Body, Personhood and Privacy: Perspectives on the Cultural Other and Human Experience Approaches to Culture Theory Volume 7 Aims & scope The Approaches to Culture Theory book series focuses on various aspects of the analysing, modelling, and theoretical understanding of culture. Culture theory as a set of complementary theories is seen to include and combine the approaches of different branches of science, among them the semiotics of culture, archaeology, environmental history, ethnology, cultural ecology, cultural and social anthropol- ogy, human geography, sociology and the psychology of culture, folklore, media and communication studies. Series editors Kalevi Kull (Tartu, Estonia) Valter Lang (Tartu, Estonia) Monika Tasa (Tartu, Estonia) Editorial board Eileen Barker (London, United Kingdom) Regina Bendix (Göttingen, Germany) Anu-Mai Kõll (Södertörn, Sweden) Tom Moring (Helsinki, Finland) Roland Posner (Berlin, Germany) Marek Tamm (Tallinn, Estonia) Peeter Torop (Tartu, Estonia) Body, Personhood and Privacy: Perspectives on the Cultural Other and Human Experience Edited by Anu Kannike, Monika Tasa & Ergo-Hart Västrik This volume has been financed by the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT, European Regional Development Fund), and supported by the Research Centre of Culture and Communication (University of Tartu) and by the institu- tional research funding IUT2-43 (Estonian Research Council). Managing editors: Monika Tasa, Anu Kannike Language editor: Daniel Edward Allen Technical editors: Kaija Rumm, Tuuli Kaalep, Helen Kästik, Ergo-Hart Västrik Design and layout: Roosmarii Kurvits Cover layout: Kalle Paalits Copyright: University of Tartu, authors, 2017 ISSN 2228-060X (print) ISBN 978-9949-77-459-3 (print) ISSN 2228-4117 (online) ISBN 978-9949-77-460-9 (online) University of Tartu Press, www.tyk.ee/act Contents List of photographs 8 List of figures 9 Notes on contributors and editors 10 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction: multiple disciplinarities, human experience and the cultural Other 18 Anu Kannike, Ergo-Hart Västrik I. Field Experiencing and interpreting truth 32 Essay by Aet Annist Mimetic knowledge in the ethnographic field 35 Art Leete “If you’re really interested in scientific research, you should study the Bible!” Ethnographical fieldwork among evangelical Christians 53 Piret Koosa II. Body Bodily experiences and biopolitics 74 Essay by Katrin Alekand Owning the body: patents and transformations of the body in Cambodia 77 Darcie DeAngelo The biopolitical turn in post-ideological times: a trajectory of Russia’s transformation 99 Andrey Makarychev, Alexandra Yatsyk III. Public–private Dynamics between public and private 118 Essay by Halliki Harro-Loit Changing media and privacy conventions 121 Halliki Harro-Loit The construction of the ‘other’ through private stories: Japan in the travelogues of Estonian seamen, as published in Estonian newspapers during the second half of the 19th century 145 Anu Masso, Ene Selart Small stories, trivial events – and strong emotions. Local event narratives in hand-written newspapers as negotiation of individual and collective experiences 163 Kirsti Salmi-Niklander Meaning-making and ethnicity in different contexts: Russians in Estonia, Russia and Kazakhstan 179 Triin Vihalemm, Cynthia S. Kaplan IV. Space Setting up space 214 Essay by Franz Krause Creating spaces of food experience: pop-up restaurants in Estonia 217 Ester Bardone, Anu Kannike Shoshone as a text: a structural-semiotic analysis of reading the river as a whitewater raft guide 245 Jamie Kruis V. Death Death as the transformation of personhood 268 Essay by Kristiina Johanson & Pikne Kama Individual and collective burial places: an analysis of the Viimsi tarand graves of northern Estonia 271 Maarja Olli, Anu Kivirüüt Tricking Death? The Role of the awareness of death in self-transformation of personhood according to Georges Bataille 293 Normunds Titans Interviews Autoethnography and applied cultural analysis 314 Interview with Billy Ehn Bodylore and embodied knowledge 324 Interview with Katharine Young Embodied seeing-with-the-world 328 Interview with John Wylie Personhood in archaeology 332 Interview with Chris Fowler Index of names 337 8 Halliki Harro-Loit List of photographs Maharajadhiraj Maharaja Mahimahendra Maharao Raja Shri Sir Umed Singh II Sahib Bahadur. Street art by Mina Ja Lydia in the so-called Freedom Gallery, Tartu Freedom Bridge (Vabadussild). Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru, 2013 front cover Põhja Konn. Street art by Edward von Lõngus in the so-called Freedom Gallery, Tartu Freedom Bridge (Vabadussild). Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 16–17 Ur Mother Parade. Street art by Maari Soekov ja Satinka on garages next to Puiestee street 77, Tartu. Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 30–31 A Girl With Four Legs. Street art by Mina Ja Lydia on the wall of Kaseke, a former restaurant, Tähe street 19, Tartu. Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 72–73 Live Fast, Die Young. Street art by Mina Ja Lydia at Kompanii street 12, Tartu. Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 116–117 A Man Catching Money. Street art by 69 in the so-called Freedom Gallery, Tartu Freedom Bridge (Vabadussild). Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 212–213 The Fisherman’s Inn at the Port of Kärdla. Kärdla Cafe Day. Photo: Ester Bardone, 2 August 2013 224 Restaurant Day in Uus Maailm district. Kirsi and Marko from Savolax restaurant. Photo: Anu Kannike, 19 May 2012 227 Swedish Goose Supper invitation and menu. Courtesy of Tallinn Supper Club, 2013 231 Ants Uustalu, chef de cuisine at the Ö öbiku gastronomy farm. Photo: Lauri Laan, 2014 235 Kalevipoeg 3.0. Street art by Edward von Lõngus in the so-called Freedom Gallery, Tartu Freedom Bridge (Vabadussild). Photo: Liina Luhats, March 2016 266–267 Chinese torture ling chi (‘death by a thousand cuts’) performed as punishment for the gravest crimes. Photo from Bataille 1989 [1961], 204 305 LAN Party. Street art by Edward von Lõngus on the wall of Tartu Jewish cemetery at the corner of Roosi and Jänese streets. Photo: Kaija Rumm, April 2016 312–313 9 Introduction List of figures Location map of Cambodia with Battambang Province highlighted. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository 78 The symbiotic nature of the conventions of mediated privacy 139 Structural characterisation of the Russian populations in Estonia, Kazakhstan and Tatarstan 183 Religious affiliation of the Russian populations in Estonia, Kazakhstan and Tatarstan 183 Description of interview participants 211 Low water orientation on the Soshone river 257 High water orientation on the Soshone river 257 Distribution of bone clusters, cremated and inhumed bones in the Viimsi I grave 278 Distribution of the artefact groups in the Viimsi I grave 280 Distribution of bone clusters and artefacts, men with crossbow fibulae and cremated juveniles in the Viimsi I grave 281 Distribution of bones and artefacts in the Viimsi II grave 283 10 List of 8gures Notes on contributors and editors Katrin Alekand (katrin.alekand@ut.ee) is a PhD student in ethnology at the Insti- tute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on techniques relating to the body, traditional arts of altered bodies, and the contemporary uses of these arts with an emphasis on the use of henna as a tra- ditional technique and as a developing form of body art. She is also a practicing henna artist. Aet Annist (aet.annist@ut.ee) is a senior researcher at the Department of Ethnol- ogy, Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu. Her research and publications currently focus on social fragmentation and dispossession both in rural and transnational settings, as well as on the effects of heritage institu - tions in stratification. Ester Bardone (ester.bardone@ut.ee) is a lecturer in ethnology at the Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu. Her research interests and pub- lications focus on rural entrepreneurship and tourism in Estonia in the context of the experience economy, performing rurality and heritage; and historical as well as contemporary developments in Estonian food culture. Darcie DeAngelo (darcie.deangelo@gmail.com) is a doctoral student in visual and medical anthropology at McGill University, Canada. She obtained her Master’s degree in visual cultural studies at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Her eth- nographic film Touching Ground (https://vimeo.com/latitudereadjustment) has been shown at several festivals and conferences. She conducts research mainly in Cambodia. Billy Ehn (billy.ehn@umu.se) is professor of ethnology at the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. His research interests include ethnographic and cultural studies, based on fieldwork in various environ- ments in the former Yugoslavia and Poland, and at a pharmaceutical plant and various preschools in and around Stockholm. Chris Fowler (chris.fowler@ncl.ac.uk) is a senior lecturer in later prehistoric archaeology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom. His research interests include Neolithic and early Bronze Age Britain; personhood, the body and 11 Notes on authors and editors identity in archaeology and anthropology; mortuary practice in prehistoric