Abstract
This chapter investigates whiteness in Finland and explores Nordic beliefs and values regarding race and racism against the ideology of Nordic nations as democratic societies. The chapter focuses on troubling normative ideas about Finland and the notion of Finnishness and interrogates how whiteness as property is produced and reproduced through popular visual culture. Contemporary art examples, as forms of visual culture, are explored through their possibilities to engage in a critical conversation on whiteness and ownership. The chapter concludes by tying together questions of possession, property, and ownership in Finland, and the politics of whiteness as the right of representation.
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Notes
- 1.
While Nordic racism evolves in part from a lack of self-criticism regarding colonialism, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to interrogate in depth Finland’s colonial past, both as one colonized by Sweden and Russia, and one that has colonized others, such as Sámi people.
- 2.
While different scholars use upper or lower case (whiteness or Whiteness), we use lowercase in the body of the text only for consistency, not to limit its power or significance.
- 3.
- 4.
Ironically, Sámi people are the most “rooted” people in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia, being the only indigenous culture in Europe.
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Kallio-Tavin, M., Tavin, K. (2018). Representations of Whiteness in Finnish Visual Culture. In: Kraehe, A., Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Carpenter II, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65256-6_4
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