IASR/NSR Open Speakers Series 2019-2020

Spring 2020 Programme

(to be finalized, subject to change)

Time: Every second Tuesday at 16:15-17:45, starting on 21 January 2020
Exception: Professor Patrik Aspers’s Speakers Series lecture will be held
on Thursday, 6 February 2020, at 17:15-18:45
Place: Tampere University, Pinni B1096, Kanslerinrinne 1, 1st fl.

Updated 9 April 2020

21.01. A Post-socialist Perspective on Emerging Audit Culture: Changing Practices and Subjectivities of School Teachers in a Russian Region
Associate Professor Nelli Piattoeva, NSR, Tampere University

This lecture presents empirical findings and theoretical discussions generated collaboratively on an international research project “Transnational Dynamics in Quality Assurance and Evaluation Politics of Basic Education in Brazil, China and Russia (BCR)” funded by the Academy of Finland in 2014-2017 and links them to ongoing scholarly debates on governance by numbers and performance metrics in the sphere of school education. Embarking on a sociology of the actual and localized ‘audit culture’, the lecture focuses on the question of How the introduction of novel quality assurance principles and measurement tools influences subjectivities and observable practices of teachers in schools. Studies on audit cultures across different sectoral and geographic contexts have emphasized their deeply political and personal consequences. This is because evaluation processes that rely on the quantification and ranking of complex qualitative phenomena make remote control possible through surveillance and access to the inner world of an organization and individuals working therein. Earlier research on the influence of expanding audits and performance management on the subjectivities of school teachers points to the damaging effects of performance-based accountability on teachers’ autonomy and professional identity, and documents a predominantly negative attitude of teachers towards accountability reforms. Scholarly accounts of post-socialist transformations show how professions, practices and personalities have been both affected by the introduction of audit cultures and, simultaneously, how enduring socialist and even pre-socialist structures and practices have helped to construct forms of resistance to and isolation from the dominance of performance metrics. In the case of the studies documented here, some teachers’ reactions, such as fabrications or formalism, appear reminiscent of responses to socialist plans and communist bureaucratic controls. Overall, the lecture points to the importance of examining actually emerging audit cultures in contexts as forming at the messy interface between subversion and submission by their subjects.

According to the tradition of pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, the social self constitutes by social interaction. After explaining this connection, the here presented contribution analyses the consequences of audio-visual mediatisation in the last decades of the 20^th century and the implications of digital mediatisation in the 21^st century for the self which is put into question by these developments. It is made obvious that there happen media-induced transformations of the self. Nevertheless, it is still of great significance for initiating creative processes and the possibility of emancipation.

Keywords: Social self, social interaction, audio-visual and digital mediatisation, the post-modern age, the oversaturated self, the culture of simulation, the virtual self, virtual transparency

Thursday, 06.02. Organizations and the Fashioning of Grown and Decided Institutions, at 17:15-18:45
Professor Patrik Aspers, University St. Gallen, Switzerland

Recently, critique has been launched the New Institutional organization theory. It is argued that this theoretical approach has forgotten about the core institution that it originally was set out to explain, organizations. This talk departures from the basis of organizational theory, defines formal organization, and relates this notion to the two forms of institutions: grown institutions and decided institutions. Decided institutions are the result of decision for others, usually backed by a formal organization. Grown institutions are the result of mutual adjustment of actors, essentially taken for granted that cannot be planned. This talk analyses the two ways institutions come about. Thereby the scope conditions of each of the two forms of institution in relation to organizational theory are spelled out. The notion of organization is central for understanding decided institutions, but not for grown institutions.

