Sessions

Note: The order of the presentations and other details are subject to change: final program will be distributed with the conference materials once you arrive.

Power and Signification

Chair: Risto Heiskala, heiskala@yfi.jyu.fi

What is power and what can it do? The session will be put together on papers outlining different approaches to power and particularly the way in which the link between power on the one hand and meanings, sense and signification on the other is dealt with in different theories of power. Particularly welcome are papers with synthetic interest but various types of orthodoxies be they rational choice, phenomenological, poststructuralist, pragmatist or some other type are also tolerated providing that they emerge from a sincere interest to fruitful debate between research programmes.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Technologies of Power

Anu Kantola
The Affective Rule: Theorizing Power and Authority in Contemporary Capitalism

Marja Eriksson & Jari Luomanen
Experienced Fears in Finnish Expert Organizations

Flor Avelino
Power in Transition: A Framework to Study Power in the Context of Sustainable Development

Maria Carbin & Hannele Harjunen
Intersectionality, Power and Priviledge

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Publicities, Experiences, Practices

Eva De Smedt & Kristel Vandenbrande
Power and Mediated Interactions. Researching the Mutual Dynamics of Power and Meaning Making in Televised Political Debates

Hanna Rautajoki
Power relations and public sphere – The case of Finnish television discussions

Markku Koivusalo
Cantata of Power: Experience of its forms, dynamics and consequences

Mario Vötsch
Power with power over: Nomadic practices in the cultural field 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50 : Theoretical Approaches

Bart Put
Power and Symbolization: A View from Systems Theory

Jon Hanf & Vera Belaya
A multi-theoretical approach to defining power

Antti Gronow
Bourdieu’s Economist Account of Power

Risto Heiskala & Marita Husso
The power of institutions in shaping agency. The case of gender

 

Governmentality and Global Governance

Chair: Pertti Alasuutari, pertti.alasuutari@uta.fi

The concept of governmentality, coined by Michel Foucault, emphasizes that modern governance often works by influencing or guiding the comportment of others through acting upon their hopes, desires, or milieu. This framework also stresses that political power must not be conceived of as reduced to the activities of the state, and that the principal target of government is population. We invite papers in which the governmentality framework is applied to global governance, for instance to the analysis of nongovernmental organizations or to analyzing the way in which international governmental organizations influence nation states by attempting to induce the beliefs and aspirations of the actors involved.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Governmentarlity and Global Governance Session I

Martin Fougère and Nikodemus Solitander
Articulating 'Global Social Responsibility': The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) as a Global Governmental Project

Doerthe Rosenow
Power and Governmentality: The WTO and the Case of GM-Food

Eeva-Liisa Myllymäki
The Evolving Global Governance through Its Institutions

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Governmentality and Global Governance Session II

Laura Dib
Conditioning the neighbourhood – How the EU uses soft governance to reorder East European space

Kirsi Eräranta
Governing new social risks in the EU

Katja Mäkinen
European Citizenship as Governance

Marjaana Rautalin and Pertti Alasuutari
The uses of the national PISA results in the discourses of Finnish government officials

 

Power Asymmetries

Chair: Ariel Penetrante-Macaspac, University of Vienna, Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) of the International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA), macaspac@iiasa.ac.at

Asymmetries in power influence the decision and action competencies (Handlungskompetenz) of conflict actors in several contexts as well as the structure and framework of the whole negotiation process. For example, in peace negotiation rounds, asymmetries in power between the government and the rebel group serves as a challenging factor in the peace process.

How can these power asymmetries be described, defined, and analyzed? This question includes the search for methodological tools that can be used in measuring power asymmetries. Further relevant questions are: In which way does it affect the notion of efficiencies of actors? In which way does power asymmetry influences the structure and framework of negotiations? How can power asymmetries be revoked? is there really a necessity of revoking power asymmetries? Can mediation fill the gap caused by power asymmetry? If this is the case, in which context can this occur? Can a typology of power asymmetry be made?

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Systems of Analysis & Negotiation Dynamics

Introduction (Ariel Macaspac Penetrante)

Tehseen Noorani: Imaginary Bodies in Mental Health

Christopher Elsey: “This is my Lesson”: Working Out Asymmetries in Class

Vera Belaya & Taras Gagalyuk & Jon Hanf: Power Asymmetry in Supply Chain Networks: Phenomenon and Measurement

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Agencies of Negotiation: Actors

Tuomas Forsberg & Antti Seppo: Power Without Influence

Lasse Peltonen: Mediated Constitution of Strong and Weak Actors in Urban Planning

Kristiina Abdallah: Power and Quality in Production Networks. Reconstructing an Actor-network in the Subtitling Industry

Day 3: 13:00-14:40 : Negotiation Dynamics and Structures

Petra Merenheimo: Power Relations at the Social Services Market

Salme Korkala: Power Asymmetries in Workplace

Chenjian Zhang: Negotiatory Power Relation and its Break-up

Conclusion (Ariel Macaspac Penetrante)

 

