Ethnologia Europaea

Journal of European Ethnology

ISSN: 0425-4597 (print) • ISSN: 1604-3030 (online) • 2 issues per year

Volume 45 Issue 2

CULTURAL EXPRESSION AND SUPPRESSION OF THE UNDESIRABLE AND UNBEARABLE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Regina F. Bendix

This article focuses on drivers involved in various modes of personal transport in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and describes their interactions and conflicts, often resulting in verbal or nonverbal expressions of anger. Using various approaches, ranging from semi-structured interviews to “participant driving,” it describes in great detail a small part of traffic infrastructure, that is, a crossroads in the city centre, which is a daily meeting point for thousands of people and their vehicles. Through an analysis of driving habits and reflections on daily language and media, the article sheds light on some key questions, which have, so far, only briefly been discussed by anthropologists: How do people habituate their driving? How do they comprehend vehicles as an indispensable part of their identity? And how do they express feelings and emotions on the road?

THE TOPOGRAPHIES OF AFFECT

Grete Swensen

Based on a critical reading of three prison protocols from 1860 to 1930, this article examines the affective quality of prisons as social spaces. Guided by concepts such as affect and embodiment, it looks closer at the ways anger, rage, and frustration were bodily expressed. In a place where silence ruled, anger and frustration were channelled through the use of material devices and bodily practices (involving breaking material devices into pieces, making noise, catching glimpses of light, communication with other prisoners via piping systems, etc.), all at the cost of longer imprisonment and reduction in meagre food rations. The soundscape experienced by insiders stands in contrast to outsiders’ views of prisons as large secluded fenced-in buildings enveloped in silence.

A STORY TO TRANSFER TRAUMA

Sam Senji (Pseudonym)

HALF-CUP RAGE

Kimberly J. Lau

EMOTIONAL ECOLOGIES AND MUSICAL FIRST AID AT THE EDGE OF REASON

Birgit Abels

HATE AS A POLITICAL OUTCAST

Birgitte Schepelern Johansen

Increasingly, certain types of crime, speech and prejudice are being targeted by European policy makers under the label of “hate.” Building on participant observations at anti-hate crime conferences in Copenhagen and Vilnius, and policy documents and campaign material from a range of national an international actors, this article probes the ways in which hate is problematized within current anti-hate crime activities in Europe. Hate seems here to work in two different ways: one dominant, emphasizing hate as prejudice, the other more implicit and ambiguous, emphasizing hate as an attitude of radical dislike. In both cases, hate is seen to jeopardize personal freedom, equality, tolerance, and democracy. This way of mobilizing potentially marginalizes the perpetratorsand makes it difficult to discuss the possible ways in which liberal democracy itself is entangled in labeling, producing and sustaining hatred.

RAGE

Glenn Bowman

#MUSLIMRAGE

Alexandra Schwell

In September 2012, Newsweek magazine used the headline “Muslim Rage” accompanied by an image of angry bearded men as its front cover page. After harsh critique, it invited its readers to discuss the front cover via Twitter under the hashtag #MuslimRage. Unexpectedly for Newsweek, this request triggered an ironic subversion of the notion of “Muslim rage”: social media became tools in a subversive discourse where users did not only play with the notion itself, but ridiculed Western fears of “raging” Muslims. Drawing upon the reactions on Twitter and other social media the article scrutinizes how humor and irony as political and networked social practices provide a means for marginalized groups to establish a counter-discourse.

FROM THE SURGEON’S PRACTICE

Rudolf Flückiger