Int Social Sci J - 2022 - Fox - The More Than Human Production of Material Dis Advantage A Russian Case Study

DOI: 10.1111/issj.
12373
ARTICLE
The more-than-human production of material

dis/advantage: A Russian case study
Nick J Fox1 Tatiana Gavrilyuk2
1
University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 Abstract
1DH, UK
Applying a new materialist analysis, this paper reports
2
University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia findings from a qualitative study of young workers in contem-
porary Russia to address how more-than-human materialities
Correspondence
can be materially affective in the workplace, producing
Nick J Fox, Dept of Behavioural and Social
Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, and reproducing context-specific capacities and incapacities.
Huddersfield UK. Social advantages and disadvantages derive from these dispar-
Email: n.j.fox@hud.ac.uk
ities in capacities: what bodies can do economically, socially,
physically, psychologically and politically. Semi-structured
[Correction added on 2 November 2022, after first
online publication: affiliation for author Tatiana interviews were conducted with 37 Russian workers aged 16–
Gavrilyuk was corrected.] 29 from the Ural Federal District of western Siberia: of these,
16 respondents worked in industry, while 21 were in retail and
service sectors. The data revealed a wide range of non-human
matter that affected respondents’ capacities, producing oppor-
tunities and constraints on their work and development. Some
of these everyday “tiny dis/advantages” may accrue over time
into more lasting advantage or disadvantage. We conclude
that – alongside economic resources and social support –
the myriad interactions with non-human matter in workplaces
contribute to relative dis/advantage. We suggest that a focus
on tiny dis/advantages both complements and refines con-
ventional sociocultural analyses of material dis/advantage and
social inequality.
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper addresses empirically an aspect of the production of social advantage or disadvantage
(henceforth “dis/advantage”) that has often been downplayed in sociological analyses of social
inequalities and social divisions (Fox and Alldred 2021a): the material contribution of non-human
matter (NHM). In the context of this study, NHM includes work, domestic and leisure spaces and
places; the tools, materials and physical facilities people use in their work; material possessions; and
the many other physical objects that affect them on a daily basis.
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1034 FOX AND GAVRILYUK
We set out to assess the significance of workplace NHM for the production of dis/advantage, and
consequently to the establishment of lasting social divisions. To pursue this aim, we adopt a more-
than-human, new materialist, theoretical framing (Fox and Alldred 2017.; Coole and Frost 2010).
We apply an associated ethological (Deleuze, 1988, p. 125) methodology to primary data on social
advantage and disadvantage, gathered from young Russian workers during a larger study of the “new
working class” in Russia (Gavrilyuk 2021). This ontology and methodology focuses not on macro-
level structuring forces but on assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 22) of different matter, and
enables analysis of the affective micropolitics of events and interactions that occur in workplaces and
more generally. We shall suggest that these data reveal what we call the “thousand tiny dis/advantages”
(Fox and Alldred 2021a) that both accrue from daily interactions with both human and NHM in the
workplace, and distribute more lasting relative dis/advantage within a society.
Post-Soviet Russia offers an interesting setting within which to explore how NHM may contribute
to social dis/advantage. Though the lengthy socioeconomic and political transition from the planned
economy of the Soviet era has been far from smooth, with consolidation of new power hierarchies and
economic re-structuring, what has emerged is economically and ideologically a form of neoliberal
capitalism (Trubina 2016), though tempered by the social welfare norms established under the Soviet
regime (Collier 2011). Analysts suggest this has resulted in devastating de-industrialisation (Crowley
2016, p. 399), dramatic increases in precarious work (Trubina 2016, p. 203), and a parallel “shadow” or
“underground” economy of untaxed, unregulated, and illegal practices (Rochlitz 2017). Social inequal-
ity in Russia has increased in recent years (Credit Suisse Research Institute 2018, p. 159), fuelled in
part by the ascendancy of a small number of oligarchs who have acquired a substantial proportion of
assets previously controlled by the Soviet state (Toshchenko 2018). According to the Bloomberg bil-
lionaires index, the 10 richest Russians added more to their wealth in 2017/18 than their equivalents in
the USA or UK (Sazonov and Witzig 2018); while research for the larger study conducted by [Author
2: removed for anonymisation] found that 78 per cent of working-class Russians under 30 years earn
less than 450 USD a month, and 37 per cent less than 300 USD (Gavrilyuk 2021).1
Though a low-wage economy in comparison to most western nations, the trends toward de-
industrialisation, neo-liberalisation, and social inequality in the contemporary Russian labour market
and political economy reflects many trends in employment and social stratification seen elsewhere
(Coburn 2004), suggesting that the findings of this more-than-human study are generalisable to other
contemporary capitalist societies. Consequently, our intention with this paper is not to attempt to
offer conclusions specific to a Russian setting, or to assess how the specificities of the labour market
and political economy in the Russian Federation may establish particular patterns of dis/advantage.
Instead, we shall draw some more general conclusions about how incorporating assessment of NHM
can enhance sociological studies of dis/advantage.
2 SOCIOLOGY, NON-HUMAN MATTER, AND DIS/ADVANTAGE
Sociology and political economy have theorised relative sociomaterial divisions variously, invoking
terms such as “social inequalities”, “social position”, “social stratification”, “social inclusion and
exclusion”, “social capital”, and “social class” (Grusky 2019; Wright 2005). However, within this
broad scholarship, NHM has often been displaced from concern by an emphasis within sociology
upon the human social practices that produce social inequalities – as brief surveys of sociological and
organisation studies to stratification and “class” disclose. Thus, Weber’s approach to class explored
the complex interactions between power, individual life-chances, and social mobility (Breen 2005,
p. 32) that contributed to differential “social status” (Weber 1964, pp. 428–429) and in turn to dis-
tinct “classes” (Savage 2000, p. 16). The only NHM acknowledged in this account was individuals’
economic resources (Weber 1964, p. 425). These aggregations have been widely reflected in classifica-
tions such as the Goldthorpe class scale (Goldthorpe and McKnight 2006), which categorised people
