The island of Kökar, located in the outer archipelago of the Åland islands of Scandinavia, is traditionally a society known for its rich culture connected to the living tradition of traditional folk music. In media the island is portrayed as The island of Fiddles. Yet at the same time the number of people actually playing, singing and dancing in the traditional style is declining year by year. With the application of Thomas Turinos conceptual framework on participatory- and performative music making, island culture is analyzed, looking at what wider societal values are expressed within the contemporary musicking practices. The study shows example of different types of musicing contexts, key actors and -arenas, as well as ideas on the connection between music and a Kökar island identity. The essay provides empirical evidence for how different musical events such as a cultural festival, a choir and a fiddler team can contribute to social sustainability, in accordance with Turino's theory of participatory music making as part of artistic citizenship.

Migration and re-migration of economically and socially marginalized Ethiopian women and girls has become a phenomenon. Based on interviews with 12 Ethiopian migrant women returned from the Middle East and the Gulf States, the primary aim of this thesis is to describe and study Ethiopian women migrants’ circular migration to the Middle East. I will mainly focus on how social dynamics in the family, gender relations and economic circumstances are intricate. The process of women’s migration and how the expectations of the family can be gender differentiated are discussed. Further, the migrant women’s power relation when class and ethnicity determine their position is discussed. Relations with the sending family and the issues related to the women who return, as well as problems affecting them at home and in the destination countries, are looked at. Various and complex issues of migration and the women’s roles are discussed with reference to the women’s experiences. Migration provides women with opportunities for social and economic mobility but can also subject them to ethnic discrimination, exploitation, and abuse. The movement is generally seen as voluntary labor migration and it has placed them in a vulnerable position both at home and abroad. Their migration is interconnected to the economic need but also the responsibilities they have towards their family and kin.

This article seeks to move beyond the Euro/North-centrism recurrent in methodological discussions on what we may learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. Such debates often centre on uncertainty and involuntary immobility – aspects which are hardly new for many researchers. In this article, we argue that the pandemic offers an opportunity to rethink research relations between what we term ‘contracting researchers’ in the Global North and ‘facilitating researchers’ in the Global South. Such relations are often marked by rampant inequalities in remuneration, working conditions, and visibility/authorship. Drawing upon experiences in DR Congo, Sierra Leone, and India, we argue that the pandemic increased the dependence on – and highlighted the invaluable contributions and skills of – facilitating researchers, in part slightly refiguring bargaining power. We also propose pathways for change, arguing for a strong collaborative approach and the need for institutional change, without discarding the responsibilities of individual researchers.

Ethnology is a disciplinary field that is more or less interwoven with anthropology. Its main focus is the analysis of various cultures and cultural expressions, usually within a national context. In practice, ethnologists favor an approach toward culture from the individual perspective, with a key interest in how single ordinary individuals, seen as active cultural beings, think and act in their everyday lives. This implies that they are both shaped by and contributors to the shaping of cultures in their everyday lives. However, within ethnology, culture viewed as a bidirectional phenomenon is not merely regarded as an individual process. Rather, it is regarded as something that occurs in collective social contexts. When analyzing culture, ethnologists usually employ a combined focus on its ideational and folkloric aspects as well as aspects of materiality, locality, and identity. Ethnology's general methodological approaches comprise ethnographic fieldwork as well as studies of artifacts and sociocultural structures.

Ethnology. The Adaptability and Continuity of a Discipline

This article discusses the development throughtime and space of ethnology as a multifaceted disciplinaryfield. The objective of the article,however, is to challenge possible pre-assumptionsof ethnology as an incoherent i.e. variable and inconstant discipline, due to national limitations andtheoretical and methodological responsiveness, byproposing some core aspects regarding focalpoints,perspectives and methods that may beconsidered as prominent and unifying amongstethnologists both in Sweden and abroad. The articleargues for a general and continuing disciplinarianfocus on culture as a pluralistic, complexand individual-based phenomenon, as well as fundamentalinterest in the functions, social structures,constructions and experiences of cultures.Furthermore, the article describes how both earlierand later generations of ethnologists in generalhave chosen to study culture based on a selectionof recurring perspectives that comprise boththe intangible and tangible aspects of culture, aswell as the spatial and social contexts in whichcultures are formed and maintained. Finally, thearticle highlights how different types of ethnologicaldata are collected and analyzed via a combinationof constantly developed methods of culturalanalysis, though rooted in a disciplinarian tradition. In conclusion, despite a continuous progressionand adjustments within ethnology in regardto perspectives and methods over time and space,this has more often resulted in additions ratherthan replacements. For this reason, it seems relevantto define ethnology as a coherent discipline,designated by both adaptation and continuity.

