888 resultados para NARRATION (RHETORIC)
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Enchanted by Sources. Henry Biaudet, Liisi Karttunen and Finnish Historical Research in Rome in the Early Twentieth Century This study traces the scholarly endeavours of Henry Biaudet (1870 1915) and Liisi Karttunen (1880 1957) and "La mission historique finlandaise à Rome" which they founded in 1909. They are forgotten in Finnish historiography, but remain internationally renowned for their contribution to the nunciature studies. By investigating their historical work on the Counter- Reformation era, their roles in the scientific communities of Helsinki and Rome as well as the intersection of politics and science in their scholarly practices the study explores the nature of historical research in general at the turn of the twentieth century. The work covers fields such as historiography, university history and the political use of history. Methodologically the research is based on the analysis and contextualization of published and unpublished sources (e.g. correspondences, university records, scholarly publications and reviews in academic journals). Henry Biaudet criticized the previous research on the Nordic Counter-Reformation for its narrow national scope and sources. He sought out a new approach, including the use of sources in archives all over Europe and the inclusion of the Catholic viewpoint. Accordingly, Biaudet and Karttunen searched for records in archives in Southern Europe. Their unorthodox interpretations were denounced in Finland since the picture they gave of late sixteenth-century Sweden was too different from the national narrative. Moreover, Finnish national identity was firmly rooted in Protestantism, and questioning the benevolence of the Reformation and its main actors was considered as an attack not only against historical truth but also national values. The comparison between Biaudet s and Karttunen s arguments and the accepted narrative in Finland shows how traditional interpretations of the Nordic Reformation were influenced by the Lutheran ethos and European anticlerical rhetoric. Historians have recently paid substantial attention to the political use of history, usually focusing on politicized constructions of the national past. This study shows how research that met the criteria of modern historiography also served political purposes. Conducting research in an international community of historians and publishing ambitious scholarly studies that interested an international audience were ways to create a positive image of Finland abroad. These were not uniquely Finnish ideas but rather ideas shared by the international community of historians in Rome. In this context, scientific pursuits were given a clear political meaning. This enhances our understanding of nineteenth-century historiography being firmly rooted between science and politics.
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The 1980s and the early 1990s have proved to be an important turning point in the history of the Nordic welfare states. After this breaking point, the Nordic social order has been built upon a new foundation. This study shows that the new order is mainly built upon new hierarchies and control mechanisms that have been developed consistently through economic and labour market policy measures. During the post-war period Nordic welfare states to an increasing extent created equality of opportunity and scope for agency among people. Public social services were available for all and the tax-benefit system maintained a level income distribution. During this golden era of Nordic welfare state, the scope for agency was, however, limited by social structures. Public institutions and law tended to categorize people according to their life circumstances ascribing them a predefined role. In the 1980s and 1990s this collectivist social order began to mature and it became subject to political renegotiation. Signs of a new social order in the Nordic countries have included the liberation of the financial markets, the privatizing of public functions and redefining the role of the public sector. It is now possible to reassess the ideological foundations of this new order. As a contrast to widely used political rhetoric, the foundation of the new order has not been the ideas of individual freedom or choice. Instead, the most important aim appears to have been to control and direct people to act in accordance with the rules of the market. The various levels of government and the social security system have been redirected to serve this goal. Instead of being a mechanism for redistributing income, the Nordic social security system has been geared towards creating new hierarchies on the Nordic labour markets. During the past decades, conditions for receiving income support and unemployment benefit have been tightened in all Nordic countries. As a consequence, people have been forced to accept deteriorating terms and conditions on the labour market. Country-specific variations exist, however: in sum Sweden has been most conservative, Denmark most innovative and Finland most radical in reforming labour market policy. The new hierarchies on the labour market have co-incided with slow or non-existent growth of real wages and with a strong growth of the share of capital income. Slow growth of real wages has kept inflation low and thus secured the value of capital. Societal development has thus progressed from equality of opportunity during the age of the welfare states towards a hierarchical social order where the majority of people face increasing constraints and where a fortunate minority enjoys prosperity and security.
