Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.23991/ef.v50i1.115635
E. Hertz
Rules are a basic property of human societies and yet they occupy a historically contested place in the modern narrative about what makes us human. Rules are infinitely malleable and ambivalent, at the same time a reflection of power inequities, a mechanism for reinforcing these inequities and a means to challenge them. Transgressing them can both create new spaces of freedom and reinforce the norms that they seek to establish. Reframing rules as potentialities helps break this spell. It allows us to ask not what we should do but what we can do, and to take the measure of the limits of our actions, as humans and as social scientists.
{"title":"Fight for Better Rules","authors":"E. Hertz","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.115635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.115635","url":null,"abstract":"Rules are a basic property of human societies and yet they occupy a historically contested place in the modern narrative about what makes us human. Rules are infinitely malleable and ambivalent, at the same time a reflection of power inequities, a mechanism for reinforcing these inequities and a means to challenge them. Transgressing them can both create new spaces of freedom and reinforce the norms that they seek to establish. Reframing rules as potentialities helps break this spell. It allows us to ask not what we should do but what we can do, and to take the measure of the limits of our actions, as humans and as social scientists.","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":"121784485","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.v50i1.115168
Raúl Acosta García
Cycling in Mexico City is dangerous. But over the last two decades it has become less so. New cycleways, a large public bicycle-sharing scheme, various government cycling promotion projects and an abundance of official signalling demanding respect for cyclists have made bicycles visible as worthy vehicles on city streets. For cycloactivists, however, such improvements are not enough. Cyclists are frequently harassed, attacked or run over by motorists. Cycloactivists thus demand more and better cycleways as well as increased measures to address injustices in mobility issues across the city. They do so through protests, information campaigns, public performances and academic debates, and crucially, by cycling through city streets. This means that they use their bodies as symbols, to highlight their vulnerability. Along the way, they often break existing traffic rules to highlight how unfair they are and to draw attention to other demands. I refer to their efforts as experiential cycloactivism, which highlights cyclists making themselves vulnerable as a means of denouncing illegitimate rules and policies that need to be changed. I conclude the analysis by suggesting that their style of rule-breaking is a type of ritual with which they seek to improve the city, not burn it down.
{"title":"Cycloactivism in Mexico City","authors":"Raúl Acosta García","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.115168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.115168","url":null,"abstract":"Cycling in Mexico City is dangerous. But over the last two decades it has become less so. New cycleways, a large public bicycle-sharing scheme, various government cycling promotion projects and an abundance of official signalling demanding respect for cyclists have made bicycles visible as worthy vehicles on city streets. For cycloactivists, however, such improvements are not enough. Cyclists are frequently harassed, attacked or run over by motorists. Cycloactivists thus demand more and better cycleways as well as increased measures to address injustices in mobility issues across the city. They do so through protests, information campaigns, public performances and academic debates, and crucially, by cycling through city streets. This means that they use their bodies as symbols, to highlight their vulnerability. Along the way, they often break existing traffic rules to highlight how unfair they are and to draw attention to other demands. I refer to their efforts as experiential cycloactivism, which highlights cyclists making themselves vulnerable as a means of denouncing illegitimate rules and policies that need to be changed. I conclude the analysis by suggesting that their style of rule-breaking is a type of ritual with which they seek to improve the city, not burn it down.","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":"122100925","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.v50i1.129311
Coppélie Cocq
{"title":"Towards New Forms of Engagement","authors":"Coppélie Cocq","doi":"10.23991/ef.v50i1.129311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v50i1.129311","url":null,"abstract":"","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":"121735464","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.113009
Inés Matres
In the spring of 2020 young people were living in an exceptional period of isolation, messiness and emotional turmoil. The pandemic situation in Finland serves as the background of this study, which focuses on participation and the voice of adolescents in times of crisis. My inquiry is based on 75 diaries collected by diverse museums and archives and originally created by 11- to 18-year-olds during remote schooling, and my aim is to ascertain how they were invited in and responded to making the stuff of history. Combining oral history and media ethnographic methods, I provide an analysis of the diaries focusing on the emotional resilience attached to hobbies, the echo that the narrators’ information habits generate, and the media ecologies that resulted from the crafting and writing of diaries. My main argument is that although the diaries capture the narrators’ reactions to the crisis, the strong presence of their ordinary lives exposes shared generational traits that are worth preserving beyond this strange time. The students were writing in and about the immediate environment in which they lived their lives, which resulted in an uncommon and rich form of oral history that raised new questions about young people’s experiences during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
{"title":"“Ha! Suck on that Corona, I Found Something to Do”","authors":"Inés Matres","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.113009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.113009","url":null,"abstract":"In the spring of 2020 young people were living in an exceptional period of isolation, messiness and emotional turmoil. The pandemic situation in Finland serves as the background of this study, which focuses on participation and the voice of adolescents in times of crisis. My inquiry is based on 75 diaries collected by diverse museums and archives and originally created by 11- to 18-year-olds during remote schooling, and my aim is to ascertain how they were invited in and responded to making the stuff of history. Combining oral history and media ethnographic methods, I provide an analysis of the diaries focusing on the emotional resilience attached to hobbies, the echo that the narrators’ information habits generate, and the media ecologies that resulted from the crafting and writing of diaries. My main argument is that although the diaries capture the narrators’ reactions to the crisis, the strong presence of their ordinary lives exposes shared generational traits that are worth preserving beyond this strange time. The students were writing in and about the immediate environment in which they lived their lives, which resulted in an uncommon and rich form of oral history that raised new questions about young people’s experiences during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133300471","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.120995
