TY - JOUR AU - Elmgren, Ainur PY - 2020/05/13 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Visual Stereotypes of Tatars in the Finnish Press from the 1880s to the 1910s JF - Studia Orientalia Electronica JA - StOrE VL - 8 IS - 2 SE - DO - 10.23993/store.82942 UR - https://journal.fi/store/article/view/82942 SP - 25-39 AB - <p>Visual stereotypes constitute a set of tropes through which the Other is described and depicted to an&nbsp;audience, who perhaps never will encounter the individuals that those tropes purport to represent.&nbsp;Upon the arrival of Muslim Tatar traders in Finland in the late nineteenth century, newspapers and&nbsp;satirical journals utilized visual stereotypes to identify the new arrivals and draw demarcation lines&nbsp;between them and what was considered “Finnish”. The Tatars arrived during a time of tension in&nbsp;the relationship between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire, with&nbsp;the Finnish intelligentsia divided along political and language lines. Stereotypical images of Tatar&nbsp;pedlars were used as insults against political opponents within Finland and as covert criticism of&nbsp;the policies of the Russian Empire. Stereotypes about ethnic and religious minorities like the Tatars&nbsp;fulfilled a political need for substitute enemy images; after Finland became independent in 1917,&nbsp;these visual stereotypes almost disappeared.</p> ER -