Sovereignty, song and 'The Sapphires' (Wayne Blair 2012)

With its foregrounding of the political issue of the denial of Aboriginal Australian sovereignty by British invaders in its big budget, mainstream narrative, 'The Sapphires' (Wayne Blair 2012) is shown to be another example of a "fourth formation" (Starrs 2012) in Moore and Muecke's 1985 model. Blair's feel-good movie features an all-Aboriginal Australian troupe of singers, The Sapphires, who undertake a journey of self-discovery whereby they learn the importance of choosing the protest songs of black Soul over the white coloniser's "whining" Country and Western songs and this is historically contextualised with a discussion of Aboriginal Australians and popular radio. Furthermore, this paper argues the iconic 'Welcome to Country' is twice subverted to reinforce this theme, firstly in the Cummeragunja pub and secondly in war-torn Vietnam. Finally, the prediction is made that a "fifth formation", in which seeking recognition of Aboriginal Australian sovereignty is no longer the goal because it has become the ongoing reality, will soon be the project of Australian film-makers as they celebrate this long overdue societal shift.

Juana Molina : left-field folktronica at the Brisbane Festival

Argentine singer-songwriter Juana Molina is one of those fearless artists. The kind of fearless artist who abandons a successful TV show at the height of its popularity to pursue a solo career in making and performing slightly left-field South American folk-tinged electronica...

When sexuality is in a research topic! The methodological challenges in sexuality and street healing research in Bangladesh

This paper is a bridge between two studies by the author: (i) completed MA research; and (ii) on-going PhD research, on male sexual health and the street healing system in Bangladesh. Street healing, a traditional healing system in Bangladesh, is at the centre of the studies. This is a popular form of folk healing in Bangladesh, where male impotency is a central issue. The author has been researching street healing to understand male sexual health-seeking behaviour in Bangladesh. In this paper, the author brings in experiences from his MA research to explore the challenges of studying sexuality and street healing in Bangladesh and concludes by describing his plan to address those issues in his on-going PhD research.

Green: Exploring the aestheticized use of chroma-key techniques and technologies in two intermedial productions

Peggy Shaw’s RUFF, (USA 2013) and Queensland Theatre Company’s collaboration with Queensland University of Technology, Total Dik!, (Australia 2013) overtly and evocatively draw on an aestheticized use of the cinematic techniques and technologies of Chroma Key to reveal the tensions in their production and add layers to their performances. In doing so they offer invaluable insight where the filmic and theatrical approaches overlap. This paper draws on Eckersall, Grehan and Scheer’s New Media Dramaturgy (2014) to reposition the frame as a contribution to intermedial theatre and performance practices in light of increasing convergence between seemingly disparate discourses. In RUFF, the scenic environment replicates a chroma-key ‘studio’ which facilitates the reconstruction of memory displaced after a stroke. RUFF uses the screen and projections to recall crooners, lounge singers, movie stars, rock and roll bands, and an eclectic line of eccentric family members living inside Shaw. While the show pays tribute to those who have kept her company across decades of theatrical performance, use of non-composited chroma-key technique as a theatrical device and the work’s taciturn revelation of the production process during performance, play a central role in its exploration of the juxtaposition between its reconstructed form and content. In contrast Total Dik! uses real-time green screen compositing during performance as a scenic device. Actors manipulate scale models, refocus cameras and generate scenes within scenes in the construction of the work’s examination of an isolated Dictator. The ‘studio’ is again replicated as a site for (re)construction, only in this case Total Dik! actively seeks to reveal the process of production as the performance plays out. Building on RUFF, and other works such as By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, (2012) and Hotel Modern’s God’s Beard (2012), this work blends a convergence of mobile technologies, models, and green screen capture to explore aspects of transmedia storytelling in a theatrical environment (Jenkins, 2009, 2013). When a green screen is placed on stage, it reads at once as metaphor and challenge to the language of theatre. It becomes, or rather acts, as a ‘sign’ that alludes to the nature of the reconstructed, recomposited, manipulated and controlled. In RUFF and in Total Dik!, it is also a place where as a mode of production and subsequent reveal, it adds weight to performance. These works are informed by Auslander (1999) and Giesenkam (2007) and speak to and echo Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre (2006). This paper’s consideration of the integration of studio technique and live performance as a dynamic approach to multi-layered theatrical production develops our understanding of their combinatory use in a live performance environment.

