SOS Project Closing Seminar

We are glad to announce the Research Council of Finland funded project Skills of Self-Provisioning in Rural Communities (SOS) is coming to a successful end! You are warmly welcome to the closing seminar to discuss and celebrate the main findings of the project.

Monday 26 August 2024 at 13:00-17:00 in Helsinki
Tieteiden talo (House of the Sciences and Letters), Main Room

At this event, we are delighted to have our collaborators—Lasse Nordlund, the founder of the School of Self-Sufficiency, Rasimäki; Juha Helenius, professor of agroecology at the University of Helsinki, Ruralia Institute; Hilkka Vihinen, research professor at the Natural Resources Institute Finland—participating in a panel with the keynote speaker, Dr Petr Jehlička, senior researcher at the Czech Academy of Science, Institute of Ethnology.

Please ensure your seat by registering below!
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Monday 26 August 2024 at 13:00-17:00 in Helsinki

Tieteiden talo (House of the Sciences and Letters), Main Room

 

13:00 Coffee and tea

13:15 Welcoming words - professor Pasi Heikkurinen, principal investigator

 

13:30-15:00 Main findings of the project

13:30-13:45 Relations of skills, university lecturer, Jarkko Pyysiäinen, leader of work package 1

13:50-14:05 Processuality of skills, university lecturer, Toni Ruuska, leader of work package 2

14:10-14:25 Places of skills, associate professor, Jenny Rinkinen, leader of work package 3

14:30-14:45 A spiral model of skills, professor Pasi Heikkurinen, leader of work package 4

14:45-15:00 Q&A

15:00 Sparkling wine and nibbles

 

15:30-16:45 Societal implications

15:30-16:00 Keynote: The practice and policy of food self-provisioning, senior researcher, Petr Jehlička, Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Department of Ecological Anthropology

16:00-16:15 Q&A

16:15-16:45 Panel discussion

  • founder, Lasse Nordlund, School of Self-Sufficiency
  • professor, Juha Helenius, University of Helsinki, Ruralia Institute
  • research professor, Hilkka Vihinen, Natural Resources Institute Finland

16:45 Closing words – professor Pasi Heikkurinen, principal investigator

 

17:00-20:00 Party

The practice and policy of food self-provisioning

Dr Petr Jehlička, senior researcher

Department of Ecological Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

Drawing on a longitudinal empirical study of food self-provisioning in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as on a recent exploratory study of this practice in China, this keynote address argues that sustainability scholarship and policy would benefit from embracing a greater diversity of sustainability practices. Such inclusivity in reaching social and environmental action may importantly lead us to pay more attention to what can be termed already existing sustainability, rather than privileging innovation. This reduces the burden placed upon promises and plans sketched out in an idealised future and helps societies to scale out effective solutions. However, these everyday sustainable practices are often deemed backward and hence vulnerable to devaluation by public authorities, and the findings point to the risk of their diminishing.

This keynote will redirect attention to the policy implications of possible sustainability losses caused by the devaluing of sustainability-compliant existing practices. It is important to recognise that the losses in terms of sustainability outcomes due to the decline of sustainable practices, such as self-provisioning of food, may significantly outweigh the gains brought about by sustainability innovations. This in turn highlights the need to move the endeavour of uncovering new impetuses for the way we think about sustainability policy to places beyond the epistemic Western ‘core’. It casts epistemic peripheries in the global South and global East as sources of original insights on less conventional forms of sustainability.

Please register for the event via e-form here:

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/130400/lomake.html

The registration closes on Friday 16th August!