Research projects: reorganising gender orders in a postmodern frame

 

Postmodern theorising and postcolonial critique set basically new conditions and demands even on the study of traditional culture and folklore. With the aim of tackling the diversity of cultural and gender issues, of new technology and of aspects of consumer culture, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity have become a common denominator for research projects in the field of cultural study.

For instance, aspects of modernisation are touched upon in the research project “Modernisation and Popular Experience in Finland 1860–1960”(2002–04), led by docent Laura Stark (University of Helsinki). This multidisciplinary project discusses modernisation processes from the viewpoint of ordinary people focusing on transformations at the level of household, individual and community. Gender and generation among others form a basic viewpoint in this project. (See: http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/folkloristiikka/moderniz.html.) In addition the modern information and communication technology and its local impacts on everyday life and on construction of gender identity has been tackled in recent research projects in the university of Joensuu under the leadership of Professor Seppo Knuuttila. Gender-specific folkloristical aspects are represented in these projects by Sari Tuuva, who is conducting research into computing ethnographies from a gender perspective, and Johanna Uotinen, who is polishing her dissertation on narratives of gendered experiences and signification processes connected with computers[224]. 

Another type of multidisciplinarity linking gender, the body and postmodern culture is carried out in a research project “Gender Narrated in Speech and Deed” (2004–06) led by docent Helena Saarikoski (University of Helsinki). The project belongs to the fields of folkloristics and musicology, youth studies, disability studies and dance studies. The project aims to analyse how gender is realised in everyday activities and accounts of those activities. Gender is studied here as intertwined with other factors of identity, like sexuality, age and phase of life, disability, physical appearance and acting in a professional capacity. The materials of the studies are multitype qualitative ethnographic materials interpreted in the frame of respective cultural and historical contexts. (See http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/saarikoski.htm.) In addition to research projects, two national graduate schools must be mentioned here as important trainers of postgraduate students for specialisation in gender in the study of culture. The first is the multidisciplinary Graduate School of Gender System led by Professor Aili Nenola (Univeristy of Helsinki) and the other links the fields of folkloristics and comparative religion, namely the Graduate School of Cultural Interpretations: Nationality, Locality, Textuality, led by Professor Seppo Knuuttila (University of Joensuu).

 

Conclusions

 

The gender aspect in contemporary Finnish folkloristics is important and inseparable from other directions of study. Here I have only been able to outline a preliminary introduction to the issue. On the one hand, gender-sensitive folkloristics still considers themes derived from the history of the field, such as the making of women’s worlds, folklore and culture visible, and constructs a female perspective in the interpretation of all the materials explored in our fields. On the other hand, research in this field is diversifying from a base of questions raised by old folklore scholars as well as by modern theoreticians of gender: discussion of deconstruction of the subject, otherness, the diverse meanings of sexuality, hegemonic masculinity, bodily signification, emotions, experience, ethnicity, nationality, age etc. – such a list of popular research topics is in a continuous process of change, which is a sign of fruitful development in the field.