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- Convenors:
-
Karina Lukin
(University of Helsinki)
Sanna Kähkönen (University of Helsinki)
Indrek Jääts (Estonian National Museum)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to discuss the processes and consequences of ethnological or folkloristic practices in which researchers have deliberately or inadvertently not recorded, described or represented certain cultural details, and which have resulted in misinterpretations.
Long Abstract:
Field work is often done not only across cultural, linguistic and social borders, but also across national ones. While the borders have frequently been described as natural, they are, in fact, constructed within the fieldwork process, and especially within the consequent, nationally oriented practices, such as archiving, travel writing, research, or museum exhibitions. The routines, conventions and ideologies related to the recording and production of ethnologic and folkloristic knowledge typically produce areas of obliviousness and misinterpretation. These may arise for example when the actors deliberately or inadvertently turn their heads away from the impact of modernisation or details that do not fit to the larger frameworks of narrating cultures and histories. As a result, some things remain in the shade. This can be useful for those working in knowledge production, but unfavorable for those being studied.
In this panel, we are interested in rereading and unwriting the disciplines’ research histories, especially the moments or processes and consequences of not viewing, not recording, not describing or not exhibiting. We are especially interested in papers that discuss the objects, human beings and communities that lie in between national borders or are marginalized inside a nation and whose voice and culture have hence been neglected or misinterpreted. We invite researchers to unpack the process through carefully rereading and relooking at the materials, their collecting, archiving and exhibiting processes and hence producing possibilities for new understanding. We also welcome scholars working with minority or indigenous perspectives in our panel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
When elf mills were collected at the turn of the 20th century, they were interpreted as traces of a magic past. Rereading the accompanying documentation, however, shows they were part of a living practice, and as such central to conflicts over tradition, gender, and class
Paper Abstract:
This paper will explore alternative interpretations of so-called elf mills, a type of folk magic objects currently held in the collections of the Nordic Museum and Skansen in Sweden. Elf mills are typically large stones with cup-shaped bowl pits, into which the rural population have placed small offerings, such as coins and needles, as part of rituals for healing or disease prevention. When these objects were collected at the turn of the 20th century, they were interpreted as residual traces of a soon to be lost magical past. However, a closer examination of the accompanying documentation reveals that these stones were not merely relics of a distant magical tradition, but rather part of a living practice and as such central to conflicts of the time. In many cases, the documentation includes accounts of attempts by the local population to hide or dispose of elf mills. Additionally, there are several reports of young boys stealing coins from the elf mills, challenging their supposed magical powers. In contrast, the elderly and women often emerge as the primary guardians of these magical practices. While seen and recorded, though, these aspects did not make it to the final stage of knowledge production: to the exhibiting. A rereading of the elf-mills provides insight into the contested nature of magic, revealing its connection to broader societal issues such as the tension between tradition and modernity, femininity and masculinity, as well as questions of age and class in rural Sweden at the turn of the 20th century.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper rereads the Finnish travel narratives related to the West Siberian natives and suggests that they share a metadiscourse that declines the modernity of the natives, but identifies them as non-modern selves.
Paper Abstract:
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous Finnish researchers travelled in the peripheries of the Russian Empire in order to collect linguistic, ethnological and folkloristic materials concerning communities speaking Finno-Ugric languages. While most of the travels headed in the areas where Karelian was spoken, several expeditions directed further east. The researchers tended to write travel narratives that were mainly published by the Finno-Ugrian Society based in Helsinki. These narratives often commented the social circumstances of the field work beyond the actual research aims, and they illuminate extremely interesting implicit points of departure of the research paradigm.
In my paper, I will interpret the travel narration related to the field work done in Western Siberia. Contrary to the earlier interpretations emphasising the national context of the research paradigm, I will use the colonial frame to reread the recurring tendency to avoid or understate the modernisation in the fieldwork. Instead, the researchers framed the modernisation as Russification, harmful to the natives. The aim of the paper is to discuss this as a metadiscourse that hindered to perceive the Finno-Ugric speaking natives of Siberia as modern selves, but instead systematically identified them as non-modern and backward.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper discusses the fieldworks to Estonian Ingria in the 1930s by both Estonian and Finnish researchers and asks about disciplinary boundaries between countries and disciplines` connection with politics at the time. The community`s attitude to research will also be explored.
