Elina I. Hartikainen
University of Oslo, Department of Social Anthropology, Faculty Member
- University of Helsinki, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Department MemberUniversity of Helsinki, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Department Member, and 3 moreadd
- The Politics of Identity, the Politics of Recognition, Multiculturalism, Democracy, Race and Ethnicity, Social Movements, Linguistic Anthropology, Brazil, and 7 moreAfrican Diasporic Religions, Religion, Political communication, Public Communication. Political Communication, Anthropology of Religion, Talal Asad, and Violenceedit
- Elina I. Hartikainen is an Associate Professor at the Social Anthropology Institute (SAI) at the University of Oslo. ... moreElina I. Hartikainen is an Associate Professor at the Social Anthropology Institute (SAI) at the University of Oslo. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and MAs in Anthropology from the University of Helsinki and Social Sciences and Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Previously, she has worked as an Academy Research Fellow in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki (2019-2023), a Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki (2016-2019), and Earl S. Johnson Instructor in Anthropology in the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (2013 to 2016).Her research examines the intersection of religion, politics, law, and race in Brazil through a focus on religions of African origins. In her past and current research, she has explored this conjuncture through the analysis of the Candomblé religion’s practitioners’ activist engagements with Brazilian state projects of participatory democracy and multiculturalism in Salvador, Brazil. Her current research examines how the legal treatment of violence against religions of African origins in Rio de Janeiro reflects and contributes to debates on and efforts to reimagine Brazilian secularism. Theoretically and methodologically, her research draws on both socio-cultural and linguistic anthropological approaches in order to understand the role and impact of interactional praxis in the unfolding of political processes.edit
The legal status of Afro-Brazilian religions has changed dramatically in the past few decades. For much of the 20th century, Afro-Brazilian religions lacked legal recognition as religions. Over the past twenty years, they have become... more
The legal status of Afro-Brazilian religions has changed dramatically in the past few decades. For much of the 20th century, Afro-Brazilian religions lacked legal recognition as religions. Over the past twenty years, they have become targets and beneficiaries of ethnoracial laws and government institutions fostered by Brazil's 1988 "Citizen Constitution." Still, most acts of violence on Afro-Brazilian religions fail to reach courts and even fewer are tried using the legal frameworks provided by ethnoracial law. This article examines the structural obstacles that the legal remediation of discrimination against Afro-Brazilian religions has faced over the past two decades. It argues that although religious activists' efforts have contributed to beneficial changes in the legal landscape surrounding religious intolerance, current legal understandings of religious prejudice and discrimination continue to curtail the application of anti-discriminatory law to most attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions. Looking ahead to the 2020s, these obstacles can be expected to be aggravated further by the growing influence of conservative Evangelical Christian agendas on the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of the Brazilian government.
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Este artigo estende a análise de Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda quanto à complexa relação entre as ideologias raciais brasileiras e a hostilidade às religiões de matriz africana, bem como à "política dos terreiros" advinda dessa relação,... more
Este artigo estende a análise de Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda quanto à complexa relação entre as ideologias raciais brasileiras e a hostilidade às religiões de matriz africana, bem como à "política dos terreiros" advinda dessa relação, situando-as em um contexto mais amplo de debates sobre o tipo de sociedade que o Brasil é e deveria ser. Para este fim, será examinado como as noções de racismo religioso, de discriminação e preconceito religioso e de liberdade religiosa foram e são articuladas de diferentes maneiras por tribunais brasileiros e por militantes de religiões de matriz africana, e como essas articulações são diferentemente posicionadas e constitutivas das contestações sobre as relações entre Estado e religião.
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This commentary extends Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda's analysis of the entanglement between Brazilian racial ideologies and antagonism towards Afro-Brazilian religions, and the terreiro politics that it has brought forth, by situating them... more
This commentary extends Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda's analysis of the entanglement between Brazilian racial ideologies and antagonism towards Afro-Brazilian religions, and the terreiro politics that it has brought forth, by situating them within a broader context of debates about the kind of society Brazil is and should be. To this end, it examines how the notions of religious racism, religious prejudice and discrimination, and religious freedom have been and are variously articulated by Brazilian courts and practitioner activists from Afro-Brazilian religions, and how these articulations are differently positioned in and constitutive of contestations over state-religion relations.