ANTing the analytics of power - powering ANT

Chairs: Jani Kaisto, University of Jyväskylä, jani.kaisto@yfi.jyu.fi and Olli Pyyhtinen, University of Turku, olsapy@utu.fi

What is it with the (post-)Foucauldian analytics of power? Friends and followers of Foucault seem to start their analysis of power relations with ready-made categories at a point where everything interesting has already happened. Instead of decomposing power into the tiny ingredients of which it is made and produced, power relations are merely revealed ‘behind’ seemingly innocent and neutral activities, hence reproducing the model of ‘social’ explanations. What about actor-network theorists? Are they, in turn, forgetting or downplaying power as a crucial element in relations between different actors? Heterogeneity of multiple networks needs to be studied in terms of power as well. Is it possible to take the best of both worlds? We invite papers that try to do so or discuss the possible connections between the Foucauldian analytics of power and actor-network-theory.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : ANTing the analytics of power Session I

Ariane Debourdeau & Cédric Moreau de Bellaing
Cross empirical perspectives on power: making Actor-Network and Foucault theories commensurable

Heini Hakosalo
Living in a material world: A point of contact between Latourian and Foucauldian conceptions of power

Olli Pyyhtinen
Foucault/Latour: On the tiny ingredients of power

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00: ANTing the analytics of power Session II

Maria Åkerman & Taru Peltola
On the politics and performativity of calculations

Christoph Waldhauser
Taming the monster: Conceptions of power in post-modern organizations

 

Pension Power and Pension Fund Governance

Chair: Ville-Pekka Sorsa, University of Oxford, ville-pekka.sorsa@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Pension funds and their agents in the investment industry control enormous sums of money, profoundly affecting  the structure and performance of nation-states and the global economy. They are setting the future for
various global transformations due to their institutionally provided 'pension power', the ability to affect and change social realities mainly through investment actions. These funds, arising from different kinds of
institutional frameworks, are the most powerful financial agents in the 21st century due to their capability to unify dispersed voices into single courses of actions in the global marketplace chracterized by diffuse
ownership.

But how are these funds governed? How is pension power being used in corporate governance and what kinds of consequences does this usage of power have? The main focus of the session is on the power relations between
pension funds, financial institutions and corporate governance. Pension funds are not, however, the only sources of power related to different pension systems. Pensions are essential mechanims in determining, for
instance, inter-generational social contracts, effectiveness of incentives promoting  making longer working careers, conflicts of interests in industrial relations. Pensions are an essential field in various disciplines
in social sciences. Although having focus on pension funds, we are interested in all papers exploring the use of power enabled by different pension systems.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Pension Power and Pension Fund Governance Session I

Welcome and introduction (session chair Ville-Pekka Sorsa)

Sixten Korkman: Power over pensions - Who should decide and how?

Adam Dixon: The Power of Finance: Global Influence with Local Differences

Pin-Hsien Chen: Empower or fetter? Occupational pension reform and fund governance in Taiwan

Jukka Lassila & Tarmo Valkonen: Pension funds, risk-taking and power

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00: Pension Power and Pension Fund Governance Session II

Antonis Roumpakis: Embedding power in pension institutions: explaining changes in the governance of pension funds

Ville-Pekka Sorsa: The institutional limits of pension power

Discussion

 

Images & power: visual communication and the public sphere in late modern societies

Chairs: Matteo Stocchetti, matteo.stocchetti@arcada.fi, Lars Lundsten, Karin Kukkonen, University of Mainz, Germany

Images represent power. However, this commonplace is only a starting point in the multidimensional interactions between visual representations and power structures. This session invites conceptual reflections across disciplines and empirical research exploring the many connections between images and power. We understand images not as artifacts, but rather as a form of discourse representation in which issues of power are fundamentally at stake.

In a previous research we focused on the role of mediated images and their capacity to constitute communities of viewers in times, when the conditions of late modernity have undermined more conventional forms of bonding (Stocchetti and Sumiala-Seppänen 2007). This phase of the project is devoted to the political aspect and the role of visual communication in the (re)construction of the public sphere in late modern societies, which are experiencing a crisis of incredulity towards the political and the dismantling of the “great narratives” (as conceptualised by Lyotard). The uses of images in the construction of the political is of special interest to us here. The political can be understood that conceptual place where the relations between individuals and groups become issues of power and where negotiation, conflict and cooperation are the necessary interaction strategies. Images not only constitute this arena, they also provide the combatants’ weapons of choice.

