Budkavlen

Äckel som kulturell kraft

2022-12-15T13:11:40+02:00

Detta nummer av Budkavlen fokuserar på vad äckel och äcklighet åstadkommer i olika sammanhang. Det äckliga kan både avstöta och attrahera, väcka både nyfikenhet och avsmak. Äckel är en kulturellt formad känsla som kan ha starka effekter i världen och i enskilda människors liv. Artiklarna som ingår visar bland annat hur hur äckel kan användas för att styra in människor i önskad riktning, engagera människor att handla och avskräcka dem från oönskat beteende.

Red. Blanka Henriksson & Ann-Helen Sund

Vardagen som folkloristiskt laboratorium

2022-12-15T13:24:14+02:00

Texten är Lena Marander-Eklunds föredrag på professorsinstallationen vid Åbo Akademi 2.12.2022

Äcklig mat och (o)tacksamma repatriander

2022-05-09T14:35:50+03:00

Disgusting foods and (un)grateful repatriates, food, hygien and normality in Swedish refugee camps 1945

With a focus on food and disgust, this article examines the meeting between survivors who came to Sweden from Nazi concentration camps in 1945 so called “repatriates”, and the camp institutions that received them. The purpose is to examine the everyday negotiations and power relations of camp life through statements about food. The ways in which eating is linked to disgust illustrate the unequal and conditional relationship between "host" and "guest" and notions of the (un)grateful repatriate.

Eating is, like sexuality, an area surrounded by strong taboos, rules, and orderings. Regulations and rituals around food define and delimit religions, ethnic groups, national identities, classes, and genders. Food has moral, social and political dimensions. A certain kind of food, eaten by a particular group in a certain context, is considered enjoyable, desirable, normal and healthy, or abominable, abnormal, or disgusting (Douglas 2011 [1966]). Food is also strongly associated with hospitality and the rituals of charity. In hospitality there is an inherent conditional power relationship between the host and its guest. This is particularly evident in relation to refugee reception. The guest must play according to the host's rules and be grateful to earn the hospitality. Some categories of guests are considered more "worthy", and in merit of greater empathy (Ahmed 2000, 2004). Exploring food and eating practices in refugee camps make this act of balance visible, the unequal power relations that arised in Swedish repatriate camps. As in the concentration camps, food involved a regulation of time and space and a manifestation of dependency. Eating was controlled: how, what and when they ate, and with whom. Institutions exercise power over the subject, whether the purpose is benevolent or malicious. This created disgust and resentment. Still, in contrast to much else, the food situation was something that the individual could resist, albeit limited. The study concerns both conditions in open camps and in a closed internment camp for "deviant" foreign women.

”Vi ser dem som smutsiga och äckliga platser som är fulla av farliga bakterier”

2022-04-07T16:26:15+03:00

This paper is about what disgust means for how people talk about and act in toilets. The overall purpose is to map and analyze meanings attributed to toilets, primarily public, but also semi-public, variants (semi-public are toilets that are publicly available under certain conditions, for example for guests at a restaurant). A more specific purpose is to investigate how disgust organizes these meanings as well as people’s toilet practices.

The main material is based on interviews with 11 people who clean or have cleaned toilets professionally in different places and in different contexts, for example at shopping centers, companies, institutions and ships. The paper is also based on media material collected with the help of the database retriever.nu and a search on "public toilets". In addition, observations have been made in public toilets, such as at airports, training facilities and bus stations. Theoretically, the paper is based on a discourse-theoretical perspective that focuses on logics, i.e. organizing principles possible to identify in different practices and discourses.

According to the results, a cultural logic of disgust characterizes notions of toilets and toilet practices, which means that toilet visitors strive to distance themselves ritually, symbolically and practically from the materiality of the toilet. As an example, toilet visitors create distance to a presumed contaminated toilet seat by hovering, i.e. by performing their needs without touching the toilet seat with the buttocks. Non-contact technologies such as automatic soap dispensers fulfill a similar distancing function.

Snor

2022-04-07T14:06:01+03:00

I artikeln studeras det äckliga med utgångspunkt i de kulturella betydelser som snor laddas med. Snor uppfattas som äckligt, ett sjukdomssymtom och något farligt beroende på situationen. Snor är slem som bildas i slemhinnan i näsan och slemmet ökar i samband med inflammation. Det resulterar i snuva. Nästan alla är snuviga och snoriga ibland. I folkmedicinska uppteckningar finns en uppsjö med botemetoder mot snuva. Idag har snor fått en annan dimension i och med Corona-viruset. Nu kan snor vara rent av livsfarligt.