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Horseback riding is a popular activity in Finland, especially among young women and girls. For centuries, however, horse husbandry and horse culture in Finland had been dominated by men. Nowadays it is mainly the girls who ride as a hobby and take care of the horses. The stable has evolved into an important social sphere for girls, a semi-public room of their own where they spend time together. A study of the girl culture in the riding stable offers a unique perspective as well as new information on becoming a girl and a young woman in Finland. The subject of my research is the girl culture and girls communities at the horseback riding stables. In this thesis I discuss what kind of girl-cultural sphere the stable is, how girls organize their community, and what different aspects and meanings the hobby entails for girls while they are actively engaged in the hobby. I focus on the construction of gender and girlhood and examine how these gender constructions can be theorized as gender tradition. The research material consists of the interviews of 22 stable girls from different parts of Finland and an observation period at one of the stables. The informants were from 13 to 27 years of age. The theoretical background is based on the anthropological study of folklore, girls studies, feminist theory and post-humanist viewpoints. I am interested in how girls culture and girlhood are produced performatively in the interview narration and participant observation. I concentrate on four aspects of this culture: 1) what girls do at the stable, and what kind of relationships they create with horses; 2) social relations focusing on the ways girls construct their own groups, the way their hierarchy is constructed and how they use power; 3) the norms and social control regarding social behaviour; and 4) the reasons girls give for their involvement in the hobby, and girls interest in horses in general. In this girl culture, gender norms and boundaries are not only stretched or transgressed, but the culture also re-produces the hierarchical and stereotypical ideas of gender. The traditions of gender express both the hegemonic gender system and those ideas of gender which girls resist, at least momentarily. Constructions of gender and gender tradition are constituted at the intersections of historical and contemporary expectations of what it means to be a girl. Conscious of these societal demands, girls support, reproduce, challenge, and make comments on them.
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Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, we know little about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this paper, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Swedish company Volvo in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis adds to the previous studies explaining how organizational restructuring as a phenomenon is legitimated, how this legitimation has changed over time, and how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated in the media. This study also increases our theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.
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Researchers and practitioners have increasingly explained post-merger organizational problems with cultural differences, especially in the context of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. It is suggested here that cultural differences have great explanatory power in the context of post-merger change processes. There are, however, problems with a number of superficial cultural conceptions that are common in research in this area and in managerial rhetoric. This critical article provocatively delineates misconceptions widely held by researchers and practitioners in this field, which not only disregard cultural differentiation, fragmentation, inconsistencies and ambiguities, but further, illustrate a lack of understanding of cultural permeability and embeddedness in the environment, an overemphasis on abstract values and lack of attention to organizational practices, an overemphasis on initial structural differences and lack of attention to the new cultural layer, a lack of recognition of the political dimensions and a failure to recognize cultural differences as sources of value and learning. In this article, the theoretical problems associated with these misconceptions are examined and new conceptual perspectives suggested. The risks at stake for decision makers are also discussed.
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The aim of this study was to investigate educators relational moral voices in urban schools and to listen to what they told about moral professionalism and moral practices in challenging urban schools. Their relational moral voices were investigated through the following three questions: 1. What are the educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people? 2. What are the educators moral voices in relation to their work and society? 