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This book is the first edited volume focusing on handwritten newspapers as an alternative medium from a wide interdisciplinary and international perspective. Our primary focus is on handwritten newspapers as a social practice. The case studies contextualize the source materials in relation to political, cultural, literary, and economic history. The analysis reveals both continuity and change across the different forms and functions of the textual materials. In the 16th century, handwritten newspapers evolved as a news medium reporting history in the making. It was both a rather expensive public commodity and a gift exchanged in social relationships. Both functions appealed to public elites a...
Traditionally, oral traditions were considered to diffuse only orally, outside the influence of literature and other printed media. Eventually, more attention was given to interaction between literacy and orality, but it is only recently that oral tradition has come to be seen as a modern construct both conceptually and in terms of accessibility. Oral traditions cannot be studied independently from the culture of writing and reading. Lately, a new interdisciplinary interest has risen to study interconnections between oral tradition and book culture. In addition to the use and dissemination of printed books, newspapers etc., book culture denotes manuscript media and the circulation of written...
This wide-ranging, comparative and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.
In this study, I examine the life narrative of a female factory labourer, Elsa Koskinen (née Kiikkala, born in 1927). I analyze her account of her experiences related to work, class and gender because I seek to gain a better understanding of how changes in these aspects of life influenced the ways in which she saw her own worth at the time of the interviews and how she constructed her subjectivity. Elsa’s life touches upon many of the core aspects of 20th-century social change: changes in women’s roles, the entrance of middle- class women into working life, women’s increasing participation in the public sphere, feminist movements, upward social mobility, the expansion of the middle cl...
This books explores varying conceptions of the Nightmare hag, mara, in Scandinavian folk belief. What began as observations of some startling narratives preserved in folklore archives where sex, violence and curses are recurring themes gradually led to questions as to how rural people envisaged good and evil, illness and health, and cause and effect. At closer reading, narratives about the mara character involve existential themes, as well as comments on gender and social hierarchy. This monograph analyses how this female creature was conceived of in oral literature and everyday ritual practice in pre-industrial Scandinavia, and what role she played in a larger pattern of belief in witchcraft and magic.
This book is among the very few publications offering to the English-speaking readership significant insights into contemporary Lithuanian folklore research. Dealing with a broad variety of materials—from archived manuscripts to audio-recorded life stories to internet folklore—it comprises such topics as history and identity; the traditional worldview influencing modern people’s actions; the construction of the mental landscape; types and modes of storytelling; and the modern uses of proverbs, anecdotes, and internet lore. In a balanced way reflecting upon past and present, tradition and modernity, individual and collective, and employing modern research methodologies to dissect and analyze popular subjects and themes, this book presents a condensed view of the popular Lithuanian culture and mentality.
This book explores the diversity of meanings that accrue around the terms 'hobo', 'tramp', and 'vagabond'.
Since the Iraq war, the Middle East has been in continuous upheaval, resulting in the displacement of millions of people. Arriving from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria in other parts of the world, the refugees show remarkable resilience and creativity amidst profound adversity. Through careful ethnography, this book vividly illustrates how refugees navigate regimes of exclusion, including cumbersome bureaucracies, financial insecurities, medical challenges, vilifying stereotypes, and threats of violence. The collection bears witness to their struggles, while also highlighting their aspirations for safety, settlement, and social inclusion in their host societies and new homes.
This anthology ‘The Culture of the Finnish Roma’ is a highly needed collection of articles intended for a wide audience, in Finland and internationally. The editors of the anthology, when participating in many international conferences and seminars, have often been asked: Is there Roma research in Finland? What is it like? Which perspectives does it utilize? The main function of this anthology is to reply to those questions. It compiles an array of contemporary Roma research done in present day Finland, both by Finnish, Finnish Roma, and international scholars. It will be of interest to both academic as well as lay readers interested in Roma culture and Roma life in Finland, past and pre...
Finnish Settler Colonialism in North America reinterprets Finnish experiences in North America by connecting them to the transnational processes of settler colonial conquest, far-settlement, elimination of natives, and capture of terrestrial spaces. Rather than merely exploring whether the idea of Finns as a different kind of immigrant is a myth, this book challenges it in many ways. It offers an analysis of the ways in which this myth manifests itself, why it has been upheld to this day, and most importantly how it contributes to settler colonialism in North America and beyond. The authors in this volume apply multidisciplinary perspectives in revealing the various levels of Finnish involve...