Tampere Group for Sociology of Culture co-founder Dr Riie Heikkilä will deliver an INEQ Book Talk at the University of Helsinki on 15 April. The title of her talk is Reading and inequality in contemporary Finland. The event will be held both online and onsite at Unioninkatu 37, 1066 (Tiedekuntasali).
The description of the talk goes as follows:
Reading books is a cultural practice in decline. It is increasingly skewed towards the educated middle classes and towards women, and each young generation reads less books. Especially in a highly egalitarian society such as Finland, it is an unresolved question why and how some groups drop out of readership and why reading yields benefits to some while feeling symbolically repulsive to others. The talk will be based on my recent book Miksi lakkasimme lukemasta? Sosiologinen tulkinta lukemisen muutoksesta (Gaudeamus 2024). It shows, in the light of both longitudinal nationally representative quantitative data and rich qualitative data with people from unprivileged backgrounds, that reading is deeply linked to inequality. It can be understood as related to cultural capital, the mechanism which according to Pierre Bourdieu’s famous formulation maintains and reproduces cultural hierarchies, symbolic exclusions, and inequalities between social classes.
More info and free registration by Friday 11 April here: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/ineq-helsinki-inequality-initiative/riie-heikkila-reading-and-inequality-contemporary-finland