Images in power will meet in three round table sessions on 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40

The following papers will be dealt with during these sessions:

Alina Curticapean
Walls, doors and exciting encounters: Balkanism and European Integration in Bulgarian Political Cartoons 

Bernhard Gross
When the Other Speaks: Migrant Voices on British Television News 

Anne Koski
EU as visual community

Karin Kukkonen
The Mirror, the Map and the Simulacrum: Approaches to Visual Representation and the Question of Power 

Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen
Visualising and embodying collective identity politics: the case of Finland war children and Karelian evacuees
 
Asko Lehmuskallio & Heidi Kaarinen & Tiina Neuvonen
Images and Affects: Getting to know the societal other

Eeva Luhtakallio
Visual Orders of Local Democracy. Representations of citizenship in city magazines and activist web sites in Finland and France 

Lars Lundsten & Nina Östernholm
Disempowerment of Russians in Finnish Television News

Chairs: Henri Goverde (h.goverde@fm.ru.nl), Erkki Berndtson, Clarissa Hayward

International Political Science Association/ Research Committee nr 36 Political Power

The IPSA Research Committee (nr 36) on Political Power is sponsoring a session on the theme ‘Power and Space’. Members as well as non-members of the RC36 are invited to send paper proposals. Please, use the conference form which will be available at the conference website (February, the 1st, 2008). The local organizers will send your proposal to the convenors of the session for selection and approval. It is proposed that some of the best papers will be used in a special issue which will be submitted to the refereed Journal of Power.

Power shapes and re-shapes spatial forms.  Space, in turn, serves as an important resource and mechanism of power.  These claims have long been advanced by social theorists, from Michel Foucault to Michel DeCerteau to Henri LeFebvre.  They have received renewed attention in recent years, for example, in Paul Hirsts’ posthumously published book about politics, war and architecture; in James Scott’s work on space and the modern state; and in the recent writings of Bent Flyvbjerg.  We propose an intensive investigation of the mutual relationship between power and space.  How do spatial forms shape identities, interests and action?  How do they shape democracy, and how do they promote or undermine the use of reason?  What are appropriate research methods for addressing questions of space and power, and how should we think about the historical development of that relationship?  What are the best tools for elaborating principled critiques of particular configurations of spatial relations of power, and what institutional implications follow from such critiques? 

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Power and Space Session I

Lars Bo Kaspersen & Jeppe Strandsbjerg: States make Space makes State

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Power and Space Session II

Fatma Devrim Kilicer Yarangumeli: Re-creating the National Fetish after September 11

Henri Goverde: Representation of Power in (Green) Public Spaces

Erkki Berndtson: Power and the Aesthetics of Space

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50 : Power and Space Session III

Anoush Khoshkish: Financial Imperium in the Electronic Age

Shaw-wu Jung: Space of Culture, Space of Spectacle: The Making of Culture in a Rural Village in Taiwan

Lotta Lounasmeri: Tracking the New Elite: Building the Finnish Nation in the Age of Globalization

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00: Power and Space Session IV

Kevin Ryan: Engineering Civility: the power of (un)supervised play

Stewart Clegg: The Politics of Gossip and Denial in inter-organizational relations

Zdenka Vajdova: Power and Public Administration Reform

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40 : Power and Space Session V

Malin Rönnblom: Policy, Power and Space: towards an Intersectional Methodology in Policy Analysis

Saara Tuomaala: Friendships between Girls: Making Gender, Power, and Spaces in the working Class Community, 1917-1940

 

 

Care, Agency and Power 

Chairs: Marita Husso, University of Jyväskylä mhusso@yfi.jyu.fi and Helena Hirvonen University of Jyväskylä hemahirv@yfi.jyu.fi 

Care is an essential part of our existence. It is involved with social practices and embedded in power relationships. As such it is bound up by discourses which are both produced by and produce practices directed by formal and informal rules and habits. The aim of the session is to put together papers outlining different approaches to care as a social practice and the ideas / significance of agency in the context of care. We welcome theoretical and empirical papers, which consider different approaches to care, agency and interpersonal and structural dynamics of power. Particularly welcome are papers dealing with questions of gender, embodiment, ethics or emotions.

 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50: Care, Agency and Power Session I

Poul Poder
Constructing a differential, emotional approach to agency, care and power

Terry Tse Fonf Leung
Power dynamics in professional care

Eeva Jokinen
“Small” agency, affects and machines

Helena Hirvonen: Frustration in the field of care work. Moral reflections on contemporary care practices

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00: Care, Agency and Power Session II

Rebecca Lynch & Nigel Eastman
“Non-compliance is not an option”: Agency, power, persuasion and control in mental health care

Kaisa Vehkalahti & Susanna Hoikkala
Care and discipline ? Disciplinary practices in Finnish Reform Schoolsin 1920s

Elin Kvist & Maria Carbin & Hannele Harjunen
Domestic services or Maid? Discourses on gender, class and race in Nordic policy debate

Suvi Nieminen
Negoating Qualification and Competence ? The Case of Immigrant Nurses in Finland

 

Representations of Capitalism and Identity

Chairs: Jussi Ojajärvi, University of Tampere, jussi.ojajarvi@uta.fi, and Mari Pajala, University of Turku, mari.pajala@utu.fi

 

Unless we ask how capital shapes culture and subjectivity, is it likely that we can escape being defined by it? As opposed to the neo-liberal conceptions which often rely on homo oeconomicus or other disengaged notion of individuality, cultural and critical theory sees identity and subjectivity as constructed (even if not fully determined) by the relations of power, including the socio-economic ones. This session invites papers discussing cultural articulations, media phenomena or literary texts that represent, either symptomatically or diagnostically, the 'hidden' character of capital.

