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In our paper, we have developed a list of modes for audience engagement on social media on the basis of the Facebook posts of selected museums in Latvia and Estonia. Within the frame of our study, the museums’ Facebook posts covering a timespan of one year have been analysed using the method of close reading and applying the principles of grounded theory. A multi-dimensional approach to various modes of engagement is proposed in order to involve different visitors in the activities of the museum, and considering different functions of the message. The results of the paper are applicable when considering diverse repertoires for modes of engagement with the museum’s audiences on social media, as well as when engaging with them on-site. The paper contributes to the trend of democratisation within the museum context by exploring the potential of museums when forging their relationships with their visitors.

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This article provides an insight into ethnographic research during the Soviet occupation of Latvia, viewed in the context of national self-consciousness. Ethnographic research in Soviet Latvia was conducted by the ethnographic sector at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR). By successfully using phrases appropriate to the political situation as well as the right quotations from Soviet ideological works, it was possible to maintain ideas and attitudes developed in interwar independent Latvia, for example, regarding Latvian national costume – in the works of Mirdza Slava. In turn, Aina Alsupe managed to carry out substantial new studies of the history and development of weaving in Latvia, and collect materials on the development of applied art in Soviet Latvia. The studies conducted by both Alsupe and Slava allowed researchers to keep applied folk arts and the folk costume topical, and in doing so to help maintain Latvian cultural identity.

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The lives of Indonesian waria (transgender women) are substantially shaped by spatial dynamics. As a result of social and spatial exclusion, subsequent migration and economic needs, a lifestyle pattern around daily work in beauty salons and street nightlife tied to transactional sex has evolved in many parts of urban Indonesia. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Indonesian regions of Java and West Papua, I demonstrate that despite tremendous spatial abjection, salons and street nightlife are also productive, transformative and conjoining spatialities that foster waria subjectivity in affective relations with their intimate partners, the community, the phantasmic promise of the transnational mediascape and Indonesia as a nation. The places that waria occupy may spark moral prejudice and targeted violence, but simultaneously they are sites of agency at which waria experience self-affirmation and a sense of belonging while embodying through gendered performance the envisioned mobility at both national and transnational scales. The paper thus foregrounds how spaces and subjectivities are mutually constitutive, forging one another, as well as how certain spatialities hold potential to disrupt the sense of marginality.

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This study, based on archive document research and analysis of publications by Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) ethnographers, discusses the process of invention and implementation of Socialist traditions and the role of scientists in this. The introduction of Soviet traditions in Latvia did not begin immediately after the Second World War when the communist occupation regime was restored. The occupation regime in the framework of an anti-religious campaign turned to the transformation of traditions that affect individual’s private sphere and relate to church rituals – baptism, confirmation, weddings, funerals, Latvian cemetery festivities – in the second half of 1950s, along with the implementation of revolutionary and labour traditions. In order to achieve the goals set by the Communist Party, a new structure of institutions was formed and specialists from many fields were involved, including ethnographers from the Institute of History at the LSSR Academy of Sciences (hereinafter – LSSR AS). Ethnographers offered recommendations, as well as observed and analysed the process, discussing it in meetings of official commissions and sharing the conclusions in scientific publications, presentations, etc.

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Estonian ethnography as one of the Estonia-related disciplines was tied with Estonian nationalism from the very beginning. Defined as a science investigating mainly the material side of vanishing traditional peasant culture in the 1920s, it fitted rather well with the Soviet understanding of ethnography as a sub discipline of history. Thanks to the major cooperation projects initiated and coordinated by ethnographers from Moscow, Soviet Estonian ethnographers could continue studying Estonian traditional peasant culture. Their favourite research topics (folk costume, peasant architecture and traditional agriculture) supported Estonian national identity, but also suited the framework of Soviet ethnography. Studying contemporary (socialist) everyday life was unpopular among Estonian ethnographers because the results had to justify and support Soviet policy. They did so unwillingly, and avoided it completely if possible. Despite of some interruption during the Stalin era, ethnography managed to survive as a science of the nation in Soviet Estonia.