into occupational groups, from professional through to unskilled manual workers and non-employed.
MORE-THAN-HUMAN PRODUCTION OF DIS/ADVANTAGE 1035
Bourdieu’s (1984; 1986) analysis shifted sociological analysis of the production and reproduction
of social divisions further from a concern with matter, introducing a new focus on people’s use of
symbolic resources to establish social position. Symbolic resources include culture and education
(“cultural capital”) and social networks (“social capital”) (Bourdieu 1984, p. 114). Citizens use these
symbolic “assets” strategically to achieve and sustain privilege or other social position (Bourdieu 1984,
p. 114; Savage et al. 2013, p. 223; Toft 2019, p. 112), while the specific volume and combination of
capitals that an individual possesses establishes dispositions toward particular (classed) thoughts, out-
looks, and actions (Weininger 2005, pp. 91–92). In this perspective, the effects of material objects on
human bodies must be analysed in terms of such human dispositions, not those of the objects them-
selves (Varriale 2016, p. 173). This emphasis was reflected in Savage et al.’s (2013) large-scale UK
survey of social class, which aggregated citizens into seven classes based on respondents’ stocks of
economic, social, and cultural capital.2
Meanwhile, Homans (1949, p. 333) and Muldoon (2012, pp. 109, 113) suggest that organisation
studies and work sociology were strongly influenced by the conclusion by the Hawthorne Studies
researchers that human/human interaction was more important for productivity than physical work-
ing conditions (Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939, p. 14). When material objects (particularly spaces
and information and communication technologies) in the workplace have been acknowledged (Aroles
et al. 2019), often NHM has been considered merely as a carrier or mediator of human sociocultural
meanings (Bartram 2021, p. 787; Orlikowski 2007, p. 1437). However, Fernandes’ (1997) study of a
Calcutta jute mill revealed the multiple ways in which matter directly affected workers’ bodies, as did
Jakonen et al.’s (2017) analysis of innovative work communities and practices such as co-working.
Orlikowski’s (2007) study of mobile communication technologies similarly demonstrated the material
capacities of technologies to shape workplace behaviour.
When sociology has turned its attention to topics such as embodiment, anthropogenic climate
change, or the health impacts of the built environment that cut across a social/natural dichotomy,
such privileging of the human over the non-human becomes problematic (Benton 1991; Latour
1993; Lockie 2012: 2; Urry 2009). The recent “turn to matter” in the social sciences and human-
ities (Pierides and Woodman 2012) offers one resolution to this contradiction. This turn has been
marked by the emergence of a range of relational, posthuman/post-anthropocentric, vital materialist
and non-representational social theory perspectives that have been described by the umbrella term
“new materialisms” (Bennett 2005; 2010; Coole and Frost 2010, p. 5; Lemke 2015, pp. 3–5). These
perspectives include affect and assemblage theories, onto-epistemology, speculative realism. actor-
network theory (ANT), non-representational theory, feminist posthumanism, and post-qualitative
research (Gamble et al. 2019, pp. 119–122). Some of these, such as ANT and Deleuze and Guattari’s
nomadic alternative to “State philosophy” (Massumi 1988, pp. xi–xiii) predate the “new materialist”
designation, while critics have identified incommensurable differences between some of the perspec-
tives encompassed within this portmanteau term: for instance, between the ontologies of Deleuze and
Barad (Hein 2016), or between vital materialism and what Gamble et al. (2019, p. 112) describe as
“performative materialism”.
Furthermore, it has been suggested by some scholars that the new materialisms are by no
means “new”, bearing similarities in their post-anthropocentrism and vital materialist to many pre-
existing indigenous and First Nation ontologies that also recognise the affectivity of NHM (Todd
2016; Tompkins 2016) and acknowledge an integral link between nature and culture (Rosiek et al.
2020; Tompkins 2016). Meanwhile, Bennett (2010) recognises as avatars of vital materialism the
third century BCE Greek philosopher Epicurus and his later Roman follower Lucretius – who
considered all matter as kinetic and in continuous flux. And while the “historical materialism”
of the mature Marx’s political economy floridly subordinates matter to “sensuous human activ-
ity [and] practice” (Lettow 2017, p. 114), it is pellucidly apparent from works such as volume 1
of Capital (Marx 2011 [1906]) that humans and non-human matter (for instance, raw materials,
commodities, factories, and money) are inextricably caught up within the social relations of cap-
italism that he described (Lettow 2017: 116). Indeed, Nail (2020, p. 21) has argued Marx’s early
materialism was of an explicitly Lucretian kinetic bent, reflecting a very “new” materialist perspective
– in which matter is always “active and self-sensitive before humans are even on the scene” (Nail
2020, p. 28).
Perhaps then, what is most significantly “new” or “renewed” (Braidotti 2022, p. 108) about these
approaches are the capacities they supply to think differently, and to transgress accepted doctrines
and ontologies (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 376; Monforte 2018, p. 385; St. Pierre et al. 2016,
p. 102). And despite the diversity and complexity within the new materialist portfolio, three common
features serve to unsettle the essentialism, anthropocentrism, and dualisms that have underpinned con-
ventional ontology of both sociology and political economy (Coole and Frost 2010, p. 7). First, new
materialists do not consider the material world as comprising stable, essential entities but instead as
relational (DeLanda 2016, p. 10) and in flux, constantly re-assembling in unpredictable ways (Potts
2004, p. 19). Second, alongside the dissolution of culture-nature dualism, they are monist, cutting
across a range of dualisms including mind-matter, structure/agency, surface/depth; reason/emotion,
human/non-human, and animate/inanimate (Braidotti 2013, pp. 4–5; Coole and Frost 2010, pp. 26–
27; van der Tuin and Dolphijn 2010, pp. 155–157). Third, they remove the anthropocentric privilege
associated with humans and human agency, acknowledging instead the liveliness of all matter (Con-
nolly 2013, p. 400), with agency a feature of multiple non-human entities and processes (see also
Bennett 2005; 2010).
This ontology has some significant consequences for political economy and social theories of
dis/advantage, stratification, and inequality. The monism of the new materialisms rejects structural
or systemic explanations of dis/advantage and inequalities and their temporal continuity (DeLanda
2016, pp. 13–14; Latour 2005). Instead, these are consequences of micropolitical forces within com-
monplace material interactions. “Power”, Fox and Alldred (2021a) have argued, “is not a monolithic
