Call For Papers 1/24: Crafting knowledge and creative material practices

Ethnological research of materials and material culture connects both material and immaterial aspects of craft making. Contemporary research relates to skills and creativity, functionality and values. Craft making and artefacts are essential part of material culture. Craft making consist of maker related aspects, including cognitive and sensorimotor skills and affects, as well as external factors, e.g. materials, design traditions, economic realities and needs of making.

A craft process as creative practice has many uncertainties. No matter how well the process is planned, materiality can work out in unexpected ways and the end result can be something unpredictable. However, when crafter uses tacit knowledge and lets materiality guide the process, new ways of making can be created. Sometimes allowing oneself to make mistakes is crucial for creating new ways of thinking and doing.

Crafting is an affective process. During difficult times, e.g. a pandemic, war and shortage periods, people have found survival strategies and methods to use materials in innovative ways. Crafting can be used as a method of handling emotionally hard reality. Craft making may lead to a more comprehensive understanding about materials and even survival and success in life but also to a fuller understanding of our research topics. Recycling, self-sufficiency and the do-it-yourself attitude are effective and essential factors, as well as creative statements in the time of accelerating climate change and Anthropocene.

The issue 1/2024 of Ethnologia Fennica calls for a broad range of articles that deal with crafting; crafting knowledge and creative material practices. What kind of creative methods have been experimented, invented and found useful in the material processes of communities and individuals? Moreover, how have these innovations and different kinds of hand skills in various contexts influenced our societies and everyday life? Furthermore, how does crafting affect our emotions and values?

Ethnologia Fennica is a peer-reviewed, international open access journal. The journal publishes original scholarly articles, review articles, conference reports and book reviews written in English. The articles undergo double-blind peer review. The Finnish Publication Forum classifies Ethnologia Fennica as a leading academic journal at Level 2 (on a scale of 0 to 3).

Please submit your manuscript by 5 November 2023. The deadline for reviews, reports and commentary texts is 31 March 2024. The issue will be published in June 2024.

Please submit your language revised article (which should not exceed 10.000 words) through the journal.fi submission system (https://journal.fi/ethnolfenn). Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting their manuscript or, if already registered, they can simply log in and begin the submission process. For further information, please see our article guidelines at https://journal.fi/ethnolfenn/articlequidelines and our style guide at https://journal.fi/ethnolfenn/styleguide.

Please note that in every issue, we also publish articles outside the theme, and you can submit your manuscript at any time.