Peksmine ja löömine Eesti külas 1868-1911 Nursi vallakohtu protokollide näitel. Õigusetnoloogiline perspektiiv

This article aims to study the beating cases - one of the problems and conflicts in the 19th century Estonian peasant society and their transformation in time on the basis of a study of the Communal Court of Nursi materials. The article investigates the modernization process of Estonian society as exemplified in the transformation of court practice on the background of general modern legal reform. Local communal courts constituted a class-specific peasant court system in the Baltic guberniyas of the Russian Empire. These courts tried peasants for their minor offences and solved their civil disputes. The present study is based on Communal Court of Nursi records from 1868 to 1911, currently being preserved in the Estonian Historical Archives. It is requisite for the better comprehension of the topic to provide a survey of the institutional development of communal court. This task has been accomplished in the first part of the article, which contains an overview of the general peasant court system that existed on the Estonian territory and a more detailed historical account of the institutional development of communal court set in stages. The second part discusses the general problems and themes of legal anthropology. The theoretical framework is to a great extent based on Simon Roberts' social stratification scale of disputes. The court disputes from 1868-1888 are discussed on the basis of Simon Roberts' social stratification scale of disputes. I will give separate treatment to the beating cases of municipality and court officials, conflicts between the employer and the employees, and the cases between the peasants themselves. Last part of the article is devoted to the survey of the court minutes from the period after the judicial reform of 1889 (court dispute from 1883-1911). The beating incidents and fights in taverns will receive here a lengthier treatment, since the taverns had become in a way a source of social problems. It was the period of transformation in the general perception of justice by Estonians and the modern legal reform. The nature of conflicts was also changed, as smaller disputes gave way to bigger and more important economical matters. In comparison with the 1870s the court practice in Nursi had been considerably transformed by 1890s. The number of court disputes decreased and their nature was changed. The beating cases were quite frequent in the second half of the 19th century among Estonian peasants, occupying the second position after theft. Most beating cases in 1870s and 1880s (67,7%) occurred between social equals. But quite a number of cases (almost a quarter) crossed the borders of social stratification: these were the conflicts between landlords and their servants. Only two cases were found, where the peasant beat the municipality or court officials. Most of the court cases in 1890s and the first decade of 20th century occurred also between social equals - the peasants themselves. It is significant, that the cases that crossed the social stratifications had decreased considerably. Most of the beating cases occurred between the peasants: neighbors and family members, and the majority of fights took place in taverns

Mundane tourism mobilities on a watery leisurescape: canal boating in North West England

There are over 3,000 miles of navigable inland waterways in England and Wales, managed mainly by the Canal and River Trust, which promotes their use for various leisure activities. Canals have undergone a radical transformation in their use and purpose, from being important transport links in the 18th and 19th centuries, to largely being left derelict. During the 20th century, however, the canals have been transformed from an obsolete infrastructure into a modern leisurescape used by various individuals, groups and stakeholders. Concentrating on the canals of Northern England and Northern Wales, this thesis focuses on one of those groups on the canals who have not yet received sufficient academic attention, the holiday and leisure boaters. In order to research tourism, a temporary and mobile phenomenon, with the commitment necessary for an ethnographic research, this study develops a methodology, reflexive mobile ethnography that combines the mobilities approach and European ethnology, utilizing semi-structured interviews, participant observation and auto-ethnography for data collection. As no previous academic study has presented a comprehensive analysis of contemporary canal tourism as a lived and embodied experience, the present study extends our understanding of inland waterways tourism and mobilities. Theoretically, the study suggests studying tourism mobilities from the everyday life perspective – mundane tourism mobilities – and the data analysis shows that these are simultaneously material, embodied, temporal and convivial. A number of materialities have to come together in order to constitute mobile assemblages that make canal travel possible. These assemblages, such as boat-humans, move in the temporal canalscape, characterised by its specific – slow – tempo, but also engaging with the past in embodied ways. Furthermore, the canal temporalities are characterised by mundane socio-natural and socio-bodily rhythms, which are identified in the thesis through the rhythmanalysis of the leisure boating everyday life. The material and temporal practices of boating take place in the context of social interactions and their closer examination helps to redefine the boundaries of a canal boating community. This study therefore presents an analysis of the canal leisurescape where the human and non-human form various co-agencies and assemblages, experienced in embodied ways in the context of mundane tourism mobilities. The latter framework, as developed in this thesis, constitutes a theoretical contribution to mobilites studies by proposing to research tourism from the perspective of everyday life focusing on three key elements: time, place and practice. The work will therefore extend existing understanding of tourism mobilites, particularly in the ways in which they relate to embodied everyday life practices

Pacemaking and placemaking on the UK canals

This paper focuses on the complex relationship between pace and place, offering a novel lens for understanding mobility within the context of canal boating. Drawing on fieldwork on the canals in north-west England, the paper focuses on mobile placemaking practices. Canal boats act as physical and material but also ideological pacemakers, guiding the boaters towards subscribing to the idea of slow living, where certain canal-based pace-myths play an important role. Pacemaking on the canals is therefore a form of placemaking, realised through the mobility of the vessel, materialities of the infrastructure, tempos and temporalities, representations and stories about canal life as well as the bodies on board and on towpaths as canal boaters modulate and manage their experience and performance of pace. The investigation of the interplay between the slow pace, rhythms, embodied practices, canal infrastructure, and the prevalent pace-myths offers valuable insights into the ways places are shaped by the pace of mobility, thus expanding the concept of placemaking. By foregrounding pace as a key concept in mobility studies, the paper demonstrates the need for a more nuanced understanding of the temporalities associated with different modes of movement

Understanding train tourism mobilities: a practice theories perspective

By integrating mobilities research with practice theories, this paper uncovers the interdependencies between tourism, transport and mobilities that allows for a more comprehensive analysis of individual mobile practices and their connections with other mobilities and tourism practices at a destination. By analysing train travel as a performance, practice entity (materials, meanings and competencies) and practice bundle, we also bridge the structure–agency gap in transport and tourism research. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on three longdistance branch lines in Northern England, we unpack train mobilities in the tourism context to show the interconnectedness of and the competition between seemingly unrelated practices. Our findings reveal the structures and dynamics that shape rural train travel within the tourism context. Moreover, train mobility is transformed through various micro-changes that occur through tourists’ performances and changes in the practice elements, such as the presence of skilled or unskilled travellers. We furthermore show that train tourism is an interlocked system of what we have termed ‘multimodal mobility bundles’ involving the interplay and competition between different mobilities and practices and the role of governance in shaping these dynamics