Papers (journal articles and book chapters) by Inkeri Aula
Sociological Research Online, 2024
With the world population aging rapidly, it is crucial to include the imagination of older adults... more With the world population aging rapidly, it is crucial to include the imagination of older adults in envisioning a better future, and to promote transgenerational exchanges. To achieve this, novel interdisciplinary methods are needed to assist researchers with studying the process of transgenerational creative co-imagination involving older adults and younger people together. In this article, we present a workshop method that brings together methodological approaches from the fields of sensorial ethnography and visual narratives in a multi-professional setting to facilitate transgenerational creative co-imagining of future. To illustrate the use of this method, we present a case study of two workshops we have held recently with older adults and young people in which a sensory walk method has been combined with a grassroots comics method to co-create comic strips that present narratives of transgenerationally co-imagined future of natural environments. We also discuss the lessons learned from these two case-study workshops, with the aim of highlighting some of the shortcomings of our workshop method, so that, it can revised and expanded further to suit the specific needs of other studies.
niin & näin , 2023
OPEN ACCESS LINKISSÄ. Abstract: Kuvittelu sisäisin silmin on sekä ajattelun että esoteerisen harj... more OPEN ACCESS LINKISSÄ. Abstract: Kuvittelu sisäisin silmin on sekä ajattelun että esoteerisen harjoituksen muoto. Toden ja kuvitelman välinen raja voi asettua toisin sen mukaan, mikä kulttuurinen käsitys mielikuvituksesta sitä ohjaa. Animistisissa tai esoteerisissa maailmankäsityksissä on täysin perusteltua ajatella, että mielikuvitusta ei ole: kaikki on havaintoa tai merkki jostakin. Synnynnäinen kyvyttömyys nähdä mielikuvia valvetilassa, afantasia, on johdattanut tämän artikkelin kirjoittajan sisäisten aistien pohdinnan ja selkounitekniikoiden pariin. Tietoisen unennäön ja aistien kulttuurintutkimuksen läpi katsottuna näkemisen ilmiöt ja mielikuvituksen suhde todellisuuteen asettuvat
Understanding Marine Changes. Environmental Knowledge and Methods of Research , 2023
Journal of Population Ageing , 2023
The fact that the world population is ageing brings about societal challenges, but at the same ti... more The fact that the world population is ageing brings about societal challenges, but at the same time creates new opportunities for more creative and meaningful lives at older age. In this article, we investigate existing gaps in several fields of research that aim to better understand the role of creativity in later life and its effects on healthy ageing. We present an overview of the diverse definitions of creativity and culture, review current approaches to wellbeing, and summarise findings from research on the effects of creative activities on wellbeing and healthy ageing. In addition, we discuss recent research on the impact of environmental contexts and relations on creative wellbeing. Through identifying the definitions and scope of research on creativity and wellbeing in the lives of older adults, we aim to provide promising future research directions. Our review shows that current research on the impact of artistic and creative activities on wellbeing in later life generally does not consider older adults’ own subjective and relational experiences, and too often ignores elements of the complex environmental conditions in healthy ageing. Therefore, we conclude that there is a sustained need for holistic and relational approaches that address the entanglement of social and natural environments with healthy ageing and creative wellbeing.
Sensory Environmental Relationships: Between Memories of the Past and Imaginings of the Future , 2023
Helmi Järviluoma, Inkeri Aula, Eeva Pärjälä, Sonja Pöllänen, Milla Tiainen, and Juhana Venäläinen... more Helmi Järviluoma, Inkeri Aula, Eeva Pärjälä, Sonja Pöllänen, Milla Tiainen, and Juhana Venäläinen:
In this article, we analyse changes in urban sensescapes brought to the fore by sensobiographic walks conducted with artists. The sensed and experienced urban environment is not just a collection of mechanical or static features. It is intertwined with individuals and groups living in the urban area in question, who perceive, interpret, recall, and co-produce their living environment in multisensory ways. We focus on artists of different ages and their experiences of changes in the urban sensescapes of two medium-sized European cities—Turku and Brighton. This article outlines and contributes to the latest cultural studies’ approaches to urban research based on our five-year research project, Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships in Europe, 1950–2020 (SENSOTRA). The starting point is that cities and the artists living in them influence each other by way of mutual intra-action. Our article also contributes to recent and emerging research on artists, providing new perspectives on the relationship between artists and their environments.
Keywords: urban studies, sensory ethnography, sensobiographic walks, intra-
action, research on artists
NEW SEEDS FOR A WORLD TO COME Policies, Practices and Lives in Adult Education and Learning, 2023
How to maintain and nurture resilience in our communities, when nature loss and climate extremiti... more How to maintain and nurture resilience in our communities, when nature loss and climate extremities are threatening the very foundations of our existence? We are immersed in the natural world with other life forms, so we should consider the more-than-human components of our social world from diverse perspectives. This paper suggests that exploring sensory
experiences of different generations can help in developing wellbeing in our more-than-human communities. Creative methods, such as multisensory ethnography and artistic work, are needed to account for the co-constitution of our communal realities with animate and inanimate nature. There is much to learn from approaching sustainable wellbeing and resilience as a sensorial and a bodily question. With insights from anthropology, this paper proposes multisensory ethnographic methods, that are informed by the holistic approach and insights to alterity from anthropology of the senses, for creative and transdisciplinary community
research.
Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies, Feb 6, 2023
https://www.routledge.com/Sensory-Transformations-Environments-Technologies-Sensobiographies/Jarv... more https://www.routledge.com/Sensory-Transformations-Environments-Technologies-Sensobiographies/Jarviluoma-Murray/p/book/9780367674311
"Extensive project addressing changes in people’s sensory environments is now completed (3.5.2023)"
"Sensotra is an extensive and international research project, which explored different generations’ experiences of their environment over a period of six years. The project examined, e.g., how digital devices and technological changes have shaped people’s lives in different parts of Europe.
Completed in the field of cultural research, the project is now completed, and its findings are published in a new book, Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies (edited by Helmi Järviluoma & Lesley Murray, Routledge). The book will be launched on the Joensuu Campus on Monday, 8 May 2023.
Gentrification and mass tourism are shaping sensory environments
The Sensotra project focused on changes in people’s experienced sensory environments in three medium-sized European cities – Turku, Brighton and Ljubljana – in 1950–2021. Professor Emerita of Cultural Research Helmi Järviluoma, the leader of the Sensotra project, received a 1.9-million-euro European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the years 2016–2021.
“Sensobiographic walks conducted together with interviewees of different ages and researchers proved to be an excellent way of gathering information, and we conducted around 180 of such walks. The ways in which residents of European cities ‘use’ their city have changed over the decades – and also as a result of technological development,” Järviluoma says.
Digital technologies are intertwined with residents’ experienced sensory environments in complex ways. One of the most important findings of the project was that even the smallest natural areas within cities provide young and more elderly residents alike with unexpectedly important experiences that promote their well-being – with and without digital devices.
“Young people often seek relief from vulnerable life situations or from the busy city life by choosing their routes so that they go through the city’s own natural areas, waterfronts, forests and parks,” Postdoctoral Researcher Inkeri Aula says.
In all of the cities studied, gentrification and construction for tourists reduced both undeveloped land that feeds the senses and environments that foster communal creativity. For example, some urban residents felt alienated by smells they regarded as too sterile.
In Ljubljana, for example, the rapid industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation taking place in the era of socialism created new spaces that strengthened “socialist senses”. Later, mass tourism not only shaped Ljubljana’s historical parts of the city, but also had a profound impact on the perception of public space.
The project’s interactive Sensotra Tour website showcasing various materials can be found at https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1364831714358067201. Aimed at the public, the website features sensobiographic walks in three cities, utilising both 360 images and 360 videos as well as audio recordings of sensory environments and interviews. To ensure the anonymity of the study participants, the interviews have been produced with the help of voice actors."
Kulttuurintutkimus tietämisen tapana (toim. Kinnunen, T & Venäläinen, J.), 2022
Tieto muodostuu yhteydessä monimutkaiseen ympäristöön. Tässä artikkelissa esittelen aistietnograf... more Tieto muodostuu yhteydessä monimutkaiseen ympäristöön. Tässä artikkelissa esittelen aistietnografisia ja taiteellisia lähestymistapoja, joiden kautta voidaan ylittää subjektin ja ympäristön välisiä rajoja. Ympäristökriisin keskellä on erityisen tärkeää luoda tutkimuskäytäntöjä, jotka tunnistavat keskinäisen riippuvuutemme muusta luonnosta. (1) Aistielämäkerrallinen tutkimus, (2) aistikävelytyöpajat ja (3) etnografisesta aineistosta tehdyt taideinstallaatiot tarjoavat kolme erilaista lähestymistapaa aistietnografisesti muodostettavaan tietoon, joka voi tavoittaa sekä ajallisia muutoksia että tilannekohtaisen kytkeytyneisyytemme materiaaliseen ja aistittuun ympäristöön.
Dimensions
Environmental relationships need to be understood as crucial in contemporary social research. Thi... more Environmental relationships need to be understood as crucial in contemporary social research. This article explores relating with nature in urban contexts and its diverse temporalities. How do people relate to the more-than-human natural environments in the city? How does urban nature appear through sensory memories and perceptions? To answer these questions, this research analyzes sensobiographic walks conducted with young (15-30 years of age) and old (70+ years of age) city dwellers in Turku, southwest Finland. Via transgenerational sensobiographic walks (Järviluoma 2021), less controlled urban green spaces such as parks, riversides, margins, and pathways are discovered as weedy landscapes, where encounters between the human and the non-human take place. These weedy landscapes allow the sharing of sensory experiences and memories of transformation, following that sensing itself can be grasped as a collective endeavor. This article asserts that urban biodiverse sites maintain their...
niin & näin 3/21, 2021
Löytyykö kansanperinteestä ja siihen niveltyneistä mielenmaisemista jokin erityinen kokemuksellin... more Löytyykö kansanperinteestä ja siihen niveltyneistä mielenmaisemista jokin erityinen kokemuksellinen yhteys maahan? Ekokatastrofin tuottaneesta yhteiskunnallisesta olemisen tavasta on vaikeaa löytää tajua siitä, kuinka elää tuhoamatta elämän edellytyksiä. On siis etsittävä toisia maailmassa olemisen tapoja. Tämä kirjoitus esittää, että Amazonian alkuperäiskansojen ontologioista kehrätty perspektivismin käsite voi toimia työkaluna myös meikäläisen loitsuperinteen ja ylipäätään myyttisen ajattelun avaamien rajamaiden oivaltamiseen.
Humanistinen kaupunkitutkimus , 2021
Järviluoma Helmi, Aula Inkeri, Pöllänen Sonja, Pärjälä Eeva, Tiainen Milla, Venäläinen Juhana
Music as Atmosphere Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds, 2020
ABSTRACT:
Sensobiographic walking method, developed by Järviluoma (2017) and the SENSOTRA resear... more ABSTRACT:
Sensobiographic walking method, developed by Järviluoma (2017) and the SENSOTRA research project, provides a template for accessing the unfolding of experience in a shared situation. This chapter probes theoretical intersections of the concepts of mediation and atmosphere with the sensobiographic method in attending to everyday experiences. The main question is how do recent transformations in mediations of lived sonic experience – related to the ubiquitous presence of media technologies – manifest themselves in daily life.
