Ambiguity of Action: Ethnographic and Theoretical
Perspectives
Symposium organized by Vulnerable Lives – Research Group led by Prof. Marja Liisa
Honkasalo
June 10-11, 2014, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki
This two-day symposium invites social scientists to ponder on the ambiguity of action from
ethnographic and theoretical perspectives. The starting point to the symposium arises from
ethnographic research in which we have apprehended precarious modes of action that deserve
more social scientific attention. But how to ask theoretical questions without simplifying the
messiness and ambivalence of the fabrics of life we study? With the burden of social scientific
theorizing of action, how to approach modes of agency which are passive, small scale or
ambiguous? Presentations and lectures engage with ambiguities of action and the ways in which
action is intertwined with various social bonds and relations, as well as, material aspects,
including the body and technology. We invite you to come to think and have a conversation with
us about this pressing theme of empirical scholars interested in large, theoretical questions.
Tuesday June 10, 2014 Siltavuorenpenger 3a, Auditorium 107
9.00 Registration and coffee
9.30-9.40 Marja-Liisa Honkasalo: Opening words
Chair: Kaisa Ketokivi
9.40-10.55 Marja-Liisa Honkasalo: Ambiguous agency. A radical relational view
10.55-12.25 Workshop 1
Sanna Rikala: ‘Quiet agency’ in women’s burnout processes
Leena Åkerblad: Beyond insecurity. Unstable labor market position and precarious agency
Annalisa Sannino: On the agency of seemingly passive modes of action: The example of
Vygotsky’s waiting experiment
12.25-13.35 Lunch (Viola, at one’s own expense)
Chair: Marja-Liisa Honkasalo
13.35-14.50 Robert Fairbanks: How it Works. Recovering Citizens in Post-Welfare
Philadelphia
14.50-16.00 Workshop 2
Anna Leppo & Riikka Perälä: Agency in the context of pharmaceutical treatment of drug
problems in post-welfare Finland
Elina Paju: Methods for Mess: How to relate to the wildness in social scientific data
16.00-16.30 Coffee break
Chair: Kari Vesala
16.30-17.40 Workshop 3
Olli Pyyhtinen: Making Art. From Possession of Agency to Being Possessed by and Immersed
in Action
Katve-Kaisa Kontturi: Folds of Sustainability: Fabrics and Agency in Grey Gardens
Symposium Dinner 19- (for speakers, at Klippan)
Wednesday June 11, 2014 Siltavuorenpenger 3a, Auditorium 107
Chair: Anna Leppo
9.30-10.45 Mustafa Emirbayer: Relationality and Ambiguity
10.45-12.15 Workshop 4
Frank Martela: From individual to duovidual: Care as a co-created form of action
Riitta Högbacka: The agency of the disempowered
Kaisa Ketokivi & Atte Vieno: Belonging-work: On the ambiguity of making bonds in
everyday life
12.15-13.30 Lunch (Viola, at one’s own expense)
Chair Riikka Perälä
13.30-14.30 Workshop 5
Kari Mikko Vesala: Serving somebody as a question of agency
Susanne Ådahl: Fragile dialogues: Negotiating agency with voices
14.30-15 Coffee break
15-17 Final discussion (panel)
17-19 Get-together (Olivia, wine reception for everyone)