Cultural beliefs about societal change: A three-mode principal component analysis in China, Australia, and Japan

People’s beliefs about where society has come from and where it is going have personal and political consequences. Here, we conduct a detailed investigation of these beliefs through re-analyzing Kashima et al.’s (Study 2, n = 320) data from China, Australia, and Japan. Kashima et al. identified a “folk theory of social change” (FTSC) belief that people in society become more competent over time, but less warm and moral. Using three-mode principal components analysis, an under-utilized analytical method in psychology, we identified two additional narratives: Utopianism/Dystopianism (people becoming generally better or worse over time) and Expansion/Contraction (an increase/decrease in both positive and negative aspects of character over time). Countries differed in endorsement of these three narratives of societal change. Chinese endorsed the FTSC and Utopian narratives more than other countries, Japanese held Dystopian and Contraction beliefs more than other countries, and Australians’ narratives of societal change fell between Chinese and Japanese. Those who believed in greater economic/technological development held stronger FTSC and Expansion/Contraction narratives, but not Utopianism/Dystopianism. By identifying multiple cultural narratives about societal change, this research provides insights into how people across cultures perceive their social world and their visions of the future.

Warmwaters

This project originated from both investigation of the musicalisation of theatre and impact of gender upon contemporary physical comedy. Developed as a ‘music first’ proposition, the initial experiment was to blend music and theatre so they were indistinguishable. Musicalising theatre, and theatricalising music. This established a covert intermediality with the potential to work in theatre or music venues. An iterative cycle of writing, performance, and videography over two years in venues ranging from small cafes to Woodford Folk Festival resulted in a full-length performance premiering at Brisbane Powerhouse’s Queensland Cabaret Festival 2015. The soundtrack to the show was recorded as a full-length album at QUT’s Gasworks Studio and released in 2014. It’s become clear that male/female musical comedy acts are an extremely rare pairing. Certain preconceptions about gender and comedy complicate the field; indeed the comic tropes of the double act which the Warmwaters flow around and through. Brian Logan (2011) even poses that “the male-female dynamic militate[s] against comedy”. This performance-led research draws on Comedy Studies to examine three classic formulations of the comic duo as they are manifested at critical incidents in the Warmwaters’ show. These moments are examined in terms of comic functionality and gender, evaluating and potentially reformulating them, whilst working towards a better understanding of the relative scarcity of the male/female musical comedy duo. Prototypes have been performed in various venues, utilising performance as research: cycles in which discoveries made during unpredictable gigs in music venues are captured on video, transcribed, rewritten, then fed back into live performance.

When Japanese law goes pop

Japanese law is going ‘pop’. Since the turn of the century, Japanese popular culture, especially prime-time television, has dedicated more time to legal themes, characters and settings. Lawyers, overwhelmingly women, are the heroes in both dramatic and comedic television series (Nakamura, 2007). Courtroom battles are the scene for plot developments (Ishikawa, 2004). Practising lawyers are the new celebrities, joining actors and singers on the light entertainment talk show circuit. To be sure, law is not a new thematic preoccupation on Japanese network television. Nor is it one that has become so dominant that it overshadows more traditional genres such as workplace romantic comedies, coming-of-age dramas or family soap operas (eg, Dissanayake, 2012, p._194). But, its growing presence on the silver screen in twenty-first-century Japan is a trend that merits analysis. The purpose of this chapter is to explore that socio-legal significance. This presents theoretical and empirical challenges. Theoretically, is there explanatory potential in the link between law and popular culture in Japan? Empirically, does the greater embrace of law-related characters, plots and scenes in prime-time television series since 2001 provide compelling evidence of changing popular attitudes to law and legal process among Japanese viewers? The inspiration for both the title and theme of this chapter comes from Sherwin’s When Law Goes Pop (2000). But it departs from Sherwin in how it defines and analyses the issues. For Sherwin, ‘pop’ means ‘implosion’.

