From the abstract to the concrete and beyond : The winding road of constructing a conceptual framework

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Käsityön ankkurointi : Kohde kulttuurienvälisyyttä ja ajallisuutta yhdistävänä tekijänä

This study focuses on the potential of objects in craftwork activities, specifically in wooden boat building. The monograph addresses two polar trends in scientific conceptualisations of craftwork: eliminating objects from skill-focused analyses of crafts and eliminating the cultural and historical potential of objects in craftwork. This study aims to move beyond general interpretations of craft revival using cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), with the core principle of the approach being a focus on concrete activities, specifically object-orientedness. The notion of an object of activity helps to ground motivation in the objective world and facilitates an understanding of why people do things. In this study, the notion of an object is used as an entity for anchoring crafts — as a way to understand concrete cases of craft revival. CHAT was enriched with the approaches of actor-network theory and the epistemic approach proposed by Karin Knorr Cetina. The ethnographic data for the study come from three wooden shipyards in Finland, Russia and India, collected between 2012 and 2014. All the shipyards were producing similar usable wooden vessels at the time. The potential of the object in craft is that the object of activity instantiates differently in various concrete cultural and historical circumstances, specifically through cultural and historical features accumulated across time and space. Study of the object of activity offers the possibility to compress human efforts into a certain point of time and cultural moment, and thus, to expand activities across temporal and cultural boundaries. The unifying factor of the object in craft resides precisely in its diversity, in its cultural and historical features or differences, formed by specific local circumstances. The primary contradiction in the craft of wooden boat building is the movement between adhering to old ways (following the ancient craft or even replicating history) and responding to new practices (building a boat that satisfies market demands). This constant back-and-forth movement becomes visible in the everyday work of craftsmen as certain tensions and struggles arise. Wooden boats mediate the relationships both within and across communities of craft workers. They are a way to make history and culture tangible and alive, transferring it further into the future.Tämä tutkimus keskittyy kohteen käsitteen mahdollisuuksiin käsityössä, erityisesti puuveneiden rakentamisessa. Tässä monografiassa käsitellään kahta vastakkaista kehityssuuntaa käsityön tieteellisessä käsitteellistämisessä: kohteen käsitteen häviämistä taitoihin keskittyvistä analyyseista ja kohteen kulttuurisen ja historiallisen potentiaalin karsiutumista analyyseista. Tutkimuksen tavoite on mennä yleistysten taakse tarkastelemaan käsityön elpymistä konkreettisten toimintojen kautta käyttäen kulttuurihistoriallisen toiminnan teorian lähestymistapaa. Teoriasuuntauksen pääperiaate on toiminnan kohteellisuus. Käsitys toiminnan kohteesta auttaa kiinnittämään motivaation objektiiviseen maailmaan ja ymmärtämään miksi ihmiset tekevät asioita. Tässä tutkimuksessa kohteen käsitettä käytettiin kokonaisuutena, joka ankkuroi käsityön - sekä keinona ymmärtää käsityön elpymistä konkreettisissa tapauksissa. Kulttuurihistoriallista toiminnan teoriaa tarkasteltiin rinnakkain kahden muun teoreettisen lähestymistavan kanssa: toimijaverkkoteoria Karin Knorr-Cetinan episteeminen lähestymistapa. Etnografinen tutkimusaineisto on kerätty kolmelta puuvenetelakalta Suomesta, Venäjältä ja Intiasta vuosina 2012 – 2014. Kaikki telakat valmistivat puualuksia käyttöä varten. Kohteen potentiaali käsityön kannalta oli se, että toiminnan kohde, joka ilmeni eri tavoin konkreeteissa kulttuurisissa ja historiallisissa olosuhteissa, etenkin kulttuuristen ja historiallisten ominaisuuksien kasaantumana ajassa ja paikassa, tarjoaa mahdollisuuden tiivistää inhimilliset pyrkimykset tietyssä historiallisessa hetkessä ja tietyssä kulttuurissa, ja tämän kautta laajentaa toimintoja läpi ajallisten ja kulttuuristen rajojen. Käsityön kohteen yhdistävä tekijä on sen monimuotoisuus – erojen kulttuuriset ja historialliset piirteet tai erot, jotka tietyt, paikalliset olosuhteet ovat muokanneet. Ensisijainen ristiriita puisen veneenrakennuksen käsityössä on liike, joka tapahtuu vanhassa pitäytymisen (entisaikaisen käsityön seuraaminen tai jopa historian jäljentäminen) ja uuteen vastaamisen (käyttöön tarkoitetun ja markkinoiden tarpeeseen vastaavan veneen rakentaminen) välillä. Tämä jatkuva liike tulee näkyväksi jokapäiväisessä työssä tietynlaisina jännitteinä ja kamppailuina. Puuveneet välittävät yhteisöjen sisäisiä ja yhteisöjen välisiä suhteita. Ne ovat keino tehdä historiaa ja kulttuuria eläväksi ja käsin kosketeltavaksi, välittäen niitä eteenpäin. Jatkotutkimuksen kannalta kiinnostavaa olisi analysoida kuinka digitaalisia teknologioita käytetään käsityössä ja kuinka ne muuttavat tarkoituksellisuutta ja sosiomateriaalisuutta perinteisillä käsityöaloilla