 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50: Representations of Capitalism and Identity Session I

 

Liisa Lähteenmäki
Constructing goodies with an attitude: Temp agency work as governmentality

Antti Malinen
Finnish employers’ political struggle against industrial democracy legislation during 1960’s and 70’s

Isabel Farinha
Self-identity and in-school marketing

Päivi Berg
The ideal subject in the physical education curriculum

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00 : Representations of Capitalism and Identity Session II

Liina Puustinen
Governing the ordinary consumers

Sanna Karkulehto
Representations of commodified sexuality in contemporary Finnish women’s literature

Georgios Papdopoulos: Psycho-analyzing money: challenging the ideological foundations of comtemporary capitalism

 

Social and vital norms – Canguilhem revisited

Chairs: Dr Ilpo Helén, University of Helsinki, ilpo.helen@helsinki.fi, Dr Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, University of Helsinki

  

Today, normality, deviance and individual differences are increasingly seen to be connected or derive from genetic susceptibility, inborn temperament, neurophysiological traits or other biological sources. Futhermore, biochemical and other means effecting vital functions are becoming more and more in fashion in practices which attempt to normalise behaviour, feelings or thoughts of the individuals or manage their ‘risk behaviour’. In this session, this development will be discussed in the light of Georges Canguilhem’s studies on the concepts of the normal and the pathological and analysis of the differences between the vital and social norms. The relevance of Canguilhem’s insights for understanding of the current development will also be touch upon. The session will concentrate on discussion, and therefore the participant accepted will be asked to send their papers (max 5000 words) about a month before the conference to the the organiser of the session who will circulate them among the participants. More specific information will be shared in due time.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Social and vital norms Session I

Ilpo Helén
Normality, moods and adjustment – a Canguilhemian analysis

Katja Yesilova
Biology and Family

Mikko Jauho
Two Definitions of Health and the Concept of the Normal

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00: Social and vital norms Session II

 

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
The normal, the pathological, and the moral aspects of insurantial techniques

Lotta Hautamäki
Mood scaling

Victoria Margree
Normalisation and Normativity: Canguilhem and Psychiatric Discourse

 

Rethinking the State

Chair: Lars Bo Kaspersen, Center for business and politics, Copenhagen Business School,
lbk.cbp@cbs.dk

Notions such as governance and governmentality rightly question the traditional identification of (political) power and the sphere of the (nation) state. Yet, the State remains a legitimate object of theorizing and empirical research, particularly when unpacking the phenomenon of political power. So how to think state power in general and its contemporary forms in particular? Can we think the state as an autonomous 'assemblage' (DeLanda) or as a particular kind of 'abstract machine' (Deleuze & Guattari)? Is the contemporary state primarily a 'security state' and, if so, how do we link this observation with the state-form in general? The session welcomes contributions that try to re-articulate existing traditions of theorizing the state (e.g., Marxism or the Weberian approach) as well as papers that draw on more recent theoretical currents (such as post-structuralism and social systems theory).

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Rethinking the State Session I

Lars Bo Kaspersen
What is a state?

Jaakko Kauko
The political in state-university relationships

Cagri Yoltar
The Green Card Scheme in Turkey: An ethnography of ‘the State’ and its ‘poor citizens’

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00 : Rethinking the State Session II

Songi Park
Tender as a Form of the State or How tendering reorganises state and society in South Africa

Viviane Brachet-Márquez
State Making and the Constitution of Social Order

 

Child policy meets children as political agents (Panel session)

Chair: Dr. Kirsi-Pauliina Kallio, University of Tampere, kirsipauliina.kallio@uta.fi

 

Panel session with five panelistis: Timo Harrikari (University of Helsinki), Tarja Pääjoki (University of Jyväskylä), Tuukka Tomperi (University of Tampere), Tomi Kiilakoski (University of Tampere), and Kari Paakkunainen from the Finnish Youth Research Society

 

Panel is held on Day 1 13:10 – 14:50

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) has proved to be a major step in the recognition of children’s rights. The Contevention advocates three kinds of rights for the under aged: 1) rights to resources and care, 2) rights to protection from harm, neglect and abuse, and 3) the rights to self determination and making informed personal decisions. As a reaction to this, many countries have introduced policies that seek to establish means for children’s participation and empowerment as citizens. These policies have generally enjoyed positive reception. It has been acknowledged that children’s possibilities to influence their own daily environment have improved with a positive effect on children’s feelings of involvement and responsibility. However, while the recognition of children’s rights has been an important development in itself, it is equally important to assess how these rights are realised in children’s lives. This has been a major argument in the recent social science research. It has been understood that the predominant focus on childhood policy making runs the risk of neglecting the importance of children’s own agency as a factor in their empowerment. Thus, it seems that to locate the politics of childhood it is useful to make a distinction between children’s rights de jure (policies, treaties, proclamations and laws dealing with children’s rights), and de facto (situations in which children practice their rights in their own terms). And further, in order to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the politics of childhood due attention must be paid to children’s politics that are negotiated in child policy contexts. This suggestion forms the starting point of our panel session. 

