Centre for Sociology of Democracy

The centre investigates question of democracy in contemporary societies. Its projects address this topic from different perspectives, deploying a variety of methodological approaches, while sharing the common framework of pragmatistically oriented theorising of the social.

The centre's research addresses the large-scale wicked problems societies and, eventually, the humanity outright are facing, including economic, social, environmental, and political inequality, as well as interlinked threats to democracy and equity-based governance.

The centre consists of a methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary group of researchers who study, in a cross-secting fashion, the dimensions, levels, and aspects of social life and societal structures that form the elements of democracy.

The key topics in the centres research are:

1. The everyday, mundane practices in which democracy takes place, evolves, and becomes defined.
2. The intertwinement of political participation and the polarization processes in civil societies due to increasing, intersecting inequalities and marginalization.
3. The online and offline engagements shaping political agency and introducing novel forms of publicizing concerns and arguing for them.
4. The processes emerging from citizenship practices shaping the understanding of political cultures, and in particular the engagement in political (and proto- anti- and de-political) activities of young people.

The centre's ongoing projects are:

• Imagi(ni)ng Democracy. Young Europeans Becoming Citizens by Visual Participation (ImagiDem) (ERC Starting Grant 2019-2024).
• Totaalidemokratia. Parademokraattinen järjestelmä ja osallistumisen kulttuuriset työkalut 2010-luvun Suomessa. (Koneen Foundation 2019-2022)
• Feeling Biases and Bubbles. Deep Stories -section. BIBU - Biases and Bubbles in Participation. (Strategic Research Council 2017-2021)
• Young Citizens in the Age of Polarization. Ethnographic and Big Data Based Study of Engagement, Participation, and Marginalization in 2010s Finland (YCAP) (Academy of Finland 2016-2020)
• Citizens in the making: Ethnography and Big Data on Youth Engagement, Participation and Marginalization in 2010s Finland (Kone Foundation 2014-2018)

Eeva Luhtakallio

Assistant Professor

eeva.luhtakallio [at] uta.fi

+358 40 503 1573

 

Taina Meriluoto

Post-Doctoral Researcher / Coordinator of the ImagiDem -project

taina.meriluoto [at] uta.fi

+358 44 523 9839