would not want to participate, but for reasons that open interesting and at times difficult reflections on the relations of transformative work.
I am no stranger to visiting civil society events. In my postdoc project (2017–2022), funded by the Maj and Tor Nessling foundation, Kone Foundation and the Foundation for Economic Education, I attended many events over the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. After the pandemic, I have also been invited as a speaker in events and media on topics related to economies, work, and livelihoods in socio-ecological transformations. In that sense asking for my presence, alongside with many others, makes sense.
But many of the civil society events take place on evenings and weekends, because people have time off from waged labour and studies. This organisation has increasingly collided with my need to rest after the waged work week, also because my unpaid care duties start when my offspring is at home from their day-time institutions. In addition, we grow a modest share of our food, which means that planting and harvesting seasons are even busier than the normal hullabaloo. Her Royal Highness would like to add that also the incredible opportunity to act as a cat servant is considered as a care duty.
This autumn the tension between on and off duty has manifested itself for several reasons. While some of them are private, some are connected to public roles and space for manoeuvring. For the remaining part I shall reflect these public roles and what do to with them.
As a professional I am in my mid-career with a track record of several publications, some funding, editorial and reviewer responsibilities, and increasing amount of supervision. My job is not anymore about writing texts and funding applications for myself. Now I am expected to enable others’ work and supervise them. This role has taken some time to adjust, but nowadays, after some training and practice, I feel confident in my role as an editor, reviewer, mentor, supervisor, and soon a work counsellor – thanks to my on-going training. However, these roles mean that I use more time on them, which is away from something else, usually fieldwork, such as visiting events. I have only so much time and energy, which means that I need to work with others to share the workload. This means acquiring funding for projects, including people’s wage and various expenses. This circle is hard to escape.
My role as an expert is a middle-class job, in which I get paid to connect people, write various texts, learn, and generate new ideas to secure institutionally approved outcomes, such as funding, supervision, (now less) teaching, and certain type of publications. My middle-class life is materially secured and predictable. This does not mean I would not have problems, but my socioeconomic status makes me a privileged member of the Finnish society, also when comparing globally.
For the past years I have increasingly reflected my class position, which has not so distant working-class roots. I seem to have a difficulty to perform certain neoliberal close circuit thinking, in which one is supposed to only improve one’s own position in society. Still, I tend to favour my immediate comfort over challenging it. While there are some private reasons why to prioritise comfort recently, this tension puzzles me. For instance, according to studies, leaving one’s comfort zone, while not too much, is a perquisite for learning, and related to acquiring contentment in the long run.
Overall, devoting one’s time and energy to common issues is in crisis in Finland and in many other Western contexts. Collective action, that used to be part of the working-class ethos, is being challenged in many frontiers from changing legislation to discourse. Thus, my response to how to use my time and energy is a mix of being influenced by personal situation and the structural developments with conflicting expectations.
According to contemporary democratic ideals, everyone who is capable, has an obligation to do something to enable the common good. At least one should vote. What is common good has been debated in democratic organisations since their development. But the responsibility remains. There are equally enough debates about where and how the debates should be happening. In short, the officially elected members of the parliaments and city councils are not the only ones who know what the common good is. To make things even more difficult, democracy as we know is being challenged by authoritarian thinking and practices in many places where this was considered unlikely.
Relations on transformative work requires the space and time to reflect one’s position as well as talk with others. Personally, I return to the same position repeatedly: I have a responsibility to do more than my job. Sometimes doing more is doing less, which relates to shifts in mindsets, but that is another post. In practice, I continue to balance my various roles. Yet, there is also a need to devote time and energy to demand structural changes. For me one of them is to ensure that people living and working in the age of polycrises could come together to consider which structural changes to prioritise and what kind of strategy would enable them.
Eeva Houtbeckers 
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