Elaborating on media theorists Kember & Zylinska (2012), this chapter proposes that ”media” do not signify pre-constituted devices that then mediate something, but constant emergence of both the uses of technological media and the human experience concurrent with them. In the sensobiographic ethnography proposed, two participants of different age groups are invited to undertake joint walks whose routes they choose by turns, providing rich data on the embodied, site-specific, and technology-related emergence and remembering of atmospheres and sounds. Human bodies–minds are also conceived of as constantly emergent mediators of experiences. Everyday sonic experiences co-emerge with multi-scale imaginaries and diverse materialities.
Keywords: sensobiographic, mediation, atmosphere, media
The Revival of Political Imagination Utopia as Methodology, 2020
Utopian imaginaries as tools for social transformation require a sense of hope. Scholarly knowled... more Utopian imaginaries as tools for social transformation require a sense of hope. Scholarly knowledge can also be reoriented by looking for local utopias and utopian ideals embedded in particular environments and practices, and the hope they may offer. Anthropological research on hope has mainly focused on different vernacular conceptions of hope, and on the characteristics of religious and spiritual hopes (Kirksley & LeFevre 2015; Crapanzano 2004, 97–123). However, utopian hope can also be seen as a tool. This chapter takes under scrutiny how hope, understood as a form of knowledge orientation, relates to the effectiveness of utopia as a tool for social transformation.
I present contemporary struggles of the Afro-Brazilian quilombist movement as an example of maintaining hope in the face of adversities. Inspired by anthropologist Hirokazu Miyazaki’s method of hope, in which hope is taken as a method that unifies different forms of knowledge, this chapter argues that quilombismo, as it is manifested today, could bring a forward-looking orientation to the quilombos, and to Afro-Brazilian heritage more generally. Quilombist utopias put into practice in contemporary communities express hope for the future, instead of being tied to past-bound images.
The notion of the “quilombo” has been reclaimed for decades by Afro-Brazilian movements and religious communities, black spiritual and cultural spaces, social projects, and capoeira schools. The concept bears strong utopian connotations for contemporary social and cultural movements, and implies a centennial history of struggle for the ethno-territorial rights of thousands of rural black communities in Brazil. While the officially recognized quilombo communities struggle under severe oppression and violent attacks, the symbolic reclaiming of Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage connected with quilombist utopias has become ever more important. The quilombola movement defends Afro-descendant communal rights, and a way of life formed in a relation with the local natural environment in Brazil, where struggles over land are heated (e.g. Carter 2015) . Quilombist initiatives and influences can be found among diverse cultural expressions from capoeira and samba to political demonstrations, pointing to the significance of embodied practices entailing a social memory of the Afro-Brazilian history . However, the translocal influences today differ from the afrocentric quilombismo of the 1980s, so here the current phenomena is denominated ‘contemporary quilombismo.’ In contrast to the territorial quilombola movement, ‘quilombismo’ refers to a more loosely defined movement whose actors identify with Afro-descendants’ struggles for political and cultural reasons.
História oral e direito à cidade: Paisagens urbanas, narrativas e memória social, 2019
Coming out in September 2019
Elore, 2018
https://journal.fi/elore/article/view/72816
Maiseman aistiminen on aina monin tavoin välittynyt... more https://journal.fi/elore/article/view/72816
Maiseman aistiminen on aina monin tavoin välittynyttä, esimerkiksi ruumiillisten tapojen, rutiinien, kulttuuristen aistijärjestysten ja teknologian välittämää. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelen kaupunkimaisemaa ihmiskehojen ja aistiympäristön vuorovaikutuksena, jossa vuosikymmenten takaisten aistimusten muistelu sekoittuu tilannekohtaiseen, jaettuun kokemukseen. Artikkelin aineistona ja metodina on kolme aistielämäkerrallista kävelyä Turussa. Tutkija ja kahta eri sukupolvea edustavat haastateltavat ovat yhdessä
kulkeneet haastateltaville aikaisemmin ja myös nykyään merkityksellisiä reittejä pitkin aistit avoimina, keskustellen samalla aistimuistoista ja arkisen teknologian käytöstä osana elinympäristöä.
Aistielämäkerrallisten kävelyjen tulkintaani ovat innoittaneet uusmaterialistisen ja non-representationaalisen teorian lähestymistavat, jotka tavoittelevat subjektiivisen kokemuksen ja objektiivisen ympäristön välisen jaon ylittämistä. Monet inhimilliset ja ei-inhimilliset toimijat kansoittavat maisemaa ja vaikuttavat toistensa elämään ja olemiseen ennalta määräämättömillä tavoilla. Tätä tarkastelen Anna Tsingin käsittein rikkaruohottuneena maisemana. Myös maisemasta itsestään tulee toimija, joka esimerkiksi käynnistää muistamisen ja kertomisen tapahtumia: veden kosketus, ennalta määräämättömät kohtaamiset kadulla ja äänimaiseman muutos ovat osa maiseman aistivoimaista, koettua historiaa. Toimijuus, kokemus ja muistaminen rakentuvat tilannesidonnaisella tavalla maiseman, aistikävelyn elementtien ja niiden välisten suhteiden luomassa muuttuvassa kokonaisuudessa. Tämä dynaamisuus koskee myös mukana kulkevaa tekniikkaa aina sateenvarjoista ja kengistä älypuhelimiin ja kuulokkeisiin. Lopputuloksena on moniaistinen etnografia samanaikaisesti koetusta ja muistetusta maisemasta, joka saakin poiketa hallitsevasta kaupunkien kulttuuriperinnön, kuten kaupungin maamerkkien ja arkkitehtuurin, arvottamisesta.
