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The article examines the challenges university teachers face when adopting connective pedagogy in organizing teaching. Instead of studying the learning outcomes of the method, we decided in this research to focus on the teachers' experiences when doing things differently in a fairly traditional pedagogical institution like a university. In spring 2019, as a part of our new degree programme entitled Culture, Communities, and Change (KUMU) at the University of Jyväskylä, we implemented a multisensory ethnography course in collaboration with a third sector development project promoting village tourism in Central Finland. On the course, we applied a problem-based approach to implement the connective pedagogy through which we wanted to increase the students' working life skills and public engagement. While the main objective of the multisensory ethnography course was to develop village tourism and teach the students how to do ethnographic research, we also scrutinized our own teaching experience in developing higher education pedagogy through documenting our own activities in field diaries and analysing our own roles through self-reflexive ethnographic practice. The group discussions and the diaries of the teachers during the course are the data that has been analysed by means of social practice theory. The three elements of social practices--material, competence, and meaning--helped us to identify the important factors that should be taken into consideration when trying to change everyday practices in our work, in this case to organize collaborative teaching with a third sector development project. According to our results, a problem-based approach is an effective tool on a collaborative project course between the university and a third sector organization because it enabled us to practice connective pedagogy at a very practical level. There are also challenges in applying a new method. Studying our diaries and notes of group discussions and reflecting our experiences, we identified the following critical stages and weak spots: Planning and co-ordinating the course took a lot of time and resources and teachers must tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty. The competence of the teachers was also challenged; they needed to be open, for example, to dealing with unfamiliar research topics. Even if the teachers' meanings, motivation, and values were in accordance with the principles of connective pedagogy, there are still many contradictions in the meaning element of problem-based teaching practice. Above all, the teachers were compelled to question their role as experts when taking third sector actors as equal partners in producing new knowledge.

This article describes varied place attachments manifested in public (communal) places in the two socioeconomically weakest suburbs of the city of Jyväskylä in central Finland. We conducted ethnographic research and observations, interviewed local experts on their views of the suburbs, and analyzed discourses from various places where residents' experiences of identity and social relations are connected to residential and community attachment. Our results show a strong connection to place evolving in both suburbs through bonds to the physical and the social environment. The local experts reported social connectedness and sense of belonging among the residents of both suburbs. The strength of the suburbs resided in a community spirit manifested in public places (community centers, local natural beauty spots, and recreational spaces). Residents are attached to their nearby natural environment and specific places in both suburbs. Attachment to place is undermined by negative media influence and by public discourse highlighting social segregation and insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over-consumption and the domestic abundance of things have become a problem in affluent Western homes, which are full of new commodities and layers of lived things. At the same time, the encounter with mess and clutter generates a strong moral charge. We should not approach clutter as simply meaningless or lacking order, but rather as a form of trouble-making materiality that forces people to engage with materiality due to a sense of discomfort. In this article, we focus on specific objects that are considered as clutter, asking thirteen people to introduce the materiality of their homes. Overall, we find three different viewpoints on clutter: stuff materializing social relations and family connections; stuff referring to personal memories; and stuff that constructs the feeling of home. We conclude that clutter is not a simple matter of disorder, but rather something affective that calls for attention and emotional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of the history of the Treblinka II Nazi German death camp (located in Poland) provides a unique opportunity to conduct a fine-grained examination of the concept of the value of material assemblages and how this can vary depending on temporal, historical, and societal context. Following its closure, the site transitioned from a razed camp to a crime scene to a potential treasure repository to a memorial and finally to an archaeological site. In this paper, we present the various ways in which the value attributed to objects present within the camp landscape evolved and how the terrible judicial and cultural tragedy that was the Holocaust means that many of these values were aggregated over time. By providing a contextualized discussion of value, we present trends that will be relevant to scholars engaged in the study of material culture from a wide range of epochs while also identifying those that are unique to assemblages pertaining to conflict and genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the heritage of the WWII evacuation and the so-called 'burning of Lapland' within a Sámi reindeer herding community, and assess how these wartime experiences have moulded, and continue to mould, the ways people memorialise and engage with the WWII material remains. Our focus is on the village of Vuotso, which is home to the southernmost Sámi community in Finland. The Nazi German troops established a large military base there in 1941, and the Germans and the villagers lived as close neighbours for several years. In 1944 the villagers were evacuated before the outbreak of the Finno-German 'Lapland War' of 1944-1945, in which the German troops annihilated their military installations and the civilian infrastructure. Today the ruins of demolished German military installations persist around the village as vivid reminders, and act for the villagers as important active agents in memorising this vital phase in Lapland's recent past. They also appear to facilitate nostalgia for the more independent days before traditional Sámi lifeways were ruptured by stronger Finnish State intervention in the post-war decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories that elderly people tell about their lives often touch upon their experiences of a changing world and the ways in which people cope with different transformations. In her doctoral research, the author examines the life narrative of a female laborer, the author's grandmother Elsa Koskinen, born in 1927. Koskinen-Koivisto argues that nostalgia functions as a narrative strategy to highlight the importance of values such as social responsibility and togetherness. In addition, nostalgic narratives can be seen as reclamation of agency, an attempt to control change. This article examines nostalgia as a complex narrative strategy, paying attention to the situations in which nostalgia occurs in the interaction between two generations, and considers how the past is represented for younger generations and how the nostalgic reminiscence can be interpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented wherein the editor discusses various articles published within the issue on topics including layers of nostalgia in the work of freelance artist Juhani Seppovaara, mixed emotions linked to nostalgic reminiscence and its connection with different phases of life, and Finnish women's written reminiscences about adoption of pants as suitable dress for women.