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Preface to the Special Issue “Hybrid Beliefs and Identities”

The 35th Nordic Ethnology and Folklore Conference, titled RE:22, was held from June 13th to 16th, 2022 was held in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Book review: Pócs, Éva and Bea Vidacs, eds. 2020. Faith, Doubt and Knowledge in Religious Thinking. Budapest: Balassi Kiadó. 409 pages.

Hybridity is often discussed in connection with the postcolonial condition. The cultural revival of the Khanty bear ceremony in Western Siberia could be a perfect example. It is on one hand a key representation of local Indigenous ontology an…

The aim of this article is to explore the effect of hybridity in the Komi hunters’ knowledge system as well as the potential for mutual understanding in dialogue between ethnographers and their Indigenous partners. I discuss how the hunters exploit pri…

Exhibition review. Echo of the Urals is the Estonian National Museum’s permanent exhibition, dedicated to Finno-Ugric indigenous peoples and their cultures.

Book review: Stachowiak, Andrzej. 2021. Miejsca święte na Pomorzu. Pruszcz Gdański; Słupsk:Wydawnictwo Jasne. 278 pages.

Although many disciplines dropped the use of “vernacular” in the 21st century because of the term’s connotations of primitivism, classism, and marginalization arising from 19th-century colonialism, the term has risen in usage among folklorist…

This paper analyses highly creative and hybrid practices which tie the Indigenous Siberian, European Christian and Soviet worlds in unexpected ways. Reflecting on the Forest Nenets reindeer herder, poet and intellectual Yuri Vella’s understanding of th…

This article offers an anthropological and ethnographic perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected and shaped rural community social behaviour in Kayo village during Japan’s first official state of emergency, April 7th to May 6th, 2020…

In the early through to mid-20th century (before the Second World War), the Jewish population in Samogitian towns was quite abundant; they were generally business owners, and therefore there could have been various relationships between the rural Samog…

This article contributes to the debate about environmental sustainability, using the Skolt Sami conceptions of nature obligations as guides to this theme. The author’s recent research material is analysed in relation to other relevant publications and …

The article challenges the assumption that land tenure is contingent on acquiring a land title. It argues that for Indigenous peoples a land may be delineated, occupied, utilised, and collectively owned through the concept of territoriality.&…

The article* examines the sacred landscape in the space of Chuvash villages in the Samara Trans-Volga region. A sacred space is understood as a territory that, from the point of view of local people, has special properties and performs certain function…

The article analyses changes in Ukrainian folk beliefs about the afterlife in the face of forced resettlement due to the construction of hydroelectric power stations and water reservoirs. During resettlement, folk beliefs were adapted to the …

At the turn of the 20th century, exotic shows as a form of displaying otherness gained wide popularity among various kinds of mass entertainment in Europe and the United States. Promoted professionally, the shows attracted public interest,&nb…

Ritual objects and belongings are still used today at Udmurt prayer rituals that have sacrifices. We would even go so far as to say that carrying out ceremonies without them is unthinkable. Depending on their function they can be defined in several gro…

This article is dedicated to special people whom their community marked as having secret knowledge and magic power, and who belong of the institution of the initiated. My main sources are my field materials, interviews with these magic specialists, gat…

Published on 2022-12-07 12:01:27

Published on 2022-12-07 10:41:26

This is a book review: Ali Ali’s reading of Asli Vatasever’s ethnographic book on political and academic exiles. Asli Vatansever shows how the two forms of exile and precarization: 1) under state authoritarianism and 2) in the academic labor market are…

de Haas, Hein, Castles, Stephen and Miller, Mark J. 2020. The Age of Migration. International Population Movements in the Modern World. New York & London: Guilford Press. Sixth Edition. 443 pp. Published on 2022-12-07 10:55:09

Nursing homes for older seniors are considered an integral part of the Nordic welfare regimes, with a comparatively large proportion of employed native-born women. This is partly under change. An ageing population in interplay with increased difficulti…