18.02. Journalism Movements and the Challenge of Polarisation
Dr Laura Ahva, IASR, Tampere University

In this talk, I will address the challenge of social polarisation from the perspective of journalism. I will discuss how the concept of polarisation is being used in the contemporary debates about the public discourse. Furthermore, what do we know about the connections between social polarisation and the media, and more specifically, journalism? This discussion brings us to the theoretical framework of social responsibility of journalism. Within this framework, there has emerged a variety of reformative approaches to journalism that carry in them the idea that journalism should better serve society by being more responsive and sensitive. In the talk, I will bring together the approaches of peace journalism, public journalism, constructive journalism, solutions journalism, slow journalism and our own proposal, conciliatory journalism. Is there a need for all these journalisms, and what do they propose? I will analyse the approaches to see what they together have to offer for the challenge that polarisation poses for journalism.

03.03. Narratives in Foreign Policy Analysis
Dr Johanna Vuorelma, IASR, Tampere University

Foreign policy analysis is a field of knowledge that is narratively constructed. Narratives are key to understanding how events in world politics that seem arbitrary become coherent and meaningful, often offering lessons in morality. There are strong narrative traditions in foreign policy analysis, which are passed on from one generation of foreign policy analysts to another with shared metaphors and beliefs. As such, foreign policy analysts are situated agents who are influenced by narrative traditions in the field but can also slowly shape them. The lecture discusses narratives in foreign policy analysis with the use of three theoretical approaches. Firstly, the aesthetic approach is about representation. Secondly, the narrative approach is concerned with the method of representation. Finally, the interpretative approach is about the relationship between representation and reality. Foreign policy analysis concerning Turkey serves as the primary case study in the lecture.

CANCELLED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS SITUATION
17.03. Brexit and Beyond? Some Challenges of Conjunctural Analysis
Professor John Clarke, Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow and Professor Emeritus, The Open University, UK

The UK’s vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016 has been a significant political and cultural moment for the UK and has potential consequences within and beyond Europe. Since the referendum in 2016, I have been attempting to develop a conjunctural analysis of the moment of Brexit, originally as an alternative to monocausal or epochal accounts of the event which identify it as a matter of populism, nationalism or working class rage, for example. A conjunctural analysis promises to pay more attention to the multiple forces, tendencies, contradictions and crises that become entangled and condensed in such formative moments. In this presentation I will explore some of these entangled dynamics and draw out two challenges that continue to preoccupy me in this process:

(1) How to think about the multiple temporalities that are in play in the moment of Brexit. These range from the immediate questions of intra-party calculations in the realm of UK politics to the longer reaches of globalization and the UK’s stuttering attempts to enter the post-colonial period).

(2) How to think about the national question transnationally. Most attempts at conjunctural analysis have treated the conjuncture as a spatially contained focus – taking place in a particular national formation. But it should be clear that ‘Britain’ is in no meaningful sense a closed space – in economic, political or cultural terms. So how does this conjuncture take place?

CANCELLED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS SITUATION
31.03. Imagi(ni)ng Democracy: European Youth Becoming Citizens by Visual Participation
Professor Eeva Luhtakallio, University of Helsinki

The current political and institutional crises render the future of European democracy uncertain. To gain deeper insights into what the current discontent may lead to, and how to address it for the good of an equal and inclusive democracy, we have to study future political actors, today’s young citizens, and examine what are the means of political action prevalent to them. The public sphere of today’s youth is increasingly dominated by visual content, and therefore the visual dimension of political participation is to be a key concern in research thereof. The current youth’s understanding of political action – building arguments, mobilizing, and participating – is likely to become firmly anchored in repertoires of visual participation. ImagiDem will explore, analyze, and conceptualize visual participation of young European citizens in order to formulate a model of democratic practices in the 2020s. ImagiDem addresses visual political participation and democratic practices among young citizens in the European context using a radical triple-strategy: it combines visual ethnography with computational big data minining and analysis, and deploys this combination to a comparative research setting. The project design includes four countries of comparison – Finland, France, Germany, and Portugal – with both an ethnographic and a computational subproject realized in each of them. Both methodological approaches – comparative online ethnography, and computational, machine learning based analysis of large sets of social media image data – are risky and hitherto scarcely explored. The theoretical challenge ImagiDem takes is to develop pragmatist theorizing of visual justification and engagements on the one hand, and visual cultural toolkits and frames, on the other. With this methodologico-theoretical toolkit, ImagiDem provides overarching analysis of the future of European democracy.

