SIEF News

SIEF Newsletter for Autumn 2023

The SIEF Autumn Newsletter is now out. Read the PDF or webversion.

Stop the Violence and Return to Dialogue - SIEF Executive Committee statement

SIEF unreservedly condemns the terrorist actions of Hamas on 7 October 2023 that resulted with the killings, abduction, and abuse of mostly Israeli civilians, as well as those of other nations. We call on the international community to do all it can to bring about the return of all abductees and hostages to their homes and families.

We condemn all civilian killings and atrocities, Palestinian and Israeli, and call on the international community to ensure that there are no attacks on civilians – systematic or otherwise – by any side and that military codes be strictly and clearly enforced.

SIEF, an international organization that promotes cultural understandings, stands firmly with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists and others seeking for a solution through dialogue to this long and bloody conflict. The world needs a peaceful agreement that respects the humanity of both nations, their ongoing cultural, social, and emotional needs, and their rich, often shared, cultural heritage.

In the face of ongoing atrocities, we urge the international community to use all its power and influence to realize a sustainable two-state solution, where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, committing to sustaining such a solution into the future.

Our deepest thoughts go to all victims and their families, friends, and neighbors, and we extend our solidarity to colleagues and students across the region.

The Executive Committee of SIEF

SIEF is an international organization with a 1200+ membership base that facilitates and stimulates scholarly exchange in the community of Ethnology, Folklore, Cultural anthropology, and adjoining fields in the name of human understanding.

Letter of concern regarding the Professorship or European Ethnology at the University of Turku, Finland
The University of Turku might indefinitely suspend the professorship of European Ethnology as a part of its economic plan. SIEF has sent a letter of concern.

Culture in Dialogue Seminars: Keeping Channels of Communication Open

SIEF stands for free and open communication across boundaries, borders, and disciplines. Today, with old divisions reappearing in Europe, we believe that specialists in Ethnology, Folklore, Anthropology, and related fields, have a duty to highlight lessons of the past and show that, through dialogue, we can reach better understandings of the world and each other. The SIEF Board introduces Culture in Dialogue, a series of occasional online seminars intended to encourage, initiate, and develop communication between East and West.

The inaugural event on 14 July features Stef Jansen, University of Sarajevo. Read the abstract and register (free) to attend this Zoom.

Useful links of support resources for Ukrainians

The Executive Boards of SIEF and EASA have cooperated to disseminate information on support, scholarships and jobs offered to Ukrainian scholars at risk. View this list of opportunities, advice and resources received from various parts of Europe. If you have new/additional information please contact us via the email cited there.

SIEF Statement in support of academic colleagues in Ukraine

The International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) is deeply concerned with the devastating developments recently witnessed in Ukraine. SIEF expresses its solidarity with the people of Ukraine including colleagues, students, and friends, who represent our scholarly fields of Ethnology and Folklore at the academic institutions of Ukraine. Read the full statement.

SIEF Working Groups News

SIEF 24th International Ethnological Food Research Conference

Paper proposals are now open for the 24th International Ethnological Food Research Conference. Read more.

Conference Theme: Living Eating Habits, Revitalized Foodways and the Concepts of Tradition and Food Heritage

 

SIEF JOURNALS

New issue of Ethnologia Europaea, Vol. 53, no. 1

The latest issue of "Ethnologia Europaea" 53(1) 2023 is out! Journal content:

Francisco Martínez: How to Write Things: Fiction, Anthropology and Foreignness in Berlin.

Tom Fogel und Dani Schrire: Negotiating Tradition Archives in a Community Setting: Sounds of Silence and the Question of Credibility.

Ann Runfors: The Political as the Personal: Postmemory among Descendants of Polish Migrants in Sweden.

Elena Apostoli Cappello: Sustainability as a Symbolic Resource at the Local Level, and Its Strategic Uses: A Study in Northern Italy.

Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir: “[She] was very eager for men and hated living alone”: Supernatural Women who Pose a Threat to Men in Icelandic Legends.

