This essay begins with a quotation from Carl Schmitt in which he quotes Søren Kierkegaard on the significance of the exception in political theology. The essay is an extended reflection on this quotation within a quotation. Through a comparison of Kierkegaard and Schmitt, the author presents two readings of the state of exception: the first centers on the figure of the sovereign, while the second centers on the figure of the martyr. The sovereign suspends the law from above, while the martyr suspends it from below. In the political sphere, there are two ways of becoming the exception: the sovereign versus the martyr.

According to Candomblé, axé is present in every living being and is necessary to life. To develop and maintain a sense of well-being, one must maintain a balanced level of axé which is linked to a reciprocal relationship between human beings and orixás (African deities). This article will explore the link between the spiritual force axé and well-being (bem estar) within Candomblé philosophy. Starting with explaining axé within the context of Candomblé and its concept of personhood, the article will reflect in the latter part on the concept of well-being from the perspective of axé and put forward an argument for the inclusion of Candomblé in philosophy of religion.

Archaeologists in the Canary Islands have gathered substantial quantitative data from radiocarbon measurements and aDNA analyses. While undeniably helpful and necessary for apprehending past human activity, their interpretation, based on theories underpinning models developed for island chains, has lagged, leaving a gap in our understanding of processes of occupation and social network systems. The decontextualized nature of the archaeological landscape of the Canaries and a lack of consensus about proper radiocarbon methodologies are some of the factors contributing to heated scholarly debate. Here, for the Canary Islands, the author reviews the current literature on aDNA and discusses settlement theories, the chronological evidence used for occupation models, and how such perspectives align with current thinking on island colonization.

In Old Norse poetic literature, the smiðr was a master of the arts, able to control and shape multiple materials into various kinds of objects. While the mythological smiðr has been regarded as separate from the real-world blacksmiths and metalworkers of gold, silver, and copper alloys, the archaeological evidence recovered in towns and workshops of the Viking Age, as well as medieval written sources, provide a different perspective. In 2015, a hitherto unknown, well-preserved workshop was excavated in the Viking town of Kaupang in Norway, containing evidence of complex metalworking requiring the skills of blacksmiths and workers of soft metals. In this article, the authors venture beyond the Old Norse myths, into the world of the proficient smiths as multi-crafters and their tools of the trade.

This article analyzes tweets in the Turkish language from November 2020 to May 2021 in which Kurds are explicitly mentioned that feature negative animalization directed toward Kurds and pro-Kurdish organizations. It systematically compares ways of animalization attribution, to what entities the animalization is attributed mostly, and the attributors (actors) of animalization. First, it argues that animalizing dehumanization directed at Kurds in the data set principally occurs for attributing the lack of four human traits: agency, civility, morality, and rationality. Second, it shows in what different ways the lack of these traits is attributed to Kurdish people in general and to major pro-Kurdish groups such as HDP (the largest pro-Kurdish legal political party) and PKK (the largest pro-Kurdish armed group). Finally, it discloses three main political networks among Twitter users within the data set and characterizes how negative animal references to Kurds, pro-Kurdish groups, and each other were used by these actors. Thus, this research seeks to establish a framework to study other ethnic conflicts from the perspective of animalization and invites further research on whether the trends that were found imply a general tendency around the world.

This article seeks to discover how this contemporary Finno-Ugric identity has been politically instrumentalized and negotiated in Estonia. First, we look at how the Estonian state engages with the concept of Finno-Ugric world and inscribes it into Estonia’s foreign policy goals. Then, we delve into the role of Finno-Ugric traditionalism in Estonian populist and far-right discourses. Third, we discuss how local identity constitutes and cements community building initiatives and projects in the Seto region known for its local specificity and cultural peculiarity.