Search

This article examines a series of unsettling images from the Finnish Continuation War (1941–1944) and the memories of the war that these photographs construct for contemporary Finns. We argue that these images can be viewed through Alison Landsberg's (2004) notion of 'prosthetic memory', which underlines how visual media enable the acquisition of vivid memories of past events. The paper outlines how these long-ignored photographs narrate unexamined dimensions of World War II in ways that transform how Finns in particular remember the war. The images illustrate a neglected Finnish occupation of Soviet territories and the treatment of Russian civilians under Finnish rule. We argue that the images can provoke empathy for their experiences and therefor challenge traditional and nationalist Finnish war interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Finland, the vocational education and training (VET) qualifications lead into work. Also, active citizenship is one of its aims, and qualification enables application to tertiary study. In terms of these aims, literacies are central. In the context of competency-based VET, we analyse how a curriculum of literacy is realized during literacy lessons. The theoretical background lies on sociocultural understanding of literacies as social practices, and this article discusses the school subject of literacy representing theoretical knowledge in competency-based education. Methodologically, the paper draws from feminist ethnography, and the analysis focuses on examining language use in recurring classroom events. We analyse ethnographic data from the literacy lessons for the car mechanics and building construction programmes (2018–2020). These are programmes with an overrepresentation of male and working-class-based youth. The analysis highlights that during the lessons, the value of literacy manifested as market-oriented and work-relevant 'usefulness', and the literacy curriculum was realized as delimited to labour contexts and topics. There was an imperative of motivation for conducting literacy schoolwork which draws on stereotyped notions of students who are seen as not interested in literacy but in longing to labour. Based on this analysis, the literacy curriculum was realized as 'literacy for labour'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiential reality surrounding the Divine Liturgy, a Byzantine rite in Orthodox Christianity that has remained central to Eastern practice globally since Late Antiquity. The article draws on multi-sited ethnography in the glocal context of the Orthodox Church of Finland (OCF), a national church of minority and a site of multicultural interaction. Our analysis shows participants articulate their experiences with the Liturgy in an epistemology of interiority by which (1) they constantly, if unevenly, and agentically engage with the Liturgy in a form of individual, vernacular artistry. This interiority is (2) both sensorial and interpretative, and (3) ambivalently grounded in motifs of being "at home" and, at the same time, "on a journey." That is, participants from different backgrounds make a connection to the Liturgy both as a spiritual and a literal home, relating to different elements—Finnish, Karelian, Byzantine, and Church Slavonic—in its ritualistic aesthetics. At the same time, Liturgy emerges as a perpetual journey of new openings and glimpses, informed by past experiences and life trajectories, and participants relate to these two aspects simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how a teacher transforms from constrained and controlled to an independent yet dialogical agent. We analyse and describe the transformation of a teacher in the Finnish rural north in one school semester from a conforming teacher to a transformative teacher, examining the narrative of her personal journal and ethnographic researcher’s journal. By analysing the transformation process of one individual teacher, we identify the contexts that an individual teacher may need to consider when transforming. This paper finds that the pedagogical transformation process did not focus on learning new teaching methods and applying them in class; instead, the pedagogic transformation occurred after the teacher reflected personally and professionally and carried out small, concrete changes. The pedagogical transformation culminated in two turning points and was enabled by professional support, personal support, space, and personal emotional resources. A three-year survey reveals that such a transformation had permanent consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss how art workshops can be used to examine dimensions of belonging. We draw on our findings of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with unaccompanied refugee minors in Finland. The practical aim of the art project was to offer a platform for transcultural communication and interaction, and to support mutual understanding and solidarity among the refugee minors and Finnish pupils. The collaborative ethnographic approach gave us an opportunity to meet the young people through working together and be equally active members of the group sharing the same classroom. Theoretically we aim to enlarge the understanding of the sense of belonging and the role of the subjective agency of the unaccompanied minors, including everyday participation. We highlight the practices through which the minors can be supported in an embracing manner in their everyday lives in new host societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on embodied practices in processes of nationalization among preschool children at the age of 6. It analyses how children define themselves and others, how they characterize and frame Finnishness through embodiment. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study in two preschool classes. It is argued that nationality works in a gendered way as a source of inclusion and exclusion in children's peer relations: those children who manage to perform Finnishness by continuously proving their cultural flexibility through 'proper' embodiment are included more fluently. The analysis suggests that, particularly in the context of Finland, where cultural diversity is only recently recognized, multiculturalism as a pedagogical framework is insufficient for the promotion of equality in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autobiographies of the upper and middle classes abound with descriptions of servants who seem to have been in charge of the master's children day and night. What we usually gain is the perspective of the master's children, while servants' own accounts are few. How did they feel about their responsibility for the master's children? It was common to hire young girls to take care of infants but what did the girls themselves think of the job or the master's baby they were carrying in their arms all day long? Unlike, say, in London working-class quarters a century ago, where young girls seem to have liked being hired as nurses, the overall impression is that in Finland and Sweden girls disliked the job or at least preferred other jobs. The information we have is infrequent (ethnographic descriptions, written oral history and a few autobiographies) but consistent enough to be suggestive. It is easy to list the disadvantages of the job: it was binding, patience demanding, the responsibility may have been heavy. Yet these factors characterised child care everywhere, thus they do not explain why in some places children liked the job but in others they would rather have avoided it. In this paper young girls' experiences as hired baby nurses in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Finland and Sweden are discussed and some explanations are suggested for their liking or disliking the job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents commentaries on the article "On the Back of a Blue Elk: Recent Ethnohistorical Sources and 'Ambiguous' Stone Age Rock Art at Pyhänpää, Central Finland," by Antti Lahelma. The authors argue that the use of ethnographic analogies in the interpretation of meaning not be used uncritically in prehistoric archaeology. The reply of Lahelma on the comments is also provided.

