Helsinki Research Group for Political Sociology (HEPO)

Meeting with the ’Moderns’ University of Helsinki

15 March 2011

HEPO basics

• Founded / institutionalized by Risto Alapuro, Markku Lonkila, Eeva Luhtakallio and Tuomas Ylä-Anttila

• Studies of political processes , practices and disputes; social movements & associations, activism, civil society, democratization, public sphere…

• Global scope, comparative perspective• Particularly strong knowledge of French and

Russian societies

More info on HEPO

• HEPO blog: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/politicalsociology/

• HEPO in Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=153211418045316

HEPO teaching

• Seminar for doctoral students• Series of lectures by HEPO members and

colleagues: ’Politics on the move’, http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/spaces/move.htm

• Workshop course on qualitative methods by Eeva Luhtakallio

• Supervision of doctoral and masters’ theses

HEPO post-doc researchers

• Akhlaq Ahmad*• Risto Alapuro*• Markku Lonkila*• Eeva Luhtakallio*• Suvi Salmenniemi: Self-help and

Conceptions of a ‘Good Life’ in Finland and Russia

• Tuomas Ylä-Anttila*

Doctoral students affiliated with HEPO

• Karin Creutz-Kämppi*• Leonardo Custodio: Community media,

democratic theory and participation• Veikko Eranti*• Peter Holley*• Suvi Huikuri*

Doctoral students affiliated with HEPO (cont)

• Zeinab Karimi*• Meri Kulmala: Womens’ activism in Russian

Carelia• Mari Kuukkanen: Means and ends of anarchist

politics in Finland • Sofia Laine*• Samu Lindström*

Doctoral students affiliated with HEPO (cont)

• Eveliina Louhivuori* • Laura Lyytikäinen: Youth civic activism and

protest movements in Moscow. • Elina Mikola*• Freek van der Vet: Russian civil society and

access to the European court of human rights• Minna Viuhko: The organisation of human

trafficking

Some examples of HEPO masters’ theses

• Veikko Eranti: Variations of NIMBY. Common good and self-interest in the opinions of the inhabitants of Etelä-Haaga

• Suvi Huikuri: Dispute on climate: Justifications presented by the global North and South in the conferences on climate change. (Kiista ilmastosta: pohjoisen ja etelän esittämät oikeutukset uutta ilmastosopimusta rakentavien kokousten julkisissa keskusteluissa).

• Samu Lindström: Gate crashers’ demonstrations (Kuokkavieras –mielenosoitukset)

• Kaisa Luhtala: Civic activism in the internet-era. The arrival of Carrot mob in Finland (Kansalaisaktivismi internet -aikana. Porkkanamafian tulo Suomeen)

• Hanne Hämäläinen: Visuaalinen vastademokratia valta- ja vastajulkisuudessa

Recent dissertations by HEPO

• Eeva Luhtakallio: Local Politicizations - A Comparison of Finns and French Practicing Democracy" (Politisaation paikat. Tutkimus suomalaisista ja ranskalaisista demokratian käytännöistä)

• Tuomas Ylä-Anttila: Politiikan paluu - Globalisaatioliike ja julkisuus (The Return of Politics – The Global Justice Movement and the Public Sphere)

HEPO is full of HOPE!

Youth political participation in transnational agoras

Sofia LainePhD Candidate,

Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki

Research setting

Young peoples’ political participation in

transnational political meetings

Mostly 17-30-years-old Freedom=

diversity of the forms of political actions = room for creativityDifferent form of knowledge takes place in different forms of political participation

Participants come form

several different countries.

Transnational themes.

World Social Forums(2006 Bamako, 2007 Nairobi and 2009 Belém),

European Social Forum (2008 Malmö),Global Young Greens Foundin Conference (2007

Nairobi), EU Presidency Youth Event (2007 Hyvinkää)

Articles and timetable1. Laine, Sofia & Gretschel, Anu (2009) Whose arena the EU youth policy is?

Young participants’ involvement and influence in EU youth policy from their own points of view: Case of EU Presidency Youth Event in Hyvinkää, Finland. Young 17(2), pp. 191–215.

