Suchergebnisse

Avant-garde in Finland is the first book to provide an overarching introduction to avant-garde art by Finnish artists. The articles in the book discuss the application and development of the cultural ideas of the avant-garde in Finnish art from the early 20th century till the present day. The book focusses on the social, political, and artistic characteristics of avant-garde art and their manifestation in Finnish avant-garde literature, visual arts, architecture, fashion, and music. The book shows the remarkable role of women artists in the development of the Finnish avant-garde. Many artists and groups are presented in the book for the first time. At the same time, the articles highlight connections between well-known Finnish artists and international avant-garde movements that have not been recognized in earlier research. A key theme of the book is the tension between the internationality of avant-garde and the nationalist elements of Finnish culture. The book is peer-reviewed, and its authors are eminent senior scholars and younger researchers.

City as a Stage explores the diverse ways in which modern cities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries presented and projected themselves, especially by staging major urban events, which have often been interpreted as major local and national turning points. In particular, the book discusses how cities were imagined through the prism provided by other cities, major events, as well as alternative pasts and futures. How –with admiration, indifference or contestation– did various urban actors engage with the city as a stage? The book paints a multifaceted picture of the history of urban events and town twinning, while at the same illustrating how students and travellers experienced cities such as Berlin, Rome, Helsinki, and Tampere. As for individual urban events, Stockholm's General Art and Industrial Exposition of 1897, Helsinki's 400th anniversary of 1950, and the Moscow Youth Festival of 1957 are all given their own chapter.

Saamentutkimus tänään is an introduction to the Sámi studies, i.e. the scientific study of the Sámi people. It gives many-faceted basic information of the Sámi people and presents up-to-date views of the disciplines related to the Sámi studies, e.g. history, archeology, genetics, linguistics, comparative religion, folkloristics, ethnology etc. It provides scientifically based knowledge of the Sámi during the prehistory and pre-Christianity, dealing with reindeer herding, handicraft, the Sámi languages, Sámi literature and art and civil right questions, including participation in the international movement of the indigenous people. All the authors are eminent experts of their scholarly fields, and all the articles have been revised by the Academic representatives of the Sámi themselves - "Teos esittelee saamentutkimuksen keskeisten alojen uusimmat tulokset ja näkemykset ja päivittää saamelaisia ja saamelaiskulttuuria koskevat tiedot genetiikasta kielitieteeseen ja historiasta nykykulttuuriin. Kirjassa perehdytään myös saamelaisten aineelliseen ja henkiseen perinnekulttuuriin: käsityöhön, poronhoitoon, folkloreen, taiteisiin sekä muinais- ja kansanuskoon. Erityisen painon teoksessa saavat ajankohtaiset ihmisoikeus- ja alkuperäiskansakysymykset. Kaikki kirjoittajat ovat alojensa aktiivitutkijoita. Kirja on 1995 julkaistun Johdatus saamentutkimukseen -teoksen kokonaan uudistettu ja huomattavasti laajennettu laitos."

"Gendered and sexualized abuse and other forms of violence are visibly present in the culture of the third millennium. Especially bodies that are gendered as female are – both dead and alive – objects of multiple forms of abuse and violence in the texts and imageries of contemporary culture. Men, on the other hand, are often represented as abusive towards women and as the violent gender or, as targets of other men's violence. Structural violence has also an impact on many areas of everyday life, and it is materialized in, for example discrimination and inequality. Gender and Violence: The Ethics and Politics of Reading scrutinizes gendered violence as a complex phenomenon of contemporary culture. The authors study the ways in which ways representations of violence can be read, viewed and received. They also discuss what kind of politics the violent representations implement and actualize, and how they affect their audience.
Gender and Violence takes a critical stance on the intersections of gender, power, and violence in literature, film, television and the internet. The analysis focuses on, for example, sci-fi, Nordic Noir and North American comedy series, poems, young adult literature (YA) and nationalist blog texts. The book presents both Finnish and international academic discussions, in which researchers in the fields of gender studies, arts and literature, and cultural studies challenge contemporary English abstract 279 understanding of gender, sexuality, power, and violence. Moreover, Gender and Violence provides tools for critical discussions on violence and in-depth scrutiny about its cost on all of us.
Gender and Violence is an anthology of academic research articles. It works well as an academic textbook, but it also provides timely and new knowledge for everyone interested in questions of gender and violence – phenomena that touch upon all of us."