A Systematic Literature Review on Extended Reality : Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality in Working Life

Extended reality (XR), here jointly referring to virtual, augmented, and mixed (VR, AR, MR) reality, is becoming more common in everyday working life. This paper presents a systematic literature review of academic publications on XR indicating changes in practical organization of work. We analyse both application areas of XR and theoretical and methodological approaches of XR research. The review process followed the PRISMA statement. Design, remote collaboration, and training were the main application areas of XR. XR enabled overcoming of obstacles set by time and space, safety, and resources by mediating experience of space. Research on XR applications in actual working life settings is yet relatively rare and covers primarily three areas: collaboration, evaluation of knowledge transfer, and work practices. Virtual reality was the most common form of applied XR, although the hardware used varied case by case. We identified four research areas regarding XR: collaboration, work practices, and evaluation of knowledge transfer, which somewhat followed the application areas. We did not find XR-specific methodologies in the reviewed articles, only few recent studies used novel ways of collecting research material, such as recording the movement in virtual reality. For now, XR still holds significant potential rather than clearly confirmed general advantages in working life.Peer reviewe

Money, time, or saving the world: Balancing valuations of ‘good’ interdisciplinary research

This paper analyses valuations of ‘good’ interdisciplinary research that manifest in research planning workshops. We use ethnographic case data from an interdisciplinary research project on vertical farming to build insight on how differing registers in the valuing of ‘good’ interdisciplinary research are balanced. The vertical farming project we use as a case includes researchers from sub-disciplines of the life sciences, technology, data science, and human sciences in a Finnish university of applied science (UAS). We use thematic content analysis to identify four core registers of valuing the ‘goodness’ of research and tensions between the following registers: money, sustainability, scientific value, and academic identity. These registers largely conform to a statistical-economical regime of academic evaluation, while sustainability draws on RRI principles and the interdisciplinary emphasis on societal problem-solving. The registers are balanced mainly through temporal and conceptual compartmentalisations. Throughout three workshop encounters over the course of a six-month period, a perpetual negotiation of the different registers of valuing ‘good’ research was taking place, with attempts to avoid exclusionary choices between “money, time, or saving the world”.Peer reviewe

On the power of the object : History-making through skilled performance in wooden boat building

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Learning for the complex object of work in a digital printing network

This article investigates the learning of a digital printing network that was seeking sustainable collaboration in the textile, clothing, and interior printing industry. Digitalization is transforming work, giving rise to new types of networks and creating learning challenges for participants. The object of digital printing activity becomes heterogeneous, open-ended, and indefinite. The concept of the complex object of work, which is based on cultural-historical activity theory, is introduced to examine the dynamics between the digitalization of work and network learning. Data were collected at the starting phase of the network collaboration, when participants discussed the future object of the digital printing activity. The participants were involved in design, textile manufacturing, digital printing, vocational education, and research, and consumer-customers were also represented. The authors argue that revealing the complexity of the object of work on multiple levels of learning is crucial to enhancing innovation in the networks of the digital age.Peer reviewe

Teaching 'a course without content' : relational agentic orientations to reorganisation of higher education

The managerial transformation of higher education often means implementing novel modes of teaching and learning, including experiential and collaborative teaching. University teachers' agency is crucial for managing and enacting changes in higher education. Collaborating as part of these changes requires a specific kind of agency, namely relational agency. The aim of this paper is to conceptualise relational agency by studying the relational agentic orientations of university teachers towards a reorganisation of higher education. The data come from a novel mass course at a faculty of education in a Finnish university, which emerged as part of a major university-wide reorganisation of study programmes. The course is organised and taught collaboratively by a group of teachers, and has no predefined content. A typology of the agentic orientations in the teachers' interviews was constructed on the base of the intersections between the expansions of different objects of activity (one's own, others', partially shared) and the teachers' evaluation of these expansions (pragmatic-adaptive, critical, developmental-transformative). The teachers focused primarily on student learning and on expanding the object of student learning activity, which extends the focus of relational agency to not only seeking resources in others but also being a resource for others.Peer reviewe