De kulturella betydelser som snor laddas med diskuteras genom fokus på följande 1) Snor och äckel 2) Snor som sjukdomssymptom och 3) snor och fara i relation till Corona-viruset. Som teoretiskt perspektiv används bland annat Mary Douglas (1997) tankar om renhet, fara och smuts. Även snor som moraliskt äckel och äckel och fara diskuteras samt de rituella praktiker som omgärdar snor. Materialet består främst av traditionsuppteckningar och frågelistsvar. Snor i samband med sjukdom omtalas väldigt neutralt. Samtidigt uppfattar vi snor, speciellt andras snor, som äckligt.

In this article, I will discuss snot in relation to common cold and in relation to the Coronavirus. The object of the article is to look at how snot is charged with different cultural meanings when talking about common cold and the Coronavirus. The study is delimited to study snot in relation to illness and cures of it. I will discuss weather snot is looked upon as something disgusting, dangerous or something neutral.

Fy, en fästing!

2022-04-07T14:10:29+03:00

This article focuses on why ticks evoke disgust and how this strong emotion makes us react and act in different ways. By feeding on us and our companion animals ticks cross the line of privacy and intimacy. By focusing on what disgust as an emotion does, it is possible to detect and analyze affective responses related to body and space. The strong emotional reactions caused by ticks create imbalance and loss of control in our everyday lives. In the efforts of re-creating order and control various practices are activated. These practices become ritualized, reoccurring routines during the tick season that last from early Spring until late Autumn. The practices also involve order-inducing behavior and distancing practices to keep the body and the space around us tick-free. The approach to ticks is anthropocentric, where the human body is protected against ticks while the body of the tick is subjected to violent and morbid treatment.

The research material for this article consists of questionnaires and media material, through which an in-depth understanding of the relationship of humans, ticks and companion animals can be reached. This article can be seen as a contribution to the research field of Human-Animal Studies by raising questions about how humans relate to animals and how interspecies relationships are built. The affective responses to ticks create tensions, conflicts and boundaries between humans and non-humans. Disgust is culturally constructed and driven, and we learn to avoid the dangerous and the unknown. The lack of a certain tick charisma equalizes ticks with so called trash animals and invasive species, who are neither considered belonging in nature or culture. Therefore, the question of ticks as disgusting is not merely a question of an emotional reaction and what this emotion does with us. Instead, the question brings forth existential and societal dilemmas about the influence, power and responsibility of humans in multispecies relations.

Instrumentalisering av äckel

2022-04-22T10:31:02+03:00

Illegal drugs are disgusting, while legal and medical drugs are not. This is a message that has long been promoted in Sweden and has become a self-evident claim, even though the active substances in legal and illegal drugs can be the same. What is then the difference between a threatening, disgusting drug and a non-threatening medical cure? In this article, proximity and distance to objects already designated as disgusting is analysed as key to how drugs acquire disgustingness, in line with Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology. In the same way as drugs themselves, users of drugs can acquire disgust. To avoid disgustingness, disgust must be shown if a proximate drug, or user of a drug, turns out to be disgusting, making judgements of whether or not a drug is disgusting a matter of human value as well as valuation. If the source of the threatening is placed in previous contacts, a line of affects and assessments is central, transforming the discussion about a certain substance into a discussion about proximities. Perceptions of a corrupt medical industry, for example, can direct disgust towards prescription medicines from the point of view of users of illegal drugs. Medical facilities, conversely, can provide information that relies on assumptions of threatening otherness regarding drugs that are far from Western medicine. Betelnut – a mild stimulant that is uncommon and legal in Sweden – listed alongside notorious drugs such as heroin and crack in an information folder handed out at a hospital, serves as an example of how a drug can be perceived as threatening without reference to pharmacology or illegality. Campains that strive to make people reject drugs to keep them safe from potential drug-related harm, can in this way instrumentalise disgust in ways that relate to constructions of race and class. Instrumentalisations of disgust can thus pose a risk for some, while others are kept away from the disgusting.

