This research examines the challenges of gaining access to participant observation in two foreign factories pseudonymously named Blue Apparel Company (BAC) and Green Garment Company (GGC) located in Bole Lemi Industrial Park (BLIP) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Accessing foreign manufacturing firms that have employed thousands of local workforces is difficult because they do not want observers to know their “mysteries of the abode of production”. Establishing personal connections and friendships is thus crucial in gaining access, particularly in settings where multiple approvals are required for fieldwork. In this piece, I will explore how my ethnicity turned a barrier into an opportunity, allowing me to gain access to BAC. I will discuss how the match between my ethnic background and the person who manages a foreign factory at BAC helped me get data for my PhD thesis, aligning the adage “birds of a feather flock together” and how a lack of co-ethnic connection hindered me from accessing GGC.

Digital Research Data and Human Sciences (DRD Hum) Conference – Joensuu, Finland, 10–12 December 2024.

The years of 2023 and 2024 reminded us again of the urgent need to mitigate climate change. Despite the warnings from climate science, narratives of denial continue to spread on social media. This article aims to explore how climate change rejection becomes naturalized through the construction of “common sense”. Engaging with previous literature on critical folkloristics as an approach to contemporary folklore, I introduce Fredric Jameson’s hermeneutic model for allegorical interpretation as a potential framework for understanding such narratives not merely as peripheral expressions, but as manifestations of broader cultural, social, and historical movements. In the empirical material, the figure of Galileo Galilei serves as a symbol embodying the climate skeptic community while framing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as an authoritarian force driven by religious beliefs. This allegorical construct reveals a collective identity forged through exclusion and a defense of fossil capitalism, thereby reinforcing existing inequalities and injustices.

Ethnos Spring Seminar ‘Keepers of Culture: The Power of Partnership Between Museums and Ethnology’ in Helsinki, 28th of March 2025

This article examines how digital technologies and AI shape perceptions of Finnish mire landscapes, focusing on imagery and experiences of the Patvinsuo National Park. Employing a hybrid methodological approach, the study integrates senso-digital walks and computer vision analysis to explore the interplay between embodied on-site experiences of nature and their online digital counterparts. By drawing inspiration from sensory ethnography and various walking methods, senso-digital walks involve participants reflecting on their use of digital tools and the contrasts between physically experienced and digitally mediated environments. To complement the ethnographic fieldwork, a large set of Instagram images of Patvinsuo was scraped and clustered using machine learning techniques to create a visual taxonomy of the various ways in which Patvinsuo is represented in the digital sphere. The process of attempting to interpret the machine-generated clusters hints at how algorithms participate in reframing aesthetic sensibilities in the perception of the environment. By combining digital and sensory approaches, the study explores the complex interrelations between algorithms, human practices, and aesthetic values in shaping environmental perceptions and ethics.

4th Artefacta Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 13–14 February 2025

Creative and visual methods have shown great potential to engender new ideas and (self) understandings in participants in research focused on topics that are hard to address via conventional qualitative methods such as interviews. Through their playful approach, such methods can open a whole new window for researchers to understand participants or research phenomena. However, engaging participants through these methods can be challenging, and the outcome can be more uncertain and unpredictable compared to conventional qualitative methods. Our article introduces three case studies that applied a method drawn from design research, namely cultural probes. By analyzing these cases together, we are able to highlight the strengths, shortcomings, and issues that need careful consideration when probes are applied to an ethnographic research process. We critically reflect on the ideas of playfulness behind the visual and creative approaches and contribute to methodological discussions on playful methods particularly with adult participants. Our findings emphasize the importance of profound understanding of the epistemological background of the method, why playfulness is employed in research, to whom probes are targeted, and how motivation is engendered in participants. Employed without these considerations, playfulness of probes can appear strange and as something that alienates the study participants rather than engages them in sharing their views and ideas.

This review deals with everyday creativity, which is considered central to success in current working life. Creativity is also central to the development of research methods, the theme of this issue of Ethnologia Fennica. The article examines perceptions of creativity by work counsellors, who are constantly on the lookout for effective methods in their work with clients. Work counsellors’ understandings of creativity provide a basis for self-reflexion for researchers’ aspirations in developing research methods. How can we provoke and enhance creativity?