State Library Queensland

Sheona Thomson writes about the transformation of a public institution in relation to a study on post-occupancy. "Brisbanites like me, with memories of long hours of study in the former buildings of the State Library of Queensland, can only marvel at the living institution we have in our city today. For most of the 80s, our bookish pursuits were hosted in the fustily intimate reading rooms of Centennial Hall, the late 1950s extension to the nineteenth-century building (formerly housing the state museum) by F. D. G. Stanley in William Street on the north bank of the Brisbane River. At the time, the wheels of an expansive cultural ambition were turning, and piece by piece on the south bank of the river the rambling Queensland Cultural Centre was realized. The fourth stage of the complex opened in 1988 as the new home for the State Library and for many years after, countless studious, transient folk whiled away time in the deep interiors of the straight-faced concrete and glass edifice by Robin Gibson and Partners..."

Ufologia ja ufokokemukset uskonnollisina ilmiönä : Teoreettinen tutkimus

The main question of my doctoral thesis is whether ufology and UFO experiences are or can be explained as religious phenomena. My research is theoretical in the sense that I combine and systematise cultural scientific knowledge concerning the religiosity of ufology and UFO experiences and complete this theoretical effort with empirical subject matter. The research material for my study consists of theoretical literature and empirical texts written by ufologists and those who have had UFO experiences. I defined the material in a way that it became full and extensive with regard to ufology, stories about UFO experiences and the cultural scientific literature concerning them. In addition, I present a source criticism for the literature because it is in part informal. The method is analysing and synthesising the material in the context of spiral of hermeneutic inferential process. Definitions of religion, ufology and UFO experience, developed by myself, serve as guide lines for the process. The conclusions of my research are as follows. For the most part, ufology and UFO experiences belong to the category of religion and only a fraction of these instances can be explained as something else, for example psychiatric phenomena. From the religious viewpoint I explain ufology and UFO experiences on four different but interlinked levels: historical, comparative, sociological and psychological. Historically ufology and UFO experiences include esoteristic, Christian and folk religious elements. In addition UFO experiences have significant similarities with folk religious stories and shamanistic experiences. From the perspective of the sociology, of religion ufology and UFO experiences can be analysed as products of our scientific and technological Western culture. Social crisis and social psychological group mechanisms affect the appearance of ufological ideas and UFO experiences. Psychologically, in the background of religious UFO experiences there can be found several factors, such as wishful thinking. Concerning UFO sightings these are misinterpretations of certain ordinary and some rare or exotic natural and technical phenomena. Intense UFO experiences, such as UFO abductions, are stimulated for the most part by hallucinations, sleep paralysis disorders, lively fantasies (in case of fantasy prone personalities) and false memories. In group cases social pressure, small group delusion and the guilt of exposing the true nature of a story come into play. A UFO experience can be traumatising because of certain inferential mechanisms and cognitive dissonance involved in the process of conversion as a UFO experiencer. UFO religiosity is a cross cultural, widespread and a significant field of phenomena, which can offer insight about religious developments in the future. However, UFO religiosity has not been studied extensively. This research is one effort to address this lack of documentation. The motivation behind my thesis was to make ufology and UFO experiences more understandable.

Älykkään suunnittelun teoria : Tutkimus kansanomaisen psykologian ja biologian yhteydestä kreationistiseen ajatteluun

