Place, Boundaries, and the Construction of Finnish Territory. In Kaplan, D & J Häkli (editors) Boundaries and Place: European Borderlands in Geographical Context. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford 2002, pp. 178-199. (original) (raw)

Conclusions: Towards a New Agenda for Place/Territorial Identity

Representing Place/Territorial Identity in Europe. Discourses, Images, and Practices, 2021

This chapter constitutes the conclusion to the collective book titled “Representing Place and Territorial Identities in Europe: Discourses, Images, and Practices”, edited by the authors. This book started from the premise that representations count a lot in the construction of place / territorial identities. The concluding chapter highlights the role of territorial identities and identity narratives/representations in fostering resilience at various scales. First, it discusses the focus on local or regional territorial identities, on the relevance of place in preserving heritage and in boosting development. Then, concerning methodology, it reveals the diversity of research material enabling the study of representations: written and oral text, and visual imagery, in face to face interaction and online. This chapter argues that issues relating to specific places/territories mature at the local scale, but they assume breadth and worldwide resonance thanks to the networks of social and economic relationships that bind people and places on the entire planet. It also underlines the need to never stop studying the identity representations of places/territories in a critical and proactive way, because it is also on them that the affirmation of a sustainable, inclusive, and participatory way of living the world depends.

Regions, borders and identity in a relational and territorial world

2015

This Special Issue is set up to commemorate Professor Anssi Paasi and his academic work on his 60th birthday. Anssi Paasi’s research on regions, territoriality, borders, identity and power-knowledge relations in neoliberalizing academia has had a wide influence in human geography and beyond. His robust body of work has made him the most internationally well-known scholar in Finnish geography and has charted the path for internationalizing human geography in Finland. He has achieved the highest honours in Finnish academia, including the nomination and employment as Academy Professor (2008-2012) and the establishment and leadership of the RELATE Centre of Excellence in Research in Oulu and in Tampere (2014-2016)1. In addition, he is Honorary Professor of Human Geography at the University of Wales (2006–) and recipient of prestigious Ashby Prize that was given to him based on the most innovative article published in the journal Environment and Planning A in 2005. Yet his work has contr...

Cultures of demarcation : territory and national identity in Finland

1999

and interpretation, which make up a landscape, always take place in some material and cultural context. Landscape is not only looked at, but also also lived in. There are different kinds of social and personal identities which may give shape to, and be formed by cultural landscape. National identity is a particular case in that it is often formed in connection with political aspirations. Hence the term nationbuilding. It is possible to address the particular relation between national identity and cultural landscape by focusing on the structured aspects of 'landscape', that is, by looking at the ways in which things and events are systematically drawn to signify nationality, and nationhood. The fact that there are certain textual or textlike materials through which this can be done-the result of reading and writing national space-justifies the term 'discursive' in connection with 'landscape'. National landscape is not only read off from nature and culture, it is also written therein. I argue that the concept of discursive landscape has the potential to make us better understand the intertwined nature of national identity and territory. However, it is a dubiously vague and abstract notion unless contextualized within particular social activities and processes of nation-building, e.g. those that took place in Finland over the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, the 'discursive landscape of Finland' reflects the historically and geographically specific social activities and processes of nation-building, which have given rise to things and events firmly interpreted in terms of Finnishness, within the Finnish territory. It is a relatively fixed system of nationalizing signification with both virtual and concrete existence over space. The idea is well captured by Paasi (1992), who points out that a nationstate's territory can be thought of as a container which the nation-building processes gradually fill with national consciousness. The focus here is not on the Finnish discursive landscape as a whole, which would entail the analysis of the entire network of ideas, symbols, and practices associated with Finnishness, and thus constitutive of the Finnish identity. Instead, m y e m p h a s i s i s o n t h e p a r t i c u l a r r o l e o f t e r r i t o r y i n t h i s l a n d s c a p e-i. e. representations of the Finnish territory, and the concrete territorial settings which have given shape to the majority national and minority ethnic identities in Finland. The chapter begins by exploring the larger European context of the Finnish national identity. Finland is analyzed as one of the "second generation" nation-states established after the First World War. When compared with other successor states, Finland stands out as a state with a relatively "stable" territorial shape and unified state apparatus long before the formal gaining of independence. This territorially stable foundation and the emerging discursive landscape is further scrutinized by looking at the development of the majority-minority relations in Finland, with a particular focus on two cases which reflect different cultures and histories of demarcation within the territorially hegemonic Finnish identity. While pointing at the hegemonic position of the Finnish national culture in the present day Finland, and acknowledging some form and degree of unity in the Finnish identity, the concept of discursive landscape does not denote a closed, clearly defined and instrumentally applicable device of social control. The specific knowledges, images, and symbols giving shape to national identity can not be fully