Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
This paper examines how a group of women’s rights activists in Iran who identify as Muslim represented themselves prior to the emergence of the 2022 Mahsa Movement, and why they were reluctant to adopt the labels ‘feminist’ or ‘Islamic femi…
The winds are changing at Suomen antropologi: Journal of Finnish Anthropological Society! My service as editor-in-chief is coming to an end at the end of this year and I am proud to announce the appointment of the incoming editors-in-chief,…
Since the earliest colonial encounters in Greenland, place-based Inuit knowledge of seal skin processing has been applied and regenerated within a web of regional, national, and global relations. These relations have not only affected metho…
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
Faced with limitations to transnational transactions, Chinese students in Russia engage in informal currency exchanges. Through fieldwork in a Siberian city, we discovered how, against the backdrop of sanctions, fluctuating official exchang…
This essay is based on the 2025 Westermarck Lecture, delivered at the 50th anniversary meetings of the Finnish Anthropological Society. My deepest thanks to the organisers, staff, and participants of that conference, including Sarah Green, …
This essay belongs to the essay series ‘The Anthropologist’s Toolkit: Reflections on Ethnographic Methodology’. In this series, authors peer into the anthropologist’s toolkit to reflect on what ethnographic methodology constitutes in all it…
From 1920 through 1932, Soviet biomedical propaganda disseminated via Udmurt literature including through periodicals, novels, plays, and poetry aimed to instil sanitation values and advance modernisation. This propaganda targeted the Indig…
This article explores how different forms of adaptation governance in Costa Rica shape subjectivities and adaptation capacities in smallholder farms. The country presently has a neoliberal-welfare state structure that stems from the progressive transit…
The looming ecological crisis demands an urgent rethinking of possibilities within our surroundings. This article examines the practice of bamboo-shoot fermentation in India’s North-Eastern Region (NER) and explores its connections to sustainability, f…
Cette contribution offre un regard heuristique et réflexif sur la préparation conjointe, en candidat libre et de manière autofinancée, de deux diplômes aux symboliques aussi fortes qu’apparemment opposées : un certificat d’aptitude professionnel…
Certaines maladies transmises via le lait de vache, comme la tuberculose et la diphtérie, suscitent l’inquiétude des médecins. Dans cet article nos questionnements sont à la croisée de la médecine humaine, de la médecine vétérinaire, de la micro…
This article examines the trans-disciplinary œuvre and hosting activities of the Swiss-based artist and archivist, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962), founder of the Eranos Conferences and creator of the Eranos Archive. Drawn from my doctoral p…
This essay revisits art as an alternative epistemology that probes the parameters of the real and the complicated entanglements between humans and non-humans from an eco-feminist perspective. It builds upon the work of Leonora Carrington an…
This article explores a group of contemporary magical artists who are inspired by feminist new materialist thought. In the work of these contemporary artists, magic is defined less by the transmission of traditions and initiatory wisdom or …
Seeking to establish “psychical history” as a category of Victorian occult science, this paper explores the consequences that emerge when belief in spirit phenomena converges on the historical imagination. To do so, a study of the Bygone Da…
The special issue “The Witching of Art History” examines how women and artists beyond gender binaries have navigated artistic and occult subjectivities, identities and agency within art and occulture since the 19th century. The articles ill…
This article proposes that approaching the work and practice of the British-born Mexican artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) and other women working at the intersection of art and esotericism necessitates revisiting some fundamental assum…
This article explores the intersections of clairvoyance, mediumship and gender in early-twentieth-century art through the case of the Finnish artist and occultist Meri Genetz (1885–1943). While esotericism has played a pivotal role in moder…
This article explores esoteric potentiality—the perceived possibility of accessing the otherworldly—through a hermeneutic framework that integrates artist intent, the photographic image and audience reception. The Finnish artist Hanne Kiive…
In this article I examine how ecological and esoteric knowledge intersects in the works of the contemporary Icelandic artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir. Drawing from diverse traditions and practices, such as alchemy, Neopaganism, tarot, numero…
The essay considers the seeker as weaver and positions relationality as central to the experiences of many at the intersections of esotericism and modern art. It invokes the metaphor of weaving to envision a non-static, dislocated and limin…
In the early 1900s, the Swedish noblewoman Tyra Kleen (1874–1951) was a highly productive artist, author, suffragette and occult seeker. Although Kleen’s esoteric and feminist interests have to a limited extent been considered in previous r…
I am deeply grateful to the readers of Oral Tradition—and even more to the authors of thearticles in these pages—for their patience in awaiting the appearance of this long-overduevolume. Rather than an excuse, I offer an assurance that the journal is taking steps to increase ourefficiency and improve our ability to review and publish work […]
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Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):197–220 This article1 looks at the relationship between Matija Murko (1861-1952)2 and the two well known Harvard scholars, Milman Parry (1902-35) and Albert Lord (1912-91). Much connects these researchers: they were interested in South Slavic oral tradition, recorded guslari, used similar fieldwork methods, and all three compared South Slavic epic poetry to […]
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