Annette Maria Saaristo, Master of Arts, International Relations, Researcher

Research fields

• Identity-Collective Identity
• Ethnicity
• Civil Society
• Social Movements
• Non-governmental organisations
• Minorities
• Nationalism

I am currently writing a monograph titled "the Construction, Consolidation and Transformation of the Collective, Ethnic Identity Finland-Swede in Relation to the Development of Voluntary Associations". In my dissertation I define the theoretical content and the logical inter-connectedness of the concepts identity, collective identity, ethnicity and language minority. This theoretical work is based on the work of leading contemporary theorist and philosophers such as Mark Bevir, Charles Taylor, John Searle, Judith Butler, Kwame Appiah, Francis Fukuyama, Ian Hacking, Erik Allardt and Joshua Fishman. 

In my dissrtation I apply Mark Bevir's interpretive approach to political science and construct a three part historical narrative. In the fisrt part I analyse how, exactly, language-based ethnic identification was constructed within the field of voluntary associations in 19 century Finland. The second part analyses how the pattern of Swedish language-based ethnic identification was consolidated within the field of voluntary associations 1908-1949. The third part, 1950-2000, offers a theoretically motivated analysis of whether and what kind of a change can be detected in the pattern of Swedish language-based collective identification based on empirical studies of the field of voluntary associations. 

Links:

• CEREN