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This chapter analyses a census campaign organised by Afro-Brazilian religious practitioner activists in Brazil in 2009 and 2010. The chapter was published in the volume Tuomas Tammisto, Heikki Wilenius (eds.) 2021. "Valtion... more
This chapter analyses a census campaign organised by Afro-Brazilian religious practitioner activists in Brazil in 2009 and 2010.
The chapter was published in the volume Tuomas Tammisto, Heikki Wilenius (eds.) 2021. "Valtion antropologiaa: Tutkimuksia ihmisten hallitsemisesta ja vastarinnasta" which is part of the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia series.
An open access copy of the volume and my chapter can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.21435/skst.1470
The chapter was published in the volume Tuomas Tammisto, Heikki Wilenius (eds.) 2021. "Valtion antropologiaa: Tutkimuksia ihmisten hallitsemisesta ja vastarinnasta" which is part of the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia series.
An open access copy of the volume and my chapter can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.21435/skst.1470
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The corona virus pandemic has raised wide-ranging questions on the limits of religious freedoms in a global health crisis. While religious gatherings have acted as hot spots for the spread of the virus from South Korea to the United... more
The corona virus pandemic has raised wide-ranging questions on the limits of religious freedoms in a global health crisis. While religious gatherings have acted as hot spots for the spread of the virus from South Korea to the United States, efforts to restrict religious congregation have met strong resistance from groups who claim that they threaten constitutionally granted religious freedoms. The debates that this situation has provoked have by and large revolved around the question of how to balance religious communities’ right to free congregation with the need to protect the community at large from the pandemic (see Wilson, Smith, and Bean 2020). However, a closer look at the ways in which exemptions for religious communities from pandemic restrictions are debated in individual legal systems reveals substantive legal and contextual differences. This raises important questions on how the corona virus pandemic will transform the constitution of religious freedoms, state–religion relationships, and notions of legally recognized religion more broadly across the globe. The case of Brazil, I propose, presents a case in point.
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Allegations of religious intolerance push courts to deliberate on questions that are constitutive of the problem space of secularism. In addition to legal opinions on the character and scope of religious freedom vis-à-vis conflicting... more
Allegations of religious intolerance push courts to deliberate on questions that are constitutive of the problem space of secularism. In addition to legal opinions on the character and scope of religious freedom vis-à-vis conflicting rights, these arbitrations result in authoritative statements on what constitutes religion, how it may inhabit public space, and, ultimately, what interests and values underpin the national collective. This article analyzes three high-profile court cases alleging religious intolerance against Afro-Brazilian religions that were tried in Brazil during the first two decades of the 2000s. It demonstrates how at this time of rapid religious transformation the adjudication of such cases acted as a key site for the Brazilian legal establishment to redefine the place of religion in the broader context of rights and laws that regulate religion in public spaces.
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In 2017, the Finnish Immigration Service received approximately 1,000 asylum applications and appeals based on conversion from Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if... more
In 2017, the Finnish Immigration Service received approximately 1,000 asylum applications and appeals based on conversion from
Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if returned to their countries of origin. The applications posed an unprecedented dilemma for the Finnish Immigration Service: how was it, as a secular state institution, to evaluate these claims of conversion? This question also became an object of significant public and media debate. In this article, I examine how journalists writing for a religious media publication, Kirkko ja kaupunki, the newspaper of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Helsinki region, sought to inter vene in the debate on asylum seekers’ conversions. I focus my analysis on one central line of argument in their reporting: a call for the better inclusion of and engagement with religious expertise on Christianity by the Finnish Immigration Service when evaluating conversionbased asylum applications and appeals. I show that this call both positioned religious expertise as an antidote to the challenges that efforts to evaluate conversion-based asylum appeals posed to Finnish Immigration Service employees in this time period, and constituted expertise as a site for negotiations over the ‘proper’ relationship between religion and state.
Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if returned to their countries of origin. The applications posed an unprecedented dilemma for the Finnish Immigration Service: how was it, as a secular state institution, to evaluate these claims of conversion? This question also became an object of significant public and media debate. In this article, I examine how journalists writing for a religious media publication, Kirkko ja kaupunki, the newspaper of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Helsinki region, sought to inter vene in the debate on asylum seekers’ conversions. I focus my analysis on one central line of argument in their reporting: a call for the better inclusion of and engagement with religious expertise on Christianity by the Finnish Immigration Service when evaluating conversionbased asylum applications and appeals. I show that this call both positioned religious expertise as an antidote to the challenges that efforts to evaluate conversion-based asylum appeals posed to Finnish Immigration Service employees in this time period, and constituted expertise as a site for negotiations over the ‘proper’ relationship between religion and state.
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Latin American state efforts to recognize ethnically and racially marked populations have focused on knowledge and expertise. This article argues that this form of state recognition does not only call on subaltern groups to present... more
Latin American state efforts to recognize ethnically and racially marked populations have focused on knowledge and expertise. This article argues that this form of state recognition does not only call on subaltern groups to present themselves in a frame of expertise. It also pushes such groups to position themselves and their social and political struggles in a matrix based on expertise and knowledge. In the context of early 2000s Brazil, the drive to recognition led activists from the Afro‐Brazilian religion Candomblé to reimagine the religion's practitioners’ long‐term engagements with scholars and scholarly depictions of the religion as a form of epistemological exploitation that had resulted in public misrecognition of the true source of knowledge on the religion: Candomblé practitioners. To remedy this situation, the activists called on Candomblé practitioners to appropriate the “academic's tools,” the modes of representation by which scholarly expertise and knowledge were performed and recognized by the general public and state officials. This strategy transformed religious structures of expertise and knowledge in ways that established a new, politically efficacious epistemological grounding for Candomblé practitioners’ calls for recognition. But it also further marginalized temples with limited connections or access to scholars and higher education.
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A B S T R A C T Alternative politics of democracy shape and are shaped by dominant forms of democracy in circular fashion. In 2009 practitioners of Brazil's many Afro-Brazilian religions gathered in Salvador to develop a religiously... more
A B S T R A C T Alternative politics of democracy shape and are shaped by dominant forms of democracy in circular fashion. In 2009 practitioners of Brazil's many Afro-Brazilian religions gathered in Salvador to develop a religiously grounded mode of democratic politics. Mobilizing a religious formulation of respect, participants in the gathering subsumed government ideals of democratic practice under Afro-Brazilian religious norms of hierarchy and the social order that they presupposed. These efforts were predicated on an artful combining and adapting of democratic and religious discourses and interactional practices. The Afro-Brazilian religious politics of democracy that was articulated by this political project did not only reflect religious valorizations of hierarchy but it also established a new foundation for democratic politics in Brazil.
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A B S T R A C T This article examines the shifting semiotics and politics of visibility in Brazilian Candomblé activism in the late 2000s in the city of Salvador. It analyses how the use of publicly salient discourses and signs of peace... more
A B S T R A C T This article examines the shifting semiotics and politics of visibility in Brazilian Candomblé activism in the late 2000s in the city of Salvador. It analyses how the use of publicly salient discourses and signs of peace and antiviolence activism by activists from the African dias-poric religion Candomblé reconfigured the religion's practitioners public image from that of politically passive practitioners of " black magic " and self-sacrificing " black mothers " to that of politically active peace and antiviolence activists. I argue that this transformation was effected by a realignment of the general public's chronotopic orientation toward the religion and its practitioners from a chronotope of concealment to one of political visibility. This shift in chronotopic orientation not only aligned Candomblé practitioners with the social persona of the politically engaged peace activist but also produced a new social per-sona of a religiously motivated " black mother of peace. "
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My comment on p. 470-471.