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 2017
Afro-Brazilian capoeira exemplifies how communal practices connect multilocally. This article inv... more Afro-Brazilian capoeira exemplifies how communal practices connect multilocally. This article investigates how the fight-game-art forms a translocal culture, uniting practitioners in diverse localities, and connects them to a transnationally created Black Atlantic heritage. The multi-sited ethnographic approach focuses mostly on Salvador, Northeastern Brazil, where the purity of Afro-Brazilian traditions raises polemic. Through critical observation of capoeira’s dual development in Brazil, transnationality is asserted as a historical continuity in capoeira communities’ imaginaries. To grasp how globalised capoeira maintains its connection to Afro-Brazilian history, the analysis of capoeira’s traditionalism is complemented by a description of the formation of capoeira practice in the faraway location of Eastern Finland, where capoeira’s creativity and categorization-resistant, holistic nature remain central. Through the densely historicized tradition of capoeira, minoritarian views on transnational connections, on the colonial encounter, and on the effects of transatlantic slavery are shared in multiple locations.
Revista de Antropologia experimental 12/2012, 2012
https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/rae/article/view/1852 Resumo: Este artigo tem com... more https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/rae/article/view/1852 Resumo: Este artigo tem como objetivo iluminar, através da observação etnográfica dos praticantes da capoeira angola na Bahia, aspectos dos processos socioculturais e econômicos na teia atlântica de significados, implementando a metodologia de etnografia multissítio. A aprendizagem dos bahianos e estrangeiros lado a lado faz surgir tensões relacionadas a etnicidade e a desigualdade, por parte mediadas nas experiências de libertação no ritual da roda, e suas reinterpretações das relações coloniais. A participação como uma forma de troca requerida na capoeira fica contextualizada à troca material e à economia da comunidade, revelando nos passos da capoeira algumas correntes alternas ao progresso econômico do sistema mundial. Proponho-me a demostrar como a capoeira angola hoje forma uma comunidade transnacional, onde os significados ficam construídos em relação à sua mundialização: a experiência de capoeira se desenvolve no encontro de diversos pontos de vista na mesma roda.
Palavras-chave: comunidade transnacional, capoeira angola, etnografia multissítio, participação
A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY EXPERIENCED: THE CAPOEIRA ANGOLA OF EUROPEAN AND BAHIAN PRACTITIONERS
Abstract: Through ethnographic observation of capoeira angola practitioners in Salvador da Bahia, this article attempts to illuminates aspects of sociocultural and economic processes in the circum-atlantic web of meanings, implementing the methodology of multi-sited ethnography. The learning together of capoeira skills brings forth tensions connected to ethnicity and unequality between the Bahian and European capoeiristas, mediated by experiences of liberation in the ritual roda and its reinterpretations of colonial relations. Participation as a form of exchange required in the community is contextualized to material exchange and economy in the community, revealing in capoeira angola's movements alternate streams in relation to world economic process. I attempt to demostrate how capoeira angola forms a transnational community, where meanings are constructed in relation to the community's globalization: the capoeira experience is formed in the coming together of different perspectives in the same capoeira ring.
Keywords: transnational community, capoeira angola, multi-sited ethnoraphy, participation
Teaching Documents by Inkeri Aula
Book Reviews by Inkeri Aula
Kulttuurintutkimus 3-4, 2020
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Toim. Anna ... more Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Toim. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt. University of Minnesota Press 2017.
Book review essay
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Papers (journal articles and book chapters) by Inkeri Aula
In this article, we analyse changes in urban sensescapes brought to the fore by sensobiographic walks conducted with artists. The sensed and experienced urban environment is not just a collection of mechanical or static features. It is intertwined with individuals and groups living in the urban area in question, who perceive, interpret, recall, and co-produce their living environment in multisensory ways. We focus on artists of different ages and their experiences of changes in the urban sensescapes of two medium-sized European cities—Turku and Brighton. This article outlines and contributes to the latest cultural studies’ approaches to urban research based on our five-year research project, Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships in Europe, 1950–2020 (SENSOTRA). The starting point is that cities and the artists living in them influence each other by way of mutual intra-action. Our article also contributes to recent and emerging research on artists, providing new perspectives on the relationship between artists and their environments.
Keywords: urban studies, sensory ethnography, sensobiographic walks, intra-
action, research on artists
experiences of different generations can help in developing wellbeing in our more-than-human communities. Creative methods, such as multisensory ethnography and artistic work, are needed to account for the co-constitution of our communal realities with animate and inanimate nature. There is much to learn from approaching sustainable wellbeing and resilience as a sensorial and a bodily question. With insights from anthropology, this paper proposes multisensory ethnographic methods, that are informed by the holistic approach and insights to alterity from anthropology of the senses, for creative and transdisciplinary community
research.
"Extensive project addressing changes in people’s sensory environments is now completed (3.5.2023)"
"Sensotra is an extensive and international research project, which explored different generations’ experiences of their environment over a period of six years. The project examined, e.g., how digital devices and technological changes have shaped people’s lives in different parts of Europe.
Completed in the field of cultural research, the project is now completed, and its findings are published in a new book, Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies (edited by Helmi Järviluoma & Lesley Murray, Routledge). The book will be launched on the Joensuu Campus on Monday, 8 May 2023.