Väitöstutkimus analysoi julkisia poliittisia performansseja poliittisena viestintänä. Poliittiset performanssit voidaan ymmärtää julkisissa tiloissa toimeen pantuina 'näytöksinä', joiden tavoitteena on luoda arkisiin rutiineihin yllättäviä katkoksia ja synnyttää uutta toimintatilaa jonkin yhteiskunnallisen ongelman esiin nostamiseksi. Performanssit synnyttävät katkoksia monin tavoin, mutta erityisen leimallista niille on näkyvän, vallalla olevan visuaalisen järjestyksen murtaminen tuomalla siihen erilaisia 'häiritseviä' (disruptive) elementtejä: resistoivia kehoja, valtaa parodioivia kuvia, karnevalistista protestointia, katuteatteria jne. Poliittisten performanssien viestintä perustuu puheen sijaan tai ohella toimijoiden oman kehon ja sen kantamien erilaisten visuaalisten merkkien julkiseen esittämiseen, joskus hyvin äärimmäisellä tavalla, kuten esimerkiksi nälkälakoissa ja polttoitsemurhissa. Väitöskirjassa tällaista viestintätyyliä kutsutaan visuaaliseksi ja esteettiseksi politikoinniksi. Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan useita esimerkkejä performatiivisesta poliittisesta viestinnästä ja kehitetään teoreettisia ideoita sen ominaispiirteiden tulkitsemiseksi. ; In this doctoral thesis I study a phenomenon which I have titled as public political performance. By public political performance I refer to a public event (a 'show', display, demonstration) the purpose of which is to expose in public and challenge those social-political norms, practices, and relations of power which usually remain invisible in the sway of routine political life. I am interested especially in how performance works as a form of non-linguistic, or wider than linguistic, political communication. I theorize and analyze, through several illustrative examples, performances from three perspectives: as corporeal (bodily), visual, and aesthetic communication. In construction of theory I use and partly rework ideas from thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Ranciere. The study shows that public political performance is a sensitive, even volatile phenomenon because it often manifestly exposes the fundamentally violent power structure of society – as when, for example, street demonstrations induce strong counter reactions from the police and political authorities – and puts this order under critical public scrutiny. Political authorities do not take such challenges lightly, which is why public performances sometimes instigate serious political controversies. The key theoretical ideas of the study relate to performance as something done and en/acted. On the one hand, performance discloses the nature of politics as a 'doing.' This means in simple terms that, in order to subsist, the political world needs to be done, performed, and 'iterated,' every time anew. The term performative describes this social-constructivist side of politics. That the constitution of the social and political power is based not on any 'natural' ground but on continuous re/iteration of certain ways and routines is often revealed only when it is visibly and noticeably disrupted. This is what political performance typically does. On the other hand, performance signifies a particular kind of public show which resembles but does not equal theatrical shows. Performance is theatrical in being an 'art-like' communicative act, yet it is more surprising and unpredictable compared to regular theatre and, because of this, usually more difficult to approach and interpret. Political performance as a contingent and sometimes oddly appearing public event with a surprise effect brings forth the importance of disruption for politics. It alerts us to situations where the normalized political performatives are being visibly questioned by bringing into public space – 'in your face' – diverse disrupting elements like resisting bodies, parodying images, and carnevalism. The relationship between these two, performatives and performances, creates an edgy and 'chiasmatic' political space from which much of political life gains its driving force. This basic idea and relationship constitute the key starting point for this study's theoretical reflections. Political performance is an important subject for political studies for several reasons. The purely knowledge-based reason is that that in directing attention to the corporeal and visual aspects of politics and political communication, performance brings into view phenomena and conceptual possibilities which are too often ignored by political researchers and theorists. The relevance of performance for the field can also be justified from another perspective, through reference to its political and democratic significance. The discussions and analyses carried out in the study show that there are political circumstances where citizens see public performance as the only available means of participation in political communication, with other channels of communication forbidden or marginalized. There are also situations where citizens create, through setting up a performance, space for public communication and action where it has not existed before. Political performance as a way of contesting existing political realities can therefore have special value for political freedom. Political and democratic theory needs to understand, I shall argue, also that category of political action which performs political freedom rather than asks for it.