Europe; and cosmology in prehistoric Europe. Halliki Harro-Loit (halliki.harro@ut.ee) is professor of journalism at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. Her research interests include journalism culture and diachronic changes in mediated culture. She was head of the cultural communication research group at the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory. Kristiina Johanson (kristiina.johanson@ut.ee) is a researcher in archaeology at the Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on the secondary uses of Stone Age artefacts in later periods, concentrat- ing mostly on their use as magical thunderbolts. Pikne Kama (pikne.kama@gmail.com) is a doctoral student in archaeology at the Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu. He combines archaeo- logical and folkloristic sources to study the information connected with human remains in wetlands. Anu Kannike (anukannike@yahoo.com) is a researcher in ethnology at the Esto- nian National Museum. Her research focuses on the home from historical and contemporary perspectives, particularly home decoration and food culture. Cynthia S. Kaplan (Kaplan@polsci.ucsb.edu) is professor of political science, University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-convener of the Research Focus Group on Identity at UCSB. Her research interests include ethnic identity, social movements, political participation and youth political culture. Anu Kivirüüt (anu.kiviryyt@gmail.com) is a doctoral student in archaeology at the Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu, and has com- pleted an MSc in human osteology and funerary archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on human osteology, cremation burials and tarand graves. Piret Koosa (piret.koosa@gmail.com) is a researcher at the Estonian National Museum and a doctoral student in ethnology at the Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu. Her current research focuses on religious change in the post-Soviet Russian North. 12 Notes on authors and editors Franz Krause (f.krause@uni-koeln.de) is currently a senior researcher at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology and the Global South Studies Center (GSSC), University of Cologne. He works on the relationships between humans and their environments, in particular water. Krause has conducted research in Mali, the Philippines, Finnish Lapland and Estonia. Jamie Kruis (jakruis@gmail.com) holds a Master of Arts degree in semiotics from the University of Tartu and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Pur- due University in the US. She is interested in the field of ecosemiotics, relations between nature and culture, and focuses her research on environmental learning. Art Leete (art.leete@ut.ee) is professor of ethnology at the Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu. His research interests relate to subsistence technologies and social and religious changes, as well as history of descriptions of northern Finno-Ugric indigenous peoples in Russia (the Khanty, Mansi, Tundra and Forest Nenets, and Komi). He was the head of the ethnology research group at the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory. Andrey Makarychev (asmakarychev@gmail.com) is a guest professor at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science, University of Tartu, and a senior associate at CIDOB, Barcelona. In 2017 he is also a visiting professor at SciencePo, University of Bordeaux. His areas of research include political theory, discourse analysis and different conceptualisations of power and politics. Anu Masso (anu.masso@ut.ee) is a senior researcher at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on personal social space, vari- ous forms of spatial mobility and research methods in social sciences. Maarja Olli (maarja.olli@ut.ee) is a doctoral student in archaeology at the Insti- tute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on material culture, tarand graves, decoration and ornaments of the Roman Iron Age in Estonia. Kirsti Salmi-Niklander (kirsti.salmi-niklander@helsinki.fi) is an university lectur- er in folklore studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on inter- action between oral and literary communication, narrative analysis, oral history and book culture from below. 