Tutkimuksen kohteena on (uus)kreationistinen älykkään suunnittelun (Intelligent Design) teoria. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan teoreettinen ja lukeutuu kognitiivisen uskonnontutkimuksen alaan. Näkökulmana on tarkastella älykkään suunnittelun teorian mukaista ajattelua ihmisen intuitiivisena taipumuksena ymmärtää luontoa ja luonnossa esiintyviä mekanismeja. Esimerkkinä intuitiivisesta päättelystä tarkastellaan erityisesti kansanomaisen psykologian (folk psychology) ja kansanomaisen biologian (folk biology) mukaista ajattelua. Tutkimuksessa kysytään: ilmeneekö älykkään suunnittelun teoriassa mahdollisesti kansanomaisen psykologian ja biologian mukaista ajattelua? Ensimmäiseksi käsitteellistetään älykkään suunnittelun teoria ja esitellään tutkimuksen aineisto. Esille tulevat yhteydet Yhdysvaltojen uskonnolliseen ilmapiiriin, kristillisten kreationististen suuntausten jatkumoon sekä evoluutioteoriaan. Aineisto koostuu älykkään suunnittelun teoriaa kehitelleen Michael J. Behen todistajanlausunnosta Doverin oikeudenkäynnissä, jossa arvioitavana oli älykkään suunnittelun teorian mahdollinen tieteellisyys ja uskonnollisuus. Tutkimuksen teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä määritellään tarkemmin, minkälaisiin ajattelutapoihin kansanomaisella, tieteellisellä ja uskonnollisella ajattelulla tutkimuksessa viitataan. Tämän jälkeen esitellään teoreettiset työvälineet - kansanomaisen psykologia ja biologia. Teoriaosuudessa tarkennetaan myös kansanomaisen, tieteellisen ja uskonnollisen ajattelun suhdetta intuitiiviseen ja intuitionvastaiseen ajatteluun, sekä määritellään kolmas termi epäintuitiivisuus. Teoriaosuus perustuu pääasiassa kognitiivisen uskonnontutkimuksen alaan lukeutuvien tutkijoiden, kuten Scott Atranin, Pascal Boyerin, Robert N. McCauleyn ja Ilkka Pyysiäisen julkaisuihin. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan myös evoluutioteorian ymmärtämistä tutkineen E. Margaret Evansin tutkimuksia. Analyysissä teoreettisia huomioita havainnollistetaan aineistosta löydettyjen esimerkkien kautta. Teoriaohjaavan sisällönanalyysin kautta Behen todistajanlausunnosta nostetaan esille erityisesti kansanomaisen psykologian ja biologian mukaiset ajattelun tavat. Analyysissä tarkastellaan, mitä tutkimuslöydösten avulla voidaan selittää älykkään suunnittelun teorian edustamasta kreationistisesta ajattelusta. Tutkimustuloksena esitetään, että älykkään suunnittelun teoria mukailee monilta osin sekä kansanomaista psykologiaa että kansanomaista biologiaa. Älykkään suunnittelun teoriassa muodostetaan intuitiivinen ideakokonaisuus maailmasta/ eliökunnasta ja sen aiheuttaneesta intuitionvastaisesta toimijasta. Mahdolliset epäintuitiiviset elementit, kuten luonnonvalinta ja kristillinen teologia, ovat teoriassa olemattomat. Tutkimuksessa osoitetaan, että kreationistista ajattelua voidaan perustellusti tarkastella ihmiselle intuitiivisena taipumuksena ymmärtää luontoa.

Literaturnaja skazka A.M. Remizova (1900-1920-e gody)

Literary tale of A.M. Remizov (1900’s – 1920’s) The thesis is devoted to a detailed historical-literary description of a tale as a genre tradition in the creative work of Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov (1877-1957), one of the major Russian prose writers of the 20’s century. This very approach allows to specify the place and functional meaning of this genre in literary practice of the writer and to appeal to one of the key problems of the 20-21 century literature history – a specific of modernistic literature composition principle and a role of montage techniques in its formation. Remizov was working on tales during his whole life, though the most productive years of folklore studies fell to 1900’s – 1910’s. During this period he intensively studied folklore materials, narrated several hundreds of folk tales and in 1900’s – 1920’s published eight tale collections which played a significant role in the formation of stylistic and compositional principles of his prose of the 1910’s – 1920’s, especially montage techniques, which in its turn influenced the development of the narrative forms in the Russian post-revolutionary literature. At the same time a tale has specified not only poetics but also problematics of Remizov’s creative work, as when choosing folklore sources the writer always alluded to modern themes and relevant intellectual trends. The current research work, based on various archive materials and a wide spectrum of modern historical-literary data, complies four chapters with a consistent description of creation history, publication and critics’ reviews of Remizov’s tale collections and single tales contributing to his creative evolution characteristic. Furthermore, the work refers to composition and subject of the particular collections. On the whole it enables to follow up genre dynamics. The first chapter of the work is devoted to Posolon’ (Sunwise), the earliest tale collection of Remizov. The main feature of the collection is that its composition is oriented on the agrarian calendar and the subject – on the system of mythological views reflected in the Russian folklore. This very collection to a large extent corresponds to the writer’s views on the myth represented in Pis’mo v redaktsiyu (Letter to the Editor). The history of this manifesto appearing is analyzed in the second chapter. The incident which caused its forthcoming contributed to ‘legitimization’ of Remizov’s narrations as a relevant genre of modern literature and to upgrading the writer in professional hierarchy. The third chapter analyzes Remizov’s collections of 1900’s – early 1920’s, a result of Remizov’s scrupulous work with a specific tale material. He is acting here as a tale repertory researcher and in some cases as a collector as well. The means of such collections’ topical organization is not the myth but the hero of the tale. According to this principle single pieces are grouped into cycles, which then form complicated montage constructs. Texts themselves can be viewed as a sort of hyper-quotations, as they in fact entirely coincide with their original sources. Besides, collections usually have their own ideal patterns. In the fourth chapter a connection of Remizov’s creative work with folk fun culture and a tradition of the folklore noel story is being demonstrated on Zavetnyie skazy (Secret Tales) material. A consistent collections’ history creation analysis convinces us that the tale was a sort of laboratory in which main writer’s prose methods were being worked out.

