Pohjoismaisen hallintatavan vaaralliset heikkoudet

Darius Ornston kritisoi pohjoismaista poliittis-taloudellista hallintotapaa ja esittää sen sisältävän jopa ”vaarallisia” piirteitä. Ornstonin teos Good Governance Gone Bad: How Nordic Adaptability Leads to Excess (2018) antaa ajattelemisen aihetta esimerkiksi poliittisille ja taloudellisille päättäjille. Kirja-arvio on alunperin ilmestynyt American Journal of Sociology -lehdessä, 2020 vol 25(5). Tämä teksti on muokattu, suomenkielinen versio alkuperäisestä. nonPeerReviewed

Political community resilience in declining rural areas in Finland

Abstract In this article, we study how declining rural communities build political resilience in Finland. Community resilience is an adaptive process through which rural communities try to maintain their viability in changed circumstances. This process does not entail a submissive attitude, but rather active agency and an effort to influence matters concerning the community’s well-being. We focus on the political dimension of resilience by identifying different local tactics that rural communities adopt to promote their own development following municipal mergers. We classify these tactics into three categories: cooperation, conflict and community-led development. The significant difference…

Becoming Politically Active: Life Courses and the Formation of Capitals among Young People of Migrant Origin in Finland

This article focuses on the life courses of young people of migrant origin who are active in civic and political fields in Finland. The aim is to analyse, from the micro-level life course perspective, the issues in their lives that have helped them to become active. The article draws on empirical data collected using participatory methods. Four young people of migrant origin participated in the research process and contributed to the data analysis. The theoretical framework consists of Bourdieusian concepts of political habitus and emotional, cultural and social capital. The article shows that participants gained strong emotional capital during their childhood, which laid the groundwork for…

”Ja Rosatom on varmasti erittäin hyvä toimija myös Fennovoimalle” : kuinka kansanedustajat perustelivat venäläistä ydinvoimakytköstä

Venäjä miehitti Krimin niemimaan keväällä 2014. Kärjistyneestä geopoliittisesta tilanteesta huolimatta eduskunta hyväksyi samana vuonna Fennovoiman ydinvoimalahankkeen, jossa keskeisessä roolissa oli venäläinen valtionyhtiö Rosatom. nonPeerReviewed

Loneliness and interaction ritual theory: failed interaction chains among Finnish university students

This article relates loneliness to interaction ritual theory, understanding loneliness in terms of problematic microinteractional dynamics. The advantage of interaction ritual theory is that it extends our understanding of the issue of the psychologised self and related questions such as how loneliness feels or is experienced. Loneliness is here defined as a response to interaction representing relational understanding of emotions. Interaction ritual theory is interested in the emotional consequences that individuals experience from successful or unsuccessful interaction rituals. Loneliness in this view represents a state in which the individual is denied access to rewarding aspects of inte…

Staying inside : social withdrawal of the young, Finnish ‘Hikikomori’

This article explores socially withdrawn young Finnish people on an Internet forum who identify with the Japanese hikikomori phenomenon. We aim to overcome the dualism between sociology and psychology found in earlier research by referring to Pierre Bourdieu, who provides insights into how individual choices are constructed in accordance with wider social settings. We focus on the individual level and everyday choices, but we suggest that psychological factors (anxiety, depression) can be seen as properties of social relations rather than as individual states of mind, as young adults have unequal access to valued resources. We scrutinise young people’s specific reasoning related to the soci…

Bourdieu and Social Movements: Considering Identity Movements in terms of Field, Capital and Habitus

This article examines the explanatory capacity of Pierre Bourdieu's work in relation to social movements and, in particular, identity movements. It aims to provide a theoretical framework drawing on Bourdieu's central concepts of field, capital and habitus. These concepts are viewed as providing a theoretical toolkit that can be applied to convincingly explain aspects of social movements that social movement theories, such as political process theory, resource mobilization theory and framing, acknowledge, but are not able to explain within a single theoretical framework. Identity movements are approached here in a way that relates them to the position agents/movements occupy in social space…

Workers’ and volunteers’ ideas about the benefits of young people’s cultural participation : a critical capital-based approach

This article deals with non-profit sector and voluntary workers’ understandings of the benefits of young people’s participation in cultural and leisure projects in Central Finland. Active participation is highlighted on a policy level as a solution to social inequality, exclusion, and marginalisation among young people. The article focuses on the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of participation by exploring the advantages that cultural projects bring to young people. The article theorises these dimensions by drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of capital to provide a more critical account of the participation paradigm. Fifteen workers and volunteers on cultural projects were …

