Anu Kantola

Seize the Moment: Financial Crisis and the Making of the Finnish Competition State

In this paper we examine how Finnish Governments dismantled the Nordic welfare state paradigm from the 1990s onwards and adopted Schumpeterian ideas of a competitive workfare state. In the early 1990s, Finland went through a financial crisis that was the most severe in OECD countries since the Second World War and came to play a major role in the paradigm change. In the crisis, the Ministry of Finance gained a central role as a consensus-building power broker, and formulated a political strategy of national competitiveness, which was adopted as a rationale of power for consensual governments and has been maintained since. We suggest that financial crises can become formative moments in which new ideas are adopted and policies are reformulated. They can also become moments which provide opportunity to overcome citizen opinion. In Finland, the wide popular and party support for the Nordic welfare model was not reflected in the new paradigm.

From gardeners to revolutionaries: The rise of the liquid ethos in political journalism

In many newsrooms, journalistic work has increasingly been reorganized in ways that make it more flexible, multi-skilled and assertive, or even ‘liquid’. Empirical studies on liquid journalism, however, are scarce. This article examines how the rise of liquidity can be seen in the work-related ethos of Finnish political journalists. The article is based on 25 in-depth interviews of political journalists. In the findings, three generational groups – the solid moderns, the liquefying moderns, and the liquid moderns – emerge divided roughly by age. These differences reflect a more general change, whereby the organizations of the solid industrial modernity have been flattened and decentralized and, in many professions, the expertise and career prospects have been questioned. In the course of this change, political journalists are developing an anti-institutional and flexible ethos accentuated by opinionated assertiveness – in effect, an ethos of liquid revolutionaries.

Experimental and quantum-chemical determination of the 2H quadrupole coupling tensor in deuterated benzenes

Deuterium Quadrupole Coupling Constant (DQCC) in benzene was determined both experimentally by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy in Liquid Crystalline solutions (LC NMR) and theoretically by ab initio electronic structure calculations. DQCCs were measured for benzene-d(1) and 1,3,5-benzene-d(3) using several different liquid crystalline solvents and taking vibrational and deformational corrections into account in the analysis of experimental dipolar couplings, used to determine the orientational order parameter of the dissolved benzene. The experimental DQCC results for the isotopomers benzene-d(1) and 1,3,5-benzene-d(3) are found to be 187.7 kHz and 187.3 kHz, respectively, which are essentially equal within the experimental accuracy (+/-0.4 kHz). Theoretical results were obtained at different C-D bond lengths, and by applying corrections for electron correlation and rovibrational motion on top of large-basis-set Hartree-Fock results. The computations give a consistent DQCC of ca. 189 kHz for three different isotopomers; benzene-d(1), 1,3,5-benzene-d(3), and benzene-d(6), revealing that isotope effects are not detectable within the present experimental accuracy. Calculations carried out using a continuum solvation model to account for intermolecular interaction effects result in very small changes as compared to the data obtained in vacuo. The comparison of theoretical and experimental results points out the selection of the underlying molecular geometry as the most likely source of the remaining discrepancy of less than 2 kHz. Such an agreement between the calculated and the experimental DQCC results can only be achieved if rovibrational effects are considered on one hand in the experimental direct dipolar coupling data, and on the other hand in the theoretical property calculation, as is done presently.

Organizational control: Restrictive or productive?

Organizational control is conventionally - from a critical stance - viewed as a negative and restrictive phenomenon, which in one way or another subjugates workers. In this theoretical paper, we argue that organizational control is often based on a particular understanding of power; an understanding that views power as repressive, equating it with domination and subjugation while paying little attention to its productive function. We question what the implications for understanding organizational control would be if we were also to see power as productive. We contend that the Foucauldian notions of pastoral power, disciplinary power, and governmentality can be used together through the concept of regime of practices to enrich our understanding of the workings of organizational control. We thus delineate an analytical framework for the study of organizational control based on an open-ended investigation of the regimes of control in local settings.

Mediated scandals as social dramas Transforming the moral order in Finland

In this article we apply Viktor Turner’s ideas on liminality and social dramas to scandals involving the Finnish political and economic elites that have occurred since the early 1970s. We suggest that mediated scandals are transformative social dramas through which society’s moral codes are negotiated. In Finland, scandals have increased considerably and have become more dangerous for Finnish elites because they have caused increasing numbers to lose their positions. We suggest that the trend signals a long-term social transformation in society’s moral order. The Finnish scandals have reworked societal moralities and addressed the problematic issues often associated with the Cold War political order, such as drinking and sexual harassment. As a result of this process, the media have developed into liminal-like spaces that are increasingly dangerous for elites.

