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Research projects 4
The project analyses the ways that fragile cities are dealing with societal security, environmental vulnerability and representative justice in the spaces of multi-scale governance. The dimensions to be analysed are: 1) governance of insecurity and creation of accountable institutions; 2) authoritarian legacies and political-representation efforts; and 3) governance of environmental vulnerabilities and claims for justice. The research aims to develop a revised theory of urban political ecology and urban justice to better understand the interlinkages and scalar complexities of societal security, environmental vulnerability and representative justice.
Team
Anja Nygren, Florencia Quesada, Mauricio Romero, Elisa Tarnaala, Kjell-Åke Nordquist
This is a joint research of the University of Helsinki’s discipline of Social and Cultural Anthropology and South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council, with funding from the Academy of Finland and the National Research Foundation of South Africa for the period 2013-2016. The project investigates the kinds of social subjectivities and forms of socio-political and economic empowerment that current youth music styles enhance among South African youth. The key questions are what kinds of social, racial, gender, class, religious and citizenship identities and communities are being imagined and created through music-related practices, and what kinds of empowerment strategies and realities they entail.
Team
Ibrahim Abraham, Tuomas Järvenpää, Benita Moolman, Tuulikki Pietilä
This doctoral research investigates different aspects of "favela media activism". How do young people who live in the Brazilian kinds of slums use different forms of media to enact citizenship? What are their motivations and objectives to do what they do? The research explores the multidimensional and complex process of civic engagement in and through media among young favela dwellers in Rio de Janeiro.
Team
Leonardo Custódio (own PhD research)
The research project focuses on contemporary societal changes in contexts where the rapidly growing majority of population is young, and where questions of political participation, citizenship, livelihoods and frustrations require urgent attention. It draws on empirical research in Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa and reveals different aspects of what ‘politics’ may mean in unstable contexts. They differ in terms of state formation and democratic structures, post-conflict developments, NGO involvement, donor funding and global connections. The ethnographic case studies focus on forms, contents and experiences of political engagement in the everyday lives of young people – including potential de-politication, professationalization, consumerism and struggles for mundane livelihoods – in different contexts of contemporary Africa.
Team
Elina Oinas, Leena Suurpää, Sofia Laine, Eija Ranta, Henri Onodera, Petri Hautaniemi, Tiina-Maria Levamo, and Ella Alin