Pub Date : 2023-12-20DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i2.129331
Pia Olsson, Jenni Rinne
The question we address in this article concerns the kind of affective practices that people adopt in order to negotiate the various emotions aroused by global crises, and how these negotiations allow room for hope. In doing so, we focus on two recent major upheavals, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia’s war in Ukraine, and on how they have affected people’s everyday lives. Both crises were documented in two rapid-response questionnaires organised by the Finnish Literature Society. Keeping daily routines as normal as possible, prepping and preparing, sending and receiving memes and other humorous materials via social media, and becoming involved in grass-roots actions and activism were incorporated into the descriptions of everyday life. As such, these actions gave people the feeling that they were doing something and that they had some control over what was happening around them. Here, we discuss these affective practices as a way of allowing room for hope and engendering hopefulness for a better future among those taking the action, and those in their sphere of influence. In acquiring agency, people were negotiating hope for a better future despite the uncertain situation.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.128725
Pasi Enges
Although defended within the field of ethnology, Silja Heikkilä’s doctoral thesis can above all be described as a continuation of folkloristic dream research in Finland. Professors Leea Virtanen and Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj especially have, through their numerous publications, brought forward various aspects of dream traditions, e.g. the contents of dreams, their individual and collective interpretations and meanings, as well as the social transmission of dreams as oral narratives. Heikkilä explicitly identifies herself as continuing in this socio-culturally oriented research tradition. However, her purpose is to examine and define her research subject within a wider framework of intangible cultural heritage, thus emphasising the contemporary relevance and cultural value of the subject. She is not primarily interested in specific dream contents but focuses instead on people’s thoughts about the meaning of dreaming and transmitting dreams in present-day society. These ideas, memories, beliefs, interpretations and evaluations, most often verbally transmitted, are the main focus of the study.
{"title":"Dreaming Cultural Heritage","authors":"Pasi Enges","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.128725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.128725","url":null,"abstract":"Although defended within the field of ethnology, Silja Heikkilä’s doctoral thesis can above all be described as a continuation of folkloristic dream research in Finland. Professors Leea Virtanen and Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj especially have, through their numerous publications, brought forward various aspects of dream traditions, e.g. the contents of dreams, their individual and collective interpretations and meanings, as well as the social transmission of dreams as oral narratives. Heikkilä explicitly identifies herself as continuing in this socio-culturally oriented research tradition. However, her purpose is to examine and define her research subject within a wider framework of intangible cultural heritage, thus emphasising the contemporary relevance and cultural value of the subject. She is not primarily interested in specific dream contents but focuses instead on people’s thoughts about the meaning of dreaming and transmitting dreams in present-day society. These ideas, memories, beliefs, interpretations and evaluations, most often verbally transmitted, are the main focus of the study.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116396921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.120977
Tenno Teidearu
This paper studies crystals in New Spirituality in Estonia not only as things, or objects, used in certain practices, but also as agentive materials. My research participants, who wear crystals, take their material properties seriously, finding the properties to have supportive qualities, according to esoteric interpretation. Nevertheless, things and materials, objects and minerals, are never permanent; they have material lives of their own. Sometimes minerals lose their gloss, crack, break or just become lost. Physical decay and displacement, which are the focus of this paper, have meaning-making potential, which my interlocutors interpret within the framework of the esoteric. Their perception of these minerals can be understood in posthumanist and new materialist terms. The paper uses the concept of material agency to demonstrate how natural processes of decay acquire cultural meaning by connecting material properties and human interpretation. This work was supported by an Estonian Research Council grant (PUT number PRG670), ‘Vernacular Interpretations of the Incomprehensible: Folkloristic Perspectives Towards Uncertainty’.
