The departments of History and Ethnology, Social Sciences and Philosophy, as well as that of Music, Art and Culture Studies host a considerable number of research projects that fall within our profiling area. These projects showcase our strong methodological expertise, interdisciplinary cooperation, and the high international quality of our research. Our researchers have combined perspectives from history, politics, social sciences and the arts in research that is currently being conducted within the CoE “The History of a Society“, as well as in the recently ended CoE “Political Thought and Conceptual Change”.
Our profiling project builds upon a solid foundation that is a result of the close collaboration between these three departments. The project combines the empirical and methodological strengths of human and social sciences into a multidisciplinary study of crises, continuity, and change. This genuine multidisciplinarity, which combines historical, politological, social, philosophical, linguistic, cultural, and ethnological research, effectively sets this project apart from the human and social sciences of other Finnish universities.
The Department of History and Ethnology is recognized for its accomplishments in the research it has conducted on the global processes of change, the comparative and transnational histories of societies, early modern Finland, ethnography, political cultures and discourse, as well as economic history. The Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy is internationally renowned for its expertise on the history of political ideas and concepts, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of mind, phenomenology, as well as political theory. The Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies is a multi- and cross-disciplinary teaching and research unit. The department hosts e.g. the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture (RCCC), which is known for its interdisciplinary reception research as well as its analysis of contemporary cultural phenomena, such as digitalization, popular culture, and life narratives.
Research and focus areas
Crisis is a central concept of modernity. The digital history of concepts, based on big data analytics, demonstrates that, historically, the concept has had a wide range of meanings and connotations. While between the 16th and early 20th centuries, ‘crisis’ typically referred to various political events, conflicts, and states of emergency, its emphasis in contemporary discourses is predominantly on economic problems, natural disasters and catastrophes. Over time, all of these varying definitions have merged into a single concept of ‘crisis’, as something antonymous to stability, security, and continuity.
Despite being, by definition, abnormal states or states of emergency, crises seem to have become embedded into the routine condition of life. They appear to be constantly present in the contemporary world, and their presence has even become characteristic of it. The root causes for crises vary from ecological to man-made, (geo)political, and socio-economic ones, and their consequences often appear as more or less unpredictable and unstable.
Accordingly, the very definition of crisis is in itself complex and problematic. Thus, the leading objective of our research, within the profiling area, is to understand various, competing definitions of crisis; how crises come about and how they evolve; how they are defined and understood; and how they relate to global, national, and local physical environments, as well as human and collective action. Our project will concentrate especially on the historical and societal changes that precede, concur with, and result from crises, while simultaneously exploring the relevance of the historical continuity that comes to play both in and after crises.
Crises are concrete and real states of affairs. However, they are also subjectively experienced and discursively constructed, and can sometimes be purposefully created and maintained. The empirical, the experienced, and the discursive levels of the concept will all be taken into account in our research. The complexity of the topic will be tackled by drawing on the existing empirical, theoretical, and methodological expertise of our researchers in art, culture, ethnology, history, politics, social sciences, and philosophy.
The profiling area is divided into three focus areas:
The first focus area introduces the level of individual actors; the second area the level of collective political action; and the third area the level of institutions. These focus areas bring together the interdependent cultural, social, political, societal and macro-structural dimensions of crises into the research. The research in each focus area is penetrated by the investigation of the causes and effects of crises, their discursivity and material reality, their historical continuity and contemporariness, as well as the stability of socio-cultural macro-structures in relation to their states in crises. Research on all these areas is conducted collaboratively between the three participating departments.