2. Laine, Sofia (2009) Contestatory Performative Acts in the Transnational Political Meetings. Societies Without Borders 4(3), pp. 398–429.

3. Laine, Sofia (forthcoming, fall 2011) Grounded globalizations of transnational social movement. Ethnographic Analysis on Free Hugs Campaign at the World Social Forum Belém 2009. Ephemera – theory and politics in organization

4. Laine, Sofia (under construction) Methodological cosmopolitanism. In Haverinen, Ahponen and Harinen (eds.) Methodological nationalism – transnational reality: crossing civic cultural borderlines.

• Preliminary examination of the dissertation June– September. Corrections in October.

• Submitting to Faculty: November-December• Defense: January-February 2012

Samu Lindström: The Gatecrasher movement and the Finnish political culture

• the gatecrasher demonstrations (arranged during 1996–2007 on 6th of December, the Finnish national day) provoked a wide public debate because of the radical repertoires of action that were used

 • the protest represented new kind of activism in the Finnish perspective

owing to its organisational basis, forms of action and goals

• the Finnish consensus driven tradition of avoiding conflicts is challenged by the newest radicalism, but to what extent?

• the transformation of the gatecrasher publicity: after the favourable phase the gatecrashers were represented as threatening, then trivial and finally as an institutionally conquered phenomenon without any political significance

• under scrutiny: the internal publicity of the gatecrasher movement reached through archived web discussions and other alternative media

Climate Change and Civil Society (CLIC)

Interviews + analysis of websites of environmental organizations

Their justifications, views on the public debate and global networking

From global justice to climate justice?

Newspapers in Finland, France, India, California, South Africa, Malawi

UN meetings 2005 - 2011

Public Justifications Analysis: Moral dispute on climate (Ecology, Market, Civic…

www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto

The project title and its content are a work in progress...

all suggestions for improvement are most welcome!

• Aim: To understand how migrants construct an image of a Finnish ‘nation’ and how they position themselves in relation to an imagined Finnish ‘national community’. (Anderson 1991; Billig 1995)

• I understand the ‘nation’ (like ethnicity and ‘race’) as a basic unit of social classification. (Brubaker, Loveman & Stamotov 2004)• This approach does not uphold (methodological) nationalism’s belief that the social world is “‘naturally’ divided into [national] communities” (Billig 1995: 63).

• Rather the ‘nation’ is comprehend as a cognitive category – the ‘nation’ is “fundamentally not a thing in the world, but a perspective on the world.” (Brubaker, Loveman & Stamotov 2004: 32. See also DiMaggio 1997)

• The following research questions guide my research:• How is the Finnish ‘nation’ constructed by those

studied?• And how do those studied position themselves in

relation to a perceived Finnish ‘national

community’?• Two ethnographic case studies:

1. Immigrant ‘activists’ in Finland – those active in immigrant NGOs and/or social networks.

2. Finnish expatriates in the UK – within ‘Finnish’ social networks/cultural institutions.

• Dual Migrant Perspective: immigrant ‘activists’ in Finland and Finnish expatriates abroad.

• Both ‘groups’ studied present a challenge to homogeneous, territorially bound imaging of the Finnish nation-state.

• The first represents the ‘immigrant Other’ within the sovereign borders of the Finnish state, whilst the second symbolizes an extension of the ‘national community’ beyond the state’s territorial limits.

• Current status: I am now beginning to collect fieldwork data, tentatively entering the field and continuing to locate/contact potential participants in Finland.

DOCTORAL STUDENTDepartment of Social Research (Sociology)/CEREN, Swedish School of Social Science

Peter HolleyTHE NATION (RE)IMAGINED:

National Belonging amongst Immigrant ‘Activists’in Finland and Finnish Expatriates in the UK

Engagement in Political Action: Comparing Climate Activism in Finland, France, and the USEeva Luhtakallio

• How do climate issues translate into local civic practices? What kind of engagements do these practices articulate? What do these practicestell about the dynamics of local, national, and global climate politics?

• Bicycle politics in three cities: Helsinki, Los Angeles, Paris

• Critical mass demonstrations, transport activism, environmentallife style groups… And local questions of climate justice?

