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
In her article Taina Meriluoto theorizes visual practices of stigma resistance as a continuous play with identification and disidentification. Based on an ethnographic study of young, stigmatized activists’ self-images, she argues that the oft-employed concept of recognition only partially captures visual/digital resistance to stigma. By showing stigma resistance as a play with becoming visible and unintelligible, the article argues for moving beyond recognition and stigma as binary concepts.
In this paper Vasileios Maltezos, Eeva Luhtakallio and Taina Meriluoto introduce a novel methodological approach to studying visual politics today. By bridging ethnographic research and supervised deep learning-based AI and pre-trained neural networks the method enables investigating how youth participate through image creation and usage, both online and offline, by outlining repertoires of visual political action.
CSD:n julkaisema Demokratian paikat on sarja, jossa puhutaan demokratiasta arkisissa ympäristöissä. Katso, mistä podia voi kuunnella!
New podcast Spaces of Democracy is out now. See where to listen to it!
In their chapter for the Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics in the Social Sciences, Taina Meriluoto and Eeva Luhtakallio discuss the specificities of ethical questions when studying a political topic, in particular social movements and activists in stigmatized or risky positions.
By discussing current youth’s democratic practices and introducing the concept of visual politicization, Eeva Luhtakallio, Taina Meriluoto and Carla Malafaia argue for a reconsideration of what we understand as political action and propose new methodological tools for analyzing it.
In their article, Carla Malafaia, Jenni Kettunen and Eeva Luhtakallio explore the function of bodies as tools of visibility in ritualised online-offline performances. By analysing performative protests, the authors shed light on the importance of paying attention to non-verbal levels of political action and argumentation.
In this editorial Carla Malafaia, Maria Fernandes-Jesus and Eeva Luhtakallio discuss the new diverse ways young generations have become mobilized to tackle the climate crisis and picture ways towards a common world and practices.
The Pepe the Frog Image-Meme in Hong Kong: Visual Recurrences and Gender Fluidity on the LIHKG Forum
Using a combination of a computational big data analysis and a qualitative analysis, Katrien Jakobs, Degel Cheung, Vasileios Maltezos and Cecilia Wong examine how activists used the Pepe the Frog image-meme to make statements about Hong Kong politics, gender and democracy during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill and Law Movement.
In her article, Carla Malafaia studies how youths manage their activism and argues that activists construct margins of resistance in their political practices by incorporating processes that interrupt adult structures while reframing educational imagination.
In their article, by augmenting Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism with Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology, Veikko Eranti and Taina Meriluoto develop both an analytical framework for a more nuanced study of urban politics as sites of democracy and a detailed conceptualization of pluralism in democracy.
Citizens in Training: How institutional youth participation produces bystanders and active citizens in Finland
In his dissertation Georg Boldt identified four individual level outcomes of youth participation.
Do institutional approaches to participatory democracy produce better citizens, does it meet the expectations of those participating and do these structures offer the participants opportunities to realize their objectives? These are some of the questions discussed in Georg Boldt’s dissertation on institutional youth participation. One of the key findings of the study is that existing institutional practices for participation and civic engagement of young people are not responsive to the diversity of needs and interests of young people.
In his dissertation Boldt identified four individual level outcomes of youth participation. Firstly, a group of participants had a deep and fundamental experience of empowerment and transformation. Secondly, a group of socially privileged participants strengthened their position by accumulating influence. Thirdly, some participants left the process of participation to find different outlets for their civic engagement. Finally, for a group of participants, the position of being a bystander was further reinforced. These consequences were dependent on the style of interaction in the participation process, and on whether the participants felt they had any influence over decision-making.
The dissertation is based on more than 200 hours of participant observation of municipal processes for youth participation in the metropolitan area of Helsinki during the years 2015-2018. The observations were conducted in a youth council and in participatory budgeting events in Helsinki. Youth councils are the most typical forms of institutional youth participation and are based on the practices of parliamentary decision-making. Contrarily, the process of participatory budgeting offered by the city of Helsinki gives young people the opportunity to affect local budgetary allocations of the city youth department.
The dissertation is available here.