Billigt blask och piptobak

2022-04-07T14:13:08+03:00

In this article, I discuss the presence of alcohol and tobacco in the comics of Starlet, a Swedish girls’ magazine published in 1966-96. This topic is explored through the subject of disgust as a feeling: in the comics, disgust is expressed by some of the consumers of alcohol and tobacco but is mainly conveyed by onlookers or acquaintances. The consumption of alcohol and smoking met by disgust is exclusively carried out by the working class. The smoking and drinking of upper and middle classes never lead to addiction, or gross elements such as bad smell, coughing, or vomiting, why the working-class consumption is to a larger extent connected to bodily practice, excessiveness, and lack of control. The addicted working-class consumers also have problems with the usage of alcohol as a separating device – when the middle class use wine or champagne to mark a special occasion, or the end of the working week, the working-class alcoholics drink during the week, at times even at work.

Furthermore, alcohol and tobacco set out boundaries between ages. Amongst the youths showing a lack of control – vomiting from alcohol or coughing from cigarettes – is the curious teenager as well as the unreliable delinquent. The immaturity, or the antagonistic trait of the cigarette smoker is therefore depicted in these stories. The usage of smoking and drinking in the comics could be an extension of the social debate and the Swedish policy regarding alcohol and tobacco: at the time when the comics were published, several efforts were taken to decrease youths’ consumption of tobacco and alcohol in Sweden. This way of picturing alcohol and tobacco consumption as disgusting or antagonistic could be interpreted as an attempt to make said consumption less attractive to the demographic group that consumed such media as Starlet.

Äckel som kulturell kraft

2022-12-02T11:23:54+02:00

Det äckliga kan både avstöta och attrahera, väcka både nyfikenhet och avsmak. Äckel är en kulturellt formad känsla som kan ha starka effekter i världen och i enskilda människors liv. Det kan användas för att styra in människor i önskad riktning, engagera människor att handla och avskräcka dem från oönskat beteende.

Med Kamera och koffert

2022-05-15T20:19:31+03:00

Recension av Med Kamera och koffert. Resefotografier före massturismen. Red. Sanna Jylhä & Marika Rosenström. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 2021. 177 s.

Varför köper individer födda på 1970- och 80-talen fritidshus?

2022-09-13T10:58:07+03:00

Recension av Susanna Rolfsdotter Eliasson: Längtans och drömmarnas hus. Ideal och praktik bland en ny generation stugägare. Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, Göteborgs universitet 2020. 232 s., ill. English summary. ISBN 978-91-8009-130-5

Kulturarvsobjekt och kampen om besökarnas underhållning

2022-09-12T14:31:21+03:00

Recension av Maija Mäkis doktorsavhandling Polkuja esihistoriasta tulevaisuuksiin – Matkailun tulevaisuuksia ja toimijoita arkeologisilla maastokohteilla. Åbo universitet 2020.

Tankeväckande avhandling om hur heteronormativa konstruktioner upprätthålls i mötet mellan människa och väsen

2022-05-31T15:03:08+03:00

Recension av Harjunen, Catarina: Att dansa med de(t) skeva – Erotiska möten mellan människa och naturväsen i finlandssvenska folksägner. Avhandling. Åbo: Åbo Akademi Förlag. 230 s.

Rumslighet i sagomiljöer

2022-05-11T14:36:46+03:00

Recension av Nada Kujundžić: Narrative Space and Spatial Transference in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Turun yliopiston julkaisuja. Sarja B, Humaniora, 518, (2020).

Människonära vardagshistoria

2022-05-23T18:44:47+03:00

Recension av Att mötas kring varor. Plats och praktiker i handelsmöten i Finland 1850–1950. Red. Johanna Wassholm & Ann-Catrin Östman (2021). Svenska litteratursällskapet, Helsingfors och Appell förlag, Stockholm. 309 s.

Trender och traditioner i Åbo under de gångna hundra åren

2022-05-12T18:29:50+03:00

Vardagsskrock. Från abrakadabra till önskebrunn

2022-05-14T18:22:05+03:00

Tentakulärt och taktilt på museet

2022-04-29T15:04:50+03:00

Recension av Owman, Caroline: Det meränmänskliga museet: Konservatorns bevarandepraktik som flyktlinje i modernitetens museum. Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2021. 207s.

Ligger museikompetensens kärna i praktikerna?

2022-09-12T14:26:31+03:00

Recension av Inkeri Hakamies doktorsavhandling Practicing Museums: Museum People, Museum Work and Change in Practice. Helsingfors universitet 2019.