14.04. No lecture

CANCELLED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS SITUATION
28.04. Is Retirement a Crisis for Men?
Dr Hanna Ojala, IASR, Tampere University

Because paid labour and its by-products (e.g., status, purpose, income, social ties) are taken to be central to manhood, scholarly and popular discourses have characterized retirement as presenting a “crisis of masculinity”. Popular press versions of crises for masculinity persist in the marketing of medicine, exercise, social events, financial advice, and counseling. The assumption made in such retirement planning is not merely that one needs to engage in financial preparation but also how one thinks about and plots postretirement activities and behaviours.

In this lecture, I will focus on retirement as a gendered and class-based transition. Based on interviews from a qualitative longitudinal study on men’s ageing (MANage study), I explore how middle-age and older men in different class positions interpret their forthcoming or present lives in retirement. Do men’s talk about their expectations regarding retirement reflect the crisis discourse? Do men’s experiences reflect that discourse? Does class shape their experiences with the crisis discourse and adjustment to retirement? How expectations and experiences are changing over time and one’s own ageing?

The lecture aims to show how men’s perceptions of retirement reflect an ageing society, such as changes in labour market, pension system reforms and extending working careers, ageism, discourses and practices of successful ageing, and paradigm of “never-ageing masculinities”.

CANCELLED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS SITUATION
12.05. Family, Migration and the State: Racialized Hierarchies of Controlling and Representing Cross-border Intimacies
Dr Saara Pellander, IASR, Tampere University

(abstract forthcoming)

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The Speakers Series is a series of Studia Generalia Lectures in the Study of Society organized weekly by Tampere University Institute for Advanced Social Research (IASR) in cooperation with the New Social Research Programme (NSR). The lectures are given by the Research Fellows as well as the distinguished guests of the IASR and the NSR. For the programme, please check the IASR website https://research.tuni.fi/iasr/event/iasr-nsr-speakers-series-fall-2019/. Most doctoral students can also get 2 ECTS for attending a minimum of six IASR Lectures, altogether 6 ECTS at the maximum. These 2 ECTS for attending 6 lectures can be earned during two successive terms.
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IASR/NSR Open Speakers Series Lectures, Autumn 2019

Programme

Updated 20 November 2019

Time: On Tuesdays at 16:15-17:45
Exception: On Tuesday, 22 October, at 14.15-15.45
Place: Tampere University, Pinni B, Kanslerinrinne 1, 1st fl.
NB! Varying lecture halls marked in the programme

17.9. Mediatization and the Transformation of the Self, Pinni B 1096
Professor Rainer Winter, Alpen Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria

Keywords: Social self, social interaction, audio-visual and digital mediatisation, the post-modern age, the oversaturated self, the culture of simulation, the virtual self, virtual transparency

1.10. Entanglement of Humanitarianism with Colonialism and Orientalism, Pinni B 1096 (rescheduled from 29.10.)
Professor Meyda Yeğenoğlu, IASR, Tampere University

This lecture examines numerous texts written during the period of Armenian genocide and its aftermath by officials, politicians, ambassadors, relief workers, missionaries and voluntary workers to unpack how the newly emerging quasi-scientific, evidence-based and technocratic discourse of humanitarianism function as one of the hegemonic narratives in the epistemic field of Armenian genocide. They impose a certain way of speaking about the victim, sufferer, orphan and race, religion, civilization, Christianity and Islam. The enhanced political, diplomatic, missionary and philanthropic interests were instrumental in transforming the Armenian issue into a knowable entity/object, predominantly treated as an issue of minorities living outside the borders of Europe. Representation of Armenia as the origin and cradle of civilization functioned as a prism through which issues that pertain to the Ottoman Empire, Islam and the problems Christian minorities experience under Muslim rule were raised. The humanitarian discourse and practices of the period have created new forms of knowledge that were radically different from the religiously motivated vernacular of the missionaries. It was no longer sentimental, but technocratic, documentary via photographs and eye-witness accounts. This quasi-scientific, ethnographic and institutionalized narratives established a particular form of representation and common tropes that cut across all these texts in addressing the issue of minority rights, civilization, progress, customs and ways of life of different racial, religious and cultural groups. The lecture aims to unpack the ideologies and categories that operate in the narratives of humanitarianism as expressed in the apparitions of universal humanitarian ideals, and show how these texts are tinted and conditioned by European imperial concerns and Orientalist imaginaries.