13 Notes on authors and editors Ene Selart (ene.selart@ut.ee) is a junior researcher at the Institute of Social Stud- ies, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on media history, Estonian–Japa- nese relations and the construction of identities. Monika Tasa (monika.tasa@ut.ee), MA, is a series and managing editor of the book series Approaches to Culture Theory, and a senior specialist for projects in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Tartu. Her current research focuses on interdisciplinary cooperation in the humanities from an anthropo- logical perspective. Normunds Titans (normunds.titans@lu.lv) has a PhD degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He is a part-time professor at the Faculty of Theo- logy, University of Latvia, where he teaches philosophy of religion, philosophy, modern theology and ethics. Ergo-Hart Västrik (ergo-hart.vastrik@ut.ee) is an associate professor in Estonian and comparative folklore at the Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, Univer- sity of Tartu, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics. His research interests concern folklore and mythology of Finnic peoples concen- trating on questions of representation and research history. Triin Vihalemm (triin.vihalemm@ut.ee) is professor of communication research at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. Her research interests are collective identities and various forms of identity communication, the theory of social practices, personal and social time acceleration, minority transition culture and the media. John Wylie (J.W.Wylie@exeter.ac.uk) is professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. His main research area is cultural geog- raphies of landscape, embodiment and performance. His other current research interests include spatial theory and philosophy, cultures of travel and exploration, and spectral geographies. Alexandra Yatsyk (ayatsyk@gmail.com) is a Alexander Herzen junior visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Science in Vienna, Austria, and a visiting researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Sweden. She is also director of the Centre for Cultural Studies of Post-Socialism at the Kazan Federal University, Russia. Her research fields encompass studies of cultural 14 Notes on authors and editors production, politics of representation, and the role of mega-events in post-Soviet nation building. Katharine Young (kgallowayyoung@yahoo.com) is an independent scholar, writer, and visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University, USA, in the fields of folklore, anthropology, and rhetoric. She is currently studying the relationship between gestures and narrative, body image, space, interiority, consciousness, volition, thought, emotion, memory, and time in somatic psychology. 15 Notes on authors and editors Acknowledgements Most of the chapters of this volume have evolved from inspiring presentations and discussions at the fifth annual conference of the Centre of Excellence in Cul- tural Theory (CECT). The five-panel conference, entitled Embodiment, Expres- sions, Exits: Transforming Experience and Cultural Identity, took place at the University of Tartu, Estonia, from the 30th of October to the 1st of November 2013. The stimulating atmosphere of the conference, which embraced a wide spec- trum of topics, was initiated in plenary lectures by professor Billy Ehn (Umeå University), Dr Chris Fowler (Newcastle University), professor John Wylie (Uni- versity of Exeter) and Dr Katharine Young (San Francisco State University), to all of whom we express our deep gratitude. The process of organising this conference involved some procedural experiments and therefore we thank panel organisers Aili Aarelaid-Tart, Katrin Alekand, Madis Arukask, Ester Bardone, Halliki Harro- Loit, Kristiina Johanson, Kirsti Jõesalu, Maarja Kaaristo, Pikne Kama, Roland Karo, Kadri Kasemets, Franz Krause, Anne Kull, Riin Magnus, Merili Metsvahi, Tarmo Pikner, Anu Printsmann, Katre Pärn, Maaris Raudsepp, Tiit Remm, Pihla Maria Siim, Indrek Tart and Kadri Ugur for their dedication and patience. We would like to thank all the authors who developed their conference pres - entations into chapters and submitted their contributions for consideration, and the reviewers for their valuable comments. We are most grateful to photographers Liina Luhats, Ruudu Rahumaru and Kaija Rumm, as well as the street artists of Tartu whose works are used as illustrations in this publication. Our final thanks go to the team responsible for producing the series of which this book is part. Introduction 18 Anu Kannike, Ergo-Hart Västrik Introduction: multiple disciplinarities, human experience and the cultural Other Anu Kannike, Ergo-Hart Västrik The quest for interdisciplinarity Cooperation beyond the borders of disciplines can be considered one of the preconditions for successful research and development within modern academia. Models of interdisciplinary cooperation have been more productive in those domains where research problems have required the participation of special- ists from various disciplines. In the humanities and social sciences the opening up and crossing of disciplinary borders has taken place in connection with the upsurge of new cultural domains of an interdisciplinary nature as well as of novel emphases on aspects in culture and society that had previously been unnoticed. Looking back on recent developments in the humanities one can see that new ideas in culture theory, too, have often been born in the contact area between disciplines, allowing practitioners to deal with phenomena that were previously outside any single traditional discipline. Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have been buzzwords since early 1970s, when Erich Jantsch coined these terms for a broader audience (Hoff- mann et al 2013, 1857). These keywords figure frequently in various documents relating to science policy and appear often in higher education development plans; in addition to which many universities worldwide host interdiscipli- nary research centres designed to stimulate cooperation beyond the borders of research domains. Striving for multiple disciplinarities is a topical issue in many spheres of academic life, despite the fact that the use of terms such as interdis- ciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity is quite fluid (as there has been until recently no clear consensus concerning their precise meaning) (Law- rence & Després 2004, 399). However, in about a decade and a half a variety of influential works have been published to map the relationships between these concepts, the authors of which have called for more attention and awareness Kannike, A., Tasa, M. & Västrik, E.-H. (eds) (2017) Body, Personhood and Privacy: Perspectives on the Cultural Other and Human Experience. Approaches to Culture Theory 7, 18–29. Uni- versity of Tartu Press, Tartu. 19 Introduction in using corresponding vocabulary. For example, in their thought-provoking article on relationships between multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary research in health studies, Canadian scholars Bernhard C. K. Choi and Anita W. P. Pak (2006, 351) have stated: Multidisciplinarity draws on knowledge from different disciplines but stays within their boundaries. Interdisciplinarity analyzes, synthesizes and harmo- nizes links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. Trans- disciplinarity integrates the natural, social and health sciences in a humanities context, and transcends their traditional boundaries. Moreover, the authors illustrated these taxonomical differences with mathemati- cal formulae (such as 2+2=4; 2+2=5 and 2+2=yellow) and culinary examples: [M]ultidisciplinary is like a salad bowl (such as a vegetable platter or mixed salad, in which the ingredients remain intact and clearly distinguishable); interdisciplinary is like a melting pot (such as a fondue or stew, in which the ingredients are only partially distinguishable); transdisciplinary is like a cake (in which the ingredients are no longer distinguishable, and the final product is of a different kind from the initial ingredients) (Choi & Pak 2006, 359–360). In the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity Julie Thompson Klein (2010) offers a thorough overview of the variety of forms of interdisciplinarity, such as ency- clopaedic, indiscriminate, pseudo and composite interdisciplinarity; narrow and broad, shared and cooperative, methodological and theoretical, instrumental and critical interdisciplinarity, etc. Klein also underlines that in the case of multidisci- plinarity “the disciplines remain separate, disciplinary elements retain their origi- nal identity, and the existing structure of knowledge is not questioned”, indicating that this “tendency is evident in conferences, publications, and research projects that present different views of the same topic or problem in serial order” (Klein 2010, 17). From a certain viewpoint multidisciplinarity can, therefore, be labelled pseudo-interdisciplinarity (Alvargonzáles 2011, 388). If, in the case of interdisciplinarity, central keywords are interaction and inte- gration, then transdisciplinarity can be characterised by the keywords trans- cendency and transgressiveness. As stated by David Alvargonzáles (2011, 394), “[t]ransdisciplinarity claims to provide holistic schemes that subordinate disci- plines and look at the dynamics of whole systems”. Transdisciplinary approaches would have more to do with a “fusion of disciplines”, this kind of research implies that the final knowledge is more than the sum of its disciplinary components and