For the People, the Nation and the Society
Finnish social welfare and health policy organisations as social reformers and experts (1930s–1960s)
PhD project in political history, 2014–2019
Supervisors: professor Pauli Kettunen and associate professor Johan Strang, University of Helsinki
Funded by the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Kone Foundation
Summary and preliminary findings
Preliminary table of contents (September 2018)
In my PhD project, I look at four Finnish social and health policy organisations as public policy actors and experts from the 1930s to the 1960s. The organisations are Väestöliitto (the Finnish Population and Family Welfare League), Samfundet Folkhälsan (the Public Health Association of Swedish Finland), Sosiaalihuollon Keskusliitto (the Finnish Federation for Social Welfare) and Sosiaalipoliittinen yhdistys (the Finnish Social Policy Association).
Institutions, parties and ‘traditional’ dominant interest organisations (i.e., labour market organisations, or trade organisations such as the Central Union of Agricultural Producers) have been studied extensively and meticulously within Nordic and Finnish welfare state research. I am therefore interested in looking at a less examined field: NGOs and their role in the construction of what would later become the welfare state.
I argue that at the core of this role was the combination of a dual expertise: professional and political. As professional experts, they have operated on the practical, grassroots-level; for instance, by providing social welfare and health care services. As political experts, they have been active in designing and implementing social and health legislation and policy on a higher, i.e., national and municipal level, which requires theoretical and political know-how.
My research also highlights a phenomenon I have labelled ‘bourgeois social reformism’. Initially, I did not select my study subjects with the intention of studying bourgeois actors – if anything, I assumed them to be politically diverse. However, in the course of my research, I have come to conclude that all four organisations can be characterised as centre-right and representing middle-class values and interests. Nonetheless, they each have played a central role in the development of social and health policy, which in time developed into what would be called the welfare state. In these endeavours, the actors often followed the ideas and models of left-wing actors abroad (e.g., Swedish Social Democrats or American progressives) – but transformed and depoliticised these ideas and models in order to further bourgeois norms and values, to socially and culturally homogenise the Finnish population. The idea of a good quality of life was equated with the bourgeois middle class, without any apparent endeavours to preserve, for example, working-class culture while simultaneously improving the working class’ standard of living.
These findings provide a historically more nuanced interpretation of two fairly common notions. Firstly, I claim that controlling and helping individuals and groups should not be perceived as opposites, but rather, as overlapping approaches and goals. Racial hygiene, public health and social engineering, for example, were about controlling risk individuals and groups, and about preventing and mitigating individual and collective misery.
Secondly, related to the above, the findings challenge the simplistic and somewhat worn-out idea of the Nordic welfare states as a Social Democratic phenomenon, let alone working-class. My research demonstrates how social reformism should not be understood merely as a leftist trope. While the approaches and objectives included some markedly conservative goals (e.g., traditional gender and family models), bourgeois social reformists cannot – by definition – be understood in terms of conservatism. They actively worked for reforming social and health policy; not just in order to mitigate unwanted developments, but also for creating something they perceived as a better society.