 

 

Children and Power

Chairs: Mirja Satka, University of Jyväskylä, mirja.satka@jyu.fi, Timo Harrikari, University of Helsinki

 

Through modernization, the regulation of the family and childrearing acquired an important place in the production of social order. During the last decade children have become familiar to public as a problem since the media has portrayed many children as being ‘at risk of exclusion’ or involved in delinquent acts. At the same time the neo-liberal models for welfare states propose childhood and parenting as the current target of ‘social investments’ which aim to bind childhood to the socio-economic goals of success in the markets of global capitalism. These public concerns have been followed by new interests in regulating and intervening in the lives of children (and their families). It seems as if the societal and local control over children has been increasing which suggests that the manner in which power is exercised between children and adults is being transformed. In this session we are keen to learn how this is happening - and use the earlier phases of history as a resource of discovery.

 

The aim of this session is to invite together researchers who are working with various themes of caring vs. controlling children (and their families). The papers of the session might include, for instance, 1) various empirical issues related to mechanisms of generational power or 2) relations of power in children’s and young people’s everyday life, as well as 3) various theoretical approaches to caring vs. controlling power and 4) its transformations over the last decades.

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00 : Generational Power & Power in Education

Opening (Mirja Satka)

Jo Moran-Ellis: Power, Vulnerability and Control in Research with Children

E.J. Epstein: Translating Children's Litterature: Issues of Power

Susanna Hannus & Hannu Simola: A Multidimensional Theoretical Frame to
Study Power and Governance in Comprehensive Schools

Tevfik Campinari: Extended Ottoman Family and Children of Nation State:
Historical Analysis of the Rise of Paternalist Welfare State and the
Affects of Turkish Modernisation on Children's Lives

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40 : The Present Governing of Children & Methodological Issues

Maarit Alasuutari & Kirsti Karila: Framing the Picture of the Child

Elina Pekkarinen & Timo Harrikari: Governing Children by Home-coming Hour

Minna Rantalaiho & Gry Mette D. Haugen: Generational Power and Children's
Rights

Kirsi Pauliina Kallio: Performative Politics and The Practice of Everyday
Life

 

Globalization and new forms of control and the mobilization of powerless

Chairs: Helene Thomas,  Institut of political studies of Aix en provence/ University of Le Havre, helene.thomas4@wanadoo.fr, Marc Bernardot, Institut of political studies of Aix en provence/ University of Le Havre

 

What are power relations in social reality of the contemporary democracies for the powerless? Do they have capacities of resistance and fight against the leadership of the social State on their lifes and a scale of means to limit the effects of the social control and specific policies of containment or social care targeted on them? Can they organize themselves to gain some possibilities of empowerment on their own daily life or perspectives of changing it? In this session we are going to ask about this question in two directions “top-down” and “bottom up”, through two connected hypothesis which could be named the hypothesis of the “post-colonial and post-modern control” and the other one which is related to the “promotion of the self government” that requires behind the label of empowerment the adaptation of the powerless to their condition and their resilience to hazards of life and political persecution (instead of their political resistance).

 

The first perspective will focuse on the new contemporaneous forms of social and political control, both on public and private life of the individuals and the families (Arendt 1951, 1958). We aim to study how the forms of control applied to the new “dangerous classes” have changed in their patterns, technologies and conceptions in the last 20 years. Running of on one hand from Deleuze ’s theory of “control’s societies” and from Foucault’s notion of disciplinary societies and bio-policy and on the reflexion on the heterotopias [Other spaces)].

 

On the other hand we are interested in theoretical and empirical works about the conceptualisation of the “State of Exception” and the extraordinary Treatment of the human being who have "no right to rights" and who are reducted to nude life (Arendt, 1958 et 1963; Agamben, 1987). So we are especially interested in papers that analyze the new forms of banoptique (Bigo, 1993) or synoptique (Mathiesen 1974) like camps and retention centres and new technologies of watching(electronic bracelet, genetic identification…) used for news poor and strangers -that is to say, that our definition of powerless includes not only the outcasts (Bauman, 2004) and deprivated people (Townsend 1974) of the developed countries also called “working poor” or “excluded” or dominés (Bourdieu) in general, but also more particularly the migrants, refugees, asylum’s seekers and especially the undocumented migrants. They are the target of the problematic on power focusing on the human being named parias (Arendt), that are described in francophone literature about mobilizations as “without”… papers, home, job, education, money, a.s.o.

 

Papers about empirical cases based either on participative observation, interviews and archives in a socio-historical or anthropological perspective on specific countries (Australie, South Africa, Lybia, Eastern Europe, Asia…) which describes and analyzes through the quoted theories of control the reinforcement of the scale of forms of constraint and social or humanitarian protections are welcome. Secondly the “bottom-up” perspective, trying to analyze both the processes of subjectivation (Foucault, Butler), interiorization of domination (Bourdieu, Wacquant 2004) and sometimes of somatisation (Beradt 1968, Butler, 1997) of the social control by the powerless and their ways of protestation, revolt and mobilization (Fox-Piven et Cloward 1977) are welcome. Papers adopting a sociological, psychoanalytic, political perspective based on empirical investigations and on the main streams of theoretical approaches are also welcome.  