Nuorten yhteiskunnallinen osallistaminen kulttuuri- ja vapaa-ajan toiminnan kautta

Nuorten osallistumisen ja osallisuuden lisäämisestä on tullut tärkeä yhteiskunnallinen tavoite, jota yritetään edistää erilaisten ohjelmien ja projektien kautta. Tarkastelemme artikkelissa osallistamista tutkimalla nuorille vuosina 2017­–2018 suunnattua kulttuuri- ja vapaa-ajan toimintaa Keski-Suomessa. Tutkimme, miten kulttuuriin liittyvällä toiminnalla pyritään edistämään nuorten laajempaa yhteiskunnallista osallistumista ja osallisuutta. Olemme haastatelleet 15 projekteissa työskentelevää tai vapaaehtoisena toimivaa henkilöä, ja analysoineet aineistoa osallistumisen kulttuurisen, sosiaalisen, taloudellisen ja poliittisen ulottuvuuden kautta. Tulosten mukaan nuorten osallistumista tutkitt…

The formation of long-term unemployed young adults’ emotional capital during childhood : a Bourdieusian approach to emotional harm

This article focuses on the long-term formation of unemployed young adults’ emotional capital and the development of emotional dispositions during childhood. We use Bourdieu’s work and the concept of emotional capital to draw attention to the emotional dynamics of family and peer relations during childhood. Emotional capital is related to parents’ emotional involvement and investment in the child’s well-being, and it encompasses emotional skills and assets that children can attain from family relations. The concept of emotional capital allows an examination of the child’s family and close environment, which shape the development of actors’ emotional inclinations and tendencies. Our data con…

Talous feministisen kritiikin keskiössä

Johanna Kantola, Paula Koskinen Sandberg & Hanna Ylöstalo (toim.): Tasa-arvopolitiikan suunnanmuutoksia: talouskriisistä tasa-arvon kriiseihin. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2020, 328 s. I S B N : 978-952-345-056-1

Planetary well-being

Tensions between the well-being of present humans, future humans, and nonhuman nature manifest in social protests and political and academic debates over the future of Earth. The increasing consumption of natural resources no longer increases, let alone equalizes, human well-being, but has led to the current ecological crisis and harms both human and nonhuman well-being. While the crisis has been acknowledged, the existing conceptual frameworks are in some respects ill-equipped to address the crisis in a way that would link the resolving of the crisis with the pivotal aim of promoting equal well-being. The shortcomings of the existing concepts in this respect relate to anthropocentric norma…

Planetary well-being

Tensions between the well-being of present humans, future humans, and nonhuman nature manifest in social protests and political and academic debates over the future of Earth. The increasing consumption of natural resources no longer increases, let alone equalises, human well-being, but has led to the current ecological crisis and harms both human and nonhuman well-being. While the crisis has been acknowledged, the existing conceptual frameworks are in some respects ill-equipped to address the crisis in a way that would link the resolving of the crisis with the pivotal aim of promoting equal well-being. The shortcomings of the existing concepts in this respect relate to anthropocentric norma…

The formation of feed-in tariffs and the emergence of wind power in Finnish routine corporatism: favoring the economics of large-scale energy production

We explore the role and influence of the Finnish energy elite’s inner circle in the process of transition to renewable energy. Finland is a corporatist country where economic interest groups have p...

Promoting neoliberal ideology in Finnish rural community development : the creation of new moral actors

Today’s political ambitions are based on the neoliberal aspiration to diminish the state’s role and responsibilities, and to transfer those responsibilities to local communities and individuals in ways that idealise those communities, promising to ‘give power to the people’. Instead of highlighting individualism, neoliberalism now celebrates communities and participation. This article deals with the effects of this ideology with regard to Finnish rural policy objectives. Drawing on Finnish village action programmes as data, we argue that these ideological views aim to transform individuals and create new moral actors. Our research indicates that Finland’s rural policy objectives invoke acto…

Negative emotional consequences of labour market activation policies for long-term unemployed young adults in Finland

PurposeThis article deals with the negative emotional consequences of active labour market policies (ALMPs) for long-term unemployed young adults in Finland. Although such policies may have positive effects, an exploration of their negative impacts reveals their problematic side effects. We explore various aspects of ALMP interventions that prevent individuals from gaining such positive outcomes and thus reduce their motivation to invest in the policies.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the affect theory of social exchange, we understand that individuals seek positive rewards from social interactions. Our data is taken from life course interviews with unemployed people aged 20–31 in cen…

Book Review: Good Governance Gone Bad : How Nordic Adaptability Leads to Excess. By Darius Ornston.

Social movements and Bourdieu : class, embodiment and the politics of identity