{"title":"Material Agency of Crystals in New Spirituality","authors":"Tenno Teidearu","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.120977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.120977","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies crystals in New Spirituality in Estonia not only as things, or objects, used in certain practices, but also as agentive materials. My research participants, who wear crystals, take their material properties seriously, finding the properties to have supportive qualities, according to esoteric interpretation. Nevertheless, things and materials, objects and minerals, are never permanent; they have material lives of their own. Sometimes minerals lose their gloss, crack, break or just become lost. Physical decay and displacement, which are the focus of this paper, have meaning-making potential, which my interlocutors interpret within the framework of the esoteric. Their perception of these minerals can be understood in posthumanist and new materialist terms. The paper uses the concept of material agency to demonstrate how natural processes of decay acquire cultural meaning by connecting material properties and human interpretation. \u0000This work was supported by an Estonian Research Council grant (PUT number PRG670), ‘Vernacular Interpretations of the Incomprehensible: Folkloristic Perspectives Towards Uncertainty’.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126474446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.121289
Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti
The article addresses the topical issue of environmental emotions from the perspective of individual experiences of environmental art reception. The research focuses on how the audience experienced lament performances by singer and musician Noora Kauppila in natural mires in Finland, and it asks the research question: What kinds of environmental emotions have laments in the mire provoked, and how are emotions contextualised in audience interviews? Art performances in the mire have become part of a growing international mire trend in the 21st century. I understand mires as a living heritage that reflects the diversity and inter-connectedness of heritage elements (e.g. practices and knowledge concerning nature) experienced by community members and individuals. The effectiveness of art (lament performances) is linked to reception research, which has not previously been applied to mire art performances. In the debate on the impact of art, the experiential perspective has been marginal. In the interview material, individuals’ experiences reveal strong emotions about the endangered environment. The lament performance transformed a mire into a culturally appropriated space for the collective and individual processing of emotions regarding a fragile natural environment. The interviewees reported unwanted changes in their own surroundings, and their feelings about the changes were reflected in the observed decline in the habitats of birds and other mire animals. In a broad sense, the article offers insights into the meanings and changes of an individual’s relationship with nature. The research evidence suggests that a communal context is needed to deal with environmental emotions, especially negative emotions like sorrow, hatred and grief. Likewise, the individual accounts reveal a need for a communal change in abandoning unsustainable lifestyles. The article is based on research that has been undertaken as part of the ‘Mire Trend’ research project at the University of Eastern Finland.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.120070
S. Valkonen
In this text I discuss how Sámi ways of knowing could be woven into the practices of Sámi research. I introduce three stories of three research projects as examples of attempts to overcome the complex and multifaceted challenges that Sámi society is currently facing. These examples place the Sámi perception of the world and its ontological and epistemological premises and practices at the core of knowledge practices. Sámi knowledge and ways of knowing the world are jointly created and shared in the every-day activities of communicating and acting, being in dialogue with the environment, caring for it, and engaging with the principle that a human being is not the master of nature.
{"title":"Multiple Worlds of Sámi Research","authors":"S. Valkonen","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.120070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.120070","url":null,"abstract":"In this text I discuss how Sámi ways of knowing could be woven into the practices of Sámi research. I introduce three stories of three research projects as examples of attempts to overcome the complex and multifaceted challenges that Sámi society is currently facing. These examples place the Sámi perception of the world and its ontological and epistemological premises and practices at the core of knowledge practices. Sámi knowledge and ways of knowing the world are jointly created and shared in the every-day activities of communicating and acting, being in dialogue with the environment, caring for it, and engaging with the principle that a human being is not the master of nature.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121962281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.116242
Nicolas Le Bigre
Through a methodology of ethnographic walking and photographic documentation this article considers and redefines street art within the contexts of the disciplines of Ethnology and Folklore. By considering wide-ranging Scottish examples of public-facing interventions through the concepts of temporality, placement and location, and modification and defacement, this article contributes to a wider scholarly and general discussion on the role and importance of street art in our everyday lives. It argues for the significance and usefulness of these conceptual frameworks, which not only link street art in Scotland to street art around the world, but also reveal the common hybrid physical and online nature of much street art. The examples included of public interventions are almost all connected through the theme of resistance, whether personal, local, national, or international. Examples explored relate to the Scottish Independence Referendum, anti-gentrification campaigning, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, trans rights activism, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
