Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society

Sleights of Hand: Free Ports, Bordering, and the Racial Capitalist Roots of Economic Nationalist Strategies in the US and the UK

2022-08-25T15:36:51+03:00

Sleight of hand economic nationalist strategies by recent administrations of the US and UK emphasizing the “freedom” of those selectively imagined as belonging to the nation while quietly but pivotally discouraging human mobility and encouraging elite capital mobility, are discussed in this article. The US and UK’s distinct but connected recent policies – Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategies -- are not viewed as exceptional, or unique to those specific administrations of each country, but as embedded within long-term, interconnected transnational racial capitalist projects. The sleights of hand promoting selective publics’ freedom are not only hypocritical but complex to see, especially with white-impaired lenses. Two interrelated technologies of power on which these economic nationalist strategies have relied, bordering and free zones, are examined ethnographically in this article, contributing to research on the complex, varied, and experience-inflected responses US and UK residents have to these policies.

Living and Working Research Policies: The Case of International Scholars in Latvia

2022-02-18T15:25:08+02:00

The article examines the incorporation of international scholars into the Latvian higher education and research system from the perspective of labour. Whilst recent research policies in the country are aimed at increasing international cooperation to situate Latvia within the global regimes of knowledge production, the number of international researchers in Latvia remains low. Based on ethnographic research, I suggest that this is at least partially because of the largely invisible work that both international researchers in the country and their local counterparts have to perform to bridge the gap between policy dreams and structural realities. In conversation with scholarship on academic precarity and through the lens of interpretive and infrastructural labour, this article shows how the task of ‘internationalising’ knowledge production in Latvia is entrusted to individual local researchers, whilst international scholars face a multitude of uncertainties regarding their work lives and their presence in the country in general.

Rural mobilites and urban norms

2020-04-03T11:47:43+03:00

This article deals with everyday life in sparsely populated parts of northern Sweden. It investigates the relationship between local practice and political discourses. The discussion is based on fieldwork carried out in two northern municipalities. Empirical themes include everyday life mobilities and means of transport. The theoretical concepts of everyday life, community, place, and policy shape the analysis of processes pertaining to space and movement. In particular, the article discusses sustainable development as policy and argues for alternative understandings of social sustainability in relation to
rural settings.

Keywords: everyday life mobilities, means of transport, sparsely populated parts of northern
Sweden, place, policy, sustainable development, social sustainability

Key words: everyday life mobilities, means of transport, sparsely populated parts of Northern Sweden, place, policy, sustainable development, social sustainability

Hartmut, Rosa 2020. The Uncontrollability of the World.

2022-05-24T23:59:42+03:00

Rosa, Hartmut. The Uncontrollability of the World. Cambridge, Medford: Polity Press. 2020. 140 p. ISBN: 9781509543151 (hardcover); 9781509543168 (softcover)

Lounela, Anu, Berglund, Eeva and Kallinen Timo (eds) 2019. Dwelling in Political Landscapes. Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives

2023-02-20T15:53:14+02:00

Lounela, Anu, Berglund, Eeva and Kallinen Timo (eds) 2019. Dwelling in Political Landscapes. Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives. Helsinki: SKS. Studia Fennica Anthropologica 4. 293 p. ISBN 978-951-858-087-7 (Print), ISBN 978-951-858-114-0 (PDF) ISBN 978-951-858-113-3 (EPUB). https://doi.org/10.21435/sfa.4.

Articulations of power: Guns on campus and the protests against them

2020-10-22T17:52:51+03:00

When carrying concealed handguns on campus was legalised at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 2015, students and faculty positioned themselves in relation to the new law in very different ways, ranging from large demonstrations and the use of various types of rhetoric to non-vocal representations and deliberate silence. This essay examines an important transitional moment in the educational environment by focusing on the respective relationships and modes of expression—or articulations—of the affected parties regarding the issue of firearms on university premises, as these reflected opposing camps within the academic community. Drawing on interviews and quantitative research, and proposing a novel theoretical frame to understand the complex subject of guns, this essay examines the polemics, polarisation, and power dynamics around Campus Carry at UT Austin.

Lectio praecursoria. Carving out Possibilities: Refugee Background Young Men and Mundane Political Agency

2023-02-20T15:40:08+02:00

A lectio præcursoria is a short presentation read out loud by a doctoral candidate at the start of a public thesis examination in Finland. It introduces the key points or central argument of the thesis in a way that should make the ensuing discussion between the examinee and the examiner apprehensible to the audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with the candidate’s research or even anthropological research in general.

Lectio Praecursoria: Transgressive participation: Housing struggles, occupations and evictions in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

2022-06-03T16:57:53+03:00

Lectio praecursoria. Weeds of Sociality: Reforms and Dynamics of Social Relations at the University of Helsink

2023-02-20T15:43:58+02:00

Editors' note: On rent extraction in academic publishing and its alternatives

2023-02-20T15:15:32+02:00

In this editorial we introduce new members of our editorial team and the contents of this issue. In addition we discuss open access developments of the journal, namely our new license policy, which allows authors to choose a Creative Common license that best suits their needs or the requirements of their funders. This change in licenses makes our journal also compliant with the Plan S programme, which several large European research funders have signed, in order to promote open access publishing. We support such initiatives, but note that they are designed mainly to push large commercial publishers to publish publicly funded research in open access. While the Plan S is a welcome program, commercial for-profit publishers charge exorbitant charges for open access, usually paid for by the researchers' institutions. We note that these charges are a form of rent extraction, which produces little added value, as the commercial publishers rely on the free labor of researchers and publicly funded research to fill their journals' pages. More so, due to these charges the public ends up paying again for the research it funded in the first place. We argue that public support for both institutional and independent non-profit open access publishing is a socially more just and sustainable model.