Monday – 15:30-17:00
Session 4 – Aud. Westermarck C101 – Chair: Måns Broo
Teija Rantala – University of Turku & Nella van den Brandt – University of Coventry, UK
Embodiment and sensory unlearning of women disengaging from religious belonging
Women are often expected to embody the central values and practices of the religious community they belong to. Leaving their religious communities, women find a part of the ‘religious tapestry’ remaining with them long after their disengagement. Memories of past belonging are sensory and fleeting, affective moments which are difficult to put in words. In our presentation, we employ our various research projects in Finland and the UK to explore women’s attempts to forget and unlearn parts of their former religious culture. We will discuss embodied issues young formerly Laestadian women have to negotiate, such as bodily limits, conduct and shame, as well as Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses women’s experiences of liminality in transitioning out of their faith and adapting themselves to a new life outside their communities. The questions we ask are the following: what is it like for women to leave their religious communities? What are the embodied implications of women’s disengagement? How does their attempt to ‘unlearn’ shape their disengagement processes? Exploring women’s cognitive and embodied experiences helps us understand why women leave their traditions, and more broadly, some of the reasons for the decline in membership Christian communities face today.
Päivi Salmesvuori – Åbo Akademi University
Trancepreacher Helena Konttinen (d. 1916) and her yearly performance of penance
In the beginning of 20th century a poor and uneducated woman from the Eastern Finland became a nationally known prophet and preacher. People came to listen to her preaching to get healed, to get to know God’s secrets, or, for example, to be entertained. Konttinen’s career lasted 11 years. Every year in August she had a gathering that grew from one day long to last for three days. During that gathering Konttinen viewed critically the past year and how she had succeeded. If she found she had failed in something she had to perform for the audience as a punishment and penance. I will examine how Konttinen’s behaviour developed during the years. I will research her interaction both with her heavenly and earthly audience from the point of view of performance studies. I suggest, based on the sources, that Konttinen saw the performances useful for the point of view of the spectators, she would not have needed them for herself. The yearly gathering became a ritual, in which she used her body and preaching in order to engage her audience emotionally.
Emine Neval – University of Helsinki
Where are the women? The Gulen movement in Finland
The Islam-inspired Gulen movement was established in 1966 in Turkey and spread to more than 150 countries by utilizing education and dialogue. After the 2016 coup attempt, the movement was declared the responsible organization and some members became refugees. Current studies on female members are not enough to explain the recent changes, especially in Finland where the movement has not been discovered. I demonstrate the women’s roles, activities, and aspirations; also, how being a member of a religious-based community shapes their daily lives in Finland. This ethnographic research consists of in-depth semi-structured interviews with the members and the field notes collected from several meetings. In the fieldwork, I focused on spiritual gatherings which also operate like a peer support group. Overall, the data underlines not only migration but also the desire for piety affects the members. Moreover, there is a triple change involving its members, the movement, and Gulen’s thoughts.
Session 5 – Aud. Goethe L104 – Chair: Sofia Sjö
Ada Elgabsi – Åbo Akademi University
Religious (il)literacy? An investigation of the relationship between religion and culture in the school culture in Swedish-speaking lower secondary schools in Finland
The status of religion in the comprehensive school education in Finland is a highly debated issue. In my PhD project I analyze grey areas between religion and culture in the school culture in Swedish-speaking lower secondary schools in Finland. My primary sources are interviews with teachers and headmasters, the curriculum, and the law. I use a qualitative research interview method for the interviews, and I conduct a thematic analysis of the material. The primary sources will be investigated through the concepts of religious literacy and cultural heritage. My main research question is: in what circumstances do grey areas between religion and culture arise in the school culture? This question will be discussed on three different levels: (1) On a descriptive level to understand which grey areas exist based on the interviews, the law, and the curriculum. (2) On an experienced-based and emotional level to understand the thoughts, feelings, and further experiences of the interviewees. (3) On an ethical level to understand how the interviewees have thought of and handled these grey areas on their own or together with others, for example while considering questions of responsibility. I expect to offer a better understanding of grey areas between religion and culture in the school culture, as well as the interviewees own experiences of them.
