FOREST, FLOWS AND IDENTITIES IN FINLAND'S INFORMATION SOCIETY

摘要

Recent social theory has tended to celebrate boundary transgressions and flexibility. At the same time political thought has adopted the view from academic commentary, that the space of flows is now the dominant geographical logic. This essay proposes that such theoretical contributions might well be problematic from the point of view of progressive, liberatory and environmentally sustainable politics. This essay draws on social theory that neither ignores geography nor forgets nature, to make sense of some of the pressures of living with the information society's imperatives of mobility and flexibility in the Kainuu region of Finland. It also relates these to the promotion of branded regional identities in the information society. In resource-dependent regions like Kainuu, nature, culture and technology, even innovation, are broadly unproblematic elements of social reproduction. Problems arise, however, from the imperative to compete and to be seen to be competitive, and from the speeds at which recognized economic activity takes place. The broader demands of Finland as a national innovation system take inadequate account, as does social theory, of the needs of nurture and reproduction. A more appropriate social theory needs to develop an understanding of these things as part of making a living, and to articulate this with the powerful but loosely defined discourses of economics.