Hillevi Vyyryläinen

Description of research and teaching

I am a doctoral researcher, a critical sociologist and a former special class teacher who has gradually become critical of the whole discourse of ”special educational needs” and its recent turn where policymakers and institutions from Finnish national government to local administrators are increasingly creating individual-centered, quasi-neutral and pseudo-objective policies and practices based on a scientifically poor assumption that there are neuropsychiatric disorders or traits that could and should be ”recognized” and taken into account when dealing with perceived challenges in different areas of society, such as education or social services.

In my doctoral research I critically examine this phenomenon that I call neuropsychiatrization of Finnish welfare services, with current particular interest in the depoliticization, decontextualization and commodification of social and mental distress, as well as different forms of injustice, through pseudoscientific neurological and psychological claims. I apply concepts such as psychiatrization, therapization, subjectification, governance and power/knowledge.