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The Centre for Sociology of Democracy studies democracy in modern societies. Our projects deal with democracy from different perspectives and with different methods.

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Recent News & Blog Posts

Snap-along ethnography: Studying visual politicization in the social media age

In their article, Luhtakallio and Meriluoto argue that two significant shifts, namely, the blurring of lives offline and online and the increasing significance of the visual character of these lives, pose new challenges to social science research methods.

Nuorten ääni ravintola-alalla vallitsevista ongelmista on syytä ottaa vakavasti

Julkisuuteen noussut kohu on keskittynyt pääasiassa yhden suuren ketjuravintolan toimintakulttuuriin, mutta Lotta Junnilaisen ja Lotta Haikkolan haastatteluiden perusteella ongelmat eivät koske yksittäistä pikaruokaketjua, vaan ravintola-alaa laajemminkin.

Kahdeksan kuplan Suomi – yhteiskunnan muutosten syvät tarinat

Kahdeksan kuplan Suomi kuvaa talouden murrosten silmässä elävien ihmisten kokemuksia itsestään ja yhteiskunnasta: sitä, mitä he odottavat itseltään ja toisiltaan. Se kertoo myös tahdosta ja tunteista, jotka sitovat ihmisiä yhteen. Millaista tarinaa suomalaiset kertovat itsestään, ja millaisia tunteita tarinaan liittyy? Kuulemmeko ja ymmärrämmekö toistemme tarinoita?

Hyvä naapuri, hyvä suomalainen – erontekojen ja kuulumisen käytännöt Helsingin monietnisillä asuinalueilla

Linda Haapajärven, Jutta Juveniuksen ja Lotta Junnilaisen artikkeli valittiin Sosiologia-lehden toimituskauden 2020-2021 parhaan artikkelin palkinnon voittajaksi.

Place Narratives and the Experience of Class : Comparing Collective Destigmatization Strategies in Two Social Housing Neighborhoods

In her article, Lotta Junnilainen tackles the question of how particular places shape responses to stigmatization.

Organizing natures : justification and the critique in the development of organic agriculture in Finland

In his dissertation, Tomi Lehtimäki examines organic agriculture and the attempts to transform agricultural systems into more ecological and sustainable forms.

Sosiaaliturvajärjestelmä ei tue kulttuurialan itsensätyöllistäjiä

Koronapandemian synnyttämä kriisi on runnellut pahoin kulttuurialaa, josta on tullut maailmanlaajuisesti yksi eniten pandemiasta kärsineistä aloista. Lotta Junnilaisen tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kulttuurialan itsensätyöllistäjien asemaa palkkatyösuhteiden ulkopuolella.

Oikeuttamisverkostot : miten analysoida julkisissa keskusteluissa esitettyjen oikeutusten keskinäisiä suhteita

Artikkelissa esitetään Boltanskin ja Thévenot’n oikeuttamisteoriaan sekä Eeva Luhtakallion ja Tuomas Ylä-Anttilan kehittämään julkisen oikeuttamisen analyysiin (JOA)
perustuva metodi, joka havainnollistaa ja visualisoi moraalisen oikeuttamisen kategorioiden verkostoitumista.

Reflections on the Russian aggression in Ukraine from a Finnish perspective

The war in Ukraine has evoked immediate gut reactions from a distant, yet very mobilizable collective memory reserve in Finland: Russia, again. And: Are we next? We have certainly seen this one before, even though nobody wanted to see it coming this time.

Social media platforms as a tool for Elokapina’s activism

Activists participating in the environmental movement Elokapina see the sharing of images and videos in social media as a tool to tell people about daily protest activities, challenge the perceptions that people have of demonstrators and reach a wider audience for their message than would be possible through physical demonstrations. However, the personal nature of social media may also give rise to feelings of inadequacy and expose activists to strong negative attention.

Making a deal with the devil? Portuguese and Finnish activists’ everyday negotiations on the value of social media

In their article, Carla Malafaia and Taina Meriluoto explore how young activists in Portugal and Finland negotiate the value of social media in their practices.

social media

This article explores how young activists in Portugal and Finland negotiate the value of social media in their practices. Considering the near ubiquitous intertwinement of online-offline environments, and its contradictory promises for social movements, we look at these negotiations through the moral principles drawn upon to critique and justify social media practices. Based on ethnographic data from Portuguese climate activists and Finnish mental health activists, we build on pragmatist sociology as an analytical frame to investigate value and meaning-making within these social movements. Results show how activists predominantly criticize social media for its fame-valued logic, which they consider leading to the individualization and depoliticization of communication and the ‘marketization’ of messages and practices. These challenges are managed with reference to the groups’ civic values through two sets of practices: 1) grounding the online and 2) repurposing individualism. Yet these practices reveal different compromise strategies in each country to accommodate social media demands and core group values, highlighting different interpretations of civic values that materialize in competing stances in relation to ‘political’ content and ‘individual’ action. We argue that an analytical framework focusing on values as they unfold in everyday practices is particularly apt to understanding meaning construction in social movements, whose very essence is the evaluation and critique of existing justifications within certain socio-political arrangements.

The article is published open access and is available here.

Joel