top-down imposition, but instead a multiplicity of interacting and conflicting powers and resistances
– constantly in flux”. Such social, economic, and political forces shape bodies’ capacities: what they
can do (Fox and Alldred 2018; Deleuze and Guattari 1984: 288). This flux of powers and resistances
in daily interactions establish multiple sociomaterial opportunities or constraints, with consequences
for the production of divisions and inequalities.
In place of the various terms noted at the beginning of this section, we choose to acknowledge the
effects of these opportunities and constraints by applying the term dis/advantage to capture the rela-
tionality and monism of the new materialist perspective we are adopting. Within the social sciences,
“social advantage” and “social disadvantage” have been variously applied to describe differential
opportunities between members of societies (or between races, genders, or other sub-groups) in terms
of sociomaterial variables such as income, life opportunities, job security, health, and well-being (Dan-
nefer 2003, p. S327). Advantage and disadvantage have been used to explain differential rates for a
range of social issues, including crime (Newburn 2016), housing tenure (Saugeres 2009), and mental
health (Reading and Reynolds 2001).
For some scholars, advantage and dis/advantage have been considered as personalised stocks that
can accumulate across a lifetime (DiPrete and Eirich 2006, p. 273; Schafer et al. 2009, p. 232), in ways
similar to social and cultural capitals in Bourdieusian sociology. However, Dannefer (2003, p. S237)
argues that dis/advantage should be understood not as essentialist properties of individuals but instead
as relational divergences across a population. This latter perspective on dis/advantage articulates more
fluently with the relational ontology that we apply in this paper.
Furthermore, social advantage has sometimes been treated as an aspect of social structure (Saugeres
2009, p. 194; Schafer et al. 2009, p. 271). By contrast, a new materialist ontology focuses upon the
production of “tiny dis/advantages” (Fox and Alldred 2021a): in other words, the opportunities and
constraints directly deriving from the everyday encounters between humans and between humans and
non-human matter. These tiny dis/advantages may be quite transient in their consequences, dissipating
along with the assemblages that produce them. However, they may sometimes accrue and accrete over
time, generating more lasting dis/advantage, social divisions, and inequalities. For example, recent
work has shown that differences in the provision of adequate public transport between urban and
rural locations may lead to differential opportunities for career advancement, social networking, and
psychosocial well-being (Fox and Powell 2021).
3 FROM ONTOLOGY TO METHODOLOGY
To explore empirically how NHM contributes materially to social dis/advantage, we apply one par-
ticular new materialist approach, the “ethology” of Gilles Deleuze (1988, pp. 123–127). Ethology
supplies a conceptual toolkit that translates easily to the concerns of social inquiry. It has been used
widely, both by new materialist social theorists (Bennett 2010; Braidotti 2011; 2013; DeLanda 2016)
and social scientists to research a range of sociological topics including race (Saldanha 2006), gender
(Ringrose and Coleman 2013), sexualities (Alldred and Fox 2015), and health (Fox 2016; Duff 2010,
2014). In the following paragraphs, we italicise the key concepts that inform the methodology used in
this study.
Central to ethology is the study of matter’s (human and non-human) affects – a concept which, fol-
lowing Spinoza – Deleuze (1988, pp. 125–126) defined as “capacities for affecting and being affected”.
Matter – “human” and “non-human” – is defined in ethology by its capacities to affect, as opposed to
essential attributes or form. We must therefore always ask of matter not what it is, but what it can do:
its capacities (Buchanan 1997). Capacities emerge contextually, when a body or other matter interacts
with other bodies or things (DeLanda 2016, pp. 143–144; Deleuze 1988, p. 123). For example, in
differing contexts water may wet, wash, sustain life, quench thirst, or drown. Such context-specific
capacities may enhance opportunities for action or interaction, or even produce a transgressive “line
of flight” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 277); incapacities, conversely, constrain such possibilities. It
is these capacities that establish and sustain the tiny dis/advantages of daily life.
These affective interactions between human and non-human materialities were described by
Deleuze and Guattari (1988, pp. 22–23) as assemblages. Actions and events assemble matter in unpre-
dictable ways (Bennett 2005, p. 445), in what Potts (2004, p. 19) described as “a kind of chaotic
network of habitual and non-habitual connections”. It is the affects within an assemblage that estab-
lish what a body or a non-human thing can do in a particular event or encounter: for instance, a work
meeting or a production line.
Bodies can affect or be affected physically, psychologically, culturally, economically, and polit-
ically. However, affects are not equally affective (possessing capacity to affect), so within every
assemblage/event, the flows of affect and the capacities these flows generate in bodies constitute a
micropolitics (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 216) that contributes to the deployments of powers and
resistances within a context such as a workplace, a school, or a wider society (Fox and Alldred 2021a).
Assemblage micropolitics enable and constrain what bodies can do, producing opportunities for, or
limits upon, action. For example, in a simple assemblage such as a production line, the micropolitics
affects both the materials to be produced and the speed at which workers must process this matter.
This understanding of multiple emergent capacities produced within non-linear and non-hierarchical
assemblages undermines a simplistic notion of causality that ascribes agency to one body or thing
(Bennett 2010, pp. 32–33).
Together, the concepts of “affect”, “assemblage”, “capacity”, and “micropolitics” supply a basis
for a new materialist social research methodology, as set out in Deleuze’s (1988, pp. 125–126) coda
to his book on Spinoza, and subsequently illustrated variously in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and
Guattari 1988, pp. 149–156, 257). Such an ethological methodology aims to identify the human and
non-human matter in events, the affects that assemble them, the capacities that are produced by these
assemblages, and the broader micropolitical consequences. In the context of the current study, this
conceptual toolkit establishes a relational, post-anthropocentric and monist framework for making
sense of dis/advantage: as the unending micropolitical production of capacities, as bodies and non-
human matter assemble within everyday encounters. The ethological approach to social inquiry is
developed further in the following section.
4 STUDY, DESIGN, AND METHODS