15.10. What does ‘decolonization’ mean to you? A farewell (bomb) letter, Pinni B 1096
Dr Leonardo da Costa Custódio, IASR, Tampere University

Decolonization seems to have become a buzzword in multiple disciplines in Finland and abroad. However, the debate about what it means in relation to individual, collective, institutional and structural changes in academia remains under-discussed. Inspired by Tuck and Yang’s article “Decolonization is not a metaphor” (2012), Custódio – descendent of enslaved people in a former Portuguese colony – reflects on his own relationship with coloniality and what “to decolonize” means in his own scholarly trajectory. The goal of the talk is to provoke the audience to reflect about their own epistemological choices and power positions in the unequal and hierarchical university system.”

22.10. Women Leaders in Finnish Universities: Navigating Neoliberalism, Narrating Neuroliberalism, and Nurturing New Imaginaries, Pinni B 1096, NB! at 14:15-15:45
Professor Louise Morley, University of Sussex in the UK

Louise Morley and Rebecca Lund

While some women are flourishing as leaders in the global academy, others are subjecting leadership to critical scrutiny and disqualifying it as an unattractive career option involving compliance with the political economy of neoliberalism that often conflicts with feminist values and epistemologies. Leadership, for many feminists, implies epistemic splitting, frictions, and limited subject positions. In a context where welfare has slipped into wellbeing, neuroliberalism, or the governing through affect can be a dominant modus operandi. Feminist change interventions can be restricted to the affective, rather than the structural – mentoring, soothing and mediating the toxic effects of competitive individualism and performance measurement. We ask what ways of knowing can allow us to think differently about gender and leadership, and what circulation of affects, shapes women´s leadership priorities, practices and identities? What possibilities are emerging from the assemblages and relational potential of policy interventions, global speaking back to patriarchal power, the revisioning of gender, and the inclusion of women in higher education leadership. This paper is based on 10 interviews with women university leaders in five universities in Finland- a Nordic country with a sophisticated policy architecture for gender equality. Theoretically, the study intersects feminist affect notions, gender performativity, neoliberalism and neuroliberalism. Areas of affective intensity that participants reported included: gendered authority, financialised performance cultures, conflict and unpopular decision-making, precarity, and ageism. We conclude that while there is substantial evidence of gender inequalities in higher education, and problematic restrictive gender binary categories, more attention should be paid to imagining and leading post-gender universities. The politics of representation i.e. counting more women into neoliberal universities, are not necessarily a counternormative force and should be replaced with a politics of vision, and indeed, of hope.

29.10. Three Remarks on Populism: Sovereignty, Class, Figure, Pinni B 1100
Professor Mahmut Mutman, IASR, Tampere University

