Ensiapua tiedekirjoittajalle

Kirja-arvostelu: Virve Mertanen: Tietokirjoittajan käsikirja. Vastapaino 2007

Sinisistä maisemista maantieteen ytimeen

Allan Tiitta: Sinisten maisemien mies. J. G. Granön tutkijantie 1882–1956. SKS 2011

"Niin todenmukainen kuin mahdollista" : Maisemavalokuva suomalaisessa maantieteessä 1920-luvulta 1960-luvulle

Finnish geography has been tightly linked to the construction of the Finnish nation state. The discipline was formed as a part of the governmentalisation of the modern state, and its development has followed changes in the spatial regulation of the Finnish society. However, geography has not only reflected societal structures, but geographers have also actively taken part in constructing Finland and Finnishness by developing research and representational methods, which have turned the spatial complexity of the state into governable, controllable, and hierarchical regionalities. Consequently, geographical research and its documents have positioned themselves in their social contexts by supporting the state ideas that have characterized different epochs. I understand landscapes as social ways of seeing. It follows that the forms of representing landscapes are statements in favour of certain social realities and aspirations. This study scrutinizes the landscape photography of Finnish geography from this perspective by defining the ways in which landscape photography has been used to represent and produce a desired statehood and citizenship. I position the examined photographs at the intersection of discourses about scientific content and social role of geography in order to clarify how geographers have negotiated their position in the Finnish nation state while creating ideas of Finnish regions and landscapes. My study draws from the methodologies of visual studies and sociology of science. I use content and discourse analyses to study the landscape photographs published in Terra (the journal of The Geographical Society of Finland), Finnish geography schoolbooks, and the non-fiction book series Suomenmaa ( The land of Finland ). I concentrate on the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s, which are three decades during which Finland turned from an aerial nation state into a modern welfare state. Geographical landscape imagery captured this change well. In the 1920s, representations of landscapes were linked to the constitutional consensus politics of the state, whereas in the 1940s landscape photography was used to legitimate expansive Finnish wartime politics and to unify the post-war state. In turn, the photographs from the 1960s depicted a state that had become a producer of civic services and a distributor of welfare. At the same time, within the field of geography, the landscape photographs turned from sensory observation material into sources of chorological analysis and further into documents that had a lesser role in research but which were nevertheless crucial in popular communication. My study represents the geographical landscape imagery as a political but conventional totality, which is characterized by many temporal layers. The imagery draws upon several traditions, which include, for example, the chorological and visual traditions that stem from the era preceding the institutionalisation of geography and the nineteenth century national and nature romantic traditions. Most importantly, however, the imagery is characterized by a twentieth century tradition, which represents the spatial and functional structure of the modern nation state. The importance of this tradition shows that the Finnish geography has been very loyal to the state institution. My study thus shows that the landscape photographs have been intertwined with the processes of social spatialization of the Finnish nation state and reveals that the geographical ways of representing landscapes have been highly dependent on societal spatial interests of knowledge.Tarkastelen tutkimuksessani maisemavalokuvan käyttöä suomalaisissa maantieteen julkaisuissa (Terra-aikakauskirjassa, Suomenmaa-kirjasarjoissa ja maantiedon koulukirjoissa). Valokuvia on pidetty maantieteessä yleisesti ulkoista todellisuutta objektiivisesti taltioivina dokumentteina, joiden avulla tutkijat ovat kuvittaneet niin matkakertomuksiaan, oppikirjojaan kuin tieteellisiä tutkimuksiaankin. Lisäksi kuvia on käytetty ahkerasti kansalaisvalistuksen välineinä. Työni osoittaa, että maantieteilijöiden tavat esittää Suomen maisemia ovat olleet lausumia tietyn yhteiskunnallisen todellisuuden ja tavoitetilan puolesta. Valokuvat ovat esittäneet tutkijoiden käsitykset maailmasta todelta näyttävänä kokonaisuutena, jolloin kuvista on tullut paitsi tieteellisiä myös kulttuurisia ja poliittisia väittämiä. Kuvien propagandistinen luonne on ollut voimakkainta populaareissa maantieteellisissä julkaisuissa ja oppikirjoissa, mutta myös tieteellinen kuvasto on sitonut maisemat osaksi maantieteen yhteiskunta- ja tiedepoliittisia tavoitteita. Työni avainvuosikymmeniä ovat 1920-, 1940- ja 1960-luvut, joiden aikana Suomi muuttui poliittisesti leiriytyneestä porvarillis-talonpoikaisesta kansallisvaltiosta moderniksi hyvinvointivaltioksi. Näiden vuosikymmenien kuluessa suomalainen maantiede tuotti aktiivisesti visuaalista aineistoa, joka tuki käsitystä kansallisesti eheästä valtiosta sekä sille lojaalista valtiokansalaisesta. Vaikka kuvastoon taltioitui sekä yhteiskunnan että maantieteellisten lähestymistapojen muutos, pysyivät suuret temaattiset linjat samankaltaisina kautta tutkimani ajanjakson. Maantieteilijät kuvasivat Suomea modernistisella otteella, jossa Suomen alueille ja paikoille määriteltiin valtiollisen eliitin tavoitteille alisteiset kulttuuriset ja toiminnalliset identiteetit. Niinpä maisemavalokuvissa yhdistyivät 1800-luvulla kehittynyt romanttinen käsitys suomalaisesta kulttuurihistoriasta ja luontosuhteesta sekä modernin kansallisvaltion ihanne sisäänrakennettuine valtahierarkioineen. Samalla määrittyi maantieteen oma tehtävä tätä valtiorakennetta tukevana tieteenalana. Maantieteilijät sosiaalistivat kansalaisvalistuksen keinoin ihmiset sitomaan omat alueelliset identiteettinsä osaksi tilallista järjestystä, jonka territoriaalinen ja moraalinen ydintoimija oli kansallisvaltio