 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50 : Globalization Session I

Introduction (Marc Bernardot)

Thomas Griffiths: The Digital Diagram

Ravi Baghel: Control in Information societies: From surveillance to diagnosis?

Nicolae Morar: How does Genetic Testing Challenge the Foucauldian Concept of Biopower?

Day 2 17:20 – 19:00 : Globalization Session II

Introduction (Helene Thomas)

Ulrike Höppner: The possibility of resistance. Thinking with Arendt and Foucault

Elina Oinas & Katarina Jungar: HIV activism, embodiment and state/global politics

Anna Rastas & Ulla Vuorela: Writing “our future history”: Africa(ns) in Finland/and in Finnish non-fiction

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40 : Globalization Session III

Introduction (Helene Thomas)

Hanna Kaisti: Decentralisation and the forest-dependent poor in Indonesia: Redefining powers, resources and subjects

Kati Rantala: Eviction order: an unsuccessful seize of power by the suppressed

Pauline McGovern: Field of Struggle: community-based health promotion

 

Arbitrary Power: Ecologies of Power and Resistance in Cognitive Capitalism

Chairs: Akseli Virtanen, Helsinki School of Economics, akseli.virtanen(at)hse.fi, Jukka Peltokoski, University of Jyväskylä,

The essence of the cognitive mode of capitalist accumulation is in the way in which human abilities to invent and think, to create meanings and relate to the presence of others are appropriated and employed to the service of pre-structured tasks and aims. But why do people fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation? 

In cognitive capitalism exploitation does not take place so much at the level of our actual actions in particular space and time (concrete working tasks, working places and working times), but it operates rather at the level of conditions and possibilities, “environments” and ecologies of our thinking and acting. The new controls work upon the aleatory, the uncertain and indeterminate still in the process of becoming. This is to say that the life at the center of politics in cognitive capitalism is no longer only the organic bio-life (biological life of a population, individual body and its particular actions), but rather the mental or a-organic life, life without organs, that is, the time-life or memory due to which human beings are not reducible their corporeal manifestations in space or to their positions in chronological continuum of time. Cognitive capitalism has broadened the ecological crises into our mental environment. The question of the ecology of this region is as pressing a problem as is the ecology of the natural world. 

Yet any account of the functioning of power in cognitive capitalism must be able to deal also with two other aspects of this ecology: (1) The organization of potential action cannot be understood without presupposing a possibility of resistance and freedom: the new controls are based on the ability of subjects to conduct the conduct of others and themselves. (2) The new controls are fundamentally groundless or arbitrary, that is, their nature is that of oikonomia, bare management without any other end. The new controls are not held down by a set of norms nor do they constitute an episteme: essential to them is not truth but pragmatic functionality. They need to change and vary from situation to situation, they require different decisions and disposition to confront specific problems. They operate without institutional legitimation or their legitimation seems to change from day to day: they are arbitrary power, power without foundation. 

Perhaps the “taking off the ground” of money best explains also this “taking off the ground” of power: whereas discipline was always related to molded currencies having gold as their fixed point of legitimation, the complementary space of the new controls are the floating exchange rates. Just like the organization and modulation of currencies, they try to sense, follow and imitate movements and exchanges as such, paying no attention to their specific contents. They try to handle sentiments, desires and social relations (to sell and buy) in a continuous movement. The market transactions and their currents are beyond any individual-collective distinctions and they cannot in no way be disciplined or controlled in space or through physical control. They may only be expressed as tendencies and intensities, as variations and deviations and their regularities. Only probabilistic treatment makes possible their regulation: they are determined only by time, not by space, only in time, not in space. 

This means that the new controls cannot be understood by approaching them simply in relation to ends that they as a means attempt to achieve. Rather their arbitrary nature means power as pure power, power without meaning, reason or legitimation. The analysis of power in cognitive capitalism cannot therefore be about identifying a power which is a justified or a non-justified means toward this or that end, but which is in no relation to ends at all. It functions “in some other way”. But how can power function and manage without any legal or institutional task or justification? How is it possible for power to function in the condition of arbitrariness and erosion of all basis, after the faith in the sign (or in any other external reason directing action) is lost? What is arbitrary or “pure power”, power that does not need the level of meaning, is not just means to this or that end, but which is in no relation to ends and meanings at all? 

Day 2 13:10-14:50 : Arbitrary Power

Introduction (Akseli Virtanen)

Konstantin Kharchenko: Indirect controls in local government: the case of Russia

Claire Blencowe: Meaningfulness and Foundationless Power: Population, Process and Life

Tero Nauha: Evil Eye. Multitude between Innovation and Negation

Heidi Fast: What kinds of zones of power can art-working generate? 