The four ethological concepts just outlined suggest a framework within which to establish the method-
ology of this study and to define the study’s methodological objectives. The overarching aim of
the study is to assess in what ways NHM contributes both to day-to-day and more lasting relative
dis/advantage. To address this aim, the specific research objectives were to gather and analyse data
from young Russian workers to:
∙ identify what NHM was present in contemporary Russian workplace assemblages;

∙ assess in what ways NHM affected workers;
∙ how the capacities that NHM produced in workers contributed to dis/advantage; and
∙ assess how these affects and capacities established a micropolitics of work that potentially
contributed to more persistent dis/advantage.
These objectives in turn informed the development of the interview guide (see below), and how we
present the data and its analysis in the following section.
The data derive from interviews conducted during a major Russian Science Foundation-funded
research project (No 1-7-7-820062) on the “new Russian working class” (Gavrilyuk 2021), which
mapped the subject-positions and lifestyles of contemporary Russian working-class youth, and
explored structural opportunities and constraints and the social inequalities and precariousness
of contemporary Russian youth labour. This survey covered 1,534 workers aged 16–29 in the
Ural Federal District of western Siberia, which was chosen for its strong industrial legacy, recent
partial de-industrialisation and growth of the service sector. From this survey, a sub-sample of
37 respondents were recruited to take part in face-to-face, in-depth qualitative interviews. Respon-
dents were selected to maximise diversity of work grade – ranging from manual workers to middle
management, and work sector. Sixteen (all male) worked in industry, while 21 were in retail and
service sectors (male = nine; female = 12). Data was gathered and analysed according to precepts
outlined in the ethics code of the Russian Society of Sociologists.
As noted in the introduction, the new materialisms encompass a range of disparate approaches,
often based in differing social theory threads (Gamble et al. 2019). Consequently, there is also diver-
gence in how new materialist ontologies have translated to methodology. St Pierre (2014, 2021)
has spearheaded a “post-qualitative” movement, arguing that the post-anthropocentrism and posthu-
manism of the new materialisms rules out any use of interviews as irretrievably humanist and
privileging human experience and insights over the non-human. However, others have modified the
interview methodology to post-anthropocentric and relational purposes, treating data from inter-
views (sometimes alongside other data) as means to gain insights into the assemblages of human
and non-human matter, and the affects in these assemblages, and the capacities they produce (Fox
and Alldred 2021b; Cluley et al. 2021; Ringrose and Coleman 2013). Following this latter ori-
entation, and the post-anthropocentric focus in ethology upon more-than-human assemblages and
affects, the present study treated respondents as ethnographic informants, supplying insider infor-
mation on the affects that assemble bodies and NHM in the workplace, and the resulting capacities
these produce (rather than insights into their individual and personal experiences and stories). In
line with this shift, biographical information is limited to gender and occupation; all names are
pseudonymous.
Interview questions included:
∙ Describe the rooms or surroundings (if you work outdoors) in which you are working. What sort of
furniture does it have? What machines and equipment are around you in the workplace?
∙ How do the physical space and objects in your work environment affect how you do your work?
∙ How do they affect your interactions with your colleagues?
Probe questions drew out consequences of physical work environments for respondents’ capacities.
Interviews were audio-recorded and fully transcribed; some were subsequently fully translated into
English, while others were partially translated prior to analysis.
A post-anthropocentric ontology also requires that the approach to data analysis diverges from
that to be found in humanist qualitative research. In place of efforts to dredge respondents’ words for
insights into their innermost experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and authentic being (St. Pierre and Jackson
2014, p. 715), the focus must be firmly upon elucidating the micropolitical flows of matter and affects
within the settings under investigation (Alldred 2021b). Consequently, in this study, the aims of the
analysis were to:
a. identify material relations (human and non-human) in the work-assemblages reported by

respondents;
b. reveal the affects (physical, psychological, social, and economic) that assemble these relations;
c. identify what capacities these affective assemblages produced in workers’ bodies (what they could
do);
d. explore the micropolitical dis/advantages that these capacities produced in workers’ bodies, and
how these may contribute to more lasting socio-material inequalities.
The italicised concepts also supplied the coding frame used for analysis with the qualitative data
analysis programme NVivo. The organisation of the findings section reflects this coding.
5 FINDINGS
Here we report the analysis of the interview data, applying the ethological conceptual framework
outlined earlier. We first document the human and non-human materialities in work assemblages and
the affects these produced. We then analyse how these relations and affects established positive and
negative capacities in workers, and how the constraints or opportunities thus generated shaped both
immediate and longer-term dis/advantages.
5.1 Non-human matter in the work environment
Table 1 summarises the very wide range of NHM with which respondents interacted. These non-
human materialities constituted the natural and built environment, physical workplaces, and in
some cases the work substrate, whether working as professionals, managers, or manual work-
ers. So, for example, as head of a large gas and oil company’s maintenance department, Ivan
spent much of his day interacting with the non-human spaces and stuff that was his work
focus.
“I work in an oil and gas company, selling fuel in bulk. I monitor the condition of our
premises and offices: there are several of them in different areas. Also, I am responsible
for equipping the office, for the stationery, utilities, technical maintenance, service sup-
port, the condition of buildings. I monitor the transport, its technical condition, and the
drivers are also under my control” (Ivan).
For manual and technical staff, NHM was integral to daily working life. Rita’s job as a shop assistant
entailed arranging displays of the jewellery her store sold, packing away and accounting for them, and
cleaning the sales area at the end of her shift. Viktor, a technician for an oil and gas multinational,
spent his days literally surrounded by NHM.
TA B L E 1 Non-human matter in respondents’ environments
Type of matter Examples

physical spaces and structures factories, offices, and other workplaces; houses and apartments; sports
facilities and entertainment venues; open countryside, mountains, rivers;
towns and villages
matter within these spaces tools, equipment, technology (hardware, software, online courses);
furniture; workplace fittings
raw materials of production iron and steel, chemicals, data
products of work finished goods, services
money and wages
consumer goods houses, cars, furnishings, technology
transport private cars, vans, buses, taxis, road and rail infrastructure
materials associated with leisure and sporting equipment, videos, films
entertainment
collective organisations and companies and businesses, educational establishments, trade unions and
institutions professional associations
“I monitor electrical appliances, sensors to keep things working properly, and undertake
planned replacement of stuff. I’m not an electrician, I don’t screw in bulbs. I sit in an
instrument room. It’s routine work but I’m used to it. There are no problems except when
the equipment changes, then some problems appear” (Rita).
5.2 How non-human matter affected workers
The affects (defined as “capacities to affect or be affected”) assembled respondents, other