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Koronapandemian myötä julkisuudessa on käyty vilkasta keskustelua siitä, kuinka kaikkien meidän arki muuttuu. Esiin on noussut esimerkiksi valtioiden ja kuntien asettamien rajoitusten ja kehotusten vaikutus siihen, mitä korona-arjessa saa... more
Koronapandemian myötä julkisuudessa on käyty vilkasta keskustelua siitä, kuinka kaikkien meidän arki muuttuu. Esiin on noussut esimerkiksi valtioiden ja kuntien asettamien rajoitusten ja kehotusten vaikutus siihen, mitä korona-arjessa saa tai on sopivaa tehdä. Eri maiden asettamia rajoituksia ja niiden tiukkuutta vertaillaan: Kuinka monta kertaa päivässä koiraa saa ulkoiluttaa Ranskassa? Onko juoksulenkki sallittu Italiassa, ja kuinka kauas kotoa missäkin saa lähteä? Toisaalta erityisesti sosiaalisessa mediassa kiertävä epidemiahuipun tasaamiseen kannustava #flattenthecurve-tunniste ja siihen liittyvät sosiaalisen eristäytymisen kampanjat luovat myös yhteisöllistä painetta toimia vastuullisesti muita kohtaan.
Arki on kuitenkin monimutkainen kokonaisuus. Siihen kuuluvat lukemattomat ääneen lausumattomat velvoitteet sukulaisia, perheenjäseniä, työkavereita ja arjen yhteisöjä kohtaan. Arjen muuttumisen tarkastelu virallisten rajoitusten näkökulmasta ei tavoita sitä, kuinka arjen velvoitteet meille tärkeitä ihmisiä ja yhteisöjä kohtaan ovat usein keskenään ristiriitaisia. Iäkkään ja rakkaan naapurin asioita kaupungilla hoitaessamme altistamme itsemme virukselle ja sitä kautta lisäämme esimerkiksi riskiryhmään kuuluvan puolisomme mahdollisuutta sairastua. Toisaalta jos olemme itse oireettomia viruksen kantajia, altistamme niin naapurin mummun kuin kaikki ne, jotka asioidessamme kohtaamme.
Arjen uudenlaisia ristiriitoja valottaaksemme olemme avanneet kirjoituskutsun, jonka kautta keräämme tutkimusaineistoksi kokemuksia arjesta pandemian aikana. Tässä tekstissä nostamme esiin kaksi tutkimuksen taustalla olevaa teemaa, joiden kautta arjen monimutkaisuus avautuu: tartunnan odottaminen ja moraaliset neuvottelut riskistä ja velvoitteista.
Arki on kuitenkin monimutkainen kokonaisuus. Siihen kuuluvat lukemattomat ääneen lausumattomat velvoitteet sukulaisia, perheenjäseniä, työkavereita ja arjen yhteisöjä kohtaan. Arjen muuttumisen tarkastelu virallisten rajoitusten näkökulmasta ei tavoita sitä, kuinka arjen velvoitteet meille tärkeitä ihmisiä ja yhteisöjä kohtaan ovat usein keskenään ristiriitaisia. Iäkkään ja rakkaan naapurin asioita kaupungilla hoitaessamme altistamme itsemme virukselle ja sitä kautta lisäämme esimerkiksi riskiryhmään kuuluvan puolisomme mahdollisuutta sairastua. Toisaalta jos olemme itse oireettomia viruksen kantajia, altistamme niin naapurin mummun kuin kaikki ne, jotka asioidessamme kohtaamme.
Arjen uudenlaisia ristiriitoja valottaaksemme olemme avanneet kirjoituskutsun, jonka kautta keräämme tutkimusaineistoksi kokemuksia arjesta pandemian aikana. Tässä tekstissä nostamme esiin kaksi tutkimuksen taustalla olevaa teemaa, joiden kautta arjen monimutkaisuus avautuu: tartunnan odottaminen ja moraaliset neuvottelut riskistä ja velvoitteista.
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News commentary on study of Finn's attitudes on the use of epithets in public discourse
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Editorial in Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 43(1).