Lived Nation as the History of Experiences and Emotions in Finland, 1800-2000: (Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience)

This open access book uses Finland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an empirical case in order to study the emergence, shaping and renewal of a nation through histories of experience and emotions. It revolves around the following questions: What kinds of experiences have engendered national mobilization and feelings of national belonging? How have political and societal conflicts turned into new communities of experience and emotion? What kinds of experiences have been integrated into, or excluded from, the national context in different instances? How have people internalized or contested the nation as a context for their personal, family and minority-group experiences? In what ways has the nation entered and affected people’s intimate spheres of life? How have “national” experiences been transmitted to children in the renewal of the nation? This edited collection points to the histories of experience and emotions as a novel way of studying nations and nationalism. Building on current debates in nationalism studies, it offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the historical construction of “lived nations,” and introduces a number of new methodological approaches to understand the experiences of the nation, extending from the investigation of personal reminiscences and music records to the study of dreams and children’s drawings.

Table of Contents:
​1. Lived Nation: Histories of Experience and Emotion in Understanding Nationalism- Ville Kivimäki, Sami Suodenjoki & Tanja Vahtikari.- 2. Lived Historiography: National History as a Script to the Past- Pertti Haapala.- Part I: Feeling and Conceptualizing the Nation.- 3. National Sentiment: Nation Building and Emotional Language in Nineteenth Century Finland- Jani Marjanen.- 4. Personal Nationalism in a Marital Relationship: Emotive and Gendering Construction of National Experience in Romantic Correspondence- Reetta Eiranen.- 5. Temporalization of Experiencing: First-Hand Experience of the Nation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Finland- Heikki Kokko.- Part II: Nation of Encounters and Conflicts.- 6. Divided Nation on Records: The Transnational Formation of Finnish Popular Music During the Gramophone Fever- Marko Tikka & Sami Suodenjoki.- 7. Red Orphans’ Fatherland: Children in the Civil War of 1918 and Its Aftermath- Mervi Kaarninen.- 8. Guardians of the Soil and the Land? Smallholders Living Their Nation in Interwar Finland- Pirjo Markkola & Ann-Catrin Östman.- Part III: Experiential Edges of the Nation.- 9. National Belonging through Signed and Spoken Languages: The Case of Finland-Swedish Deaf People in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries- Hanna Lindberg.- 10. The Ill(s) of the Nation: The Experience of Tuberculosis in Finland from the 1920s to the 1970s- Heini Hakosalo.- 11. Nimble Nationalism: Transgenerational Experiences of East Karelian Refugees in Finland and Sweden- Seija Jalagin.- Part IV: Nation Embodied and Materialized.- 12. Nocturnal Nation: Violence and the Nation in Dreams During and After World War II- Ville Kivimäki.- 13. Feeling the Nation Through Exploring the City: Urban Pedagogy and Children’s Lived Experiences in Postwar Helsinki- Antti Malinen & Tanja Vahtikari.- 14. The Image of Marshal Mannerheim, Moral Panic and the Refashioning of the Nationin the 1990s- Tuomas Tepora.- Part V: Epilogue.- 15. The History of Experience: Afterword- Josephine Hoegaerts & Stephanie Olsen.

About the Author :
Ville Kivimäki is Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland, and one of the series editors of the Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience. Sami Suodenjoki is Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland. Tanja Vahtikari is Senior Lecturer at Tampere University, Finland. The editors of the book work in the Lived Nation research team at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences.