‘Work and rhythm’ revisited: rhythm and experience in northern Namibian peasant work

Abstract

Karl Bücher's Arbeit und Rhythmus (1896) foreshadowed a practical turn in the anthropology of work. Concentrating on work rhythms, Bücher described work as human action, not merely as a means to an end. Building on his analysis, I argue that anthropology has much to gain by taking rhythm seriously as an analytical category. Rhythm facilitates and proves the acquisition of skills; it forms a link between the exigencies of ‘clock time’ and the experience of ‘task time’; and it mediates between plans and situated actions. Crucially, the possibility of finding one's own work rhythm affects the experience of work as alienated or as an intrinsically fulfilling task. In micro‐ethnographic descriptions of peasant work in northern Namibia, I show how different types of rhythmization jointly generate the flow of work. They are as much linked to the qualities of the environment we work upon as they are to the social organization of our work. Rhythmization is a crucial component in the relation between humans and their work and an important topic for anthropology.