human bodies, and NHM, and respondents described many aspects of these human/non-human
interactions.
Some affects were physical, though the character of these affects varied markedly between occupa-
tions. For security guard Oleg, work entailed controlling access to his work premises by raising and
lowering a barrier and noting visitors’ names in a logbook, while Alexei’s work as a railway track
maintenance worker entailed onerous physical manipulation of tools and equipment while exposed to
the extremes of the Siberian climate. Senior manager Ivan also undertook physical tasks, but of greater
complexity.
“I have dozens of different logbooks that I fill in manually. I even have a logbook of other
logbooks.… Every time you dispatch a car you need to record it in the journal, and the
driver and I must sign. I also conduct various briefings for drivers which are also recorded
in these journals. There’s a lot of such paperwork, various estimate sheets for the release
of vehicles, where I record every day whether everything is fine with the car. We do a lot
of things manually, signing documents… sometimes when there is too much information
for Excel, you just write it on paper” (Ivan).
Other aspects of the NHM that workers encountered in the workplace affected them negatively.
Pavel (a retail worker in a large electronics store) described how his daily work environment was phys-
ically unpleasant and uncomfortable. For instance, he chose not to eat his lunch in the staff kitchen, as
it was both cramped and infested with cockroaches. Even his workstation, where he spent most of the
day, was unsuitable.
“Most of all, the chairs annoy me. They’re terribly uncomfortable with my tall stature.
My knees rest against the table, on the right, the printer displaces my legs, and on the
left, there is a bin under my feet that I just want to rearrange or throw away.… The air
conditioner works, so it can be freezing sometimes. But I put a uniform polo over my
T-shirt, and that’s ok” (Pavel).
NHM may also affect workers psychologically or emotionally. Railway worker Alexei spent much
of his working day outdoors but had a powerful negative emotional response to the indoor meetings at
his work depot he had to attend.
“At our workplace, apart from the depot, the offices are very small and angular. You feel
like in a cage inside them. I hate them. I can’t stand them. And there’s no air to breathe
there at all. They stink with either oil or fuel or hell knows what else. And since the
rooms are narrow and the ceilings high, people’s voices echo. It’s a heavy feeling from
these gloomy rooms. It’s like working in a morgue” (Alexei).
However, he had a more positive emotional response to machinery he used in his job.
“Now, using a rail flaw detector trolley has been added to my duties. I am proud that I got
the opportunity to work with her. … She makes work easier. Moreover, she is brand new,
shiny, with orange stripes. I don’t know why, but I really like her. I would take her home.
Just where do I get her (laughs)? And also, I have a machine for points straightening at
my disposal. Such a big heavy beauty, orange with a yellow top. She is so long, and in
the middle of her there are grips. When they bring her, it’s a feast” (Alexei).
Shop assistant Rita described the affective interactions between the goods she sold and her
customers, and how these in turn affected her positively.
“I love my job. I love all kinds of sparkles, I love when women make themselves happy
with all kinds of amenities… when they try earrings or rings and rejoice, and the smile
shines, and communication is pleasant, positive, then everything is good” (Rita).
This latter extract also illustrates how NHM can be socially affective, inasmuch as it can mediate
engagements with other humans in the workplace. Other respondents also offered examples of this
interaction between NHM and humans. Konstantin – head of corporate sales at a large regional car
dealership – described how the finite number of vehicles available for sale caused conflict with his
colleagues.
“I work closely with the retail sales team. The dealership has a certain quota for cars and
the resource of cars in stock or in a warehouse is not always enough. It may happen that
I’m going to enter into some kind of big contract, take cars to the warehouse for myself,
and my colleagues also want to sell something, they also want to make money. So, there
are moments such as ‘well, your deal will not happen yet, so let’s sell the car now, turn
over the money quickly and then order a new car for you’. So I can’t meet my deadlines.
Because of this, conflict situations arise” (Konstantin).
In summary, workers in the study were affected continuously and in multiple ways during their
daily work lives. Indeed, for some, these interactions with NHM were the very stuff of their work.
From a relational perspective, these affects between humans and NHM constituted work-assemblages
specific to particular occupations and settings.
5.3 Non-human matter and capacities

Respondents described how positive and negative capacities deriving from interactions with NHM
shaped what they could do. Positive capacities opened opportunities ranging from enhanced produc-
tivity to personal and professional development. Alternatively, negative capacities (“incapacities”)
constrained or closed down such possibilities.
For many workers in the study, NHM directly affected their capacities to carry out the tasks for
which they were employed. For example, retail service worker Pavel described how his entire working
day (and those of other workers in his company) was mediated by multiple information and commu-
nication technologies. These programmes effectively defined the tasks he had to undertake to achieve
the tasks in his designated job description.
“When I come to work, the first thing I do is register with a device in the staff room
with a face-recognition function, to confirm my arrival.… For almost the entire working
day, I am either behind the monitor or in the shopping area. Everything that happens in
the store, all the operations are carried out through a specially designed program called
‘Trade Service’. Each of the personnel, directors, security services, has its own level of
access to various interfaces. In our zone, we have access to work mail, programs for
communication with system administrators. Also in our area is a working laptop with the
necessary programs on it for setting up TVs, computers and phones. I also have a program
for working with defective equipment. There you have to enter all the information about
the product and the accompanying documents manually” (Pavel).
Interactions with information technology equipment were also essential for the work duties of
Kristina, an entry-level office worker. When the technology failed, her work ground to a halt, creating
stress and anxiety, while also disrupting the work of others in her company.
“I use this equipment all the time, all my work is done on the computer. Also, I need a
printer to print documents, to send scanned documents, to print contracts, because the
work is mostly with contracts, the phone is also used continuously, incoming and outgo-
ing calls.… Since we have a large amount of printing we often have printer breakdowns,
or the cartridge runs out, or something else. We do not have enough additional devices
which could help us to operate smoothly.… You are anxious, searching for another device
where you can print. There’s a queue of clients who are waiting for documents to be
printed. You are getting anxious, customers are getting anxious, tension increases. All
that affects the workflow” (Kristina).
NHM was crucial for the work capacities of professionals such as teacher Natalia. The IT facilities
at her technical school were generally satisfactory, with new buildings and information technology
that enabled her to teach to a high standard. However, on occasions her work was constrained by
inadequate rooms or equipment: there might not be enough tables or chairs for students in the rooms
where she taught; rooms lacked window blinds to enable students to see the projector screen; or she
was allocated classes in bizarrely equipped spaces.
“Sometimes classes are allocated to inappropriately equipped places. For example, I had
one classroom with two rooms. In one room there was a round table, chairs around the
table, a huge range hood on top. And in the other room there was a big bath. This class-
room used to be for processing vegetables, since we teach cooks. When it was supposedly
converted for other training, the bath was not dismantled. Well, actually, I don’t know …
it’s cool – you could wash yourself, probably (laughs)” (Natalia).
Natalia’s dependency on the affordances availed by these spaces and technologies were so essen-
tial to her work, she suggested, that if compromised she would be forced to resign and seek other
employment.
“If something gets worse, if my classroom is taken away, if my equipment is taken