“Change the object itself” said Roland Barthes once. These three remarks are meant to change the object called “populism” by looking at other things: sovereignty, class, figure. First, I will discuss the concepts of sovereignty and political theology. Unfolding Foucault’s observation that “we have not cut off the king’s head in political theory yet”, I will underline the discontinuities and continuities between royal (or divine) and democratic (or national) sovereignty. I will draw on both Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and Derrida’s deconstruction of sovereignty. This discussion will bring me to the question “who are the people?”, and to the second remark on class. I will argue that “populism” has to do with class as a dynamic group formation in modern capitalist society. More specifically, it is an effect of the opening up or narrowing down of the paths of upward/downward mobility due to deregulation, unemployment, financialisation, and mobility of capital. The class dynamic operates in different ways in central and peripheral formations, leading to different political articulations around ethnicity, race and religion. Third remark is about the difficult concept of “figure,” which operates on linguistic as well as visual and visceral registers. This has to do with the figure of the other, the immigrant, the criminal or the terrorist as well as the figure of the leader. In conclusion, I will suggest that, rather than hastily synthesizing these uneven dimensions, we work along multiple lines of inquiry.

12.11. What do refugee background students want us to know about their school lives? ‘Zooming in’ on the practice architectures of a multicultural school in Australia, Pinni B 1100
Dr Mervi Kaukko, IASR, Tampere University

What happens in multicultural schools during moments which children choose as significant? Why are those moments significant? Does it matter that they were chosen by students from refugee backgrounds? In this lecture, I present a study in which young (5-8 years of age) children from a range of “refugee-like backgrounds” (UNHCR 2019) in an Australian primary school helped me answer these questions. The children used micro cameras (GoPro) to document the ebb and flow of their everyday school lives and identified moments when they felt happy or ‘successful’. Perhaps not surprisingly, much of these moments included play.

I present three types of play practices, namely play as building, play as bonding and play as negotiating, and discuss their possible role in supporting newly arrived children’s settlement in a new country. The video data showing these types of play was analysed through a practice lens: ‘zooming in’ to identify at granular level the distinctive sayings (talk), doings (actions) and relatings (relationships) of children involved in these practices, and ‘zooming out’ to see the extra-individual arrangements that hold these practices in place. This is crucial for practices are not solely products of the experience and intentions of individual people. Instead, all practices are rendered possible by the particular cultural-discursive arrangements (in language), material-economic arrangements (in work and activities), and social-political arrangements (in solidarity and power, inclusion and exclusion) found in their particular sites.

The lecture will include some examples of child-collected video data and my initial interpretation of what matters for refugee background children in their everyday school lives, and why. Furthermore, I discuss how the child’s experiences, occurring practices and broader practice architectures of schools seem to be nested with one another. The findings will disrupt a common misunderstanding of refugee children’s education as full of struggle and challenge. Instead, the data shows a group of resourceful and skillful students engaged in nuanced and complicated projects of child-led play.

26.11. A Post-socialist Perspective on Emerging Audit Culture: Changing Practices and Subjectivities of School Teachers in a Russian Region, Pinni B 1100, CANCELLED – RESCHEDULED FOR JANUARY 2020
Associate Professor Nelli Piattoeva, NSR, Tampere University

10.12. “Poor and primitive, but honest and truthful” – Overseas Famine Aid to Finland, 1856-68, Pinni B 1096
Dr Andrew Newby, IASR, Tampere University

As an “interface periphery” between Europe and the Russian Empire, Finland’s geopolitical position in the nineteenth century problematises binary notions of core and periphery in Europe. Moreover, way in which the Finnish people were constructed by outsiders (xenostereotypes) was remarkable flexible depending upon circumstances. Finland suffered repeated famines during the nineteenth century, most notably the calamitous “Great Hunger Years” of the 1860s, which culminated with the loss of approximately 10% of the population in 1866-68. This presentation will analyse aid that came to Finland from around Europe during the crisis period of 1856-68. It will pay particular attention to (i) the ways in which Finns were constructed as worthy (“deserving”) receipients of such charity; and (ii) the impact that the prevailing international geopolitical situation had on fundraising rhetoric and practice.

Earlier Lecture Series

2018-2019
2017-2018
2016-2017
2015-2016
2014-2015 (in English)
2013-2014 (in Finnish and English)
2012-2013 ( in Finnish)
2011-2012 (in Finnish)
2010-2011 (in Finnish)
2009-2010 (in Finnish)