Ethnologia Europaea

This paper explores one particular approach to satire in stand-up comedy, a popular cultural genre of oral performance, which is at the intersection of emotion and ethics. It is suggested that morally charged emotional language is particularly situated in stand-up due to the interactionally engaging features of this genre. The argument consists in framing satire as a practice and performance of moral accountability. The analysis explores how the invocation and potential dramatization of moral accountability and (intentional) agency dialectically enhance the emotional and moral efficacy of satire, and why certain habitual practices constitute fruitful targets for satire. Several cases are presented to examine how satire gives rise to dialectic of moral accountability and emotion through the use of specific stylistic and textual devices.

During the H1N1 influenza pandemic 2009–2010 in Sweden, a mass-vaccination intervention was enacted as a precautionary measure. Half a year later, medical authorities reported an increased incidence of the life-long neurological disease narcolepsy, later firmly established as a side effect of the pandemic vaccine. Using interview material together with archived protocols, this article presents an analysis of two communities, the National Pandemic Group and the Narcolepsy Association. The aim is to discuss their respective ways of arguing for solidarity, herd immunity, social justice and claim for culpability of the state. Both communities face dilemmas, doubts and double-bind situations, but also perform politics and ethics for the future in mobilizing notions ofsolidarity and responsibility in their different narratives.

The Danish flexicurity model is widely acknowledged and even advocated by the European Commission as a measure to achieve economic progress without compromising basic social conditions. It is therefore paradoxical that over the past decades the security component of the flexicurity model has faced steady retrenchments, jeopardizing its overall balance. The article applies a historical approach to understanding the transformation that has given way to a weakened position of workers in society, and asserts that the changes of the flexicurity model have been conditioned by the disappearance of the view of the “working class” as a potential threat to societal peace – a change closely connected to the waning of an alternative to capitalism and the related opportunityfor a spread of neoliberal political economy.

The Potemkin village is a metaphor for the cases of conscious, yet false construction or beautification for the sake of presenting something as better than it is, usually in front of high officials. Enumerating multiple cases and possible applications of the term (and its synonyms), I base my research on Belarus, a former Soviet and still socialist independent state governed by the same president since 1994. Going there for fieldwork at least twice a year, I noticed the extreme popularity of stories about Potemkin villages erected for the visits of the president, high officials, or foreigners. Analyzing vernacular attitudes toward Potemkinism, I argue for the multidimensionalunderstanding of it, suggesting that in a socialist state, Potemkinist order becomes a viable alternative to democracy and a significant means for the country’s self-representation.

The dish burek was brought to Slovenia by people from the other republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in the 1960s. It is now the handiest and most frequently used signifier in Slovenian popular culture, media, vernacular language etc. for immigrants from the former republics of the SFRY, the Balkans, the SFRY itself and the phenomena associated with it. This paper addresses why and how this semantic hyperinflation occurred to precisely this fast food. The burek is a product of Slovenian nationalism par excellence and cannot be understood without taking into consideration the material conditions of the object. The paper shows that the burek plays a significant role in the formation and reproduction of identities.