Gentrification and mass tourism are shaping sensory environments
The Sensotra project focused on changes in people’s experienced sensory environments in three medium-sized European cities – Turku, Brighton and Ljubljana – in 1950–2021. Professor Emerita of Cultural Research Helmi Järviluoma, the leader of the Sensotra project, received a 1.9-million-euro European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the years 2016–2021.
“Sensobiographic walks conducted together with interviewees of different ages and researchers proved to be an excellent way of gathering information, and we conducted around 180 of such walks. The ways in which residents of European cities ‘use’ their city have changed over the decades – and also as a result of technological development,” Järviluoma says.
Digital technologies are intertwined with residents’ experienced sensory environments in complex ways. One of the most important findings of the project was that even the smallest natural areas within cities provide young and more elderly residents alike with unexpectedly important experiences that promote their well-being – with and without digital devices.
“Young people often seek relief from vulnerable life situations or from the busy city life by choosing their routes so that they go through the city’s own natural areas, waterfronts, forests and parks,” Postdoctoral Researcher Inkeri Aula says.
In all of the cities studied, gentrification and construction for tourists reduced both undeveloped land that feeds the senses and environments that foster communal creativity. For example, some urban residents felt alienated by smells they regarded as too sterile.
In Ljubljana, for example, the rapid industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation taking place in the era of socialism created new spaces that strengthened “socialist senses”. Later, mass tourism not only shaped Ljubljana’s historical parts of the city, but also had a profound impact on the perception of public space.
The project’s interactive Sensotra Tour website showcasing various materials can be found at https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1364831714358067201. Aimed at the public, the website features sensobiographic walks in three cities, utilising both 360 images and 360 videos as well as audio recordings of sensory environments and interviews. To ensure the anonymity of the study participants, the interviews have been produced with the help of voice actors."
Sensobiographic walking method, developed by Järviluoma (2017) and the SENSOTRA research project, provides a template for accessing the unfolding of experience in a shared situation. This chapter probes theoretical intersections of the concepts of mediation and atmosphere with the sensobiographic method in attending to everyday experiences. The main question is how do recent transformations in mediations of lived sonic experience – related to the ubiquitous presence of media technologies – manifest themselves in daily life.
Elaborating on media theorists Kember & Zylinska (2012), this chapter proposes that ”media” do not signify pre-constituted devices that then mediate something, but constant emergence of both the uses of technological media and the human experience concurrent with them. In the sensobiographic ethnography proposed, two participants of different age groups are invited to undertake joint walks whose routes they choose by turns, providing rich data on the embodied, site-specific, and technology-related emergence and remembering of atmospheres and sounds. Human bodies–minds are also conceived of as constantly emergent mediators of experiences. Everyday sonic experiences co-emerge with multi-scale imaginaries and diverse materialities.
Keywords: sensobiographic, mediation, atmosphere, media
I present contemporary struggles of the Afro-Brazilian quilombist movement as an example of maintaining hope in the face of adversities. Inspired by anthropologist Hirokazu Miyazaki’s method of hope, in which hope is taken as a method that unifies different forms of knowledge, this chapter argues that quilombismo, as it is manifested today, could bring a forward-looking orientation to the quilombos, and to Afro-Brazilian heritage more generally. Quilombist utopias put into practice in contemporary communities express hope for the future, instead of being tied to past-bound images.
The notion of the “quilombo” has been reclaimed for decades by Afro-Brazilian movements and religious communities, black spiritual and cultural spaces, social projects, and capoeira schools. The concept bears strong utopian connotations for contemporary social and cultural movements, and implies a centennial history of struggle for the ethno-territorial rights of thousands of rural black communities in Brazil. While the officially recognized quilombo communities struggle under severe oppression and violent attacks, the symbolic reclaiming of Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage connected with quilombist utopias has become ever more important. The quilombola movement defends Afro-descendant communal rights, and a way of life formed in a relation with the local natural environment in Brazil, where struggles over land are heated (e.g. Carter 2015) . Quilombist initiatives and influences can be found among diverse cultural expressions from capoeira and samba to political demonstrations, pointing to the significance of embodied practices entailing a social memory of the Afro-Brazilian history . However, the translocal influences today differ from the afrocentric quilombismo of the 1980s, so here the current phenomena is denominated ‘contemporary quilombismo.’ In contrast to the territorial quilombola movement, ‘quilombismo’ refers to a more loosely defined movement whose actors identify with Afro-descendants’ struggles for political and cultural reasons.
Maiseman aistiminen on aina monin tavoin välittynyttä, esimerkiksi ruumiillisten tapojen, rutiinien, kulttuuristen aistijärjestysten ja teknologian välittämää. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelen kaupunkimaisemaa ihmiskehojen ja aistiympäristön vuorovaikutuksena, jossa vuosikymmenten takaisten aistimusten muistelu sekoittuu tilannekohtaiseen, jaettuun kokemukseen. Artikkelin aineistona ja metodina on kolme aistielämäkerrallista kävelyä Turussa. Tutkija ja kahta eri sukupolvea edustavat haastateltavat ovat yhdessä
kulkeneet haastateltaville aikaisemmin ja myös nykyään merkityksellisiä reittejä pitkin aistit avoimina, keskustellen samalla aistimuistoista ja arkisen teknologian käytöstä osana elinympäristöä.
