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Abstract
Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.
Notes
1 Over 90% of the population are white, speak Finnish and practise Evangelical Lutheranism.
2 The population of North Karelia has declined from 207,742 to just over 170,000 in four decades (1960–2000) but the unemployment rate is still among the highest in Finland (over 20%).
3 The net incomes from the state have usually been over 0.25 billion per year.
4 The spatial links are derived from the registers of cultural administration and relevant provincial cultural organisations (NKPF, 1960–1999; NKCB, 1968–1999; Pohls, 1989; Juvonen, 2000).
5 In two major cultural conflicts in the late 1940s, concerning the composition of the Finnish Broadcasting Company and the Academy of Finland, this traditional elite defeated the Communists.
6 This shift in political power was largely due to the antipathy the Soviet leaders felt towards the Finnish social democrats and conservatives and, on the other hand, the fear of communists by other parties.
7 The number of persons employed in agriculture decreased by 600,000 between 1950 and 1975 (approx. 15% of the whole population).
8 The social democratic director of the FBC was worried about local hierarchies and was not ready to permit local entrepreneurs, primarily strong newspapers, to establish commercial radio stations. However, on condition that the programmes have a “local spirit”, commercial radio stations have been permitted since 1985 (Salokangas, 1997: 302, 365). Regardless of the condition, Finnish local radio stations have mainly copied their profile from the Anglo-American model.
9 Kangas and Hirvonen (2001: 13–15) have counted 532 partially EU-funded regional cultural projects in Finland during 1995–1999.
10 According to different social indicators (e.g. unemployment rate, physical and mental health) Joensuu has coped reasonably well in respect to the national average, whereas the eastern forest zone in particular is an accumulation of problems (Oksa, 1985: 33, 39).
11 For example, the Kalevala hyper media and the Internet game where Karelian guerillas fight the Russians (Juvonen, 2000).