Panel discussion: Manifestations of (neo)nationalism in contemporary societies

This panel is organized by TRANSIT – Research Centre on Transnational and Transformation hosted by the Faculty of Education and Culture.

The panelist are: Professor Nelli Piattoeva, Professor Jouni Häkli and Professor Zsuzsa Millei.

The discussion will be chaired by Professor Mervi Kaukko.

In this multidisciplinary panel researchers will discuss the manifestations of (neo)nationalism in contemporary societies. They will also pose critical questions about research on (neo)nationalism. Professor Jouni Häkli will look at the critiques of methodological nationalism and whether or not these remain justified. Whereas national societies have become more porous, it is timely to explore how to study nationalism in ways that acknowledge the complex de- and re-nationalizing tendencies. Nelli Piattoeva will consider how nationalism is reproduced in the digital spaces of education and by actors supposedly removed from nationalistic discourses such as digital education entrepreneurs. Because digitalization tends to be associated with transcending borders and a post-national development or with ultraindividualism trough personalisation, it is at risk of being excluded from the discussions on how it enables the nationally framed world to continue. Professor Zsuzsa Millei will address the shift from welfare state’s values of solidarity and equality as the glue of national societies in the Nordics to virulent forms of exclusionary nationalism. Nationalism is on the rise and is taking spectacular forms often supported by the misinterpretation of scientific evidence. Welfare policies including early childhood education are enlisted to react to the growing diversity of societies as a threat to normative cultural homogeneity and associated status quo – a product of nation-building processes itself. 

Panelists Nelli Piattoeva, Jouni Häkli and Zsuza Millei

A picture of professor Nelli Piattoeva. Dark hair, white clothes and a light background with a plant.

Nelli Piattoeva is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. Her research is motivated by the broad questions about what education does and is asked to do for society, leading to a focus on how education governs, and thence to enquiry into the actors and technologies that are implicated in governing. Nelli’s ongoing research examines how the historical role of education as a conduit of national socialisation is reenacted today through discourses of digitalization and digital applications constituting contemporary school education. Nelli’s primary geographical focus of research is Russia and the post-Soviet space.

Picture of Professor Jouni Häkli. Short dark hair, white shirt, glasses and a purple blouse on the shuolders. The background is a green forest

Jouni Häkli is Professor of Regional Studies and leader of the Space and Political Agency Research Group (SPARG) at Tampere University. His research lies at the intersection of political geography and global and transnational sociology, with a focus on the study of political subjectivity and agency, lived citizenship, forced migration, and borders and national identities. He is currently leading a four-year research project, the Politics of Embodied Encounters in Asylum Seeking (POEMS), funded by the Academy of Finland. 

Picture of Professor Zsuza Millei; ,short gray hair, glasses

Zsuzsa Millei is a Professor of Early Childhood Education at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. Her research addresses child politics by exploring how politics (power, government, nationalism, and ideology) intertwine with childhood and children’s everyday life. Her comparative studies of nationalism and explorations of childhood memories of (post)socialist societies use post/qualitative and artistic methods and reveal complex matrices of power and seek to decolonize the research imagination and knowledge production.

Väinö Linna Hall, Linna Building

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