3. What kind of interaction process lies between the educators moral voices and the urban school context? The research data of this study were gathered in four urban schools in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. The research schools were chosen for this study according to the criteria of the international Socrates Comenius project called Leading Schools Successfully in Challenging Urban Context: Strategies for Improvement. This study formed part of this project, which investigated successful urban schools as challenging learning environments in nine European countries and explored the principals success in leadership in particular. The data, which included 37 narratively constructed interviews with four principals and key informants selected by the principals, were gathered in interviews conducted in 2006. In other words, the data comprised three interviews with each of four principals, and interviews with two teachers, two parents, and two pupils from each school. In addition, the school deacon from one school was also interviewed. Furthermore, part of the data from one of the research schools included a medium report of the school deacon s work. This study combined the case study method, the narrative approach and the critical incident technique as the methodological framework. In addition, all of these methods served as practical tools for both analyzing and reporting the data. The educators' narrations and the results of the study appear in the original articles (Hanhimäki & Tirri 2008; Hanhimäki 2008b; Hanhimäki & Tirri 2009; Hanhimäki 2008a). The educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people emerged through the main themes of moral leadership, the development and evaluation process, moral sensitivity, gender, values, and student well-being. The educators moral voices in relation to their work and society emerged through the main themes of multiprofessional cooperation, families and parental involvement, and moral school culture. The idea of moral interaction connected moral professionalism and the methodological combination of this study, which together emphasized social interaction and the creation of understanding and meaning in this interaction. The main point of this study was to state that the educators moral voices emerged in the interaction between the educators themselves and the urban school context. In this interaction, the educators moral professionalism was constructed and shaped in relation to themselves, other people, their work and society. The loudest relational moral voices heard through the main themes were those of caring, cooperation, respect, commitment, and professionalism. When the results were compared to the codes of ethics which guided these educators moral professional work, the ethical principles and values of the codes were clearly visible in their moral practices. The loudest message from the educators narration could be summarized in the words caring, respect and cooperation: at its best, there is just a human being and a human being with caring, respect and cooperation between them. The results of this study emphasize the need for practical approaches such as case studies and the narrative approach in teacher education to encourage educators to become moral professionals capable of meeting the needs of people of varied backgrounds. In addition, opportunities for moral, religious and spiritual education should be noticed and utilized in the plural interaction of urban schools when nurturing pupils and creating a moral school culture. Furthermore, multiprofessional cooperation and parents as the school s primary cooperation partner are needed to carry out the shared duty of moral education in urban schools. Keywords: moral professionalism, educator, relational moral voice, interaction, urban school
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The article outlines a conceptual history of narrative, in particular the changes over the movement called “narrative turn” in the social sciences. According to Quentin Skinner, conceptual changes may take place on three separate levels: by changing the criteria of the concept, by changing the range of reference, and by changing the appraisal of the concept. Recent theorizing on narrative epitomizes all of these levels, but unevenly. In spite of the rhetoric of interdisciplinarity, two almost totally separate traditions of narrative theory persist: the narratological and the narrative-turn theories. Paradoxically, the narrative turn literature has radicalized the range of reference of narrative by attaching the concept to life and identity, but has left the criteria of the concept practically intact. This has extended the reign of a simplified Aristotelian concept of narrative as a chain of beginnings, middles, and ends. The narratological tradition of theorizing, instead, has debated extensively on the correct criteria of the concept, but enlarged the range of reference rather in the direction of cognition.
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The triangular space between memory, narrative and pictorial representation is the terrain on which this article is developed. Taking the art of memory developed by Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) and the art of painting subtly revolutionised by Adam Elsheimer (1578 – 1610) as test-cases, it is shown how both subvert the norms of mimesis and narration prevalent throughout the Renaissance, how disrupted memory creates “incoherent” narratives, and how perspective and the notion of “place” are questioned in a corollary way. Two paintings by Elsheimer are analysed and shown to include, in spite of their supposed “realism”, numerous incoherencies, aporias and strange elements – often overlooked. Thus, they do not conform to two of the basic rules governing both the classical art of memory and the humanist art of painting: well-defined places and the exhaustive translatability of words into images (and vice-versa). In the work of Bruno, both his philosophical claims and the literary devices he uses are analysed as hints for a similar (and contemporaneous) undermining of conventions about the transparency and immediacy of representation.
