Introduction

Authors

• Eeva Berglund Independent research

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.127498

Abstract

Previous generations might have seen Finland as rural culture, at best adapting ambivalently to the speed, the noise, the lights and, inevitably, the machines, of city life. By the turn of the millennium, however, Finland was routinely being represented as exemplar of a bold and technology-friendly information society  (Castells and Himanen 2002). The excitement has now subsided and export figures have led to a more sombre mood. Yet technology remains a national preoccupation and a tangible element of Finnish life. From an anthropological perspective, technology was always ubiquitous and thoroughly suffused with cultural values. Nevertheless, there is an empirically obvious way in which new technology—specifically in information and communications—is both  ubiquitous and worthy of close attention.

 

Consequently, we are pleased to present this forum compiled by four Finnish researchers to provide a flavour of what is happening in Finland today. They show that anthropology is gradually also finding a place in Finnish debates on technological innovation. They also demonstrate clearly that the cultural neutrality of  technology and the tendency to collapse ‘technical development’ and ‘progress’ into each other—both recognizable features of public discourse in Finland—are themselves culturally specific habits of thought. Not only that, such habits help to conceal a vast array of social processes which demand closer examination.