Jani Marjanen, MA
Doctoral candidate
Renvall Institute, Centre for Nordic Studies CENS
E-mail: jani.marjanen@helsinki.fi
Postal address:
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
P.O.Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 A)
Research interests
The Conceptualisations of Public Communication among Finnish and Swedish Economic and Agricultural Organisations, 1797–1833
The study focuses on how public communication was conceptualised among agents active in Finnish and Swedish economic and agricultural organisations, namely Finska Hushållningssällskapet (the Finnish Economic Society, founded 1797) and Svenska Lantbruksakademien (the Swedish Agricultural Academy, founded 1813). Emphasis is put on how these agents perceived and handled the task of, on the one hand distributing useful knowledge, and on the other hand producing knowledge on economic (mainly agricultural) issues and thus contributing to economic policy making.
The organisations are studied as new organs that entered the public scene in Sweden. They both adapted to the withstanding political climate, but within both of them vocabulary on public communication was introduced and redefined. The usage of concepts such as ‘public’, ‘private’, ‘public sphere’, ‘debate’, ‘opinion’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ are in the very centre of the study.
Also, emphasis is put on how agents in the post-1809 Finnish Grand Duchy glanced at the development in Sweden. These active, but politically cautious, comparisons were an important way for Finnish agents to relate to new currents of thought that were imported or translated from core-Europe to a periphery.