Paper short abstract:

I approach the human‒nature relationship in the past experiences of water revealed in the oral tradition of the Baltic Finns to the present experiences of the villagers in my case study. I examine imagination as a theoretical and analytical framework for tacit and experience based knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

In my doctoral thesis (2017) I studied the history production of an old pilot village, Lypyrtti, in the southwestern archipelago in Finland. The Finnish National Board of Navigation abolished the pilotage of Lypyrtti in 1961. The nostalgic process and the textualisation of the researcher's own experiences transmitted also the non-human co-actors involved in the signification process and the tacit knowledge constructed by the villagers' empirical practice. The oral history of Lypyrtti highlighted the functional aspect of relations to and experienced-based knowledge of water as epitomized by stories and performances. It was a shared sense of belonging to the communality of the people lived by and with the water. Beyond the village in question, the research also displayed the concern of the environmental condition of the Baltic Sea.

In my presentation I approach the human‒nature relationship as a historically constructed phenomenon. I have a long-term perspective starting from the past experiences of water revealed in the oral tradition of the Baltic Finns to the present experiences of the villagers in my case study. Imagining is a social action, connecting human and non-human, material and immaterial actors. I examine imagination as a broader theoretical and analytical framework for tacit, situated and experience based knowledge. I ask, whether social imaginary and co-imagination as analytical tools are convenient to bridge the caps between individual and collective memory and between oral tradition and present experiences of water.