 

Immigration and governmentality 

Chair: Randy Lippert, University of Windsor. Assisting chairs: Heikki Kerkkänen, University of Jyväskylä, hemakerk@cc.jyu.fi, Tuomas Martikainen, Åbo Akademi, tuomas.martikainen@abo.fi, and Miikka Pyykkönen, University of Jyväskylä, miipyyk@yfi.jyu.fi   

Immigration is one of the most burning questions for local, national and international government nowadays. Government takes place in all phases of the immigration process: Governing ideas and practices encompass the incoming to the country or some transnational territory (e.g. EU). Such technologies are used as passport and visa, international agreements and contracts, national laws, border control, camps, deportation, detention and so on. Government touch also upon settlement of immigrants, both in the phase, when immigrants have just settled and when they are applying nationality after living in particular territory for required period. Technologies of government of settlement are also manifold: laws, integration projects, personal contracts, education, personal integration plans, funding, and large individual variety of “practices of the self”. In all phases of immigration process, rationalities of government vary from security of territory to the wellbeing of its every inhabitant. Forms of power – in terms of Foucauldian power analytics – on their behalf encompass modern pastoral and government power as well as different forms of disciplinary and sovereign power.

Although state and public administration are usually catalysts in organising governance of immigration on national and local level, there are plenty of other actors in the field. Different kinds of voluntary or semi-voluntary organisations, movements, communities, churches and other religious communities also participate in government of immigration. It is common throughout Europe that voluntary associations are those who organise integrative services for immigrants (e.g. language consultancy and civic skills education), churches and movements assist asylum seekers in getting residence permissions (e.g. juridical help and sanctuaries), and so on. All these contexts include practices, which tend to shape the subjectivity of individual immigrant. They are examples of government through communities and through individual freedom, which are often seen as typical implementations of rationality of advanced liberalism. However, as deportation practices and incarcerations to reception centres for instance reveal, liberal government of immigrations does not happen only through freedom, but includes authoritarian forms of sovereign and disciplinary power as well. This is the case on international level too: despite of their many humane background principles, coalitions and organisations such as EU, UNHCR and International Organization for Migration do control migration through variety of sovereign and disciplinary technologies.

Session invites empirical and theoretical reflections across disciplines observing the recent and present forms of government of immigration and settlement of immigrants. Government is understood in a Foucauldian way, i.e. as conduct of conduct, in which human self-conduct is steered and governed externally in the name of her/his own good and the good of the whole population. Government aims at some specific ends, although these ends may not be achieved in the way they are represented, because of the unpredictability of the governmental process. By emphasizing governmentality, we want to pay attention to both practices and knowledges of government; what are the mentalities of government of immigration and how do they implement in administrative and other conductive practices. However, presentations using non-Foucauldian approach are also very welcome.

Day 1 13:10 – 14:50 : Immigration and Governmentality Session I

Opening words (Dr. Randy Lippert)

Martin Geiger
Migration management' and the construction of 'spaces of security'. Critical reflections on inter-governmental agencies' measures to block migratory movements.

Salla Tuori
Governmentality, empowerment and multicultural politics

Susan Zimmermann
Governance and asylum seekers: the importance of integration and how its achievement is prevented or deferred.

Ali Reza Ghobadi
Power, Folklore and Identity

End of session (Dr. Randy Lippert)

Day 1 15:20 – 17:00 : Immigration and Governmentality Session II

Opening words (Dr. Randy Lippert)

Heikki Kerkkänen
Governing bidirectional acculturation in Finnish integration policy

Tuomas Martikainen
Organising Immigrant Religions in a Liberal Welfare State: The Case of Finland

Fabian Georgi
A Field of Struggle. Analyzing the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with Foucault, Gramsci and Poulantzas

End of session (Dr. Tuomas Martikainen)

 

Gender, Ethnicity and Everyday Citizenship Practices

Chairs: Anu Hirsiaho, anu.hirsiaho@uta.fi, Suvi Keskinen, suvi.keskinen@uta.fi, and Jaana Vuori, jaana.vuori@uta.fi

In this session, we will analyze how gender, ethnicity and ´race´ are intertwined in the everyday practices of the ?western?, (post)modern societies. How do, for example, authorities meet citizens, or clients welfare professionals? How do textual practices create, form and reproduce gendered citizenship, ?race? and ethnicity? What might be described as practices of citizenship education and what are the effects of such practices? What kinds of gendered citizenship events or encounters are important for migrant or ethnic minority participants, ethnic majority participants, and different groups within these? We welcome both empirical and theoretical papers.

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40

Anne Maria Holli & Milja Saari
Representing Women? Women as Experts in Finnish Parliamentary Standing Committees

Petri Ruuska & Jarno Valkonen: Intertwining of national, ethnic, gender and age categories in tourism work

Tatiana Tiaynen
Everyday life practices and identities of Ingrian elderly women across the Russian Karelian Finnish border

Suvi Keskinen
Conditioned Citizenship in the Finnish Welfare State

Anu Hirsiaho & Jaana Vuori
Reading and writing as everyday citizenship events – Perspectives of migrants and professionals in the Finnish context

 

Queer Powers

Chairs: Antke Engel antke.engel(at)queer-institut.de and Tuula Juvonen tuula.juvonen(at)jyu.fi

 
What kind of powers shape our understanding about gender and sexuality – as well as our practices? How do these powers intersect with class, "race" and ethnicity in a globalized world? Is 'hegemony' a useful concept for analyzing and criticizing heteronormativity? How can one challenge the normative and normalizing effects of discoursive power?

