Ethnologia Fennica

Engaging (with) Places

Snjolaug Johannesdottir — 2025-02-04

Places are significant for people, providing grounds for a sense of belonging, identity, and well-being. This article draws on a research project examining people-place relations within the everyday material environment of central Reykjavík. Grounded in a critical heritage studies perspective, the project aims to contribute to an understanding of how individuals ascribe meaning and value to the historic urban landscape and analyse the emotions and affective qualities that emerge through sensory engagement with places perceived as material embodiments of the past. The article addresses the method of solitary, self-led participant walks using audio-visual recording glasses, supplemented with follow-up interviews. This approach facilitates in-situ, on-the-move observations of participants’ spatial encounters, offering insights into their emotional and sensory experiences of the urban landscape. The article delineates how the method enabled participants to immerse themselves in the flow of their walks, evoking a variety of sensorial expressions, mnemonic fragments, and shared narratives prompted by encounters with the material facets of the city centre. The findings highlight the potential of the method to provide partial yet meaningful access to the affective and emotional dimensions of people’s interactions with urban spaces, offering insights into the ways individuals experience and value the historic urban landscape.

Walking with Ines – Sensing Urban Transformation

Päivi Leinonen — 2025-02-04

This article examines a walk-along interview conducted in the new district of Linnakaupunki in Turku, Finland. We aim to find out what elements in the urban environment affect the well-being of one resident and how she perceives these factors along the route she chose. In this study, we pay attention to the method itself: how does our method of a walk-along interview, conducted with a wearable action camera, help us distinguish these different factors of well-being? We view the walk-along interviews as an entanglement where the method, the technique used, and the bodily senses intertwine.
In our study, the walk creates a frame for the interview allowing place-related thoughts to arise in a specific moment. Walking makes the connection to places immediate. The Linnakaupunki area combines different time layers, creating the spirit and atmosphere of the place. The wearable camera can document the route in detail, record time levels and landscape changes, and capture the interviewee’s affective experiences and responses.

Urban Imaginations

Pia Olsson — 2025-02-04

Based on multi-method team ethnography, this study examines the knowledge production of creative ethnographic methods. We explore what the encounters between ethnographers and streets as sensory entities can tell us about urban living: How do ethnographers become part of street life, and what kind of knowledge is produced through this material-sensory entanglement? Our experimental methods include ethnographic hanging out, sensory intervention, and the application of ethnographic methods in futures studies. These methods broaden our understanding of the ways in which the socio-material environment can be experienced and envisioned. They shift attention to the blind spots, offering a unique perspective on urban life that diverges from traditional depictions of street life. Our project draws inspiration from a 1970s ethnological project in which two streets in central Helsinki were documented by ethnology students through interviews, photographs, and observations of street and domestic life. In autumn 2023, present-day ethnology students revisited the same streets using sensory and creative ethnographic methods as their tools. This knowledge is reflected in the research ideals of the 1970s and the knowledge produced at that time.
The article is based on the coursework conducted in the Ethnography of Everyday Life course in autumn 2023.

Sensory Gentrification in the Most Beautiful City in the World

Sandi Abram — 2025-02-04

This article examines the dynamics of gentrification within the intersections of creative industries, urban (re)development, and social exclusion, with a focus on Ljubljana, Slovenia. It investigates the transformation of the Rog factory and its surrounding area—from an industrial site to an autonomous squatterzone and, finally, to a creative hub. Central to our analysis is the sensory dimension of urban regeneration. We introduce the concept of sensory gentrification to articulate the changing distribution of the sensible. Our argument posits the aesthetic, affective and sensory transformations implicated in gentrification as more than mere spatial rearrangements. Instead, we assert that the spatial rearrangements produce corresponding forms of social subjectivity. Through this lens, the paper shows how the gentrification of Rog recuperated the surplus politics of the squatting community—its anti-hegemonic political ideas and practices—incorporating them into the surplus value production of the newly established creative center.

Dance Floors of Polish Traditional Dances

Kinga Wygnaniec — 2025-02-04

The question of how dances bear meanings is one of the key issues in the anthropology of dance. The author here describes how sensory participation in a dance party with traditional music allows the dancers to understand and negotiate the complex ideas behind the dances. She proposes the dance floor as an analytical category – an emergent modality of space that encompasses dancers and their materialising interactions. The research is based on the theoretical framework of embodiment. The material was gathered through participant observation during dance parties with traditional music. The data presented in this article was collected through observation, with a focus on the chosen senses. The study suggests that the personal engagement of a researcher in the field makes it possible to extrapolate the subjective information of bodily experience within a net of relations that come into being on dance floors. By focusing on the senses and materiality to explore the animated reality of dance, the author is able to provide a phenomenological description of how dance floors communicate information.

Navigating stigma: A dissertation about kink offers important contributions to Ethnology

Kim Silow Kallenberg — 2025-02-04

Johanna Pohtinen 2023. The Kink Community in Finland: Affect, Belonging, and Everyday Life. Turku: University of Turku. 92 pp. Diss. ISBN 978-951-29-9159-4 (print). ISBN 978-951-29-9160-0 (PDF). https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-9160-0

What happens in the grassroots when communities are rearranged?

John Björkman — 2025-02-04

Nina Koskihaara 2023. Kun kunta lakkasi olemasta. Kylä- ja kotiseutuyhdistykset kuntarakenteen muutoksiin reagoivina toimijoina (When the municipality ceased to exist. Village and local heritage associations as reactive actors to municipal mergers). Diss. Turun yliopisto. Humanistinen tiedekunta. Historian, kulttuurin ja taiteiden tutkimuksen laitos. Etnologia. 270 pp. ISBN 978-951-29-9494-6 (print) ISBN 978-951-29-9494-3 (electronic).

Multidisciplinary and collaborative questionnaire activity

Pirjo Korkiakangas — 2025-02-04

Anna Kirveennummi 2023. Kutsu osallistua tieteelliseen toimintaan. Etnografisia näkökulmia monitieteisen kyselytoiminnan yhteistyöhön ja käytäntöihin. [An invitation to participate in scientific activity: ethnographic perspectives on collaboration practices in multidisciplinary questionnaire activity.] University of Turku: School of History, Culture and Arts Studies, European Ethnology. Kansatieteellinen Arkisto 64. Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys, Finska Förnminnesföreningen. 275 pp. ISBN 978-951-29-9296-6 (print). ISBN 978-951-29-9297-3 (PDF). ISSN 0355-1830.

New study explores the experiences of young adult out-migrants from the Kainuu region in northeastern Finland

Roger Norum — 2025-02-04

Lauri Turpeinen 2023. Cultures of Migration: A Multi-Sited Ethnography of Rural-Urban Migration in Finland. Diss. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts. 270 pp. ISBN 978-951-51-8855-7 (print) ISBN 978-951-51-8856-4 (PDF) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-51-8856-4.

Vaikuttava museo -seminar (The Impactful Museum)

Sanna Särkelä — 2025-02-04

Cultural Policies in Democratic and Nondemocratic Regimes

Siarhiej Makarevich — 2025-02-04

Sensing the urban

Jenni Rinne — 2025-02-04