Markku Lonkila

STUDY INTERESTS Russian civil society

in a comparative perspective

Cultural, social and moral foundations of Russian economy

Internet and social media in civic and political activism

THE BIG QUESTIONS What kind of socio-political system

is about to form in present-day Russia?

How can associations, social movements and activism contribute to Russian democratization?

CONCRETE STUDIES The role of social network sites in

Russian and Finnish activism Urban activism in Helsinki and St.

Petersburg Anti-military activism in Russia Car drivers’ associations and

movements in Russia and Finland Social networks in the Russian

market economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

”No to the street in the Kumpula valley” (Ei katua Kumpulanlaaksoon!)

”No to the new block of flats on Komendantskii Prospekt 40 in St. Petersburg”

KP40 before

KP40 after

Climate Risk Management in Urban Environment – Strategies to enhance social adaptation and resilience

• Adaptation to climate change is necessary all over the world• Urbanization is a global phenomenon -> special problems • Climate-related risks need to be taken into account in urban policy• International organizations (e.g. World Bank, IMF, UN) have

programs and recommendations – How they are taken into account at local level?

• Comparative study of metropolises (developing, industrial or both?)The idea is to.. 1) generate scientific knowledge on risk management

and adaptation methods of cities; 2) understand the impacts of climate change to cities and its inhabitants; 3) explore social responses to mitigate and adapt to CC in city level; 4) enhance the resilience of social systems; 5) contribute sustainable urbanization

HEPO/Moderns 15.3.2011 Suvi Huikuri 24

www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto

• The struggle over regional identity: “different struggles over classifications, struggles over the monopoly over power to make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate definition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake groups” (Bourdieu 1991, 221).

• A collective gets its distinct form and substance when it is mirrored against the idea of an outer collective (Schütz & Luckmann 1973). • The focus of my study is on the positions for collective

identification – on the groupness constructed and reinforced in a dichotomic relationship with the notion of Islam.

• As collectivity on a global level is distant to the everyday-life of the individual, without attachment to daily practices, it is from a sociological viewpoint interesting to look at how these conceptions of belonging are rhetorically constructed and legitimized as positions for identification.

• This assessment simultaneously shows articulations of the discursive power specific institutionalized knowledge forms possess.

• As unnoticed parts of our daily lives media representations possess a specifically powerful role as reality-constructing and reality-establishing systems; they appear in a naturalized form as taken for granted knowledge, and hence pass without being in the center of our attention (Alasuutari 1996).

• Aim: to identify the forms of belonging and the meaning production related to the concepts

representing this collectivity by analyzing media texts that cover Islam from a global perspective.

• My key research question is: who represent the We-collective when Islam is presented as the Other?• How is groupness articulated and what are the specific

concepts identified with? • How are national and supranational positions negotiated? • How are the different subject positions rhetorically signified? • How are these concepts legitimized?

• The topic is approached through comparative case-studies of three countries, by analyzing newspaper discussions in Finland, Turkey and the UK.• Research Data: Samples from Helsingin Sanomat (Finland),

The Times (UK) & Hurriyet (Hungary) 2001-2011.• Method: Rhetorical analysis (Chaïm Perelman & Lucie

Olbrechts-Tyteca 1971).• Focus on argumentation in common language – how we argue

on the basis of values, how these are legitimized and how agreement is reached through argumentation.

The first case study:The Domestication of Global News: National Coverage of the 2011 Uprising in Egypt

DOCTORAL STUDENTDepartment of Social Research (Sociology)/CEREN, Swedish School of Social Science

Karin Creutz-Kämppi

SOCIAL BOUNDARIES IN A SUPRANATIONAL CONTEXT: COLLECTIVE POSITIONING AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEANNESS IN MEDIA

DISCOURSES ON ISLAMKEY CONCEPTS: Sociology of knowledge, nationalisms, Europeanization, Islam, globalization, social

boundaries, subject positions, group consciousness, media, rhetorical analysis

Intergenerational Relationships in International Immigrant Families

Parent-Adult Child Relationships of Iranian Immigrant Families in Finland

Zeinab Karimi

Postgraduate Student

Department of Social Research (Sociology)