We invite theoretical and empirical papers taking up issues such as queer bodies and biology, desire and fantasy, images and representations, family and generations, economy, politics and activism.
We hope for a lively discussion about the possibilities which the recent developments in queer theory offer for studying the workings of power embedded in such phenomena.

 

Day 2 13:10 – 14:50

Antke Engel: Playing Fields of Desire and Violence. A Queer Reading of Angelina Maccarone's Film Hounded

Jo Moran-Ellis & Paul Johnson: The eroticisation of inter-generational power

Marjo Kolehmainen & Katariina Mäkinen: Subjects of Change. Neoliberal subjectivity and bodily management in gay reality television

Anja Finger: Positively Powerful? The Queer Puppet and its Dwarf

 

New Public Management, Foucault and Power

Chair: Frank Boddin, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, fboddin@vub.ac.be

In the context of the deregulated, neo-liberal environment of the 1980s, new public management reforms characterized public sectors in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, the United States, but also Germany and Japan. New public management (NPM) borrows a rang of managerial notions from the private sector, such as an emphasis on organizational performance or responsiveness to consumers. NPM is not a unified set of practices, but a kind of logic which has various implementation forms and variations within diverse public sectors, such as health, social service, universities and higher education, broadcasting, transport, telecommunications and police departments (Hood 1995, Dent et al. 2004).

This session aims to bring together scholars that have mobilized poststructuralist ideas and Foucaultian theory as conceptual tools to understand the dynamics of power underlying new public management reforms. The session concentrates on how the logic of new public management (re)configures power relations within public organizations and this at diverse levels.

Scholars have scrutinized NPM from a variety of angles (see, e.g., Dent et al. 2004, Chandler & Barry 2004). From an organizational point of view, it has been shown that discipline is an important dimension underlying NPM. NPM introduces standardized, depersonalized practices, such as pre-set, evidence-based output measures, assessment programs, standard budgeting and reporting, which themselves find their origins in a longer tradition of scientific management. These regulatory, supervisory and controlling mechanisms aim at the ‘normalisation’ of the conduct of the public service employee on the one hand, and the organizational process as a whole on the other (Pollitt 1990, Ranada 1997, Batley & Larbi 2004). However, it has also been argued that discipline is not the main mechanism underlying NPM. The NPM-logic introduces and operates through mechanisms of self-entrepreneurship and decentralized responsibility. NPM promotes hands-on management, internal competition between fellow employees and the unbundling of public service departments into units with managerial autonomy (Jones 2004, Horton 2006).

Apart from Foucault’s writing on discipline, knowledge and power (1975/1977/1979), organizational scholars have used the notion of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault 1978, 1991) in order to approach power within organizations (see, e.g., Deetz 1998, Starkey & McKinlay 1998, Ursell 2000). This session aims to elaborate on these perspectives, exploring how Foucaultian theory can be used to examine the dynamics of power underlying NPM and the power struggles involved in NPM-reforms. How do NPM-discourses gain or lose organizational ascendancy and how do these discourses constitute organisational subjects? How are NPM-discourses articulated, both practically and discursively, within public service organizations? How to approach NPM’s dimension of self-entrepreneurship from a poststructuralist, conceptual backbone? How can we understand the relation between NPM’s disciplinary mechanisms on the one hand and its dimension of self-entrepreneurship on the other? We also welcome papers dealing with the difficulties that might arise when using Foucaultian understandings of power and governmentality to study new public management. What other discourse-analytical theories can be used in order to complement Foucault’s ideas on power and governmentality to deal with such issues as organizational subjectivity or organisational change? The panel hopes to make headway in terms of revisiting the conceptual tools offered by Foucault in order to understand power struggles in the context of NPM.
We call for paper proposals that address these questions and related questions and encourage both papers concentrating on conceptual issues and papers dealing with empirical, methodological reflections 

 

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40

Frank Boddin
By way of introduction. New public management and power: scale, operation and object

Katariina Warpenius
Community prevention programme as a practice of scientific management

Marko Nousiainen & Päivi Pylkkänen
Making people responsible – a Finnish village action programme as a governmental technology

Heather Brunskell-Evans
New public management of Higher education, Foucault and power

Frank Boddin: Business or Culture? Public broadcasting and the governmental regime of NPM.

 

Power, Work and Community

Chair: Paul. J. Jonker (University of Turku)

Day 3 13:00 – 14:40

Samuel Kirwan: Can we criticize community? Investigating power in the emergence of communitarian governance.

Simo Järvelä: Arabia corporation as a pioneer of rationalization in Finland

Paul J. Jonker: Revitalising labour union power at the local level: the role of shop-steward networks