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This paper discusses the role of Oromo proverbs in conflict resolution and/or management as a peace-making verbal communication principle in the cultural context. The lesson from proverbs, which contain traditional morsels of wisdom, consists of cultural value and rhetorical effectiveness helping to enforce reality in the context in which they are used. Data for this paper is generated from primary sources. In data gathering, we used interview and focus group discussion. The analysis shows that proverbs have persuasive power to advise, guide and influence conflicting parties to settle their case peacefully. The proverbs tell their truths about conflict situations and devise a resolution and management approach through metaphorical and symbolic representations. Proverbs are also an integral part of Oromo culture, handing down and imparting norms, values, rules and the worldview of the community to guide people to live in customary ways.

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3. Vol 1 No 1-2 (2007) /
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The article examines how a search for identity attempted by Žemaitians (Samogitians), a Lithuanian local cultural group, eventually evolves into the demand that Žemaitian community should be recognised as an autochthonous nation, and Žemaitian dialect – as a separate language, with all implicit rights. Attempts to implement the idea of a self-governed region as a guarantee of reconstruction and protection of Žemaitian identity is the most recent and vivid representation of such proceedings. Since Lithuania’s accession to EU is increasingly perceived as a threat to cultural identity, other local cultural groups also tend to support the idea of self-governed regions. A suggestion that four (4) self-governed regions covering respective local culture distribution areas should be created in Lithuania is promoted. The authors of such demands, due to a multitude of historical, political, and social reasons, still do not have many supporters in central government bodies, and even in local communities, although in Žemaitija their number is greater.

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Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

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This article is based on the results of recent fieldwork among the Evenk reindeer herders in the northern Baikal region. It argues that reindeer domestication should be approached as a never-ending process that happens in the context of animal and human movement and can be described as domestication-in-practice and domestication-on-the-move. An important signal of the fact that animals became closer to people is their constant return to a camp. This article presents the ethnography of how people try to facilitate these returns by feeding reindeer with salt, producing smoke and binding calves to stakes and poles. On the one hand, animals periodically come back to a camp. On the other hand, reindeer herders know the places to which the animals return outside the camp and this helps them to find reindeer in certain places. Reindeer herding in the northern Baikal region is based on constant relocation of the herd from place to place, implying daily short-term movement in order to bring animals to the camp and meaning a continuous monitoring of reindeer and predator movements.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2017-0009 The article addresses a conflicting encounter of two ideologies of kinship, ‘natural’ and ‘religious’, among the newly established Evangelical communities of Nenets in the Polar Ural and Yamal tundra. An ideology of Christian kinship, as an outcome of ‘spiritual re-birth’, was introduced through Nenets religious conversion. The article argues that although the born-again experience often turned against ancestral traditions and Nenets traditional kinship ties, the Nenets kinship system became a platform upon which the conversion mechanism was furthered and determined in the Nenets tundra.The article examines missionary initiatives and Nenets religiosity as kin-based activities, the outcome of which was twofold. On one side, it was the realignment of Nenets traditional kinship networks. On other side, it was the indigenisation of the Christian concept of kinship according to native internal cultural logic. Evangelical communities in the tundra were plunged into the traditional practices of Nenets kinship networks, economic exchanges, and marriage alliances. Through negotiation of traditional Nenets kinship and Christian kinship, converted Nenets developed new imaginaries, new forms of exchanges, and even new forms of mobility.

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Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2017-0014 This paper aims to investigate the relevance of metaphor and metonymy to ancient dream interpretation in Islamic-Iranian culture. To this end, a most-referenced book of dream interpretation is analysed according to the conceptual metaphor theory. The results show that metaphor and metonymy play an important role in this ancient discourse. The metaphorical dream is based either on a resemblance between the dream as the source domain and its interpretation as the target domain, or on some symbolic metaphors arising from cultural conventions. The metonymic dream is formed by a contiguous relationship between the dream as the vehicle entity and its interpretation as the target entity. Concerning metaphorical dream interpretation, it can be argued that the overt content of the dream is mapped onto the latent content by resemblance or cultural convention. As regards metonymic dream interpretation, it can be said that the overt content of the dream is mapped onto the latent content by a conceptual metonymy based on socio-physical context. In addition, there are two other procedures of dream interpretation based on realistic representation and the technique of reversion. These cases do not apply figurative devices like metaphor and metonymy. Also, the dreamer’s personal knowledge of his or her life does not play a significant role in the discourse of dream interpretation in Islamic-Iranian culture.

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