Empowerment and disempowerment in Finland 1550-1980
The Empowerment and disempowerment in Finland 1550-1980 project aims to study the ubiquitous power relations of ordinary actions that often elude analysis. Our prime concern is to study less visible and more informal relationships of power, instead of focusing on overt and institutionalized forms of exerting power.
Our research group has a shared understanding of power that goes beyond a limited governmental and institutional framework and encompasses individual, negotiable and disputable factors. Thus, we have defined a research apparatus in order to assess the changing characteristics of lay power. The research setting, and especially our ambition to combine a long period in time with a joint analysis of changing power relations, has not been previously covered in Finland.
Researchers:
Professor Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen and PhD Anu Lahtinen are studying domestic hierarchies in there research on households in 16th to 18th Century Finland. Anu Lahtinen will focus on illegitimate children, servants protégées and distant relatives. Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen studies the everyday life of female servants.
Adjunct proffessor Taina Syrjämaa and Adjunct proffessor Leila Koivunen concentrate on contested Finnishness in late 19th and 20th Century Finnish history of displaying and consuming. Koivunen studies exotic exhibitions and Syrjämaa's topic is the interplay between Finnishness and foreignness in consumer culture.
M.A. Outi Hupaniittuand Phil. Lic. Henri Terho are primarily addressing cultural hegemonies in their respective studies on Finnish cinema and theatre in the 20th Century.
M.A. Laura Boxberg is studying the internationalisation of Finnish art world and its power relations in the 1950s through Finnish Venice Biennale participations.
M.A. Ulla Ijäs focuses in her thesis on a merchant widow called Marie Hackman (1776-1865), her networks and female agency.
M.A. Ilana Aalto investigates conceptions of fatherhood in the late 20th century Finland.
M.A. Heli Paalumäki is studying conceptions about the future, particularly Bertrand de Jouvenel?s ideas after the Second World War.
Together, the specific research themes open the diversity of actions for empowerment and disempowerment in Finnish history in a way in which a united analysis of the changing face of power tactics is facilitated. The research group is working in the School of History in University of Turku.