Aistielämäkerrallisten kävelyjen tulkintaani ovat innoittaneet uusmaterialistisen ja non-representationaalisen teorian lähestymistavat, jotka tavoittelevat subjektiivisen kokemuksen ja objektiivisen ympäristön välisen jaon ylittämistä. Monet inhimilliset ja ei-inhimilliset toimijat kansoittavat maisemaa ja vaikuttavat toistensa elämään ja olemiseen ennalta määräämättömillä tavoilla. Tätä tarkastelen Anna Tsingin käsittein rikkaruohottuneena maisemana. Myös maisemasta itsestään tulee toimija, joka esimerkiksi käynnistää muistamisen ja kertomisen tapahtumia: veden kosketus, ennalta määräämättömät kohtaamiset kadulla ja äänimaiseman muutos ovat osa maiseman aistivoimaista, koettua historiaa. Toimijuus, kokemus ja muistaminen rakentuvat tilannesidonnaisella tavalla maiseman, aistikävelyn elementtien ja niiden välisten suhteiden luomassa muuttuvassa kokonaisuudessa. Tämä dynaamisuus koskee myös mukana kulkevaa tekniikkaa aina sateenvarjoista ja kengistä älypuhelimiin ja kuulokkeisiin. Lopputuloksena on moniaistinen etnografia samanaikaisesti koetusta ja muistetusta maisemasta, joka saakin poiketa hallitsevasta kaupunkien kulttuuriperinnön, kuten kaupungin maamerkkien ja arkkitehtuurin, arvottamisesta.
Palavras-chave: comunidade transnacional, capoeira angola, etnografia multissítio, participação
A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY EXPERIENCED: THE CAPOEIRA ANGOLA OF EUROPEAN AND BAHIAN PRACTITIONERS
Abstract: Through ethnographic observation of capoeira angola practitioners in Salvador da Bahia, this article attempts to illuminates aspects of sociocultural and economic processes in the circum-atlantic web of meanings, implementing the methodology of multi-sited ethnography. The learning together of capoeira skills brings forth tensions connected to ethnicity and unequality between the Bahian and European capoeiristas, mediated by experiences of liberation in the ritual roda and its reinterpretations of colonial relations. Participation as a form of exchange required in the community is contextualized to material exchange and economy in the community, revealing in capoeira angola's movements alternate streams in relation to world economic process. I attempt to demostrate how capoeira angola forms a transnational community, where meanings are constructed in relation to the community's globalization: the capoeira experience is formed in the coming together of different perspectives in the same capoeira ring.
Keywords: transnational community, capoeira angola, multi-sited ethnoraphy, participation
Rahan kulttuuri. Helsinki: SKS kustannus 2009.
Katso myös: https://www.academia.edu/4244189/Rahan_kulttuuri
Teaching Documents by Inkeri Aula
Book Reviews by Inkeri Aula
Book review essay
In this article, we analyse changes in urban sensescapes brought to the fore by sensobiographic walks conducted with artists. The sensed and experienced urban environment is not just a collection of mechanical or static features. It is intertwined with individuals and groups living in the urban area in question, who perceive, interpret, recall, and co-produce their living environment in multisensory ways. We focus on artists of different ages and their experiences of changes in the urban sensescapes of two medium-sized European cities—Turku and Brighton. This article outlines and contributes to the latest cultural studies’ approaches to urban research based on our five-year research project, Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships in Europe, 1950–2020 (SENSOTRA). The starting point is that cities and the artists living in them influence each other by way of mutual intra-action. Our article also contributes to recent and emerging research on artists, providing new perspectives on the relationship between artists and their environments.
Keywords: urban studies, sensory ethnography, sensobiographic walks, intra-
action, research on artists
experiences of different generations can help in developing wellbeing in our more-than-human communities. Creative methods, such as multisensory ethnography and artistic work, are needed to account for the co-constitution of our communal realities with animate and inanimate nature. There is much to learn from approaching sustainable wellbeing and resilience as a sensorial and a bodily question. With insights from anthropology, this paper proposes multisensory ethnographic methods, that are informed by the holistic approach and insights to alterity from anthropology of the senses, for creative and transdisciplinary community
research.
"Extensive project addressing changes in people’s sensory environments is now completed (3.5.2023)"
"Sensotra is an extensive and international research project, which explored different generations’ experiences of their environment over a period of six years. The project examined, e.g., how digital devices and technological changes have shaped people’s lives in different parts of Europe.
Completed in the field of cultural research, the project is now completed, and its findings are published in a new book, Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies (edited by Helmi Järviluoma & Lesley Murray, Routledge). The book will be launched on the Joensuu Campus on Monday, 8 May 2023.
Gentrification and mass tourism are shaping sensory environments
The Sensotra project focused on changes in people’s experienced sensory environments in three medium-sized European cities – Turku, Brighton and Ljubljana – in 1950–2021. Professor Emerita of Cultural Research Helmi Järviluoma, the leader of the Sensotra project, received a 1.9-million-euro European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the years 2016–2021.
“Sensobiographic walks conducted together with interviewees of different ages and researchers proved to be an excellent way of gathering information, and we conducted around 180 of such walks. The ways in which residents of European cities ‘use’ their city have changed over the decades – and also as a result of technological development,” Järviluoma says.
Digital technologies are intertwined with residents’ experienced sensory environments in complex ways. One of the most important findings of the project was that even the smallest natural areas within cities provide young and more elderly residents alike with unexpectedly important experiences that promote their well-being – with and without digital devices.
“Young people often seek relief from vulnerable life situations or from the busy city life by choosing their routes so that they go through the city’s own natural areas, waterfronts, forests and parks,” Postdoctoral Researcher Inkeri Aula says.
In all of the cities studied, gentrification and construction for tourists reduced both undeveloped land that feeds the senses and environments that foster communal creativity. For example, some urban residents felt alienated by smells they regarded as too sterile.
