Notes and Reviews: “I Still Believe that One Picture Can Tell More Than Many Written Pages”: Interview with Mihály Hoppál
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed
Category: English
The Changing Meanings of Repair in Post-Soviet Estonia : From Necessity to Resistance
Repair in the post-Soviet context shows a specific historicity, linked with Soviet consumer culture, that has caused the Soviet socioeconomic system be characterised as a ‘repair society’. People’s experiences and their narratives of the lively repair …
Working Relations
This paper offers a concept of working relations as a complement and extension to existing theories of maintenance, care and repair. Building on the cases of an umbrella, a tractor and a pond, it advances seven propositions that might guide and inform …
#Byggnadsvård : Mobilising Alternative Narratives of Building Care
Old buildings are imbued with problems and possibilities shaped by their material condition. This article unfolds around material stories circulating on Insta-gram with the hashtag #byggnadsvård, using the Swedish concept byggnadsvård (‘building care’)…
Matters of Time and Space : Towards Sustainability in Everyday Life
This article critically examines dominant sustainability narratives that prioritise technological innovation, market-based solutions and individual behaviour while often neglecting the socio-economic structures driving overconsumption. Drawing on quali…
Mending Knowledge: Community Transmission and Its Challenges in Formal Education
This paper examines how community-driven mending knowledge travels across time and into contemporary schooling, and what conditions allow it to persist. We pair a concise historical backdrop through a timeline called “How Mending Survives”, with a prac…
“Nothing is simple”. An ethnographic theory and its history
This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at St Andrews University, as the 2nd Peter Gow Memorial Lecture. Its aim is not only to pay tribute to a great anthropologist who died prematurely, but also to explore a fundamental aspect of his work. Na…
A pedra da aldeia: reativações waiwai entre a antropologia e a arqueologia de longa duração
O artigo analisa um episódio ocorrido na comunidade waiwai do Jatapuzinho, na Terra Indígena Trombetas-Mapuera, envolvendo o encontro do professor Renato Kanhera Waiwai com um antigo Pote de Pedra encontrado às margens do rio Jatapuzinho durante um…
El amor en los tiempos del caucho. Pactos matrimoniales y trabajo coercitivo entre awajún y patrones en la Amazonía peruana
Este trabajo presenta un análisis etnohistórico de los cambios en la jefatura awajún del Alto Marañón a inicios del siglo XX, centrándose en sus relaciones de dependencia, poder y trabajo forzoso con los comerciantes mestizos, en su mayoría patrone…
“Ese dia que se va el patron an hecho fiesta”.* Historicities of successful resistance against hacienda bosses among the Kukama (Peru, 1933-1945)
This paper analyzes two cases of resistance by Kukama workers within the debt slavery system of habilitación in the Peruvian Amazon during the first half of the twentieth century. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two cases,…
Making noise through law: Indigenous legal mobilisation against a power plant in “French” Guiana
In so-called “French” Guiana, or Guyane, the Kali’na village of Atopo Wipi has fought for years against a hydrogen power plant being built on their land. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in Guyane and Western Europe…
On the brink of silence: ethnographic perspectives on hunting and forest life among the Awa Guajá in Eastern Amazonia
The central theme of this article basically resides in the relationship established by indigenous peoples between their hunting practices and the forest. Indigenous ways of connecting ‘hunting’ and ‘forest’ necessarily pass through other modes of k…
Between the root and the stem: on women-plant relations, predation and familiarisation among the Awajún (Upper Amazonas, Peru)
What to do with the problem of predation? This is not only a conundrum for anthropologists working in what has become known as animist societies. The gardening activities of the Awajún people of northern Peru’s high jungle are modelled on the teach…
Making kinship with plants and the multiple meanings of care in Amazonian Indigenous gardens
This paper focuses on the bonds of kinship and care between humans, cultivated plants, and other-than-human beings in Indigenous gardens, myths, rituals, and shamanism, across Lowland South America. Drawing on Krahô ethnography and a review of ethn…
Territorialization-from-below: Community-rooted strategies towards public authority in Kamoethway, Myanmar
This article analyses territorialization ‘from-above’ and ‘from-below’ in Kamoethway, Tanintharyi Region in relation to the public authorities of the Karen National Union (KNU) and changing Myanmar governments. Fieldwork in Karen villages of the Kamoet…
“Several things have to come together”: The liminality of solar energy development in San Luis Valley, Colorado
As the aquifers beneath the San Luis Valley hit new lows, farmers and ranchers in this agricultural hub of southern Colorado are being encouraged to fallow their fields. With water scarcity as a push factor and renewable energy mandates as a pull facto…
Wilder landscapes, shifting powers: The political ecology of rewilding in Zambia
Rewilding is increasingly popular as a new paradigm for conservation, advocating the return of an autonomous nature, the ‘wild’, in closer coexistence with people. This approach resonates with transboundary conservation initiatives like the Kavango-Zam…
Les fromages au lait cru dans la tourmente d’une crise sanitaire
En 2018 en France, deux épisodes d’intoxication alimentaire liés à des souches pathogènes d’Escherichia coli se sont suivis de mesures officielles visant à évincer les fromages au lait cru de l’assiette des enfants de moins de 5 ans. L’article s…
De quoi la crise de la cuniculture est-elle le signe ?
La cuniculture est régulièrement qualifiée, en France, comme une filière agricole « en crise ». D’une part, la baisse continuelle de la consommation de viande de lapin impacte les volumes produits et le nombre d’éleveurs et d’éleveuses de lapins…
Sortir de crise ? Délibérations autour d’une politique publique du droit à l’alimentation
En mai 2020, plusieurs médias internationaux ont publié des images de longues files d’attente lors de distributions de colis alimentaires gratuits à Genève, une des villes les plus riches du monde. Cet événement a rudement éprouvé le système d’a…
Le jardinage comme pratique de « résilience » pour les ménages en insécurité alimentaire en temps de pandémie au Québec
Pendant la pandémie de Covid-19, au Québec, certains ménages se sont tournés vers le jardinage alimentaire domestique, y compris des ménages en situations d’insécurité alimentaire. Cet article étudie la pratique du jardinage chez ces ménages, av…
Invisible cuisine : comment les récits de crise façonnent l’industrialisation des cantines scolaires
La restauration scolaire en France bascule à la fin du XXe siècle d’un modèle artisanal et quasi familial des cuisines sur place à un modèle industriel fondé sur les cuisines centrales qui fait disparaître des écoles une fabrication culinaire, i…
Risques alimentaires, politique des savoirs et processus de recadrage
En 2018 en France, deux épisodes d’intoxication alimentaire liés à des souches pathogènes d’Escherichia coli se sont suivis de mesures officielles visant à évincer les fromages au lait cru de l’assiette des enfants de moins de 5 ans. L’article s…
Quel goût reste-t-il à la viande de brousse dans un contexte d’urgence écologique ?
A partir de nos missions de terrain au Cameroun et au Nord-Congo, nous exposons les dimensions symboliques et économiques de la consommation de la viande de brousse issue de la chasse chez les Ba’Aka, peuples chasseurs cueilleurs, et dont l’accè…
Objectiver une crise intime : l’exemple des « sensibles au gluten »
À partir du matériau recueilli dans le cadre d’une thèse en sociologie portant sur l’émergence de l’alimentation sans gluten en France et en Allemagne (2022), cet article montre comment les personnes sensibles au gluten cherchent à objectiver un…