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Työssäni tarkastelen venäläistä neo-euraasianistista liikettä ja tapoja joilla liikkeen aktivistit rakentavat Euraasiasta yhtenäistä kokonaisuutta ja imperiumia. Keskeisiä tutkimuskysymyksiäni ovat: Mikä imperiumi on ja mitkä ovat sen keskeisiä motivaatioita ja teemoja? Kuinka imperiumin idea rakentuu tai käsitetään ja tämän voi tulkita? Minkälaisia seurauksia voi tulkita heidän tavallaan Euraasia nähdä olevan? Materiaalina käytän haastatteluja, jotka on kerätty Moskovassa keväällä 2008, ja liikkeen kirjallisia tuotoksia (lehdet ja Internet -sivut). Neo-euraasianistisella liikkeellä tarkoitan tässä työssä Kansainvälistä Euraasianistista liikettä (Meždunarodnoe Evrazijskoe Dviženie) ja sen alahaaraa Euraasianistista Nuorisoliittoa (Evrazijskij Sojuz Molodëži). Liike perustettiin virallisesti 2003, mutta rakentaa vahvasti historiallista yhteyttä 1930 -luvun klassiseen eurasianismiin. Tämän lisäksi sen diskurssissa on paljon neuvostoliittolaisia, fasistisia, uuskonservatiivisia ja nationalistisia piirteitä. Liikkeen johtohahmo on filosofi-geopoliitikko Alexandr Dugin. Työn tausta-ajatuksena minua kiinnostaa etenkin nk. älymystön tai intelligenttien vaikutus nationalismiin tai sosiaalisia ryhmiä määrittelevien diskurssien kehitykseen ja muutokseen.Tarkastelen materiaalia diskurssianalyyttisesta näkökulmasta. Näen diskurssianalyysin sen tutkimisena, miten sosiaalista todellisuutta tuotetaan erilaisissa sosiaalisissa käytännöissä. Samalla näiden diskurssien tutkiminen, foucautlaisen perinteen myötä, tarkastelee kriittisesti niiden tuottamia (aktualisoituneita sekä potentiaalisia) valtasuhteita. Käytän työssäni myös Benedict Andersonin kuvitellun yhteisön (imagined communities) käsitettä, joka auttaa hahmottamaan tapaa, jolla tutkimuskohteeni rakentavat imperiumia yhteisönä. Aktivistien puheessa imperiumi (imperiâ) tulee esiin pääasiallisesti positiivisesti ja ”heidän omanaan,” kun taas termi imperialismi (imperializm) pääosin negatiivisena, liittyen etenkin keskeisenä vihollisena pidettyihin Yhdysvaltoihin. Esiin nousee monta toisiinsa liittyvää teemaa, jotka jaottelen viideksi pääteemaksi. Näistä tarkastelen lähemmin imperiumia ”kaikkien kansojen hyväntekijänä (poliittinen puoli)”, ulkoisen voiman lähteenä (historiallis-geopoliittinen puoli) sekä kollektiivisen subjektin luojana (imperialistis-nationalistinen puoli). Pyrin kontekstualisoimaan diskurssin ja tarkastelemaan tapoja, joilla se ammentaa motiiveja myös historiallis-kulttuurisista tavoista hahmottaa aluetta ja sen asukkaita. Käsittelen myös kansan, kansakunnan, etnoksen ja nationalismin käsitteitä ja sitä, miten ne nousevat neo-eurasianistisessa diskursissa esiin. Imperiaalisen nationalismin (imperskij nacionalizm) käsite auttaa ymmärtämään niitä tapoja, jolla liike tekee sekä pesäeroa nationalismiin että samalla hyödyntää monia nationalistisen diskurssin perusteemoja. Eräs liikkeen diskurssin keskeisistä eroista niin sanottuun nationalismin valtavirtaan on ”kansakunnan (naciâ)” käsitteen vahva negatiivinen konnotaatio. Sen vastakohtana esiin nostetaan vahvasti kansan (narod) käsite. Samalla kuitenkin etnisen venäläisen (russkij) käsitettä käytetään tavallista laajemmin ja kattavammin kuin tavallisesti, ja ennen kaikkea Venäjä nousee imperiumin keskeisimmäksi tekijäksi. Euraasialaiseen imperiumiin liitetyistä positiivistista mielikuvista käsittelen tarkemmin monikansallisuuden ja kansojen kodin ideaa, joka nousee mielestäni huomattavaksi retoriseksi taustaksi kaikessa materiaalissa. Tähän liittyy vahvasti myös saman teeman sivujuonne, eli imperiumin ”vapauttava” rooli. Tulkitsen, että liikkeen imperiumi -diskurssilla on instrumentaalinen luonne: se legitimoi aktivistien vaatimuksia varsinkin entisen Neuvostoliiton alueen suhteen. ”Euraasialaisen kansan” ajatus toimii mahdollisena Euraasiaa yhteisenä tekijänä ”Neuvostokansan” tilalla. Sen taustalla materiaalistani päätellen siintävät kuitenkin enemmänkin Venäjä ja venäläis -spesifit vaateet kuin koko Euraasia. Pohdin myös kansakunnan (nation) hyljeksimisen syitä ja käsitteen sopivuutta Venäjälle, kuten myös venäläisyyden käsitteiden kerrostuneisuutta. Kokonaisuudessaan imperiumi tuli esiin abstraktina, utopistisena ja ”totaalisena” kokonaisuutena.
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Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, little is known about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this article, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Sweden-based Volvo Bus Corporation in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis contributes to previous studies on organizational restructuring by providing a more nuanced understanding of how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated and resisted in organizational negotiations. This study also increases theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.