Maailman rahapeleistä ja rahapelien maailmoista

Kirja-arvostelu Sytze F. Kingma (toim.): Global gambling. Cultural perspectives on gambling organizations. Routledge, New York 2010

Uutuutta etsivät moniagenttijärjestelmät

This paper considers novelty-seeking multi-agent systems as a step towards more efficient generation of creative artifacts. We describe a simple multi-agent architecture where agents have limited resources and exercise self-criticism, veto power and voting to collectively regulate which artifacts are selected to the domain i.e., the cultural storage of the system. To overcome their individual resource limitations, agents have a limited access to the artifacts already in the domain which they can use to guide their search for novel artifacts. Creating geometric images called spirographs as a case study, we show that novelty-seeking multi-agent systems can be more productive in generating novel artifacts than a single-agent or monolithic system. In particular, veto power is in our case an effective collaborative decision-making strategy for enhancing novelty of domain artifacts, and self-criticism of agents can significantly reduce the collaborative effort in decision making.Peer reviewe

Extending temporal baseline increases understanding of biodiversity change in European boreal waterbird communities

Setting relevant temporal baselines is critical to understanding biodiversity change and the full impact of various pressures on biodiversity. Current knowledge of biodiversity change in European boreal waterbird communities is based on monitoring and other data from the last 35 years. However, the impact of the presumed main drivers of changes in these communities, i.e., eutrophication and alien predators, started decades before this. We used data of 35 breeding waterbird communities, representing both oligotrophic and eutrophic lakes, in southern Finland from 1951–1970 and 1996–2015 to study changes in biodiversity against a baseline from a period when the presumed main drivers were not yet fully effective. We found that species richness increased from 1951–1970 to 1996–2015 at oligotrophic lakes but not at eutrophic lakes; total abundance in turn increased at the former lake type but decreased at the latter. Breeding numbers of many historically abundant species declined at the eutrophic lakes to such a degree that the increases of other species were not sufficient to compensate for the declines. Population increases prevailed at the oligotrophic lakes and the slight declines of some previously less abundant species, were compensated for. The species level results revealed that local abundances of different species likely are affected by different drivers, suggesting that we need an autecological approach in the conservation management of boreal waterbird communities. Increased predation risk rather than eutrophication appeared to be the main biodiversity stressor in the waterbird communities studied