Category: English

The Gospel of John reflects several layers of social memory and theological creativity concerning Jesus’s death. In the early material, there seems to be a suppressed awareness of Jesus’s fate and an unwillingness to unfold it in narrative form – somet…

Flowers are placed on the altar in many Christian churches. However, while many other items on the altar have given rise to a vast body of theological research, this is not the case with altar flowers. In this article the author makes a constructive co…

The article focuses on the transformative potential of colours described by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s colour definitions are approached through the aesthetics of religion, investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. The goal is to clarif…

In this article a case study of the phenomenon of “living on light” is presented. The interlocutor “Eva” shares her memories from the period when she did not eat material food. Actor-network theory (ANT) is adopted to analyse the interview. This method…

Nationalistic interpretations of history were prevalent in Finland until the Second World War. A unifying past for Finns was sought in antiquity, often influenced by interpretations of the Kalevala, regarded as the Finnish national epic. The Kalevala a…

The current issue of Approaching Religion is based on a summer school and conference arranged in Åbo/Turku, Finland, in June 2023, on the theme of “Religion: Memory and Innovation”. The event was organized jointly by the Polin Institute for Theological…

We present a dataset that systematically estimates the energetic value of wild and domesticated food resources collected and consumed by Congolese BaYaka foragers. This dataset is unique in that it accounts for everyday practices of food processing…

Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies: Announcements

Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. This article analyses the role of religious symbolism and religiosity during The Gambia’s autocracy (1994–2017) and its democratic transition (2017–2023). Former autocratic ruler, Yahya Jammeh, exploited religious symbo…

Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. There are multiple initiatives and efforts to grant African scholars “global visibility” – as part of the decolonisation agenda. These efforts have included aiding and enabling African scholars to publish in journals of…

Laos is a country of seven million people in Southeast Asia, with its largest urban centre having a population of just under one million people. At a time of rising inflation and growing awareness of climate change, this article investigates how urban …

This article explores the story of Sanwar, who fled Bangladesh following persecution for his sexuality, and spent five years struggling for asylum in the UK. Analysing our conversations together with his asylum paperwork, I show how trauma was apprehen…

We are once again delighted to bring you a new issue of Suomen antropologi: The Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. This issue marks our final contribution as your editors-in-chief. Two years ago when we took over the journal, our primary a…

Each year just before the New Year, our hometown library—the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Library Network (Helmet 2024)—issues a curated 50-book reading challenge. To celebrate a new year, Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Societ…

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…

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…

Synnøve K. N. Bendixsen and Edvard Hviding (eds.) Anthropology in Norway: Directions, Locations, Relations. Canon Pyon, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing. The RAI Country Series, Volume Three. 2021. 152 pp. ISBN: 978-1-912385-30-0 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-9…

Stoetzer, Bettina. Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin. Duke University Press Books. 2022. 243 p. Part of the book series, Experimental Futures: Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices, edited by …

This paper reflexively unpicks digital ethnographic methods employed during ongoing online fieldwork on ‘digital deaths’. To do so, this research delves into the digital afterlife, exploring the fate of online traces and social media profiles after dea…