Helena Laukkoski
{"title":"Cultural Knowledge in a Changing World – Research, Teaching and Cultural Encounters","authors":"Helena Laukkoski","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.120995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.120995","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133226530","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.121772
H. Jönsson
{"title":"In Search of Ethnological Research on Sustainable Foodways","authors":"H. Jönsson","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.121772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.121772","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132935639","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.121584
Niklas Huldén
{"title":"Definition, Preserving and Guarding of Cultural Property and Heritage during the Second World War","authors":"Niklas Huldén","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.121584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.121584","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130852588","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.112847
Karin L. Sandell
Fish farming is a hot topic in the local press of the Jakobstad region on the west coast of Finland. In 2017, a local fisher established an open sea fish farming company to produce locally farmed fish with the aim of meeting the increasing demand for domestically produced fish. Open sea fish farming is debated due to its environmental impact. The establishment of the fish farm has been challenged and defended in several readers’ letters from local politicians and officials, local activists, researchers, and the company’s founder himself. The debate letters are filled with data on the environmental impact from nutrient emissions, and other measurable factors. However, the debate is not just about feed pellets, fish faeces, and the organic enrichment of bottom sediments—it is about the emotional relationship to the sea in a region forged by the Gulf of Bothnia. With affect theory as a starting point, I aim to analyse how notions of sustainability and sustainable foodways are expressed in a local newspaper debate about fish farming. How do the two sides of the debate present their views of sustainability?
{"title":"Enough Fish in the Sea?","authors":"Karin L. Sandell","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.112847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.112847","url":null,"abstract":"Fish farming is a hot topic in the local press of the Jakobstad region on the west coast of Finland. In 2017, a local fisher established an open sea fish farming company to produce locally farmed fish with the aim of meeting the increasing demand for domestically produced fish. Open sea fish farming is debated due to its environmental impact. The establishment of the fish farm has been challenged and defended in several readers’ letters from local politicians and officials, local activists, researchers, and the company’s founder himself. The debate letters are filled with data on the environmental impact from nutrient emissions, and other measurable factors. However, the debate is not just about feed pellets, fish faeces, and the organic enrichment of bottom sediments—it is about the emotional relationship to the sea in a region forged by the Gulf of Bothnia. With affect theory as a starting point, I aim to analyse how notions of sustainability and sustainable foodways are expressed in a local newspaper debate about fish farming. How do the two sides of the debate present their views of sustainability?","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130672751","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 : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.23991/ef.v49i2.113006
Jessica Jungell-Michelsson, Minna Autio
Food companies are central actors in driving sustainability transformations at the interface of production and consumption. Still, only limited attention has been directed to how sustainability-related meanings are being created within various food industry organizations. In this article, we explore the characteristics of the sustainability sensemaking and -giving processes among food companies and analyze how these processes influence sustainability-related transformations of current foodways. Our analysis is based on qualitative data (transcripts and notes) from interviews with managers from 15 Finnish food companies. By using organizational sensemaking literature, we shed light on the companies’ cultural talk and social meaning creations of sustainability. Our findings indicate that food companies’ sustainability sensemaking is an intra- and inter-organizational, social process occurring between the individual and organizational spheres of the organizations. Food companies act as sensegivers, as they actively communicate with stakeholders to achieve the position of a knowledgeable sustainability forerunner. Sustainability has been normalized in the talk and action of food companies, but the discursive space offered by them is limited to weak sustainability perspectives. While socio-material transgressions of current foodways may emerge, we argue that a shift from communicating and commercializing sustainability to a focus on ecological material aspects and ecological sensemaking is essential for transforming foodways towards strong sustainability.
{"title":"Transforming Foodways","authors":"Jessica Jungell-Michelsson, Minna Autio","doi":"10.23991/ef.v49i2.113006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.v49i2.113006","url":null,"abstract":"Food companies are central actors in driving sustainability transformations at the interface of production and consumption. Still, only limited attention has been directed to how sustainability-related meanings are being created within various food industry organizations. In this article, we explore the characteristics of the sustainability sensemaking and -giving processes among food companies and analyze how these processes influence sustainability-related transformations of current foodways. Our analysis is based on qualitative data (transcripts and notes) from interviews with managers from 15 Finnish food companies. By using organizational sensemaking literature, we shed light on the companies’ cultural talk and social meaning creations of sustainability. Our findings indicate that food companies’ sustainability sensemaking is an intra- and inter-organizational, social process occurring between the individual and organizational spheres of the organizations. Food companies act as sensegivers, as they actively communicate with stakeholders to achieve the position of a knowledgeable sustainability forerunner. Sustainability has been normalized in the talk and action of food companies, but the discursive space offered by them is limited to weak sustainability perspectives. While socio-material transgressions of current foodways may emerge, we argue that a shift from communicating and commercializing sustainability to a focus on ecological material aspects and ecological sensemaking is essential for transforming foodways towards strong sustainability.","PeriodicalId":211215,"journal":{"name":"Ethnologia Fennica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132960508","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}