away, if my projector is taken from my classroom, then I will probably quit immedi-
ately, because I am lost working without a projector. If they put lessons in a lecture room
where the projector doesn’t work (as already happened several times), or in the building
on the other side of the city, I get lost,… if my work conditions worsen, then it would
be harder for me to achieve my goals, for the children to learn the knowledge that I offer
them” (Natalia).
The dis/advantages produced by these material interactions with NHM extended beyond issues
of productivity, however, to encompass economic or physical disadvantage. Waitress Vera described
how making mistakes when using a poorly designed food-ordering system in the cafeteria where she
worked led to repeated financial penalties.
“If you screw up with a computer, then there will be a fine depending on how much you
enter into the computer. For example, you enter ‘Caesar salad’ and this item is automat-
ically debited from the kitchen. That is, you pay money for this salad, because who else
will pay if I was wrong and these foodstuffs simply went nowhere? They need to change
the system so you can simply delete it and no one will have to write everything off”
(Vera).
5.4 The material production of lasting dis/advantage

Data also revealed how the micropolitics by which tiny dis/advantages associated with the complex
work-assemblages of humans and NHM (and their associated affects) could establish longer-lasting
dis/advantage. While capacities and incapacities, respectively, enabled or constrained workers in the
study, what is striking about many of these interactions with NHM was that most were not one-off
occurrences, but repeated or persistent aspects of the work environment. For example, a number of
respondents complained about inadequate heating or cooling in their workplaces. Retail worker Pavel
reported an over-efficient air conditioning system in his store that could make the ambient temperature
uncomfortable for staff. Kristina (office worker) described how inadequate temperature control at work
inhibited her capacities to do good work.
“Lack of heating or air conditioning in the office is an obstacle to productive work. …

Here now it’s winter, but the heating is not on and the office is very cold. Everybody has
caught a cold, and it affects productivity – headache, cough, snivel, runny nose, general
malaise. So of course, the mood deteriorates immediately, there is no desire to work. That
is, you have to work, you can’t get rid of it, but the mood in the office is not like it should
be, like it could be” (Kristina).
Security guard Oleg spent much of his working day sitting in a booth controlling access to his
company building. Here, the barrier and booth were part of a broader assemblage comprising his home,
transport, sports facilities, and long work shifts. This assemblage disadvantaged him micropolitically
in multiple ways.
“The work is sedentary. And time is short, we have to give up something. For example, I
can’t go to the gym [if I leave work] after 8 p.m. It would take me about three hours. I’d
get home at 11, and still have to wash, prepare for the next day and cook something. So,
you have to sacrifice something” (Oleg).
Lasting dis/advantage could also be produced by the micropolitics of complex assemblages of