In Ljubljana, for example, the rapid industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation taking place in the era of socialism created new spaces that strengthened “socialist senses”. Later, mass tourism not only shaped Ljubljana’s historical parts of the city, but also had a profound impact on the perception of public space.
The project’s interactive Sensotra Tour website showcasing various materials can be found at https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1364831714358067201. Aimed at the public, the website features sensobiographic walks in three cities, utilising both 360 images and 360 videos as well as audio recordings of sensory environments and interviews. To ensure the anonymity of the study participants, the interviews have been produced with the help of voice actors."
Sensobiographic walking method, developed by Järviluoma (2017) and the SENSOTRA research project, provides a template for accessing the unfolding of experience in a shared situation. This chapter probes theoretical intersections of the concepts of mediation and atmosphere with the sensobiographic method in attending to everyday experiences. The main question is how do recent transformations in mediations of lived sonic experience – related to the ubiquitous presence of media technologies – manifest themselves in daily life.
Elaborating on media theorists Kember & Zylinska (2012), this chapter proposes that ”media” do not signify pre-constituted devices that then mediate something, but constant emergence of both the uses of technological media and the human experience concurrent with them. In the sensobiographic ethnography proposed, two participants of different age groups are invited to undertake joint walks whose routes they choose by turns, providing rich data on the embodied, site-specific, and technology-related emergence and remembering of atmospheres and sounds. Human bodies–minds are also conceived of as constantly emergent mediators of experiences. Everyday sonic experiences co-emerge with multi-scale imaginaries and diverse materialities.
Keywords: sensobiographic, mediation, atmosphere, media
I present contemporary struggles of the Afro-Brazilian quilombist movement as an example of maintaining hope in the face of adversities. Inspired by anthropologist Hirokazu Miyazaki’s method of hope, in which hope is taken as a method that unifies different forms of knowledge, this chapter argues that quilombismo, as it is manifested today, could bring a forward-looking orientation to the quilombos, and to Afro-Brazilian heritage more generally. Quilombist utopias put into practice in contemporary communities express hope for the future, instead of being tied to past-bound images.
The notion of the “quilombo” has been reclaimed for decades by Afro-Brazilian movements and religious communities, black spiritual and cultural spaces, social projects, and capoeira schools. The concept bears strong utopian connotations for contemporary social and cultural movements, and implies a centennial history of struggle for the ethno-territorial rights of thousands of rural black communities in Brazil. While the officially recognized quilombo communities struggle under severe oppression and violent attacks, the symbolic reclaiming of Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage connected with quilombist utopias has become ever more important. The quilombola movement defends Afro-descendant communal rights, and a way of life formed in a relation with the local natural environment in Brazil, where struggles over land are heated (e.g. Carter 2015) . Quilombist initiatives and influences can be found among diverse cultural expressions from capoeira and samba to political demonstrations, pointing to the significance of embodied practices entailing a social memory of the Afro-Brazilian history . However, the translocal influences today differ from the afrocentric quilombismo of the 1980s, so here the current phenomena is denominated ‘contemporary quilombismo.’ In contrast to the territorial quilombola movement, ‘quilombismo’ refers to a more loosely defined movement whose actors identify with Afro-descendants’ struggles for political and cultural reasons.
Maiseman aistiminen on aina monin tavoin välittynyttä, esimerkiksi ruumiillisten tapojen, rutiinien, kulttuuristen aistijärjestysten ja teknologian välittämää. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelen kaupunkimaisemaa ihmiskehojen ja aistiympäristön vuorovaikutuksena, jossa vuosikymmenten takaisten aistimusten muistelu sekoittuu tilannekohtaiseen, jaettuun kokemukseen. Artikkelin aineistona ja metodina on kolme aistielämäkerrallista kävelyä Turussa. Tutkija ja kahta eri sukupolvea edustavat haastateltavat ovat yhdessä
kulkeneet haastateltaville aikaisemmin ja myös nykyään merkityksellisiä reittejä pitkin aistit avoimina, keskustellen samalla aistimuistoista ja arkisen teknologian käytöstä osana elinympäristöä.
Aistielämäkerrallisten kävelyjen tulkintaani ovat innoittaneet uusmaterialistisen ja non-representationaalisen teorian lähestymistavat, jotka tavoittelevat subjektiivisen kokemuksen ja objektiivisen ympäristön välisen jaon ylittämistä. Monet inhimilliset ja ei-inhimilliset toimijat kansoittavat maisemaa ja vaikuttavat toistensa elämään ja olemiseen ennalta määräämättömillä tavoilla. Tätä tarkastelen Anna Tsingin käsittein rikkaruohottuneena maisemana. Myös maisemasta itsestään tulee toimija, joka esimerkiksi käynnistää muistamisen ja kertomisen tapahtumia: veden kosketus, ennalta määräämättömät kohtaamiset kadulla ja äänimaiseman muutos ovat osa maiseman aistivoimaista, koettua historiaa. Toimijuus, kokemus ja muistaminen rakentuvat tilannesidonnaisella tavalla maiseman, aistikävelyn elementtien ja niiden välisten suhteiden luomassa muuttuvassa kokonaisuudessa. Tämä dynaamisuus koskee myös mukana kulkevaa tekniikkaa aina sateenvarjoista ja kengistä älypuhelimiin ja kuulokkeisiin. Lopputuloksena on moniaistinen etnografia samanaikaisesti koetusta ja muistetusta maisemasta, joka saakin poiketa hallitsevasta kaupunkien kulttuuriperinnön, kuten kaupungin maamerkkien ja arkkitehtuurin, arvottamisesta.