Isänmaa ja Ranska : Suomalainen frankofilia 1880-1914

In Finland the period 1880 -1914 constituted an essential phase in the creation of the great national project as well as it was a golden time of Francophilia. With Francophilia, i.e. French-mindedness, is here understood a collectively upheld strong sympathy towards France and French culture. However, the Francophilia of late nineteenth century Finland was free from apparent political intentions and remained a chosen disposition. The strength of its drive was not only based on the older European admiration of everything French, but also on the growing fascination for a novelty emerging besides the traditional influences of the Germanic culture. In Finnish society Francophilia mostly worked as an opposite force to the most confined conceptions of what was considered national ; as a consequence France came to denote more than a country and Francophilia contained an important symbolical meaning in the construction of the Finnish nation. The main tasks of the study are to introduce as the first large historical presentation of the subject a covering examination of the many descriptions of Paris-phases of assorted artists, authors, and intellectuals, to clarify the mental relationship of the Finnish intelligentsia to France prior to national independence, and finally to provide these developments with case studies of certain life paths. However, the examination is not biographical, because the starting point remains within the rhetoric arguments of Francophilia and patriotism as these appeared within the public sphere. Historical persons have thus been dealt with primarily as reflectors of the then-current French-minded mentality. Such Francophiles in Finland were first and foremost Werner Söderhjelm, Juhani Aho, L. Onerva and V. A. Koskenniemi. The networks of the Finnish cultural field are mostly displayed through these examples. In previous research the intensive relationship of Finnish artists and authors with France has not been connected with actual concepts of nationalism. The respective periods of the intellectuals in Paris have simply been viewed as devoid of ideological links with the contemporary advancement of the fatherland, or even as opposites to the patriotic pursuits in Finland. From the viewpoint of this study these now canonized creators of a Finnish culture are primarily seen as patriots and fellow countrymen, and only secondly as artists and artist s colleagues. The dissertation is constructed as both a regional survey of the idealization of France and a study of Finnish history through the mirror of Francophilia. As such France only held an instrumental role for the receiving culture, i.e. for the construction of Finland, as no "objective truths" were sought for in France. Keywords: France, francophilia, Finnishness, national project, Paris

Suomen rautakautiset kulkuset, kellot ja kelloriipukset : äänimaiseman arkeologiaa

The thesis addresses the problem of Finnish Iron Age bells, pellet bells and bell pendants, previously unexplored musical artefacts from 400–1300 AD. The study, which contributes to the field of music archaeology, aims to provide a gateway to ancient soundworlds and ideas of music making. The research questions include: Where did these metal artefacts come from? How did they sound? How were they used? What did their sound mean to the people of the Iron Age? The data collected at the National Museum of Finland and at several provincial museums covers a total of 486 bells, pellet bells and bell pendants. By means of a cluster analysis, each category was divided into several subgroups. The subgroups, which all seem to have a different dating and geographical distribution, represent a spread of both local and international manufacturing traditions. According to an elemental analysis, the material varies from iron to copper-tin, copper-lead and copper-tin-lead alloys. Clappers, pellets and pebbles prove that the bells and pellet bells were indisputably instruments intended for sound production. Clusters of small bell pendants, however, probably produced sound by jingling against each other. Spectrogram plots reveal that the partials of the still audible sounds range from 1 000 to 19 850 Hz. On the basis of 129 inhumation graves, hoards, barrows and stray finds, it seems evident that the bells, pellet bells and bell pendants were fastened to dresses and horse harnesses or carried in pouches and boxes. The resulting acoustic spaces could have been employed in constructing social hierarchies, since the instruments usually appear in richly furnished graves. Furthermore, the instruments repeatedly occur with crosses, edge tools and zoomorphic pendants that in the later Finnish-Karelian culture were regarded as prophylactic amulets. In the Iron Age as well as in later folk culture, the bell sounds seem to have expressed territorial, social and cosmological boundaries.

