What happens in Europe has made research into nationalism increasingly important
What is the history of experience, emotions, gender and nationalism like? What can it tell us about today’s nationalism and its significance to common people? This is what Reetta Eiranen studies in her research project started at Tampere University.
Reetta Eiranen, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Tampere IAS, currently conducts a project titled “Gender, Experience and Ambivalent Nationalism in Nineteenth-century Finland”. It focuses on the networks of societally and nationally active women and men.
– The aim of my project is to examine the gendered, or male-dominated nature of nationalisms, says Eiranen. – I’m especially interested in the gendered experience of nationalism and its tensions in the constructing of the self, relationships and societal activity.
A new concept of ambivalent nationalism
Ambivalent means something that is dualistic or contradictory.
– Conceptually, I explore nationalism and its genderedness through the concepts of ’personal nationalism’ and ‘national indifference’. It is my purpose to present, or at least test, the new concept of ‘ambivalent nationalism’, which tackles the complexities, conflicts and situationality of the experience of nationalism, describes Eiranen.
In recent years, researchers have paid attention to the significance of nationalism for common people. These new openings in the field of nationalism research are represented by the histories of experiences and emotions.
Digital humanities complement the spectrum of research methods
In her research, Eiranen combines with each other personal letters, organizational documents and the metadata of the letters. In text analysis, her interest lies in narrative and hermeneutical approaches to both subjective and collective experiences and sources.
Digital humanities offer new methodological possibilities for research. In the course of her project, Eiranen goes deeper into network analysis together with her collaborator, the Constellations of Correspondence (CoCo) Consortium. CoCo collects the metadata of Finnish letters from the 19th century and creates tools for its analysis.
– In addition to network analysis, the letters written by hand in the 19th century can also be examined through automatic text recognition (Handwritten Text Recognition, HTR) with Transkribus software, describes Eiranen.
– From the shaping of modern nationalisms since the 19th century, it appears that nationalisms have been more important to some than to others, says Eiranen.
– In light of the latest events in Europe, it feels increasingly important to study nationalisms and understand how nationalisms become subjectively meaningful to people.
Keywords: nationalism, history of experience, digital humanities, Tampere University, Tampere Institute for Advanced Study