Paper short abstract:

In Finland, forest professionals have a strong impact on forests, and the way forests are defined and managed in society. Civil society institutions have strongly challenged professionals' position and expertise. This paper studies professional human-forest relationships, and its transformations.

Paper long abstract:

In Finland, forests cover approximately 86% of total land area. Consequently, forests resources have been major source for economic wellbeing and institutions supporting the management of forests have established powerful positions in society. Traditional forest sector's formal and informal power to define the forests and their use has strongly been challenged by civil society.

According recent surveys, forests are still important. The identity and lifestyle of urbanized Finns influence their values and choices, which in turn reflect the changes in global attitudes to nature. These diverging forest-related interests and values cause conflicts, mainly between professional forest institutions and civil society.

In my presentation, I study forest professionals and their relationship with the forests. How do they experience the forest, and how professional institutions affect to their relationship with forests? What kind of cultural, societal and personal meanings and emotions they connect, consciously or subconsciously, to the forests? Usually , the motivation to become a forest professional is the love and appreciation for nature. To act as forest professional, is then to intertwine personal and professional relationships with forests. This embracement of institutionalized professionalism transform their identity, and can also cause tensions.

After graduation, professionals occupy tasks both in traditional forestry and in the fields of environmental conservation and restoration. As responsible for managing forests, supplying wood, consulting private forest owners etc., forest professionals form a network that has visible impact on forests, economy, and society.

Presentation is based on phenomenological interviews of 35 Finnish forest professionals conducted in year 2020.

Paper short abstract:

In Finland, forests are mainly privately owned. Thus, private owners are central to forests. For long, owners have been instructed in management and use of forests. However, society and forest ownership are changing. This paper studies transitions in Finnish forest owner's forest relationships.

Paper long abstract:

As a property, the forest is special in many ways. In Finland, forests are partly perceived as a common resource, a source of national wealth. Many parties other than legal owners want to influence the use of forests by imposing different, sometimes even conflicting demands on the use of forests. There are disputes in Finnish society regarding attitudes towards forest, its management and ownership.

Ownership is a complex phenomenon. In addition to legal ownership, there is also a psychological side to it, the feeling that a place or a thing "belongs to us" or "is ours". Owning a forest is multidimensional and in many ways cultural. Both forest and forest ownership can mean many different things depending on the determinant and the defining situation.

Forest ownership is changing in Finland. Originally rural generations are passing forests to their urbanized descendants. In the long run, the importance of forest income in private citizens' economy has diminished. Additionally, other transformations are diversifying forest owner's relationships with the forest and changing their practices.

In this paper, I explore how cultural and social transitions and tensions are reflected in private forest owner's thinking. What kinds of official and unofficial rules, power relations and visible and invisible borders are there in private forest ownership and how these are contested or reimagined? Paper is based on thematic and biographical interviews of 49 Finnish private forest owners conducted in 2020.

Paper short abstract:

In my paper, I scrutinize the audiovisual narration of nonhuman agency in two nature documentaries. Hidden in the context of documentary sobriety, the first film reveals a forest malleable to an individual's endeavors and the second an uncontrollable nature, subordinate to coincidence.

Paper long abstract:

My paper discusses the audiovisual narration of two nature documentaries presented by the Finnish public broadcasting company, under the series of Avara luonto (Nature's wide world). The first one is a documentary film of animals in two different forests (Hidden Kingdom, episode two: Secret Forests, BBC 2014) and the second one is a film about extraordinary plants around the world (Life, episode nine: Plants, BBC 2009).

An analysis of the audiovisual narration of these films reveals subtlety that makes a difference. One contains a story of individual animals learning to survive due to their cleverness and diligence, the other is an episodic entity of plants having evolved due to circumstances and coincidence. Both stories can be understood to have main characters, but the difference in understanding and presenting this nonhuman agency creates either a nature malleable to an individual's endeavors or a collection of habitats with interrelating actors, and subordinate to happenstance.

Hidden in the context of documentary sobriety (Nichols 1991, 3), the audiovisual narration suggests very different kinds of ideas than the information delivered by the voice over. The interwoven narrative does not seem to carry the audience's heavy demands of documentary authenticity or clarity of argument. Thus, the audiovisual narration can either construct a forest where anthropocentric morality and causality prevails or a collection of habitats where even plants have agency, but no one alone controls the entity.

Paper short abstract:

Individual trees have deep meanings for people. How and why do certain tree-individuals become to be so important for human individuals? How do people create these multispecies relationships? We discuss trees as beings and places connected to life stories and worldviews of humans.

Paper long abstract:

In our research project "Trees Near Us" we examine bonds humans have with individual trees. In this transdisciplinary study we combine scientific and humanistic methods with arts. We use scientific data-analysis on interview material and ecocritical analysis on emotion-rich personal narratives and Finnish nature-writing, which enables us to create a vivid picture of the different aspects of human-tree-relationships: emotional, sensory, caretaking, spiritual and material. We also aim to surpass our anthropocentric perspective and observe these relationships from the tree's perspective with artistic methods. 

In this presentation we introduce characterizations of typical human-tree-relationships drawn from our data-analysis and juxtapose them with examples from peoples' real-life stories and Finnish nature writing. We specifically ask, is a tree an entity or a place? We reflect the spatial and creatural conceptualizations of trees in nature-writing and personal narratives. Trees as beings are non-human neighbors, companion species which are taken care of, they are species of friendship capable of empathy, but also uncanny more-than humans. Trees as physical places act as places of remembrance, everyday activities, or refuge. As physical places trees represent imaginary space connected to personal memories and life stories.

Hypothetically and speculatively, we ask, can trees be living time-machines and take humans to different temporal dimensions: to past and future, or even beyond their personal timeline? Can they help humans travel to other levels of consciousness, to their inner selves, a spiritual world, or the universe?

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on local resident's narratives about forest wildfire as a force of nature that conditions both the forest, as well as its human users and nonhuman inhabitants. What meanings are expressed about the forests? What is imagined as natural? How is human intervention understood?

Paper long abstract:

In 2014 and 2018, wildfires erupted in Swedish forests at a magnitude without precedence in modern Swedish history. These wildfires had a major impact on local communities and forestry, also stirring national debate on climate change, forestry production, and biodiversity. In this paper we present results from an ethnographic study of the aftermath of the forest wildfires in 2018. The overall purpose of the study is to study how three affected local communities mobilized local resources to cope, how local residents narrate the events of the wildfire and its aftermath, and what the wildfire led to in terms of strategies and awareness of sustainable development. Our analysis starts from the idea that anthropogenic climate change indeed "changes everything" (Klein 2014) as it alters the way in which interactions between climate and society are questioned (see Hulme & Burgess 2018). Our material consists of in-depth interviews with local residents who in different ways - as forest owners, evacuated local residents, volunteers, local fire fighters etc. - were affected. This paper focuses on local resident's narratives about forest wildfire as a force of nature that conditions both the forest, as well as its human users and nonhuman inhabitants. When re-imagining the forest and its role in the interviewee's lives, as well as its value in society, what meanings are expressed about the forest? What is imagined as natural? How is human intervention understood?