Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Ageing is not what it used to be. Even if this is a world-wide trend (Lamb 2015), in what might be called Euro-America – a conceptual project, beyond a peculiar set of infrastructural modes of sociality, engaged in a developmentalist drive – the processes of growing old have indeed turned in the last decades into (i) the object of scrutiny of new health disciplines: dissecting and intervening the phenomenon of ageing; (ii) the target of a ‘grey’ market segment developing a wide variety of services and products, as well as into (iii) matters of concern and policy-making, developing these health and market agendas further by promoting fit lifestyles according to ‘active ageing’ agendas, producing interesting governmental subdivisions (‘young old’, ‘old old’, ‘third age’ or ‘fourth age’) having both embodied and economic effects (Lassen and Moreira 2014).

The word polycrisis has recently been repopularised to describe the interaction of multiple crises at once. From the war in Ukraine to the climate crisis, these multiple crises are not only causing disappointment and confusion but also leading many to question their identity, their place in society and even society itself. At a time of uncertainty caused by overlapping and interacting crises, escape through mobility can appear as the only rational response. This special issue explores how escape is taking place at different spatial and temporal scales across Europe, and while motivations vary, the desire for new ways of living, for survival and for an identity may mean exiting one's comfort zone and participating in new communities. Driven by countercultural imaginaries and values, this special issue explores projects and communities which suggest alternatives to the manifest and embodied uncertainties caused by polycrisis and the marketplace of everyday life.

Can long-distance hiking present an alternative to the mechanisation, uncertainty and alienation of contemporary European life? Through interviews with hikers on the Via Alpina in the European Alps, we explore this question, applying Ning Wang's insights on tourism as exemplifying the ambivalence of modernity. Modern technologies increase communications, mobility and efficiency, while enabling leisure space for tourism. Via Alpina hikers do not ‘opt out’ of the social frameworks governed by Logos modernity but undertake solitary walking in search of an intrapersonal existential authenticity by reconnecting with nature, the body and an alternative experience of time. The Logos-directed elements of planning and navigating through digital devices are limited to the essential required to progress on the path and enable them to inhabit smooth time, free of the restrictive syncopations of work schedules and pressing obligations. Thus, hikers harness Logos modernity to enhance the Eros space of sensuality and emotional release. Through knowledge learned along the way, hikers strive for a positive, responsible freedom that broadens their sense of being in the world.

The article explores ‘off the grid’ representations in social media, with a focus on how these representations reproduce imaginaries of nature, place and gender. The analysis material consists of content produced by three influencers who left urban life for a simpler lifestyle in northern Sweden. We find that the social media content draws on numerous ideals: neoliberal ideals on digital entrepreneurship, anti-capitalist ideals on ‘escaping’ modern consumerist society and romantic (sometimes colonial) envisioning of northern Sweden as wild and empty land. We conclude that the ‘off grid’ social media representations and the various ideals they incorporate should be understood as expressions of a contemporary era of neoliberal romanticism: a trend that exists both online and offline.

As an early piece of digital ethnographic work, this article aims to convey an ambience for full-time vanlifers who are supposedly ‘living the dream’ in Europe. A reflection of the causes and developments of the #vanlife movement sets the foundation for discussing overregulation of restrictions on vanlifers in England, which is juxtaposed to the joy of thriving nomadically in continental Europe. The resulting discussions reveal that for some members of the vanlife community, this alternative lifestyle is embraced to attain their own sense of personal autonomy, ontological security and overall higher quality of life in a neoliberal late-stage capitalistic society that has left far too many people alienated and struggling to survive the nightmare of economic uncertainty.

Itinerant boat dwellers (boaters) in London and South East England speak about many internal divisions within the community. ‘Dirty boaters’ are contrasted with ‘shiny boaters’; ‘yuppies’ and ‘hipsters’ are contrasted ‘oldtimers,’ ‘crusties’ or ‘pirates’. For many, be they boaters, outsiders or other writers, these distinctions have something to do with class background. However, my ethnographic research with the boaters shows that, although class background can be thought to be a marker of how hard or easy one may find it to become a boater, the internal divisions that are found on the waterways have more to do with processes of socialisation. What matter (and what divide boaters) are the willingness and ability, or lack therein, to join a community of practice on the waterways and to learn the skills and ethics that are of value to boaters in their community of mutual support.

The significance of the state of the water of the sacred Lake Baikal in Buryat Indigenous society on Olkhon Island is so great that it is accompanied by a series of canons. These are rooted in certain folk narratives that define the lake as the giver of life, saviour, and maker of meanings. However, environmental narratives produced by the Russian media regarding ecological challenges, influenced by the government's shaky environmental policies, have presented Baikal as shifting from being a centre of good to a centre of evil. This image has resulted in a transformation of the normative universe among Olkhon's Buryats, leaving them with a semantic change in their religious life and diminishing the sense of responsibility in Buryat society towards the lake.

Pnina Werbner was a British social anthropologist, a brilliant thinker and an engaged intellectual renowned for her prolific contributions to debates on Sufi Islam, multiculturalism and diaspora, as well as urban and legal anthropology. In January 2023, she died unexpectedly during a holiday with her husband, the anthropologist Richard Werbner.

Jean-Paul Baldacchino and Jon P. Mitchell (eds.) (2022), Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times (New York: Berghahn Books), 204 pp., £99, ISBN: 978-1-80073-611-5

David Zeitlyn (2022), An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts (New York: Berghahn Books), 142 pp., £72, ISBN: 978-1-80073-470-8

Lea Hagmann (2022), Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-Copia (London: Routledge), 238 pp., £130, ISBN: 978-0-367-69141-7