Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society

Women and Kula

Susanne Kuehling — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article argues that the hosting of kula partners is an important part of the exchange system that requires more attention. Women’s management of their households and resources, their training of children, and the internal networks that provide for a visiting kula partner are regarded as the benefits and key motivations (‘profit’) of kula. If the hospitality is underwhelming, a visitor will not continue the partnership and, because he will share his experiences back home, this will negatively affect the future kula affairs of that household. By isolating the movements of valuables from the deep experiences of visiting and hosting, the role of women in kula is typically misrepresented as marginal and of lower value. Kula, to me and to most islanders, is not about the fame of traders, but about the cooperation of families to ensure the services, hospitality, and generosity that are so special to the region.

Key words: Kula exchange, Melanesia, gender roles, women, hospitality, ethnography, power relations

No Easy Way In

Kalev Aasmäe — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article aims to study the impact the 2012 criminalisation of residential squatting in England and Wales has had on the lived experiences and communal logics of squatters in London. Through the story of a former homeless person named Keith, this paper explores how an individual squatter with limited experience tries to navigate the complex communal logics of squatter crews and identify larger networks in order not to lose the roof over his head. Squatters’ needs to frequently move between non-residential buildings and replicate existing social dynamics in new spatial settings increase the pressures on the solidarity and communal ties within crews. Although, to some extent, stratification based on the experiences, skills, networking abilities, competencies, and status of individual squatters has always existed, the context of growing uncertainty has further amplified it. This, in turn, further erodes solidarity amongst squatters, prompting Keith to turn to new methods of securing accommodation.

Keywords: squatting, community, neoliberalism, solidarity, criminalisation, housing

Sensing the Polycrisis

Mari Keski-Korsu — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This study investigates sensory experience whilst walking in the era of the polycrisis. Through a walk followed by an interview, an attempt to gather impressions about sensory experiences and ponder how these sensory impressions reflect relations within the environment by placing them alongside environmental data, and describe the implications of the polycrisis. The focus lies on sensory registers related to the environment in the Arctic village of Abisko in northern Sweden, an area that is changing rapidly and which has been extensively researched within the natural sciences. The study draws on artistic research and the concept of transcorporeality—that is, bodies are in relation with the world around them and in a constant state of becoming with it. Transcorporeality as a concept is applied as walking ritualisation using multisensory ethnography and ‘walking with’ methodologies to investigate the sensory experiences and relations that make them. The interlocutors—here, called participants—were permanent residents of Abisko. I argue that a walking ritualisation, which involves repetitive sensing and a transcorporeal experience of the environment, adds to the narrative and knowledge of the Arctic polycrisis. In essence, that ritualisation may enmesh the human subject in the more-than-human world.

Keywords: More-than-human world, Ritualisation, Walking, Transcorporeal, Sensing, Arctic

Book Review: Meloni, Francesca. 2023. Ways of Belonging: Undocumented Youth in the Shadow of Illegality

Riikka Era — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Book Review: Salesa, Damon 2023. An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays

Matti Eräsaari — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Book Review: Eräsaari, Matti 2023. Comparing the Worth of the While in Fiji and Finland.

Matt Tomlinson — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Becoming an Adequate Child

Maija-Eliina Sequeira — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Digital Threads, Interwoven Scenes

Emmi Holm — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Conflicts over Duldung and Deportation

Aino Korvensyrjä — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Applying Anthropological Knowledge in the Business Field: Three Ethnographic Studies in a Commercial Context

Pirjo Rautiainen — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Editorial Note

Suvi Rautio — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Happy 2025, readers! It gives me great pleasure to present this year’s Winter Issue of Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. This issue contains three peer-reviewed articles, three book review essays, and four research reports.