Ruxandra Ana: Ethnographic Snapshot: Common Grounds: Life and Ethnography on the Möbius Strip.

Please visit the Open Library of Humanities website for more information about the journal.

New Issue of Cultural Analysis, 21:1 (2023)

Special issue: Creative Ethnographic Methodologies

Creativity is an integral part of ethnographic practice. In this theme issue, however, you will find examples of research that in different ways is creative in ways that pushes the boundaries of traditional research further. Research that not only recognizes how the researcher is a co-producer of all ethnography but also actively seeks out collaborations with, for example, artistic research practices or creative writing. The articles in this issue all describe and analyze how creativity take place in ethnographic research, both in the research process and in research dissemination, and how that can influence the ethnographic work.

The articles in this issue are linked to themes of ethnographic creativity such as creative writing practices, poetic inquiry, and visual and sensory ethnography. In different ways do these articles address and show that creativity is essential both for gaining knowledge about a field of research and for communicating research results, both in- and outside of academia. This collection of articles can hopefully invoke interest and curiosity in other researchers to try out more creative approaches to ethnography and to think about in what ways ethnography is intertwined with creative practices.

The issue is co-edited with guest editors Jenni Rinne (Turku University, Finland) and Kim Silow Kallenberg (Södertörn University, Sweden).

Cultural Analysis 2023 (berkeley.edu)

Cultural Analysis is proud to formally release:
Cultural Analysis Forum Series 1: Pandemics & Politics.

Added in April 2023: ADAM HINDEN, ZIYING YOU, & ZHEN GUO: Online Activism and Grassroots Memorialization in the Age of COVID-19: Dr. Li Wenliang's Virtual Wailing Wall
Response by: Frederik Schmitz

For this inaugural first series rollout Cultural Analysis releases the following articles and essays. The first essay, Becoming Folkwise: Sustaining Digital Community While Socially Distant, introduces us to a group of self-proclaimed “early-career” folkorists who take the lead in analyzing digital engagement and community. Making Sense of the Pandemic of Racism: From the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924 to the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act in 2021 by Juwen Zhang places the pandemic in the context of historical racial injustices against Asian-Americans (with a response by Fariha I. Khan). Lucy Long's essay, Refrigerators, cupboards, and canning jars: Emergent meanings and subversive practices in food preservation and storage during the Covid-19 Pandemic (with a response by Janet C. Gilmore, Emeritus Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison) takes us to the United States and foodways. God is My Vaccine: Religious Belief and COVID in the United States by Andrea Kitta explores those who are vaccine hesitant, vaccine refusers, or vaccine hostile in the context of religion and freedom. Levi Bochantin and James I. Deutsch, in their essay, The Folkloric Roots and Pandemic Popularity of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory, explores some of the troubling folk beliefs and conspiracies that arose due to the events of 2020. Finally, Malay Bera’s Interrogating Social Distancing: Pandemic and Farmer’s Protest in India explores the complicated relationship of protesting, social distances, and the pandemic.

As the first inaugural open series, Cultural Analysis will be accepting rolling submissions, whether they be articles, essays, reviews, or responses, relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Future submissions are planned to be published in waves. Cultural Analysis will expand this series as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a meaningful impact in our future and our lives. The pandemic landscape may no longer be changing rapidly, but nonetheless it will continue to change, for better or for worse. Cultural Alanysis is looking forward to hearing from you.

 

ARCHIVE

SIEF Statement In Support of Academics in Turkey

In two cabinet decrees issued in September and October 2016 within the context of the state of emergency rule, 68 signatories of the Peace Petition (“We will not be a party to this crime” – Academics for Peace, in January 2016) were deemed “supporters of terrorism”, dismissed from their posts and banned from public service. At least two of these are associated with SIEF and our sister organization AFS: Yücel Demirer and Derya Keskin-Demirer, who frequently attend SIEF meetings. They were dismissed from their positions at Kocaeli University along with 37 other faculty members without a hearing or right to appeal the decision. They are among 3,613 academics dismissed by Turkish authorities in the last three months. Read more ...