Lise Eriksson – Uppsala University/Åbo Akademi University (presenting author), Victor Dudas – Uppsala University, Aje Carlbom – Malmö University, Birgitta Essén – Uppsala Univeristy
Religious Literacy in Healthcare: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Perceived Religious Discrimination
This paper explores what characterises patients’ and their relatives’ expectations in healthcare encounters perceived as religiously discriminatory. It analyses perceived religious discrimination in Swedish healthcare through the interpretative phenomenological analysis of complaints submitted to the Equality Ombudsman in Sweden from 2012 to 2021. Religious literacy is increasingly important in diverse societies because it includes learning about of how religious beliefs and practices shape political, cultural and social expressions. The complaints addressed unfulfilled expectations related to cultural and religious literacy, equal treatment in relation to religious symbols or medical records, affirmative action in medical treatment while accounting for beliefs, and a secular environment that forbids religious symbols in healthcare encounters. Several complaints concerned healthcare providers’ reactions to patients wearing hijabs or other ethnic or religious attributes. The study indicates that healthcare providers face difficulties in conforming to the partially contradictory ideals of equal treatment and cultural sensitivity.
Nina Maskulin – University of Helsinki
An apocalyptic film as a site for learning equality
Learning religion in primary socialization is studied especially when the process involves transmission in the family. However, in the societies such as Finland, the adherence to the confessional rituals of the minor members of mainstream Christian Churches have declined since 2010´s. Moreover, the compulsory religious education of Christianity persists and the leisure time in popular media increases. Popular culture is one of the contemporary spaces for learning values and solutions in the era of climate change. My paper discusses cultural learning as complex social practice among young people. I interviewed secondary upper school and Evangelical Lutheran confirmation school pupils in the specific context of film screening of an end-of-the-world film 2012 (Emmerich 2009) combining the aspects of religious myth, climate change crisis and global inequality in the narrative. The analysis draws on the concept of attitude in the interpretation of the film and approaches cultural learning in the primary frames of beliefs and values.
Session 6 – Aud. Armfelt A102 – Chair: Linda Annunen
Jaana Kouri – Åbo Akademi University
Learning in contemporary shamanism
Shamanism is often seen as a technique to journey to the spirit world, where shamans meet their spirit teachers and seek healing, guidance, and knowledge for those in need. It is also much more, a spiritual practice, a way to be connected to one’s environment, and a life path. The shaman’s path could be seen as an outcome of an ongoing and reciprocal relationship with the spirits.
In this presentation I examine the nature of learning in contemporary shamanism. I present that one’s spiritual path could be seen as practiced and experience-based knowledge. It is more like learning/knowing ‘with’ and ‘how’ than ‘that’. I examine how learning is about realization, choices, and co-working with spirits and how this relationship is practiced in everyday life for the wellbeing of all living creatures.
Katri Ratia – Fribourg University
(Re-)Appropriated Practices for Radical Democracy in European Rainbow Gatherings
Rainbow Gatherings create temporary countercultural societies that offer radical alternatives to the cultural institutions of the mainstream world, and an inclusive social reality. The Gathering culture shifts the participants from a world conditioned by things like nation-states with centralized power, market logic and institutionalized religious forms into alternate one which operates with sharing economy, non-hierarchical egalitarianism, and open and participatory religious and political traditions. The alternative organizational practices are anchored by extensive ritualization, and the main political model, known as the Talking Circle, is based on Native American ritual traditions.
This contribution presents the cultural background and functioning of the Talking Circle, and focuses on the significance of both ritualization and the event-community in learning and employing the model. It also discusses the apparent controversy between undeniable cultural appropriation and the actual outcomes of these rituals, re-interpreted and re-purposed to serve as a practical model for egalitarian, de-centralized and participatory collective communication and decision-making, in a radically democratic manner.
Linda Woodhead – King’s College London
What They Don’t Teach You in School: Spirituality, Paganism and Alternative Learning
Taking post-1970s England as a case study, this paper argues that post-Christian ‘alternative’ forms of religiosity have offered spaces for learning about things not taught by schools or churches. For ‘spirituality’ this includes feminism, meditation, holistic healing, self-assertion and self-care. For paganism it includes environmentalism, natural and planetary cycles, folklore, magical practices, and edgy science. Some of these alternative knowledges are eventually assimilated into mainstream education, whereas others become more deeply counter-cultural and subversive (for example, feeding into conspiracy theories). Perspectives from science studies and the sociology of knowledge are employed to make sense of this late-modern epistemic landscape.