Search results for "bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Anthropology"

Glimmering utopias: 50 years of African film

2010

The history of African film began in the 1960s with the independence of the colonies. Despite all kinds of political and economic difficulties, numerous films have been made since then, featuring wide-ranging processes of consolidation, differentiation and transformation which were characteristic of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. However, these feature films should not merely be viewed as back references to specifically African problems. The glimmering fictions are imagination spaces. They preserve ideas about how the post-colonial circumstances should be approached. Seen from this perspective, the history of African film may be studied as a history of African utopias. Die Geschichte des…

“My Lies and Liaisons with Marilyn” : An Autofictional Representation of the Downtown Man, a Finnish Successor to the Marlboro Man in the Early 1990s

2022

In this autobiographical/autofictional article, I analyze the representation of masculinity, an advertising poster for a new Finnish cigarette brand from the 1990s recession, when a new man, a “softie,” debuted under the pressure of the traditional male model and the twenty-first-century dudes and lads. The model posing in the poster is a homosexual, me. In the article I ask whether a gay could represent a Finnish man in the early 1990s or only present him. I examine the picture with a queer eye in search of inconsistencies and distortions that break present alternative interpretations to heteronormativity.
 Keywords: homosexuality, masculinity, heteronormativity, advertising, represen…

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” as Bildungsromane

2018

Abstract In this essay, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” is read as a series of Bildungsromane that test the limits of that genre. In these thematically unrelated novels, characters reach critical points in their lives when they are confronted with the ways in which their respective childhoods have shaped their grownup expectations and professional careers. In each, the protagonist has a successful career, whether as a musician (The Unconsoled), a detective (When We Were Orphans), or a carer (Never Let Me Go), but finds it difficult to overcome childhood trauma. Ishiguro’s treatment of childhood in these novels foregrounds the tension between individual subjectivity and the formal st…

Fashion and Eroticism Men's Underwear in the Context of Eroticism

2001

What is the process when historically obviously neutral things are becoming loaded with mental meanings, associations and qualities, getting a new turn of expression? The article deals with the changing of men’s underwear from garments of pure utility to high fashionable, visible things. The context in which the change has taken place, the language which supports the new meanings, the forms, colours and use of the “unmentionable” are studied from an ethnological viewpoint. The author emphasises the aspects of new adaptations of the meaning of fashion in relation to changing gender roles, new ideals of the body and new mechanisms in consumer culture.

Editorial

2023

Performing ethnography and ethnicity : an early documentation of Finnish immigrants in Nordiska museet

2010

This article discusses the first project of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, dealing with immigrants. It was carried out between 1972 and 1990, and it produced material based on interviews, participant observation, photographs and other written and visual sources. The article first examines why and how this extensive research project was carried out and then discusses the documentation project as performance. The project was an early attempt to document the contemporary lives of people through fieldwork, although the original aim of this pioneering project was merely to create and preserve ethnic identity by documenting “authentic” Finnish characteristics. Thus, it is a good example …

In the beginning, this was an empty place... Place-related narratives in Timofeyevka, Siberia

2014

Authenticity, normativity and social media

2015

DATING SECRETLY The Role of the Internet in Shaping Transnational Couple Formation in the Kurdish Diaspora

2016

Drawing on twenty-one in-depth interviews, this article discusses the Internet’s role in the formation of transnational marriages among migrant Kurds who live in Finland. In contrast to what is presented in the European media, my findings suggest that transnational couple formation among migrants should be seen as highly diverse and more than just practices that maintain and preserve “traditional” marriage customs. Transnational online dating practices make visible how young adult Kurds actively engage in partner formation and spousal selection. Online dating enables individual autonomy by widening the circle of potential partners outside familial circles and offers a private social space i…

THE CONCEPT OF “FAMILY” IN SOMALIS’ IMMIGRATION TO FINLAND Views from Immigration Officials and NGOs

2016

In Addis Ababa one can see dozens of Somali families waiting daily in front of the Embassy of Finland to be interviewed. The interview represents a means of entering Finland, since those waiting presumably have a so-called family re-unifier in Finland, a relative who has of ten already received a residence permit and sometimes even citizenship. This article examines the family reunification process of Somalis who travel from Ethiopia to Finland. Drawing on the experiences related by Finnish immigration officials, it focuses on the fact that they do not share the same definition of “family” as the Somali asylum applicants. Using extensive inter views and observations, this article aims to el…