human and non-human. For example, Nikolai found his job as a welder both routine and physi-
cally debilitating. But the “welding assemblage” of Nikolai, his tools, and the materials he welded
also included other staff and management. The micropolitics of this assemblage established him in a
socially disadvantaged position, affecting him both materially and emotionally.
“[Managers say:] ‘go down, weld the bolt, unweld the bolt, cut the piece of iron, fit the
piece of iron’. Nothing supernatural and complicated… Working conditions are severe:
hot in summer, cold in winter. And the bosses all walk around so pompous, turn up their
noses at us simple hard workers. Not pleasant” (Nikolai).
The micropolitics of complex assemblages could also establish contradictory dis/advantages, with
lasting effects on social position or well-being. Konstantin described how a good material work envi-
ronment had contributed positively to his professional and career development, enhancing his capacity
to work at a senior managerial level and to progress within the company. On the other hand, his work
with IT systems was intensive, leaving him exhausted by the end of his working day, unable to devote
time to his family or leisure.
“Our equipment has been updated quite recently. I probably have one of the newest com-
puters at the enterprise. So, from the point of view of computer hardware and equipment,
everything suits me to the full.… The company I work for and the entire [car brand]
dealer network have helped me to develop, to get some new knowledge. In my current
job, it helps me, definitely.… In general, my work is good and the conditions are also
wonderful. In principle, everything suits me in my working environment.… The main
thing is to work towards a common goal, so each member of the team, including myself,
sees a single goal.… [But] there’s not enough time left for life outside work, personal
life, family life. I work until 5 pm, five days a week. It often feels that you spend so
much energy on an eight-hour working day that when you get home you are exhausted
physically and mentally” (Konstantin).
These deleterious effects led several respondents to use vacations as an opportunity to escape
temporarily from their work-assemblages, substituting debilitating material circumstances with more
salubrious settings, often featuring the natural environment. For higher-paid workers, travel or owner-
ship of a dacha [summer cottage, often in country or by the sea] could provide a means to escape the
industrial city. Senior manager Ivan’s evocative account of vacationing at his holiday home emphasised
the reinvigorating and peaceful effects of NHM in this more natural environment.
“I really like it when at a dacha in the evening, on the veranda, a beautiful sunset, nature,
a pleasant smell in the air. And you have a glass of strong tea or a bottle of beer and you
just sit, enjoy nature and it brings peace of mind” (Ivan).
Though less economically advantaged than Ivan, retail worker Pavel also contrasted the “noisy dirty
city” with the open countryside he tried to visit once or twice a year.
“Ten years ago, I lived near the Arctic Circle. I often miss that wild beauty and North-
ern Lights, where I skied in the winter. And in the fall, I collected local berries and
mushrooms and pine nuts. I love the forest, forest-steppe rural landscapes. Walking
through birch, pine, taiga and other types of forests create completely different sensations
concerning smells, light and the whole atmosphere. But most of all I like to sit by a lake
or in the mountains, with an overnight stay in a tent. While fishing, I can relax and will
stay for as long as I can stand the mosquito bites” (Pavel).
Railway worker Alexei was doubly disadvantaged, however – both by the negative physical and
mental effects of his work (noted previously) and the low wages from his manual occupation that
precluded car ownership, and limited opportunities to even temporarily escape from his daily circum-
stances. These insistent and ineluctable affects had closed down any opportunities to improve his daily
life, which was impoverished both materially and existentially. In the face of this micropolitics, the
only line of flight available to Alexei was to retreat into a fantasy life in the village where he had
grown up, and where his parents still lived. This alternative world was overflowing with NHM whose
affects contrasted with the constraining matter in his current circumstances.
“I want to go to the village. There is freedom, a field, a river.… On the outside, [my
parents’] house is brown. But the frames are painted blue. Carved. There’s a chicken
coop, a barn and a pigsty. Small low sheds. … There is also a kitchen garden. They grow
potatoes, all kinds of berries, cabbage, turnips, cucumbers. But the most important thing
is the river. It’s small and the water there is cold, but you can swim. And also there’s
a pond; you can fish there. This is what I love most. It’s quiet there, especially in the
morning, when it’s misty. Maybe later when I’ve earned money, I’ll quit everything and
go home” (Alexei).
In summary, these latter data reveal a micropolitics of powers and resistances emerging from
daily interactions between workers and NHM. These micropolitics transformed the immediate affects
of NHM into something broader than affordances or inconveniences: lasting dis/advantage. This is
discussed further in the concluding section.
6 DISCUSSION
We have reported here the first study that has gathered primary data to address specifically the impacts
on relative dis/advantage of workers’ interactions with NHM. In these concluding remarks, we con-
sider how a materialist ontology and methodology has contributed insights into more-than-human
effects on workers’ capacities, and how these capacities translate into both immediate and lasting
dis/advantage.
First, the findings have revealed the extent and breadth of workers’ assemblages with NHM in the
course of their work. By acknowledging NHM not merely as a “backcloth” to work but as materially
affective, we have disclosed NHM as a central feature of work. For respondents such as Kristina
and Viktor, it defined the limits of the work they could physically do. On occasions, as comments
from Pavel and Natalia indicated, NHM might interfere with or physically constrain the required tasks
associated with a job. More generally, the findings revealed that NHM variously and continuously
affected workers physically, psychologically, and emotionally within workplace assemblages.
Importantly, these affective interactions were relational: NHM’s affects were contingent and often
unpredictable. For example, many respondents in the study complained of a lack of heating in their
workplaces. Alexei, by contrast, preferred the sub-zero temperatures of his outdoor work to the stuffy,
enclosed offices where he and his colleagues met with supervisors for planning-meetings. Recognising
the relational affectivity of NHM shifts attention from a focus on “conditions of work” associated with
a specific occupation, to instead acknowledge the complex, contingent, and unstable assemblages of
workers and NHM.
Second, these data disclosed the variety of physical, psychological, and sociocultural ways in which
material interactions with NHM at work (assemblages) affected workers’ capacities to achieve work or
personal objectives. Though often mundane or seemingly trivial, interactions with NHM could enable
work tasks to be achieved, supplying job satisfaction, economic reward, and career advancement;
or conversely, could constrain or even prevent the completion of work tasks, thus affecting pay and
promotion, or negatively impacting health or fitness. These opportunities and constraints produced the
“tiny dis/advantages” of working life. Our data have shown the multiple ways in which NHM in the
workplace contributes to these tiny dis/advantages.
Some such dis/advantages are transitory, due to occasional unexpected events (such as teacher
Natalia being required to teach her philosophy class in a room set up for food preparation). How-
ever, the data that we have presented suggest that many of these tiny dis/advantages are not transient
or trivial but are frequent and persistent features of workers’ encounters with NHM. The cockroaches
in Pavel’s staff room and the unreliable printers in Kristina’s office – merely an irritant or distraction
as a one-off occurrence, were repeated and sustained features of their working lives. The disclosure
of such persistent affects establishes an insight into the production of more pervasive dis/advantage
and suggests that interactions with NHM at work may be significant for the production of enduring
dis/advantages. The dis/advantages associated with NHM affecting respondents Oleg, Nikolai, Alexei,
and Konstantin on a daily basis (described in the final section of the findings) supply a dripping tap
of negative affects that can accrue across a month, year, or an entire working life, establishing a
micropolitics of lasting material dis/advantage.
The focus of this study was firmly and intentionally upon workers interactions with NHM, as
opposed to the human/human interactions addressed in conventional sociological studies of the pro-
duction of dis/advantage and inequalities. So, it is premature to attempt to extrapolate findings
from a small qualitative study to weigh the relative significance of NHM vis-a-vis other sources of
dis/advantage. Figure 1 sets out a model for how the affectivity of both human and non-human matter
