Paparazzi Ethnography

Lecture 6 June 2013, U Helsinki.




6/2: Eeva Korteniemi, Planning Officer, was kind enough to show me around the Aleksanteri Institute, Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies, independent institute of University of Helsinki, Finland for academic research. With training programmes and custom-made projects, the institute’s website details the offerings for researchers accessible here.

Fall 2010, I presented the annual Aleksanteri Conference, Fueling the Future, focusing on Russian energy politics. Since then I developed an interest in working with Aleksanteri on examining Western Expertise in constructing Russian energy futures.

Aleksanteri’s 2010 conference attracted academics and policy analysts from Russia, Western Europe, the United States, and marked an early experience for StudioPolar‘s Paparazzi–Ethnographic blogging about the fleeting phenomena of events (links,  Day 3, Day 2, Day 1).

In preparation for my lecture, Aleksanteri provided accommodation at Tööloö Towers, 20 minute walk from the Institute. Just inside the main entrance of the Institute is a table with Aleksanteri newsletter, copies of books published by Aleksanteri’s Kikimora press and pamphlets relating the goings on in the coming weeks.

The materials provide evidence of scholarly events (upcoming lectures, visitors, exhibits), publications, and visiting researchers. A short informative brochure for visiting scholars details the Institute’s activities on networking within Finland on active cooperation with the international research community with a strong outreach agenda and a full events calendar.

I picked up two books published through Kikimora press as casual reading, titled Business Entry in Eastern Europe, edited by Jan-åke Törnroos and Jarmo Nieminen, and Russian Greens in a Risk Society by Oleg Yanitsky, both weighing in at 300 pages each.

Yanitsky’s argument is illuminating, suggesting that reflexive modernization in Western Europe had existed already for decades in the USSR/Russia.

Eeva’s engaging tour kept me on my toes!

I had the opportunity to attend their area studies discussion which took place on the first floor, in a cellar like room, with arched stone ceilings. The entire setting was mundane and yet seemed to be taken directly out of a cold war spy novel.

Imagine: academics meeting in a cellar of an Areas Studies institute in Helsinki to discuss methods on reformulating analysis of the east.

In the cellar, there was lively discussion about the topic, including use of the words imagination, geographical boundary lines, economic and institutions, memories of generations, real/consistent/pragmatic study, the reality of state socialism in the region – the “positive legacy” – high investment in human capital, great transformation from sovietism to capitalism and my favorite, “area studies is an applied science”.
My immediate feeling was agreement, but then I remembered that all science is applied, in the sense that science (more than peace itself), is simply politics by other means, a war machine.

We were also treated to the Finnish perspective to area studies, the politics of science and how it changes over time, and how institutes change or have a direct impact on research. One of the discussants mentioned three main developments/phases since the 1990s, within Finnish research. First, the economic collapse of the Soviet Union led to lack of market for Finnish goods, and realization of lack of knowledge about Russia and its influence on Finnish domestic politics. What had been Russian-Eastern European studies in the Finnish perspective was mainly about former Soviet Union. So the goal of first academic programs in the 1990s, within Finland, was to generate new scholarship.
A second phase, the mid-1990s, saw Finland joining the European Union (EU), and re-inventing a role for itself as the Russian expert in the EU and for mediating, having a new role, in the form of possessing wide spread knowledge about Russia and even disseminating the idea that Finns know about Russia, that they were the holy grail of Russia. A new attitude toward institutionalization of Russian studies, coordinating scholarship and education on Russian studies and eastern Europe.

Finally, a third turn, European crisis, and industry restructuring.

In the contemporary scholarly discourse, according to our discussion, there are three main agendas: 1-what perspective to take on Russia; 2- what it is worth; 3-how to do it.

Here, the discussion became more arcane, with references to Finnlandization, a heated debate concerning scholarship accusations of being left wing, and turning against the transition of Russia with a critical tone, but then, in 2010, a post-Finlandization, where accusations turn upside down, with too mild a critique against Putin’s Russian. Moreover, Europe as a normative power approach, had an important impact on how Finnish scholarship should be interpreted, including the transfer of “our” ideas (human rights) to Russia, seen everywhere through the EU value systems.

A second agenda of contemporary debates revisits the Area Studies concepts themselves, with new words emerging, such as Eurasia (traveling concepts) – East is not only Russia, but more about Caucasian countries, Central Asia, China, an interconnectedness of things and geographies. The East is not just Russia anymore. Also, the North, that there is a Nordic dimension initiative, and how Russia is interconnected with the Northern region and Europe, and Arctic perspective. Reconceptualize Eastern Europe as such – euphemisms, east central, Balkan, Baltic, trying to avoid and maintain discussion – European studies that claims post socialist countries.