Imagining a New Society: Public Painting as Politics in Postwar Finland

The thesis is the first comprehensive study on Finnish public painting, public artworks generally referred to as murals or monumental paintings. It focuses on the processes of production of public paintings during the post-WWII decades in Finland and the complex relationships between the political sphere and the production of art. The research studies the networks of agents involved in the production of public paintings. Besides the human agents—artists, assistants, commissioners and viewers—also public paintings were and are agents in the processes of production and in their environments. The research questions can be grouped into three overlapping series of questions: First, the research investigates the production public paintings: What kinds of public paintings were realised in postwar Finland—how, where, by whom and for what purposes? Second, it discusses the publicness of these paintings: How were public paintings defined, and what aspects characterised them as “public”? What was their relation to public space, public authorities, and audience? And third, it explores the politics of public paintings: the relationship between Finnish public painting, nationalism, and the memory of war. To answer these questions, extensive archival work has been performed, and over 200 public paintings have been documented around Finland. The research material has been studied in a sociological framework and in the context of the political and economic history of Finland, employing critical theories on public space and public art as well as theories on the building of nationalism, commemoration, memory, and forgetting. An important aim of this research was to open up a new field of study and position public painting within Finnish art history, from which it has been conspicuous by its absence. The research indicates that public painting was a significant genre of art in postwar Finland. The process of creating a national genre of public painting participated in the defining of municipal and state art politics in the country, and paintings functioned as vehicles of carrying out the agenda of the commissioning bodies. In the formation of municipal art policies in Finland in the 1950s, public painting connected to the same tendency of democratising art as the founding of public art museums. Public painting commissions also functioned as an arena of competition and a means of support for the artists. Public paintings were judged and commissioned within the realm of political decision-making, and they suggested the values of the decision-making groups, generally conveyed as the values of the society. The participation of official agents in the production allocated a position of official art to the genre. Through the material of this research, postwar public painting is seen as an agent in a society searching for a new identity. The postwar public painting production participated in the creation of the Finnish welfare society as indications of a humane society. It continued a tradition of public art production that had been built on nationalist and art educational ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Postwar public paintings promoted the new national narrative of unification by creating an image of a homogeneous society with a harmonious communal life. The paintings laid out an image of Finnishness that was modern but rooted in the agrarian past, of a society that was based on hard work and provided for its members a good life. Postwar public painting was art with a mission, and it created an image of a society with a mission.

The multicultural moment : the history of the idea and politics of multiculturalism in Sweden in comparative, transnational and biographical context, 1964–1975

The emergence of the idea of multiculturalism in Swedish public discourse and social science in the latter half of the 1960s and introduction of official multiculturalism in 1975 constituted a major intellectual and political shift in the post-war history of Sweden. The ambition of the 1975 immigrant and minority policy to enable the preservation of ethno-cultural minorities and to create a positive attitude towards the new multicultural society among the majority population was also incorporated into Swedish cultural, educational and media policies. The rejection of assimilationism and the new commitment to ethno-cultural diversity, the multicultural moment, has earned Sweden a place on the list of the early adopters of official multiculturalism, together with Canada and Australia. This compilation thesis examines the origins and early post-war history of the idea of multiculturalism as well as the interplay between idea and politics in the shift from a public ideal of homogeneity to an ideal of multiculturalism in Sweden. It does so from a range of conceptual, comparative, transnational, and biographical perspectives. The thesis consists of an introduction (Part I) and four previously published studies (Part II). The primary research result of the thesis concerns the agency involved in the break-through and formal establishment of the idea of multiculturalism in Sweden. Actors such as ethnic activists, experts and officials were instrumental in the introduction and establishment of multiculturalism in Sweden, as they also had been in Canada and in Australia. These actors have, however, not previously been recognized and analysed as significant idea-makers and political agents in the case of Sweden. The intertwined connections between activists, social scientists, linguists, and officials facilitated the transfer of the idea of multiculturalism from a publically contested idea to public policy via the way of The Swedish Trade Union Confederation, academia and the Royal Commission of Immigration. The thesis furthermore shows that the political success of the idea of multiculturalism, such as it was within the limits of the universalist social democratic welfare state, was dependent on whom the claims-makers were, the status and positions they held, and the way the idea of multiculturalism was conceptualised and used. It was also dependent on the migratory context of labour immigration in the 1960s and 1970s and on whose behalf the advocates of multiculturalism made their claims. The majority of the labour immigrants were Finnish citizens from the former eastern half of the kingdom of Sweden who were net contributors to the Swedish welfare state. This facilitated the recognition of their ethno-cultural difference, and, following the logic of universalism, the ethno-cultural difference of other minority groups in Sweden. The historical significance of the multicultural moment is still evident in the contemporary immigration and integration policies of Sweden. The affirmation of diversity continues to set Sweden apart from the rest of Europe, now more so than in the 1970s, even though the migratory context has changed radically in the last 40 years.

Building climate justice : an analysis of how the nexus between climate change and human rights shapes public policy agendas and alternatives

This thesis provides an analysis of how the nexus between climate change and human rights shapes public policy agendas and alternatives. It draws upon seminal work conducted by John Kingdon, whose landmark publication “Agendas, alternatives, and public policy” described how separate streams of problems, solutions, and politics converge to move an issue onto the public policy agenda toward potential government action. Building on Kingdon’s framework, this research explores how human rights contribute to surfacing the problem of climate change; developing alternative approaches to tackling climate change; and improving the political environment necessary for addressing climate change with sufficient ambition. The study reveals that climate change undermines the realization of human rights and that human rights can be effective tools in building climate resilience. This analysis was developed using a mixed methods approach and drawing upon substantial literature review, the researcher’s own participation in international climate policy design; elite interviews with thought leaders dealing with climate change and human rights; and regular inputs from focus groups comprised of practitioners drawn from the fields of climate change, development and human rights. This is a journal based thesis with a total of six articles submitted for evaluation, published in peer‐reviewed publications, over a five year period. Denna avhandling analyserar hur klimatfrågan och mänskliga rättigheter i samverkan formar den politiska agendan och det politiskt möjliga. Den bygger på banbrytande forskning av John Kingdon, vars publikation “Agendas, alternatives, and public policy” beskriver hur en fråga blir politiskt viktig och lyfts upp på den politiska agendan. Med utgångspunkt i Kingdons ramverk, utforskar avhandlingen hur mänskliga rättigheter bidrar till att blottlägga klimatfrågan som problem; utveckla alternativa metoder för att angripa och hantera klimatfrågan; samt skapa ett politiskt klimat nödvändigt för att på ett ambitiöst sätt kunna angripa klimatfrågan. Studien visar att klimatförändringar undergräver mänskliga rättigheterna men att arbete med mänskliga rättigheter kan vara ett effektivt verktyg för att stå emot och hantera effekterna av klimatförändringar. Analysen har genomförts med hjälp av en rad olika metoder vilka inkluderar litteraturstudier, författarens egna observationer under klimatförhandlingar; intervjuer med ledande tänkare inom klimatfrågan och mänskliga rättigheter; samt data insamlad genom fokusgrupper bestående av yrkesverksamma inom klimat, utveckling och mänskliga rättigheter. Avhandlingen är baserad på totalt sex artiklar som publicerats i fackgranskade tidskrifter under en femårsperiod.