can, via this persistent drip-feed of tiny dis/advantages, accrue and accrete more general and lasting
dis/advantage in workers’ lives.
We wish to conclude with some broader reflections on how acknowledgement of NHM as a con-
tributor to dis/advantage articulates with existing theories of social inequalities and social divisions,
proposing instead a novel perspective on these staples of sociology.
Sociologists have documented the powerful effects of access to economic resources upon oppor-
tunities, dis/advantage, and well-being (Gordon et al. 2013; Western et al. 2012). Other studies have
revealed that differential access to relevant social networks can affect social advantage (Lin 2000),
while it is also conceivable that on occasions engagement with particular cultural formations may
enhance or inhibit social opportunities (Tyler 2015, pp. 503–506). The study we report here can
complement these analyses of economic, social, and cultural “capitals” (Bourdieu 1986), unpack-
ing an aspect of the production of dis/advantage that has not gained sufficient sociological attention.
Stratification models such as the “seven-class” model promoted by Savage et al. (2013) could use-
fully incorporate recognition of how NHM contributes materially (as well as culturally) to social
opportunities and constraints.
While this accommodation within existing class analysis would be a welcome sociological acknowl-
edgement of NHM as a material contributor to dis/advantage, the study reported here poses a more
radical challenge to existing stratification theories. The relational, monist, and post-anthropocentric
ontology that we reported here has intentionally stepped away from the terminology of “social strat-
ification”, “social divisions”, and “social class” conventionally used to discuss social inequalities.
Instead, it has focused on the daily encounters that workers have in the workplace (specifically,
more-than-human interactions).
We would respectfully propose that this analysis – in terms of the gradual accrual of tiny
dis/advantages that constitute more lasting patterns of dis/advantage in populations – offers an alter-
native and more “granular” perspective on the ways in which social dis/advantage emerges from
the encounters of daily life, in the workplace, and elsewhere. Rather than abstracting patterns of
dis/advantage in aggregating “classes” or “divisions”, this opens the way to explore in great detail
the complex flows of affect in contemporary societies that provide a drip-feed of advantage or
Human Non-human
maer maer
aﬀects: aﬀects:
Body
capacies
Opportunies Limits on
for acon acon
Relave
dis/advantage
F I G U R E 1 The more-than-human production of dis/advantage (created in Word 2019) [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
disadvantage over a lifetime. This granularity can supply the detailed sociological understanding of
settings required not only to explain, but also directly improve social conditions.
Thus, the data reported here supplies a means to unpack the social divisions identified in
neo-Weberian and neo-Bourdieusian analyses of “class” – for instance between less skilled and profes-
sional/managerial occupations. It revealed how poor quality or inadequate NHM in the workplaces of
office worker Kristina or waitress Vera variously imposed limits on financial security, job security, and
professional development. By contrast, teacher Natalia and senior manager Konstantin enjoyed higher
quality workplaces, enhancing their productivity, with consequent greater job satisfaction and financial
advancement. These daily interactions with NHM are not just more or less agreeable encounters with a
workspace, with furnishings, or with a tool or a technology. They materially and affectively contribute
to the relative dis/advantages experienced by workers. Differences in advantage or disadvantage have
been reified by notions of “stratification” and “class” to aggregate workers into categories such as
semi-skilled, skilled, professional, and so forth, which in and of themselves explain nothing. Rather
than aggregating workers into two, five, or seven “classes”, the ontology used here opens up means
to delve into the granularity of the daily interactions (human and non-human) that shape workers’
lives and ensuing dis/advantage. We commend this approach to the study of dis/advantage and NHM
across differing work settings, acknowledging the current growth in digitisation of the work environ-
ment (Vallas 2019), the emergence of technology-enabled “platform capitalism” and the gig economy
(Scholten 2017), and the effects of changes to the work built environment such as open-plan working
and home working: all of which are profoundly affecting daily working lives and contributing to the
precariousness of employment.
A monist ontology of the production of dis/advantage is fully amenable to empirical investigation of
the multiple settings within which people live out their lives, via the analysis of affects, capacities, and
dis/advantages we have applied in this paper. This methodology establishes a basis for further research
on tiny dis/advantages. In addition to cross-sectional qualitative and quantitative research on how tiny
dis/advantages are produced within different work settings, longitudinal studies may reveal how the
quotidian interactions that produce dis/advantages across a lifetime affect career development, social
mobility, and social well-being.
Furthermore, this analysis has implications for employment policy and practice: the potential for
NHM to produce and reproduce social dis/advantage and lack of social mobility is of immediate
relevance for employers, employees, and trade unions, and for employment and business policy.
Employers and policymakers need to acknowledge that the quality of work premises and infrastruc-
ture is not simply a matter of ergonomics, health and safety, or good worker experience. It is also
an element in attracting and retaining staff, for assuring that staff have opportunities for professional
and personal development (including career advancement), and for narrowing dis/advantages that can
impact health and well-being (Fox and Alldred 2021b; Fox and Powell 2021). Beyond this function-
alist viewpoint, these findings can inform workplace activism and campaigns for improvements to
employment practices and conditions. Addressing the interactions humans have with NHM in the
workplace is not merely a matter of health and safety. More fundamentally, it is integral to struggles
to overcome the reproduction of social dis/advantage generated by workers’ daily interactions with
human and non-human matter within their work assemblages.
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T
The contribution of Dr Gavrilyuk reported in this paper was supported by the Russian Science Foun-
dation Project No. 17-78-20062: Life strategies of young people of the new working class in modern
Russia.
NOTES
1 Calculated at 2021 exchange rates.
2 Within contemporary Russian sociology, Marxist-Leninist class analysis of social position has been replaced by a stratification
theory informed by structural-functionalism. This focuses on the creation of multi-dimensional and hierarchical stratification
models of Russian society, based on criteria such as employment, income, position in the power structure and group self-
identification (Golenkova 2014). The concept of a ‘working class’ has largely disappeared because of its previous association
with Marxism-Leninism. The “middle class” is usually theorised as a stratum, while the ‘working class’ (the vast majority
of the population) remains un-named or described by euphemisms such as “basic layer” (Zaslavskaya, 1997). Recent works
discuss the class nature of a “precariat” (Toshchenko 2018) and the emergence of a new “owner class” (Golenkova 2017,
pp. 9–10).
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflicting interests.
D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon
reasonable request.
PEER REVIEW
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/issj.12373
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How to cite this article: Fox, Nick J., and Tatiana Gavrilyuk. 2022. “The more-than-human
Production of Material Dis/Advantage: A Russian Case Study.” International Social Science
Journal, 72, 1033–1051. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12373

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DOI: 10.1111/issj.

The more-than-human production of material

Nick J Fox1 Tatiana Gavrilyuk2

Int Soc Sci. 2022;72:1033–1051. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/issj 1033

2 SOCIOLOGY, NON-HUMAN MATTER, AND DIS/ADVANTAGE

3 FROM ONTOLOGY TO METHODOLOGY

4 STUDY, DESIGN, AND METHODS

∙ identify what NHM was present in contemporary Russian workplace assemblages;

a. identify material relations (human and non-human) in the work-assemblages reported by

5.1 Non-human matter in the work environment

TA B L E 1 Non-human matter in respondents’ environments

Type of matter Examples

5.2 How non-human matter affected workers

The affects (defined as “capacities to affect or be affected”) assembled respondents, other

5.3 Non-human matter and capacities

“If something gets worse, if my classroom is taken away, if my equipment is taken

5.4 The material production of lasting dis/advantage

“Lack of heating or air conditioning in the office is an obstacle to productive work. …

Lasting dis/advantage could also be produced by the micropolitics of complex assemblages of

D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T

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