LIFE IN PLACENorthern villages as environments of wellbeing and growth

| Place and Environment in the Stories of Northern People 2006–2010

| Life in Place 2008–2011

PEOPLE, DISCIPLINES AND FUNDING

| Project leaders Prof. Leena Syrjälä and Senior Researcher Eila Estola University of Oulu, Faculty of Education Dpt. of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education

| Post-doctoral researchers, doctoral students

| Local research assistants and co-researchers

| Education, Sociology, Geography, Gender Studies

| Funding from Thule Institute and the Academy of Finland

PARTICIPATING VILLAGES

| SUVANTO Municipality of Sodankylä

- Circa 30 inhabitants - The river Kitinen, running along the village is dammed - The school of the village has been shut down - The tourist centre of Pyhätunturi is close by

| RAATTAMA Municipality of Kittilä

- Circa 140 inhabitants - The river Ounas is running free - The school of the village is under constant threat of being shut down - The tourist area and National park of Pallas-Yllästunturi is close by

RESEARCH THEMES

| PERCEIVED HEALTH AND WELLBEING THROUGH LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

| What is the everyday life like in the villages?

| What is the wellbeing of the villagers composed of? (Wellbeing as ”having, loving and being” [Allardt])

| What kind of environments for growth these villages are or withhold? - home - school - the everyday

| What kind of relationships to place(s) do the villagers have?

- sense of place - ecosystems (river environment)

Consequences of Ecosystem Change for Human Well-being

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

| Place-based education (i.e. Gruenewald 2005; 2003)

| Narrative and ethnographical approach - learning from the participants - emphasis on the participatory nature of research

| Case studies, contexts of the lived everyday - broader view than the emphasised viewpoint of nature-based livelihoods (e.g. reindeer herding, hunting and fishing)

ETHICAL ISSUES

| Research FOR the villagers - research that will not just take but also gives back - results that are useful

| Research ABOUT the villagers - results for those funding - the academic audience - popular communication

| Research WITH the villagers - participatory methods - relationships between researchers and participants

| Relations between external| researchers and the | communities researched| have been increasingly | strained by differences in | understanding and in | expectation about the | relevance of research.

(Davidson-Hunt et.al. 2007)

Maija: Let’s make this into a

thank-you-card to Seppo. Should

we all sign our names? What

should I [write]…? “Thank you

for your time… Seppo”?

Eila: Should it say ”Warm thank

you…”? And you could write,

couldn’t you, something like

“Researchers from Oulu”?

Maija: But shouldn’t we sign our

names anyway, now that we’re

all here? Do we have time?

Everyone: Yes, we have time…

”MICRO-SCALE” OF RESEARCH ETHICS

DATA COLLECTION

| INTERVIEWS (c. 45 interviews) - life-story interviews - thematic interviews - group- and individual interviews - villagers of all ages - also villagers that have already moved away

| PARTICIPATORY OBSERVATION - fieldnotes, research diaries

| CORRESPONDENCE (c. 50 letters) - a year long correspondence between four villagers and a researcher

| DATA PRODUCED BY THE LOCALS - village association gatherings (recorded) - photo-evenings (recorded) - thematic observations - writing

DATA SAMPLES

| It’s just one day at a time really, nothing more, seeing how it goes with my health […] But I’m trying with this Lappish ’sisu’ to go forward, sometimes it takes tears and sweat but then you just continue […] I’m not like those with their heads in the clouds who keep moving all the time, I couldn’t do that, I want it so that if I’ve rooted to a place I’ll try to stay there.

| I couldn’t live in a town. No way. I’m sure I couldn’t. I’d be there for like two days and would come hurling back to Raattama I would. I couldn’t. I hate being in town and in a row house, like, phew! It’s like […] If you’re unemployed in a city, what do you do? For fuck’s sake, you just tramp around town.

| I think that a difficult employment situation is a challenge. I have a chance to either learn how to make do with less or create means of living for myself. I’m never bored, anything but, there’s so much to do I can’t do it all. It might be easier to be unemployed here than in town [...] And there’s many other unemployed or short-term employed people here. You don’t get the illusion that everyone else is working and that everyone else has got important things to do.