Family Networks in Finnish Society from the 16th to the 20th Centuries
Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä
H320, building H, Seminaarinmäki
28/1–8/4/2013, 16.30–18.00
In this lecture series, continuity and change in family networks in Finnish society are examined from a long-term perspective. In addition to actual kinship relations, the lectures focus on godparent relations, which presented an important possibility to complement family ties with other safety and support networks at a time when society did not support the family as in the present-day Nordic welfare society. These lectures will concentrate on the significance of family and kin relationships over the centuries. The main questions concern the kind of networks that existed and why it was possible to form them, including those that were substitutes for family-based networks when familial ties were for one reason or another weaker or hardly existed at all.
Lectures:
28/1 PhD, Adjunct Professor Olli Matikainen: Family and justice in early modern Finland
4/2 PhD Jarkko Keskinen: Godparent selection strategies in merchant community of Pori 1720–1820
11/2 MA Pirita Frigren: Sailor-households in the networks of godparenthood in the 19th century Finnish west-coastal town of Pori
18/2 PhD Kari-Matti Piilahti: Godparental patterns among new entrants into the business elite in Finland in the 19th century
25/2 MA Heikki Vuorimies: Soldiers and godparenthood in Finnish local communities in the early 18th century
11/3 PhD Ulla Aatsinki: Finnish-American family networks in the beginning of the 20th century
18/3 MA Tiina Hemminki: Creditors, debtors and godparents. Peasants’ intertwined relationships in the early-nineteenth-century southern Ostrobothnia
8/4 PhD Sofia Kotilainen: Godparenthood in the Finnish rural family communities 1700–1960
For further information, please contact PhD, Academy Postdoctoral Researcher Sofia Kotilainen (sofia.p.kotilainen@jyu.fi), Department of History and Ethnology.
