Research project

POWCULT research plan (pdf)

Research activities

 

The Power of Culture in Producing
Common Sense (POWCULT)

Responsible leader: Dr., Professor Mikko Lehtonen (Media Culture, University of Tampere)

Co-director: Dr., Docent Anu Koivunen (Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University)

The interdisciplinary project examines Finnish power structures by studying the production of common sense in the fields of culture, media and art since early 1990s. By revising the Gramscian notion of common sense, the project examines how the power of culture operates in cultural and social imaginary. Analyzing the representational and rhetorical strategies in popular press and television, literature, theatre, visual culture and popular music, we ask how these various areas of culture produce common sense and articulate value by setting agendas for public debates, by framing them, and by exerting definitional political power. We also ask how identities, notions of self and forms of communities are articulated in contemporary culture.

The project results in six monographs (in Finnish and English), a number of refereed articles (in Finnish and English), two joint volumes on "the power of culture" (in English and in Finnish) with chapters on various areas of culture, art and media as well as seminars with distinguished international and national partners. Key methods of the project include textual analysis of representations, rhetoric and discourses, combined with frameworks of social and cultural theory, media studies, feminist and postcolonial theories.

The individual projects of POWCULT are:

Docent Anu Koivunen and Professor Mikko Lehtonen: Beyond the 'Popular'?

In a monograph framing the theoretical framework of the POWCULT project, Koivunen and Lehtonen present their theory of "popular publicness". In the current global media landscape, a reifying (the popular as a thing) or fetishized (the popular as removed from its specific histories) notion of the popular is of little value neither as a descriptive term (what is popular?) nor as an analytical device (what kind of knowledge can the concept produce?). The twosome will not, however, suggest an abandoning but a rethinking of the 'popular'.

MA Mikko Hautakangas: The Finnish Big Brother and the Norms of Normality

Hautakangas studies reality television and the public discussion surrounding it. First, he clarifies the cultural location of reality television entertainment. Second, he focuses on the dynamics of power between the audience, the producers of the media product and the media text itself. Hautakangas's research is closely linked to the main question of the overall project, i.e. the power of culture in producing social norms and common sense, from the point of view of the audiences/consumers/citizens.

Docent Erkki Karvonen: Uneasy Relations Between Politics and Journalism

Karvonen's study focuses on conflicting interests and power struggles between politics and journalism in Finland. During last years the press has taken more adversarial role in relation to politics. At the same time the media seem to be commercialised and become more popular or populist. Top politicians are now treated like any other celebrities and revelations of politicians' private lives are now popular entertainment. Does this process of 'entertainmentisation' of polical coverage benefit democratic process or not? Karvonen's study engages with international academic debates concerning the role of media for democracy. In this project both journalists and politicians are interviewed in order to analyse their ways to signify the media/ politics relationship. Furthermore, public debates dealing with these relations will be studied.

Dr. Jussi Ojajärvi: Contemporary Finnish Literature and the Problematic of Capitalism and Subjectivity

Ojajärvi asks: How does contemporary Finnish literature relate to the market-centred world view that according to many recent studies has pervaded the sphere of politics? The survey discusses 50-60 appreciated novels by such writers as Kari Hotakainen, Kjell Westö, Monika Fagerholm, Hannu Raittila, Reko Lundán and Pirjo Hassinen. Some literary characters, certain modes of narration (such as using trade marks as signs of a whole era) and portrayals of milieus seem to naturalise the consumer society and class distinctions. On the other hand, literary texts may critically reflect the current ways of constructing ideological subject positions and identities. By interpreting and contextualising these representations, the study will ask: How does literature act as a cultural space containing hegemonic and/or counter-hegemonic potentials?

Dr. Mari Pajala: Television as a Technology of Memory

Pajala's project analyses the ways contemporary popular television in Finland remembers its own past and narrativises the national past and present, produces representations of identity and difference, and attaches value. Current Finnish television is involved in recycling the televisual past in the form of re-runs and commemorative programmes that make use of archival material. Consequently, television functions as an important technology of memory in contemporary society. The project aims to study how televisual repetition fixes the meanings of past and present, but also how it opens up possibilities for re-signification and change.

Docent Leena-Maija Rossi: Power of Racializing and Othering Representations

Rossi's project is based on the notion of contemporary Finland boasting to be a full-fledged participant in the processes of internationalization and globalization. The cultural production of an exclusive notion of normative, white, middle-class, reproductively heterosexual Finnishness, however, testifies otherwise. Rossi asks: How do cultural representations "sell" this hierarchical notion of national identity? How is the cultural consensus produced: who are acceptable for representing the recognizable and intelligible, good-enough citizens? The study is located in the intersection of visual studies, postcolonial studies and gender studies.

Professor Hanna Suutela: Finnish Improvisation Theatre as a Theatrical Formation

Suutela studies improvisation theatre as an interactive relationship between the performers and their audiences. She examines how the improvisation shows work as sites of cultural persuasion for economical and hegemonic power relations. Suutela suggests that while improvisation theatre supports conservative values of the middle-class audiences, it simultaneously re-introduces the idea of a firm identity or personality under all our social roles. The rhetoric of acting in improvisation theatre formulates an ideal of an individual willing and capable of adapting his/her personality into the roles demanded of him/her by the audience, the surrounding society and its economics.