Tiedettä Pohjantähden alla : Pohjoisen tutkimus ja Ruotsin tiedeseurojen suhteet Ranskaan 1700-luvulla

In the eighteenth century, the birth of scientific societies in Europe created a new framework for scientific cooperation. Through a new contextualist study of the contacts between the first scientific societies in Sweden and the most important science academy in Europe at the time, l Académie des Sciences in Paris, this dissertation aims to shed light on the role taken by the Swedish learned men in the new networks. It seeks to show that the academy model was related to a new idea of specialisation in science. In the course of the eighteenth century, it is argued, the study of the northern phenomena and regions offered the Swedes an important field of speciality with regard to their foreign colleagues. Although historical studies have often underlined the economic, practical undertone of eighteenth-century Swedish science, participation in fashionable scientific pursuits had also become an important scene for representation. However, the views prevailing in Europe tied civilisation and learning closely to the sunnier, southern climates, which had lead to the difficulty of portraying Sweden as a learned country. The image of the scientific North, as well as the Swedish strategies to polish the image of the North as a place for science, are analysed as seen from France. While sixteenth-century historians had preferred to put down the effects of the cold and claim a similarity of northern conditions to the others, the scientific exchange between Swedish and French researchers shows a new tendency to underline the difference of the North and its harsh climate. An explanation is sought by analysing how information about northern phenomena was used in France. In the European academies, new empirical methods had lead to a need for direct observations on different phenomena and circumstances. Rather than curiosities or objects for exoticism, the eighteenth-century depictions of the northern periphery tell about an emerging interest in the most extreme, and often most telling, examples of the workings of the invariable laws of nature. Whereas the idea of accumulating knowledge through cooperation was most manifest in joint astronomical projects, the idea of gathering and comparing data from differing places of observation appears also in other fields, from experimental philosophy to natural studies or medicine. The effects of these developments are studied and explained in connection to the Montesquieuan climate theories and the emerging pre-romantic ideas of man and society.

Luonto, tiede ja teknologia : Kansanvalistuksen Suomi-kuva 1870-1920

Nature, science and technology. The image of Finland through popular enlightenment texts 1870-1920 This doctoral thesis looks at how Finnish popular enlightenment texts published between 1870 and 1920 took part in the process of forming a genuine Finnish national identity. The same process was occurring in other Nordic countries at the time and the process in Finland was in many ways influenced by them, particularly Sweden. In Finland the political realities under Russian rule especially during the Russification years, and the fact that its history was considered to be short compared to other European countries, made this nation-building process unique. The undertaking was led by members of the national elite, influential in the cultural, academic as well as political arenas, who were keen to support the foundation of a modern Finnish identity. The political realities and national philosophy of history necessitated a search for elements of identity in nature and the Finnish landscape, which were considered to have special national importance: Finland was very much determined as a political entity on the basis of its geography and nature. Nature was also used as means of taking a cultural or political view in terms of, for example, geographical facts such as the nation s borders or the country s geographical connections to Western Europe. In the building of a proper national identity the concept of nature was not, however, static, but was more or less affected by political and economic progress in society. This meant that nature, or the image of the national landscape, was no longer seen only as a visual image of the national identity, but also as a source of science, technology and a prosperous future. The role of technology in this process was very much connected to the ability to harness natural resources to serve national interests. The major change in this respect had occurred by the early 20th century, when indisputable scientific progress altered the relationship between nature and technology. Concerning technology, the thesis is mainly interested in the large and at the time modern technological manifestations, such as railways, factories and industrial areas in Finland. Despite the fact that the symbiosis between national nature and international but successfully localized technology was in Finnish popular enlightenment literature depicted mostly as a national success story, concerns began to arise already in last years of the 19th century. It was argued that the emerging technology would eventually destroy Finland s natural environment, and therefore the basis of its national identity. The question was not how to preserve nature through natural science, but more how to conserve such natural resources and images that were considered to be the basis of national identity and thus of the national history. National parks, isolated from technology, and distant enough so as to have no economic value, were considered the solution to the problem. Methodologically the thesis belongs to the genre of science and technology studies, and offers new viewpoints with regard to both the study of Finnish popular enlightenment literature and the national development process as a whole.