Billy Ehn

Orvar Löfgren

Kulturanalyser

Jonas Frykman

Den kultiverade människan

In this insightful and pathbreaking reflection on “doing nothing,” Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren take us on a fascinating tour of what is happening when, to all appearances, absolutely nothing is happening. Sifting through a wide range of examples drawn from literature, published ethnographies, and firsthand research, they probe the unobserved moments in our daily lives—waiting for a bus, daydreaming by the window, performing a routine task—and illuminate these “empty” times as full of significance. Creative, insightful, and profound, The Secret World of Doing Nothing leads us to rethink the ordinary and find meaning in today’s hypermodern reality.

The Secret World of Doing Nothing

"A fun book to read, witty and emotionally evocative without ever being sentimental or superficial. It focuses on the common experiences of tourism familiar to readers from any class or culture, and really enters the tourist imagination--in stark contrast to most other books I've read about tourism, which act like the tourists are some sort of exotic livestock."--Richard Wilk, author of Economies and Cultures "A pleasure to read. The author has accomplished the very difficult task of moving almost seamlessly from general observations to the specific, and from the observations of others through time to his personal experience."--Erve Chambers, editor of Tourism and Culture "Lofgren takes us down countless paths that we didn't know were there. . . . His interests seem wonderfully idiosyncratic. The issues that he deals with are thoroughly familiar, but the angle of his light is very new."--Stephen M. Fjellman, author of Vinyl Leaves

A History of Vacationing

On Holiday

Richard Wilk

The numerous tasks and routines that shape our daily existence can seem mundane, even invisible—and yet they play an extremely powerful role in structuring and reproducing society. Exploring Everyday Life casts light on these so-called trivialities, serving as both a guide to the invisible world of the everyday and an instruction manual for first-time explorers. Ehn, Lofgren, and Wilk demonstrate how to use a broad array of ethnographic tools to discover, map, and document new and unexplored territories and guide readers through the process of cultural analysis. Their concrete examples shed light on how a study or paper assignment can evolve and point to how cultural analysis of everyday life can be practically applied in business, government, and other arenas outside of academia.

Strategies for Ethnography and Cultural Analysis

Exploring Everyday Life

Double Homes, Double Lives ?

class, culture and family life in Sweden

The sweetness of home

A Historical Anthropology of Middle-class Life

Culture Builders

Beginning his cultural journey among some 18th-century pioneers of tourism, Lofgren takes us on a tour of the Western holiday world and shows how two centuries of "learning to be a tourist" have shaped our own ways of vacationing. We see how fashions in destinations have changed through the years, with popular images (written, drawn, painted, and later photographed) teaching the tourist what to look for and how to experience it.

Richard R. Wilk

Have you ever heard of the cream effect or witnessed the power of cultural backdraft? Have you watched the slow process of fossilization or used the tactics of cultural stealth? You might be waiting for just the right word to describe what you have seen and done. This collection revitalizes the study of the cultural processes of stability and change. The 25 essays invent new processes for a rapidly changing world. They illustrate how different perspectives enrich cultural analysis and add a bit of playfulness and experimentation to a longstanding academic issue. The authorsfrom anthropology, European ethnology, sociology, and cultural studiesare peeking into blind spots and looking under the furniture in order to understand why and how some kinds of social life become visible, while so many others remain unseen. This book will inspire researchers and students to develop new approaches in cultural analysis. This is a reprint of the journal Ethnologia Europaea - Journal of European Eth

Experiments in Cultural Analysis

Off the Edge

This work examines customs and habits such as crayfish parties, Christmas celebrations, and graduation rituals. The focus is not on the traditions as such, instead they provide a starting point for analyses of how the experiences of everyday life are manifested in a visible cultural garb. The text shows how many rituals serve to release people from the bonds of tradition, usually by creating a special cultural arena. Yet it also examines the ways in which habits and customs tacitly coerce thoughts, sometimes drawing attention to fundamental social and moral values but just as often acting as impediments to reflection. The contributors try to see how some features of everyday cultural identity can be easily replaced, while others may persist tenaciously.

Exploring Everyday Culture

Force of Habit

This volume starts out with two contrasting studies of monuments. How does the seemingly stability of stone and bronze hide a constantly changing cultural use? Anne Eriksen looks at the history of ruins in Norway. The murmur of ruins turns out to be a speech of modernity, a way of emotionalising place and history. Viktoriya Hryaban discusses the fate of socialist monuments in Ukraine and shows how the attempts to create alternative post-socialist memorials reproduce a traditional Soviet cultural grammar. Lace is a dominating decorative element in many Turkish Dutch homes. It has become a sign of "Turkishness" but as Hilje van der Horst points out, people's relations to this mundane domestic element mirror some important conflicts and ideas about modernity and ethnicity. From the cultural media of monuments and lace, the discussion moves on to two more classic mass media and their role in identity politics. Stijn Reijnders explores a popular Dutch game show that has managed to survive for decades, becoming something of a national institution for some, an example of an outmoded genre for others. How does the involvement mirror ideas of an imagined national community? Finally, Silke Meyer looks at an 18th century national stereotype of "The German quack" in English popular debate and mass media. How did this caricature of Germanness become an alter ego of the English?

Ethnologia Europaea 36:1

"Nichtstun ist die allerschwierigste Beschäftigung und zugleich diejenige, die am meisten Geist voraussetzt." Oscar Wilde Was passiert, wenn allem Anschein nach gar nichts passiert? Wenn Menschen sich von der Aussicht, "nichts zu tun", angezogen oder abgestoßen fühlen, wenn sie geduldig oder wütend warten, wenn sie alltägliche Routinen gedankenverloren erledigen und in mehr oder weniger abstrusen Tagträumen der Realität entfliehen? Billy Ehn und Orvar Löfgren gehen in ihrer kreativen und aufschlussreichen Untersuchung der Frage nach, wie sich die Formen des Nichtstuns und die gesellschaftliche Haltung dazu in verschiedenen kulturellen Kontexten entwickeln und verändern, wie individuelle Gewohnheiten, Gedanken und Gefühle kulturell geformt werden. Sie geleiten uns auf eine Reise in die Welt der Übergangszonen, Zwischenzeiten und Pausen, die voller vertrauter und überraschender Details steckt.

Eine Kulturanalyse des Ereignislosen und Flüchtigen

Nichtstun

Barbara Czarniawska

What does a stockbroker in Istanbul navigating the rush of incoming trading figures have in common with a mother in Stockholm trying to organize a growing pile of baby clothes? They are both coping with excess or overflow.

How Organizations, Communities and Individuals Manage Overflows

Coping with Excess

Om at analysere kulturelle sammenhænge. Med eksempler fra hverdagen gennemgås forskellige temaer for at afdække værdier, tankegange og organisationsprincipper. Med beskrivelse af metoder og opsummering af nyere etnologisk forskning

Orvar Löfgren

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