Leaving Public Places: Antipolitical and Antipublic Forces of the Transnational Economy

Abstract Over the last twenty years there has been a change of political regime from state controlled markets to market liberalisation. This article asks how are these changes affecting the role of the public sphere? The particular case is the economic crisis of Finland in the 1990s. The article looks at interviews of the country’s most important political decision-makers: how do they perceive the role of politics and public in the new market regime? A new political culture favouring the market over the state, the private over the public and the experts over the politicians seem to appear. The elite interviews reveal an antipolitical and antipublic discourse, which tries to negate the relevance or to narrow the scope of public discussion. A formal transnational European democracy is not, however, a simple solution to these problems. The Finnish example shows how the antipublic forces of economic expertise and bureaucracy are emphasised also on the European level. Thus it is suggested that rather than choosing between national or transnational public sphere, we need to study how the public life is embedded in the structures of political power, how various political ideologies and powers aim at colonising or closing the public sphere.

Loyalties in Flux The Changing Politics of Citizenship

Institutional politics have become increasingly market oriented, consensual and therapeutic. The emerging form of political governance relies on consensual expertise and paternal care rather than on political differences and ideologies. These changes have an impact on the ways in which citizenship is defined and articulated. The classical ideals of an active polis citizenship (i.e. the ideas of dialogue, joint political action and political process) seem to be losing momentum. In particular, state-bound citizenship is losing its ability to provide the means for meaningful political action and identities. Instead, citizenship is to an increasing extent defined by market-oriented discourses and institutions, which are constructing identities and governance overlapped by traditional political citizenship. It is suggested that cultural studies could consider the cultural changes at the heart of political and economic power in order to understand the changing discourses of citizenship.

The rise of charismatic authority styles in corporate capitalism

The paper examines the rise of the anti‐hierarchical ‘flat’ and revolutionary styles of authority that emerged in late twentieth century corporate capitalism and suggests that the corporate world developed styles of authority simultaneously built on leaders’ personalised approach and revolutionary self‐actualisation and empowerment of employees. These styles are examined in the light of Max Weber’s idea of charismatic authority. The rise of charismatic authority styles is seen as indicative of the dynamic societal role the corporate world has played since the 1970s. Moreover, the author suggests that charismatic authority in its flat, informal and empowering forms might serve as an increasingly important style of authority for modern societies.

The therapeutic imaginary in memory work: Mediating the Finnish Civil War in Tampere

The article analyses reconciliatory practices on war remembrance that draw from the imaginary of therapy. The decisive battles of the Finnish Civil War took place on the streets of Tampere in 1918. Only 90 years later, in 2008, was the city of Tampere able to organise a remembrance process, which mediated the war memory through exhibition, street drama, online discussion forums and mainstream media. The remembrance encouraged the disclosure of hidden memories, broke down predatory stereotypes and addressed the transgenerational victimhood and the guilt. I suggest that the case exemplifies a shift in how societies remember: The contemporary, more individualised and plural societies saturated with therapeutic practices are prone to adopt bottom-up and participatory memory practices. At the same time, however, the article points to the limits of memory work. It is not a magic wand for doing away with past injustices. In Tampere, it was possible only for the grandchildren of the war generation.

Emotional styles of power: corporate leaders in Finnish business media

Drawing from a growing body of research that focuses on emotions as social and cultural phenomena, this article examines how publicly performed emotions can be employed in the exercise of power. The article uses William Reddy’s ideas on emotional regimes. A qualitative analysis of Finnish business magazine Talouselämä tracks how corporate leaders have performed publicly in Finland from 1940 to 2005. I suggest that corporate capitalism developed an emotional regime of enthusiastic individualism, which challenged the previous regime of paternal managerialism. The article demonstrates how business media such as Talouselämä provided an emotional refuge that became a public platform through which rising corporate sectors could formulate the new emotional regime. The mediated performances of corporate leaders became rituals that borrowed from the affect economy of social movements and fuelled the rise of the new capitalism.