Many minor post-industrial communities in Sweden, such as Surahammar and Timrå, struggle with financial difficulties and socio-cultural challenges due to the industrial decline and increased dependency on immigration from neighboring cities. In the light of this, arranging annual local festivals with a focus on cultural heritage can be seen as an opportunity to strengthen local identity as well as its inhabitant’s coexistences and sense of belonging. This article aims to analyze two local festivals, viewed as platforms for the production, communication and experiences of local cultural heritage values. Empirically resting on data collection and analysis of mainly ethnographic fieldwork, comprising interviews and observations, the article argues that these post-industrial local festivals involves identificational negotiations in regard to both the ritualized communication and implementation of local cultural heritage values. In conclusion, these festivals confirms a clearly industrial linked local cultural heritage but at the same time challenges it through enlargements, sufficiently vigilant connected to a local past in order to allow for inclusive local identifications, regardless of e.g. spatial origins.

Ideologization, manifestation and community making 

- Processes of heritage production in two local communities in transition

As the local industry has taken on an increasingly marginalized role in post-industrial small towns, like Surahammar and Timrå, in Central and Northern Sweden, an industrial past has emerged as the more valuable politically, economically but also socio-culturally, to nurture, preserve and identify with in these local industrial communities that undergo transition. This article aims to analyze local heritage production as a use and representation of history. Empirically resting on data collection and analysis of primary and secondary sources, comprising interviews, observations, archives and contextual literature, the article argues that local post-industrial heritage production may involve continuation as well as alterations of processes started in the past industrial society. Also, it comprises local adaptation as well as adjustments on heritage discourses. In conclusion, despite of local differences similarities may, as shown in Surahammar and Timrå, indeed occur in both design and content. This involves a pre-dominance of “non-professional” producers and including and excluding representations of places and people. Furthermore, local heritage provide combined political, economic and socio-cultural arenas of different ideologies as well as sites for creation of shared values and evoking emotions of belonging in diversified communities. In Surahammar and Timrå this has been done recurrently with the use of effective homogenization strategies within the field of heritage, i.e. by emphasizing sufficiently remote pasts to induce temporary but nevertheless efficient “classless and rootless” unity in pride of local place and values.

Surahammar och Timrå är två mindre orter i mellersta respektive norra Sverige som förenas i ett framgångsrikt industriellt förflutet. Båda har även, i likhet med många andra orter som präglats av en industriell produktion, drabbats av den senare tidens förändrade villkor för industrin. För Surahammars och Timrås del innebär det att ett beroende av industrin succesivt kommit att ersättas med ett beroende av nyinflyttning från i första hand de intilliggande städernas befolkning. Invånare som har ett förflutet från tiden då industrin dominerade i samhället samsas numera om den lokala ytan med dem som har flyttat in under senare tid. Den här etnologiska studien handlar om hur människor skapar sig en plats i två mindre industrisamhällen som genomgår omvandling. Vilka betydelser tilldelar man platsen man bor och verkar på, och hur hävdar man sin lokala existens inför sig själv och gentemot andra?

This thesis is based on the demise of industry that has led to a search for new solutions for the survival of smaller communities traditionally dependent on industrial production. In two local industrial communities in central and northern Sweden, Surahammar and Timrå, industrial dependency has gradually been replaced by a dependency on immigration, largely from the neighboring cities of Västerås and Sundsvall. In the changed order of these local communities, old and new inhabitants have had to negotiate positions in order to co-exist. The objective of the thesis is to present how old and new inhabitants relate to and are attached to the local community as a place in which they reside and live their lives. In focus is an interest in the local identity construction of the inhabitants, i.e. how they identify with the place in which they dwell and live their everyday lives, with and in reference to each other and the outside world. Another concern relates to just how different local options for identification can be for individuals and for collective groups of people.

Adopting a phenomenological and constructivist perspective, I regard local place as something that both old and new inhabitants are shaped by and shape in a collective process based on contrasts. The analysis is based on empirical data gathered during several years of fieldwork in the studied communities. The empirical data mainly consists of interviews and participant observations with old and new inhabitants in Surahammar and Timrå. Moreover, biographical literature, newspaper articles and data retrieved from the Internet have contributed important insights into how the local place is experienced and valued among the different groups of inhabitants. The thesis recognises the values and symbols that old and new inhabitants agree upon and that often result in spatial attachments. In addition, ideological, social and cultural differences are depicted as factors that shape a place as old and new inhabitants articulate local attachment and identification based on different grounds, needs and dreams.