Palavras-chave: comunidade transnacional, capoeira angola, etnografia multissítio, participação
A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY EXPERIENCED: THE CAPOEIRA ANGOLA OF EUROPEAN AND BAHIAN PRACTITIONERS
Abstract: Through ethnographic observation of capoeira angola practitioners in Salvador da Bahia, this article attempts to illuminates aspects of sociocultural and economic processes in the circum-atlantic web of meanings, implementing the methodology of multi-sited ethnography. The learning together of capoeira skills brings forth tensions connected to ethnicity and unequality between the Bahian and European capoeiristas, mediated by experiences of liberation in the ritual roda and its reinterpretations of colonial relations. Participation as a form of exchange required in the community is contextualized to material exchange and economy in the community, revealing in capoeira angola's movements alternate streams in relation to world economic process. I attempt to demostrate how capoeira angola forms a transnational community, where meanings are constructed in relation to the community's globalization: the capoeira experience is formed in the coming together of different perspectives in the same capoeira ring.
Keywords: transnational community, capoeira angola, multi-sited ethnoraphy, participation
Rahan kulttuuri. Helsinki: SKS kustannus 2009.
Katso myös: https://www.academia.edu/4244189/Rahan_kulttuuri
Book review essay
Call of Angola. Afro-Brazilian worlding in capoeira.
Joensuu: Itä-Suomen yliopisto, 2020
Publications of the University of Eastern Finland
Dissertations in Education, Humanities, and Theology; 155
ISBN: 978-952-61-3404-8 (print)
ISSNL: 1798-5625
ISSN: 1798-5625
ISBN: 978-952-61-3405-5 (PDF)
ISSN: 1798-5633 (PDF)
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the relationship of the practise of capoeira to Afro-Brazilian history, religiosity, and perceptions of the world. It is situated in the fields of cultural anthropology and cultural studies. Capoeira is a martial sport and art form with acrobatic and close-to-ground movements enacted in a circle, roda, where percussion music and vocals in Portuguese are led by the bow-formed instrument, berimbau, which gives rhythm to the game and bodily dialogue of two players. This communal form of expression was developed in Brazil but has roots in Western Africa and is globally known today. The present study examines what constitutes the Afro-Brazilian world at the level of experience in capoeira, and how that is transmitted and mediated. The sub-questions that support and underpin the main question are: how is the translocal capoeira constituted as part of originally Afro-Brazilian culture? Does capoeira today form a transnational community, and does it connect practitioners to the history of the genre also in new environments? What is the relationship of translocal capoeira to Afro-Brazilian history, religiosity, and perceptions of the world?
The methodology engaged with was anthropological fieldwork, consisting of participant observation, photography, and interviews. Multi-sited ethnography has been produced by these methods mainly at the roots of capoeira in Salvador da Bahia, north-eastern Brazil. Comparative data was produced on contemporary capoeira in the southern region of Brazil (Guarujá, Santos, Belo Horizonte) and in Finland. The methodology of multi-sited ethnography draws attention to the connections between capoeira’s both concrete and imaginary locations. The analysis focuses on the experiences of the practitioners and teachers of traditional Capoeira Angola in Brazil.
The theoretical approach of this study is grounded in a widely understood interpretive framework and in relational ontology. The analysis also draws from the anthropology of the senses, the interpretation of ritual experience, and observations of the nonrepresentational ethnography of the processual nature of communal expressions. The research examines the historical and social construction of Afro-Brazilianity in relation to the translocal nature of capoeira and the experiences of practitioners of Capoeira Angola. This framework outlines the Afro-Brazilian world of capoeira, which participants describe as ritual experience, liberation, a critique of the prevailing social system, spiritual exercise, and expressive art in which ancestors are present.
The idea of a specific Afro-Brazilian world, which manifests itself in different ways in the experiences of the participants, emerges from the research material. By forming the concept of Afro-Brazilian worlding this research demonstrates that the ‘world’ of capoeira is a multifaceted process taking place in situational interaction. This worlding connects capoeira practitioners with Brazilian instructors (mestres) and groups, as well as with places and stories from a mythical past. Worlding comprises both translocal, Afro-Brazilian capoeira culture, and the sensory and ritual experience of the practitioners. The study also analyses the political-historical construction of modern Capoeira Angola as a defender of the Afro-Brazilian world. A central contribution of this dissertation to research on capoeira is that traditional Capoeira Angola does not have an exclusive right to the African-Brazilian heritage in capoeira. In Salvador in particular, capoeira tourism is associated with tensions arising from ethnic and economic inequality, which are both highlighted and alleviated by the shared experiences of white foreigners and black Bahian capoeira practitioners in the roda. A key finding of the dissertation is that capoeira’s worlding in unique situations and novel environments connects enthusiasts of the art to an African-Brazilian, translocally formed history.
Capoeira’s multimodal and specific way of movement, sound, and interaction, along with its oral tradition, convey capoeira’s transgenerational and translocal knowledge also on a pre-conceptual level. This worlding takes place in different environments of the globalised art at different levels. By describing how capoeira’s transnationality is constructed in relation to its Afro-Brazilian history and ontology, the study contributes to a broader theoretical discussion of the cross-border formation of significant communities. The dissertation argues that practitioners of the art become acquainted with the Afro-Brazilian critique of colonialism and a differently understood history through personal bodily experience. The fortification of structural racism by the new radical right in power in Brazil makes the research topic particularly timely.
Following the academic structure of article-based dissertations, this thesis is divided into a research summary and four separate, original research articles. The summary presents the theoretical and methodological framework of the study. It brings together the common findings of the multi-sited ethnographic research presented in the individual articles and discusses the implications that emerge from them as a whole.
Keywords: capoeira, worlding, Afro-Brazilian, translocal, relational ontology