Paper Abstract:
Between the two world wars, part of Ingria belonged to the Republic of Estonia. The people living in the so-called Estonian Ingria were of scholarly interest to Estonian and Finnish folklorists, ethnologists, and linguists. It was one of the few Finno-Ugric regions that Estonian researchers could study at the time. Special attention was placed on Ingrian Finns and Izhorians.
The presentation aims to discuss the fieldworks to Estonian Ingria in the 1930s by both Estonian and Finnish researchers. They collected materials, talked to the press about the life of these communities and even came into conflict with each other at one point. Finnish folklorist Martti Haavio blamed Estonians for the Estonianisation of the region, linking the problem to Ferdinand Linnus, the director of the Estonian National Museum. They were both interested in preserving the cultural heritage of the local people but clashed when talking about their level of modernity.
Examining fieldwork materials (that have been forgotten in Estonia) and newspaper articles, the questions arise as to who felt justified in exploring the area and how it was done and whether the voice of locals emerged in these materials. The paper explores a hitherto overlooked aspect in the disciplinary history, shedding light on the national borders of the disciplines and their connection with politics as well as discussing the life of local communities before WW2.
Paper Short Abstract:
Ethnology played a role in the construction of Greater Finland during the Continuation War (1941–1944). What does Finnish ethnological research during the war look like when analysed through the concept of "strategic ignorance"? The archival materials show what ethnological knowledge was collected and what was ignored.
Paper Abstract:
In 1930’s and during the Second World War there was a popular idea in Finland that the country should expand further east and form Greater Finland due to the Finno-Ugric history of Karelia, east of the Finnish-Soviet border. When Finland occupied large areas of East Karelia during the so-called Continuation War against the Soviet Union (1941–1944), ethnology was one of the disciplines whose results were sought to support the Greater Finland ideology: to find evidence of the historical Finnishness of the conquered East Karelia region and thus the legitimacy of its conquest.
However, East Karelia was an ethnically and historically diverse region, where historical Finnishness, the “land of (Finnish national epic) Kalevala'” was still present, but sometimes as a thin and ambiguous layer. By asking the right questions and leaving many questions unasked - and unwritten - the thickness and relevance of this layer could be greatly enhanced in interpreting the history of the region.
The study of the history of knowledge, the concepts of which I use in my thesis, might call such knowledge production "strategic ignorance". If ignorance is defined as knowledge of the limits of knowledge, strategic ignorance is the conscious exploitation of those limits. What does ethnological research in East Karelia during the Continuation War look like when analysed through this concept? My work examines the topic in the light of the instructions, reports and diaries of the ethnologists who organised and carried out fieldwork in East Karelia, and the artefacts they collected.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper focuses on the forgotten narratives of Lithuanian religious dissidents (Roman Catholics) in the totalitarian Soviet Union. The research focuses on the problem of spiritual resistance which has so far not been sufficiently appreciated in scientific discourse. Religious dissidents can still be identified as forgotten, marginalized people, whose voices were not only ignored but also misinterpreted in the Soviet-era Lithuania.
Paper Abstract:
The paper focuses on the forgotten narratives of Lithuanian religious dissidents (Roman Catholics) in the totalitarian U.S.S.R. The official rhetoric of the Soviet propaganda “claimed that ethnography was supposed to highlight the achievements of socialism, deepen internationalism” of the Soviet people, but in reality, the majority of provincial ethnographers strengthened local ethnic identities by studying the traditional cultures of local peoples (Jääts, Karm 2024: 85). However, certain groups of people and communities which existed in Lithuania during the Soviet era, were not only excluded from the public life, but stigmatized to the extent that they were forbidden to be included into the public discourse by the Soviet ideology and propaganda.
This paper focuses on the problem of spiritual resistance which has so far not been sufficiently appreciated in scientific discourse. Religious dissidents can still be identified as forgotten, marginalized people, whose voices were not only ignored but also misinterpreted in the Soviet-era Lithuania. In order to restore justice, modern ethnologists should re-examine the contribution of the Soviet-era religious dissidents to the development of the political society. The article is based on the author's field research data and the memories of religious dissidents about their life in Soviet-era Lithuania.
The preliminary results of the research show that the main survival strategy of Lithuanian religious dissidents living under the Soviet totalitarian regime were different forms of silent resistance. On the other hand, publicity measures used by the Roman Catholics worldwide helped them fight against the injustice and slander of the Soviet propaganda.