Utifrån tvärvetenskapliga perspektiv och metoder, hämtade från etnologin och kulturgeografin, och med en empirisk utgångspunkt i tre kulturmiljöer som förvaltas av Statens fastighetsverk (SFV) i Sverige, analyserar artikeln historiebruk i form av kulturarvsproduktion och föreslår ett applicerbart normkritiskt samt i förlängningen normkreativt angreppssätt för att möjliggöra alternativa, varierade och mer inkluderande historieskildringar kring kulturmiljöer. Genom att utveckla och integrera dessa synsätt och verktyg vill artikeln argumentera för att man får tillgång till nya berättelser om platsen; berättelser som går utöver den traditionella, „normala“ historien om staten, enskilda byggnaders materiella utformning och den sociokulturella och ekonomiska eliten. En långsiktig effekt blir att det möjliggör ökad mångfald och inkludering både i fråga om förmedling och representation av platser som komplexa rumsliga och sociokulturella helheter.

Hur berättar och reflekterar människor från olika generationer över den egna barn- och ungdomstiden i en given geografisk och kulturell kontext och vad kan vi utläsa ur dessa berättelser? Denna studie utgår från fem självbiografiska, levnadshistoriska intervjuer, genomförda med informanter av olika kön och ålder, men från en och samma kulturella och geografiska kontext. De levnadshistoriska intervjuernas berättartekniska verktyg identifieras och tolkas utifrån ett levnadshistoriskt perspektiv. Intervjuerna ligger därefter till grund för en diskursiv analys, i syfte att undersöka hur informanternas berättelser förhåller sig till den specifika kontextens kollektiva normer. Diskursiva normer gällande ålder, kön och klass identifieras och analyseras intersektionellt i syfte att tydliggöra hur de möjliggör eller begränsar informanternas möjlighet till subjektiv agens inom den specifika kontexten. Resultatet av analysen visar hur kontextens diskurs förändras över tid och att detta är något som informanternas berättelser förhåller sig till. Samtidigt återfinns en rad traditionella värden, strukturer och hierarkier som tenderar att leva kvar och på olika sätt påverka informanternas livslopp och sättet på vilket de tolkar detta i intervjuerna. Intersektionella maktstrukturer framträder tydligt i studiens alla levnadshistoriska berättelser men de tar sig olika uttryck beroende på ålder och kön.

The map was created within the project "Mobilizing academic communities in Central Asia to produce new knowledge about the 1916 Uprising, and to build shared academic platforms for exchanging and disseminating knowledge about ethnically or/and politically sensitive topics".

Open access digital publication.

This essay aims at explaining how the cultural identity of Kurds has changed in regard to patriotism and ethnonationalism in connection with the Arab Spring and the emergence of IS/Da’ish in Syria and Iraq. The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind the growth of ethnonationalism among Kurds under the threat of armed conflict. The study’s main theoretical arguments rests upon a base of previous anthropological research made on the subjects nationalism and identity, and is additionally joined by theoretical arguments on ethnicity from the field of peace and conflict studies. By examining critical moments in the past and present history of Kurdish ethnonationalism as well as investigating the use of symbols representing Kurdish identity, I conclude that the emergence of the Arab Spring and the rise of IS/Da’ish has boosted Kurdish identity in regard to patriotism and ethnonationalism. Nonetheless, further research might still have to be made in order to completely understand the possibly even more detailed mechanisms behind the effects of conflicts, as well as other surrounding factors, on identity, patriotism and ethnonationalism.

Since the second half of the 20th century the Philippines have supplied the world with migrant workers. Today, almost one tenth of the population is residing abroad. Labour migration has become an important source of revenue to both state and private actors through remittances, for the Philippines, and a source of cheap labour battling labour shortage, in the receiving countries. Today, the global labour market is a distinct and important part of what we call globalisation. This is portrayed in this thesis through the lens of Philippine-Korean labour migration.

The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate the emergence of migrants as a commodity for export, the institutionalised creation of migrants, the normalisation of labour migration, and containment of migrants through legal and spatial constraints, in Manila and in Seoul.

This thesis look at the ways in which labour migration, as an economic policy, is internalised and transformed into a culture of migration. I argue that the effects of a culture of migration is felt not just by the labour migrants themselves, but also by their families and by the Philippines as a whole. As such, the reliance on remittances as a source of income has transformed domestic and global infrastructures as well as norms and social behaviour. Moreover, this thesis aims to add to the discussion on migration and remittances by exploring social dimensions and consequences of the globalisation of the labour market.