Empowerment and disempowerment in Finland 1550–1980
Project leader: Professor Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen
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.
The project focuses on three interrelated themes on power in history. 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. Professor Taina Syrjämaa and PhD 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. Phil. Mag. Outi Nieminen and Phil. Lic. Henri Terho are primarily addressing cultural hegemonies in their respective studies on Finnish cinema and theatre in the 20th Century. 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.
Contact: Professor Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, kirvai@utu.fi, + 358 2 333 5223.