Conflicts over Duldung and Deportation

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 b…

Digital Threads, Interwoven Scenes

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 b…

Becoming an Adequate Child

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…

Sensing the Polycrisis

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 withi…

No Easy Way In

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 pa…

Women and Kula

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…

Editorial Note

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 rep…

Lectio praecursoria

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 b…

Justifying Meritocracy

The theoretical aim of this paper is to articulate a novel analytical framework that makes sense of our interlocutors’ apparently conflicting claims about the reality of meritocracy in China. The theoretical argument is rooted in ethnographic fieldwork…

Lectio præcursoria

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 b…

Encounter

Anthropologists often talk about ‘encounters,’ but what do they actually mean? This term—‘encounter’—shows up everywhere across ethnographic writing and practice, but is itself rarely defined or discussed. ‘Ethnographies of encounters,’ too, are increa…

Lectio praecursoria

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 b…

Producing Human Life or Protecting Wildlife?

A series of biodiversity conservation campaign since 1980s and the establishment of Siberut National Park on Siberut Island (West Sumatra, Indonesia) have seriously unsettled the relationship between the Mentawai and forest as well as between the Menta…

Editorial Note

It gives me great pleasure to present a new issue of Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. This issue contains four peer-reviewed articles, an essay, and four research reports.

Temporal Orientations in Life Stories

This article draws on ethnographic material from life stories and nonfiction literature and is complemented by fieldwork vignettes. The material is used to discuss how experiences of connections and disconnections between past and present, self and int…

Editorial Note: A Time of Succession

Since the beginning of February this year, Suomen antropologi: Journal of Finnish Anthropological Society has navigated a succession. The previous editors-in-chief, Heikki Wilenius and Tuomas Tammisto, passed their roles on to me, Suvi Rautio, and I ha…

Reflections on Ethnographic Re-enactment

“The Anthropologist’s Toolkit: Reflections on ethnographic methodology” is a new essay series that peers into the anthropologist’s toolkit to reflect on what ethnographic methodology constitutes in all its multimodal forms. We invite all contributions …

Vital infrastructures

Sustaining lives in urban environments depends on infrastructures – buildings, water pipes, sewers, energy distribution, or roads, among others. Their availability is particularly acute in Africa due to rapid urbanization, entrenched inequalities and p…