{"title":"Resistance through the Temporality, Placement, and Modification of Street Art in Scotland’s Streets","authors":"Nicolas Le Bigre","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.116242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.116242","url":null,"abstract":"Through a methodology of ethnographic walking and photographic documentation this article considers and redefines street art within the contexts of the disciplines of Ethnology and Folklore. By considering wide-ranging Scottish examples of public-facing interventions through the concepts of temporality, placement and location, and modification and defacement, this article contributes to a wider scholarly and general discussion on the role and importance of street art in our everyday lives. It argues for the significance and usefulness of these conceptual frameworks, which not only link street art in Scotland to street art around the world, but also reveal the common hybrid physical and online nature of much street art. The examples included of public interventions are almost all connected through the theme of resistance, whether personal, local, national, or international. Examples explored relate to the Scottish Independence Referendum, anti-gentrification campaigning, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, trans rights activism, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132459318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.128728
Riikka Taavetti, Olga Tkach
Pauliina Lukinmaa’s doctoral thesis, LGBTIQ+ Activists in St Petersburg: Forming Practices, Identifying as Activists and Creating Their Own Places, analyses how lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans people and those who identify as queer (LGBTIQ+ people) manage to do activism in Russia under increasing state oppression and in an environment that is generally hostile towards sexual and gender diversity. Other current studies analyse growing anti-queer violence in Russia as a consequence of homophobic legislature and culture (see, e.g. Kondakov 2022). Lukinmaa, however, approaches queer people’s lives in this authoritarian context with a different, experimental, optics that portrays the LGBTQ+ movement in a rhizomatic form with the capacity to remain flexible, ever moving, situational and unstable but also productive, diverse and yet targeted. She provides a lively thick description and analysis of the activist network, firmly situated in a specific time and place, in the 2010s, in St Petersburg, a Russian metropole, a cultural city and an LGBTIQ+ hub, in late 2010s, currently experiencing repressive laws but before the Covid pandemic and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, both of which have had a damaging influence on Russian civil society. The book is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork that the author conducted in St Petersburg between the years 2017 and 2019. In addition to participant observation by Lukinmaa at various events and activities, she conducted 45 interviews with activists divided into three overlapping groups: those active in the registered LGBT organisations, those taking part in grassroots groups and those she has chosen to call influencers. Moreover, the fieldwork was not limited to the time she spent in St Petersburg. Lukinmaa stayed in touch with the research participants between her field trips to Russia and conducted online interviews with activists who had emigrated abroad. Therefore, her study also includes a focus on transnational networks of LGBTIQ+ people. The study consists of an introduction, which presents the research problem, an extensive analytical chapter on the century-long history of non-normative sexuality and gender expression in Russia, and chapters on locating
{"title":"Rhizomatic LGBTIQ+ Activism in St. Petersburg","authors":"Riikka Taavetti, Olga Tkach","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.128728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.128728","url":null,"abstract":"Pauliina Lukinmaa’s doctoral thesis, LGBTIQ+ Activists in St Petersburg: Forming Practices, Identifying as Activists and Creating Their Own Places, analyses how lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans people and those who identify as queer (LGBTIQ+ people) manage to do activism in Russia under increasing state oppression and in an environment that is generally hostile towards sexual and gender diversity. Other current studies analyse growing anti-queer violence in Russia as a consequence of homophobic legislature and culture (see, e.g. Kondakov 2022). Lukinmaa, however, approaches queer people’s lives in this authoritarian context with a different, experimental, optics that portrays the LGBTQ+ movement in a rhizomatic form with the capacity to remain flexible, ever moving, situational and unstable but also productive, diverse and yet targeted. She provides a lively thick description and analysis of the activist network, firmly situated in a specific time and place, in the 2010s, in St Petersburg, a Russian metropole, a cultural city and an LGBTIQ+ hub, in late 2010s, currently experiencing repressive laws but before the Covid pandemic and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, both of which have had a damaging influence on Russian civil society. The book is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork that the author conducted in St Petersburg between the years 2017 and 2019. In addition to participant observation by Lukinmaa at various events and activities, she conducted 45 interviews with activists divided into three overlapping groups: those active in the registered LGBT organisations, those taking part in grassroots groups and those she has chosen to call influencers. Moreover, the fieldwork was not limited to the time she spent in St Petersburg. Lukinmaa stayed in touch with the research participants between her field trips to Russia and conducted online interviews with activists who had emigrated abroad. Therefore, her study also includes a focus on transnational networks of LGBTIQ+ people. The study consists of an introduction, which presents the research problem, an extensive analytical chapter on the century-long history of non-normative sexuality and gender expression in Russia, and chapters on locating","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133609199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.112816
Simon Halberg
In this paper, I track the arrival of the sugar beet in Scandinavia and explore the technical changes, ecological implications and new social arrangements that followed in its wake. Based on ethnographic records and other historical material dealing with agricultural practices, I argue that an ethnological view that takes the agrarian landscape and the organisation of social life together as one analytical totality may be useful for addressing an important question: What are the implications in everyday life of an energy transition into—and out of—fossil-fuelled food production? The analysis demonstrates that the sugar beet arrived along with fossil fuels, steam ploughing, commercial fertiliser, migrant labour and agricultural consultants in a large infrastructural complex that significantly impacted the landscape. These material elements mirrored the historical victory of bourgeois industrial logic over peasant forms of life whose ecological cornerstone was the fallow land. Agricultural land became sleepless in the Anthropocene—and rural life became fossilised.
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