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122 - Gender consultancy and the marketization of feminism

33. The Humanities as Field of Culture: Making, transferring, and challenging knowledge Magdalena Petersson McIntyre1

1 Centre for Consumer Science, University of Gothenburg

While requirements on humanities to be useful have increased, the adap-tation of knowledge produced in humanities to consultancy markets, think tanks and applied research has simultaneously grown. In this process concepts and knowledge change and adapt to new contexts. Ethnologists and anthropologists have covered how the concept of “culture” has turned into a commodity and transformed from an analyti-cal and theoretianalyti-cal category, into a rational and systematic structure (Löfgren & Willim 2005, O’Dell & Willim 2015, Sunderland & Denny 2007, 2015). Less attention has however been given to the expansion of the market for gender, equality and diversity, and to the similar ways in which concepts such as gender and equality evolve when adapted to a market context. My paper will discuss the ongoing creation of gender equality as a market and the negotiations concerning concepts and standpoints that are involved in this process. Interviewed gender consultants described concern over

‘sell-ity, and where to draw the line between ideals and work. Assignments were focused critical. If a company had a problem concerning their equality image, consultants were invited to ‘solve’ the question, not to point to problems, or question the organization or -itive, engaging and constructive. In these roles consultants were required to negotiate ideals and convictions in particular ways.

33. The Humanities as Field of Culture: Making, transferring, and challenging knowledge Helena Pettersson1

1 Dept. of Culture & Media Studies/Ethnology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

The aim with this paper is to problematize the idea of learning and knowl-edge as transferable and moveable practices, in relation to research internationaliza-from in depth interviews internationaliza-from history, romance languages, and philosophy. The paper problematize different understandings of learning and knowledge transfer, depending other languages than the native, as well as practices of conference participation and research co-operations. It is important to keep in mind that the umbrella concept “the as idea and practice may come on different terms for different academic disciplines. In to different degrees of internationalization. International practices may be physical mo-bility in the forms of short-term and long-term stays, conferences, project meetings and mediated co-operations in the forms of networking, writing projects, and publishing strategies. Cultural analysis is a lens to understand how international practices and their impacts on professional careers are linked to local work place cultures and disciplinary

habits (Hasse, Sinding & Trentemøller 2008, Pettersson 2011, Wolanik Boström &

Öhlander 2011, 2015).

and practices of Romance languages scholars.

33. The Humanities as Field of Culture: Making, transferring, and challenging knowledge Katarzyna Wolanik Boström1

1 Dept. of culture and media study, Umeå University

The paper addresses the demands and practices of internationalization, as experienced by scholars and teachers of Romance languages after they did their PhD in Sweden. The interviewed scholars have their main workplace in a Swedish Humanities faculty. The work expectations might include physical movement to the cultural and linguistic context the scholars specialize in. To practice the language, to collect data, to cooperate with other scholars or to teach abroad are methods of becoming a member of an internationalized academic community, even if not all places and circumstances mobility is considered to be a natural part of a professional development, an expected part of a career trajectory as a scholar in languages. Longer physical mobility might be, however, not unproblematic. Lack of funding, concerns for one’s family’s well-being or the scholar’s health might weigh in the decision not to go abroad and inspire other strategies of internationalization, e.g. publications in English, conference participation, research co-operations, maintenance of professional networks by the use of new media etc. An interesting aspect is that Romance languages – e.g. Spanish, French, Portuguese - are native languages in many countries across the globe and thus in a profound way

“international”. Still, publications in these languages seldom count as “international”

in Swedish faculties’ and universities’ rankings. In the paper, I present some scholars’

predicaments of internationalization.

Beyond Tradition + Ethnographic Knowledge in Political

Decision-Making

Nathan Light1

1 Dept. of Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Knowledge makers are often imaginative and passionate about their craft and committed to disseminating their discoveries, but address widely varying audiences with different goals and legacies. Some such as Marx or Freud have established broad and enduring public traditions, while other system builders such as Olof Rudbeck, James Frazer or Joseph Campbell are known for their more quixotic interpretive quests and more limited followings. Other speculative historians and seers have established cults and new religious movements through fantastic histories, pseudoscience, and ritual and ethical innovations, such as L. Ron Hubbard, Falun Dafa or at the extreme, Heaven’s Gate, Charles Manson, or terrorist organizations.

This panel asks how we can apply ethnological research and theory to understanding diverse knowledge making practices and their role in promoting social movements.

Knowledge making and its articulation are vital to social life, but despite extensive study of the nexus of knowledge, power and authority, there is less investigation of knowledge making itself. Participants in this panel will consider the repertoire of tech-niques, genres, and logics involved in making and expressing new knowledge.

How do people seek and create new knowledge, or reinterpret and revive existing bod-ies of knowledge? How do they provide evidence and legitimate knowledge according to the expectations of different audiences and to conform to institutional standards?

How do people negotiate the authority to use knowledge in making public claims? How are knowledge of the past and future, and assertions about truth, tradition, ethics or the supernatural used to make political claims?

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-Pia Olsson1

Tiina-Riitta Lappi1, Karoliina Ojanen1

1 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Ethnographic research is often presented in a way that may not open up to ethnographic writing. We have a tendency to explain our research in a very multidi-mensional way when providing the reader with as much information as possible to reason for our case in question. Ethnography calls for a holistic approach, but it may practices and means of presenting ethnographic knowledge, especially when dealing with parties outside the academia?

In a world of “alternative facts” it is important to “get out there” with what we are do-ing. Ethnographic knowledge opens up new perspectives and offers invaluable insights is more focused, e.g. easier to grasp for those not so familiar with ethnographic writing.

How can we make our knowledge and ways of producing it more available and better achievable in the context of decision-making?

We welcome papers presenting experiences and practices of making good use of eth-integration policies, urban planning or health care, to name a few examples. Papers discussing how application of ethnographic knowledge in contexts other than academia affects the research process in general are invited as well in this session.

-ka, museums and epic heroes

3. Beyond tradition: Scholars, prophets, mystics, and activists making knowledge Nathan Light1

1 Dept. of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

This paper sketches examples of creating historical knowledge, and propos-es ways to bring them into a shared frame, allowing us to analyze knowledge making

into beliefs taken relativistically, and science that is exposed to critical examination, hypothesis testing, and so on. I ask “How can we better compare activist movements of indigenous empowerment or global religious reform with scholarly paradigms and con-victions that aim to improve knowledge and analysis of events in the past or predictions for the future?”

New movements and their prophets undertake reform particularly by reconceptualizing the world, revaluing and reinterpreting what is known, what it means, and what should be done. Scholars commonly commit to positions about what should be done in the academy and in some limited realm of political engagement in the world, but then take a more tolerant and impartial distance on much else that they encounter and analyze.

But the pursuit and communication of truth, whether to improve the world itself or knowledge about it, relies upon imagination and passionate, persuasive exposition, as well as techniques for creating and documenting experiential evidence.

This paper aims to reveal common elements of histories produced within scholarly institutions and paradigms as well as in religious and social movements, with the aim of developing a shared terminology for different genres of historical knowledge and reducing distinctions based in kinds of evidence or truth claims.

126 - Ethnology and Eschatology. The Fear of End and the Discourse of the