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The research in this thesis addresses the question of corporate legitimation and values. It studies moral speech in Finnish companies' social responsibility reports and annual reports. The managerial rhetoric has been examined as a means of building and maintaining legitimacy. The companies studyed are the ten biggest companies that repordted on social responsibility in 2004, and the analysed data consists of the companie's reporting from 1998 to 2008. The theoretical and analytical framework is provided by Luc Boltanski's and Laurent Thévenot's theory of justification. The theory is focused on systems of moral thinking and argumentation, so called "orders of worth". The study shows how these moral schemes were used in the legitimation process. Special attention is paid on the ways that compromises are made between different orders of worth, such as the market, civic and green order. The study shows that the focus of legitimation has shifted towards societal and environmental themes. The values of market and industry, profits and efficiency, however, remain the strongest basis for organizational legitimation in Finnish companies. The economic crisis of 2008 had a visible impact on the moral rhetoric, especially in the Finnish forestry sector. Large layoffs questionned the companies' traditional role and made companies adopt a more market-centered and project-based moral rhetoric. New inspirational and project-centered moral speech emerged as the companies were less able to present themselves as nation-based, traditional actors in the Finnish society.
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The European Union (EU) is faced with a continuous decrease in public support. There is a tension between the growing Euroscepticism and the concurrent academic discourse of a shared European identity. Informed and inspired by the current debates, this Master’s Thesis investigates the potential of a shared past to create shared identity. It also addresses the logic of cultural exclusion that is often connected to collective cultural identities. The source material is a combination of exam essays, written as answers to the history tests in the Finnish matriculation examinations of 2005-2008, and upper secondary school history textbooks. From the sources, current perceptions of Islam (as Europe’s Other) and the age of imperialism (as a debated period from Europe’s past) among the youth are studied. Through the analysis the thesis aims to indicate the level of consensus within the pupils’ identification with the past and with Europe. This objective is pursued through examining the pupils’ perceptions of Europe’s past and its relationship to non-European cultures and countries as they are manifested in the essays, and reflecting upon the level of influence that history textbooks as representatives of national hegemonic historical narratives might have on the contents, framings and emphases with and through which the pupils approach, imagine, and reproduce Europe’s past. The approach is based on previous research on the presence of history and the field of textbook research. The theoretical categories with which the sources are analyzed are derived primarily from literature on identity, European integration, history and memory, postcolonial criticism, and theorizations of European identity. Results of the research project suggest that the rhetoric of European superiority, despite its apparent demise, still resonates in contemporary understandings of Europeanness. Dominant perceptions of imperialism comprise of European agency and colonial submission, dominant perceptions of the Islamic world of fundamental difference. Identification with European history among the Finnish youth is rather shallow when examined through perceptions of imperialism; the Islamic world is perceived as Other and its representations are dominated by recent and contemporary international relations.
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Tämä työ tarkastelee kansallista ja paikallista omistajuutta Namibian opetussektorin kehittämisohjelmassa. Opetussektorin kehittämisohjelma ETSIP on 15-vuotinen sektoriohjelma vuosille 2005-2015 ja sen tavoitteena on edesauttaa Namibian kehittymistä tietoyhteiskunnaksi. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää miten kansallinen ja paikallinen omistajuus on toteutunut ETSIP prosessin aikana. Erityisesti pyritään selvittämään paikallistason opetussektorin virkamiesten näkemyksiä ETSIP prosessista, heidän roolistaan siinä ja siitä millaisia vaikuttamisen ja hallinnan mahdollisuuksia heillä on ollut prosessin aikana. Tutkimuksen lähtökohta on laadullinen ja lähestymistapa konstruktionistinen: tutkimus tarkastelee todellisuutta ihmisten kokemusten, näkemysten ja toiminnan kautta. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu haastatteluista, epävirallisista keskusteluista, lehtiartikkeleista ja ETSIP dokumenteista. Tutkimus osoittaa että kansallinen omistajuus on epämääräinen käsite sillä kansallisia toimijoita ja näkemyksiä on useita. Tutkimus vahvistaa Castel-Brancon huomion siitä, että omistajuutta on tarkasteltava kontekstissaan: muuttuvana ja kilpailtuna. ETSIPin rinnalle ollaan valmistelemassa uutta strategista ohjelmaa opetusministeriölle mikä saattaa muuttaa omistajuutta ETSIPiin. ETSIP dokumenttien omistajuusretoriikka myötäilee kansainvälisiä sitoumuksia avun vaikuttavuuden parantamiseksi mutta niistä puuttuu syvällisempi analyysi siitä, miten kansallinen ja paikallinen omistajuus toteutuisi käytännössä. Avunantajien näkemys omistajuudesta on suppea: omistajuus nähdään lähinnä sitoutumisena ennalta määrättyyn politiikkaohjelmaan. Haastatteluaineistosta nousee esiin Whitfieldin ja Frazerin jaottelu suppeista ja laajoista omistajuuskäsityksistä. Sitoutumista ETSIP ohjelmaan pidetään tärkeänä mutta riittämättömänä määritteenä omistajuudelle. Paikallisella tasolla sitoutuminen ETSIP ohjelman periaatteisiin ja tavoitteisiin on toteutunut melko hyvin mutta jos omistajuutta tarkastellaan laajemmin vaikutusvallan ja hallinnan käsitteiden kautta voidaan todeta että omistajuus on ollut heikkoa. Paikallisella tasolla ei ole ollut juurikaan vaikutusvaltaa ETSIP ohjelman sisältöön eikä mahdollisuutta hallita ohjelman toteutusta ja päättää siitä mitä hankkeita ohjelman kautta rahoitetaan. Tujanin demokraattisen omistajuuden käsite kuvaa tarvetta muuttaa ja laajentaa omistajuusajattelua huomioiden paikallisen tason paremmin. Tämä tutkimus viittaa siihen että omistajuuden toteutuminen paikallisella tasolla edellyttäisi institutionaalisen kulttuurin muutosta ja institutionaalisen legitimiteetin vahvistamista. Omistajuuden mahdollistamiseksi paikallisella tasolla tarvittaisiin poliittista johtajuutta, luottamusta, vastuullisuuden kulttuurin kehittämistä, tehokkaampaa tiedonjakoa, laajaa osallistumista, vuoropuhelua ja yhteistyötä. Ennen kaikkea tarvittaisiin paikallisen tason vaikutusvaltaa päätöksenteossa ja kontrollia resurssien käytöstä. Tälle muutokselle on selvä tarve ja tilaus.
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This dissertation investigates the atomic power solution in Finland between 1955 - 1970. During these years a national arrangement for atomic energy technology evolved. The foundations of the Finnish atomic energy policy; the creation of basic legislation and the first governmental bodies, were laid between 1955 - 1965. In the late 1960's, the necessary technological and political decisions were made in order to purchase the first commercial nuclear reactor. A historical narration of this process is seen in the international context of "atoms for peace" policies and Cold War history in general. The geopolitical position of Finland made it necessary to become involved in the balanced participation in international scientific-technical exchange and assistive nuclear programs. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 categorically denied Finland acquisition of nuclear weapons. Accordingly, from the "Geneva year" of 1955, the emphasis was placed on peaceful purposes for atomic energy as well as on the education of national professionals in Finland. An initiative for the governmental atomic energy commission came from academia but the ultimate motive behind it was an anticipated structural change in the supply of national energy. Economically exploitable hydro power resources were expected to be built within ten years and atomic power was seen as a promising and complementing new energy technology. While importing fuels like coal was out of the question, because of scarce foreign currency, domestic uranium mineral deposits were considered as a potential source of nuclear fuel. Nevertheless, even then nuclear energy was regarded as just one of the possible future energy options. In the mid-1960 s a bandwagon effect of light water reactor orders was witnessed in the United States and soon elsewhere in the world. In Finland, two separate invitations for bids for nuclear reactors were initiated. This study explores at length both their preceding grounds and later phases. An explanation is given that the parallel, independent and nearly identical tenders reflected a post-war ideological rivalry between the state-owned utility Imatran Voima and private energy utilities. A private sector nuclear power association Voimayhdistys Ydin represented energy intensive paper and pulp industries and wanted to have free choice instead of being associated themselves with "the state monopoly" in energy pricing. As a background to this, a decisive change had started to happen within Finnish energy policy: private and municipal big thermal power plants became incorporated into the national hydro power production system. A characteristic phenomenon in the later history is the Soviet Union s effort to bid for the tender of Imatran Voima. A nuclear superpower was willing to take part in competition but not on a turnkey basis as Imatran Voima had presumed. As a result of many political turns and four years of negotiations the first Finnish commercial light water reactor was ordered from the East. Soon after this the private nuclear power group ordered its reactors from Sweden. This work interprets this as a reasonable geopolitical balance in choosing politically sensitive technology. Conceptually, social and political dimensions of new technology are emphasised. Negotiations on the Finnish atomic energy program are viewed as a cooperation and a struggle, where state-oriented and private-oriented regimes pose their own macro level views and goals (technopolitical imaginaries) and defend and advance their plans and practical modes of action (schemata). Here, not only technologists but even political actors are seen to contribute to technopolitical realisations.