The article presents a study of five Polish multicultural and multilingual families in Finland, and their engagement in digitally mediated family communication. Explored through an ethnographic inquiry into the in-app communication practices of Polish migrant mothers and children, the study contributes to the body of research at the intersection of new media and communication, transnational family and migration studies, and family multilingualism. Building on the concept of virtual proximity, which refers to the emotional closeness between individuals afforded by digital technologies and mobile communication, the study identifies four thematic patterns in participants' practices in digital habitats: (i) children's agency in creating family WhatsApp groups, (ii) the use of family in-app communication for language learning purposes, (iii) digital caregiving strategies and arrangements, and (iv) the use of digital photo-sharing as a form of visual co-presence. Children's and mothers' practices in digitally mediated communication differ from each other, but they lead to the formation of transnational familyhood in digital habitats. In this context, achieving virtual proximity by digital means helps to fulfil aspirations to remain a family across distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to debates about the long-term development of migration dynamics. The argument is based on a study of the transnational dynamics of the migration flows between Finland and Sweden. The two countries provide a good case for studying the long-term development of migration patterns, since there has been a full freedom of movement and the migration patterns are well documented. The article argues that the postwar labor migration from Finland to Sweden created a transnational social space that still today facilitates migration between the two countries. Although Finnish citizens dominate the migration flows in both directions, the number of Swedish migrants has steadily increased. This new pattern can be explained by the development of the transnational social space involving an increasing number of mixed families. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the current economic order, the basic duty of citizens is to find placements in the internationalising labour market. Internationalism has been a common educational objective throughout Europe. Previously associated as a feature of middle-class subjectivities and academic education, it is implemented in the agenda of vocational education as well. In this article, I analyse how vocational students in the Finnish educational context of social services and health care see their future in the presumed internationalising labour market. The analysis is based on three years’ ethnographic fieldwork in one vocational institute of social services and health care. The dataset consists of field notes, the interviews of students and teachers, and documents produced by the institution and organisations involved, and in this article five case studies are presented in order to make visible the multiple ways in which young people make sense of their placements in the global labour market. This analysis suggests that the imagined futures of the vocational students are mainly tied with the local context. However, the global labour market is involved and in some cases actively mobilised with their subject formations, and makes the negotiating between individual desires, resources, dependences and interdependences in everyday life even more complex than it used to be. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the exhibit billed as 'Puiden kansa--metsaa atsimassa' (The Treefolk--in search of the forest), an artistic and ethnological project in Finland. Project organizers; Objectives of the exhibit; Impact of the endeavor on ecology.

This main objective of this article is to present a part of the data collected in an explorat study of the use of the semantic differential for measuring social and political images. The data were collected in Finland, and, all in all, Finnish images of over twenty peoples and twenty nations were assessed. Because of the special interest of the Northern lands for the readers of Acta Sociologica, it seems worth-while reporting in some detail the images held by the Finns of themselves and of their Scandinavian neighbors. A second purpose of the study was to investigate the interrelations between two kinds of images, referred to here and subsequently as social images and political images. The former term refers to images held about a specified group of people, while the latter refers to images held about a nation as a nation, that is, as a geographical and political entity. It is commonly believed that these two aspects of national images, can, on occasion, be widely discrepant. For example, such statements as the following are not infrequently heard in the United States: "We have no quarrel with the Russian people, only with their government." Nevertheless, it was hypothesized prior to the data collection that, by and large, these two kinds of images would show a rather high degree of relationship.