Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3638294 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Turo-Kimmo |
| FAMILY NAME | Lehtonen |
| SIGNATURE | LEHTONEN T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 129 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Fieldwork in Philosophy: Articulating a Theoretical Sensibility
The phrase ‘fieldwork in philosophy’ has its genealogy in the writings of Austin, Bourdieu and Rabinow. In this paper, we follow these authors but take a step forward; we use their phrase for naming a theoretical sensibility that has gained ground in recent years. To develop a systematic articulation of this sensibility, we draw on Foucault, Hacking, Latour, and Mol, whose research characteristically originates from within philosophy but relies o…
Disjointed modes of building resilience to socio-environmental crises
Socio-environmental crises are bound to worsen and bring about unprecedented uncertainties regarding their anticipation and management. We studied how public organizations in Finland build resilience to such crises (that is, the capacity needed to deal with and recover from disruptions) and how and why their efforts appear dysfunctional in the face of worsening crises. Our data-driven qualitative analysis draws on interviews with 58 experts in Fi…
Frictional rhythms of climate work in city governance
Cities are crucially but problematically positioned to take on the climate crisis. Although local governance seems an appropriate scale for adaptation and mitigation measures, numerous barriers to implementing them effectively have been diagnosed. We argue that a focus on pinpointable barriers neglects the intrinsic organisational dynamics that often impede effective climate action. Drawing on interviews with climate specialists in Finnish munici…
The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called 'waste-based commodity frontiers', reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift t…
La sociologie en Finlande
La sociologie en Finlande
Climate change and insurance
This special collection examines insurance as an increasingly central mechanism in shaping how the effects of climate change are transforming local economies and ways of life. The papers study a range of exemplary cases, ranging from agricultural micro-insurance in development policy and regional sovereign risk facilities in the Caribbean to public and private insurance in the United States. This framing essay situates these papers in a longer tr…
From Trash to Treasure
The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster diving as a practice of valuation. Its main questions are: How is voluntary dumpster diving intertwined with the question of value? And, conversely, what can dumpster diving teach us about practices of valuation more generally? The article proceeds via three steps. First, in order to emphasize the creative side of dumpster diving as a practice of val…
The Public, the Private and the Changing Expectations for Everyday Welfare Services: The Case of Finnish Parents Seeking Private Health Care for their Children
This article sheds light on a policy area where the notion of the active citizen has gained prominence as part of the transformation of the welfare state: purchasing private health services and private health insurance for children in Finland. Although the country’s universal health care system offers free primary health care for children, 40 per cent of children now have private insurance. Drawing on interviews with parents who seek private solu…
Domesticating insurance, financializing family lives: The case of private health insurance for children in Finland
This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service with very low costs, if any. Yet, some 40 percent of families want to supplement this service wi…
Objectifying Climate Change: Weather-Related Catastrophes as Risks and Opportunities for Reinsurance
For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to …
Latour's empirical metaphysics
In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social scientific and philosophical project. In contrast to Graham Harman's recent reading of his work, we take seriously how adamant Latour is about not creating a metaphysical system, and how he is thus essentially sharing the anti-metaphysical tenor of much of the twentieth-century philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not shun making bold claims concerning the …
Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance
Picturing How Life Insurance Matters
What kind of object is private life insurance? To discuss this question, this article examines how life insurance is pictured, that is, explained and concretized with words and visual images, in the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 2000. In principle, life insurance can only be used for assessing and securing the economic value of life. The empirical material shows, however, that life insurance, as an object, can on…
Justifications for commodified security: The promotion of private life insurance in Finland 1945-90
This article examines the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 1990. Although a fully-fledged social insurance system was established during this period, private insurance did not become obsolete. How were people encouraged to engage in voluntary forms of insurance in the new situation? We study the ways in which insurance was marketed by justifying its usefulness in relation to the 'goods' that were presumed common to …
On Simmel's conception of philosophy
The Domestication of New Technologies as a Set of Trials
This article examines the domestication of technologies by following different phases of adoption. These phases are studied as a set of trials in which the capabilities of humans and non-humans are tested in many ways. I will begin the article by investigating the period in which interest in a piece of technology is slowly aroused. This involves the collective assessment of the ‘need’ for an object and, before an actual acquisition is made, consu…
The Ethos of Thrift: The Promotion of Bank Saving in Finland During the 1950s
This article examines the promotion and legitimization of bank saving in Finnish magazines during the 1950s. While trying to educate Finnish citizens to save, articles and advertisements ended up outlining a general model for the good life, structured by the ethos of thrift. At the household level, thrift meant a plurality of activities, not only passivity or restraint. The bank-saving discourse introduced new techniques of governing oneself and …
Dancing on the tightrope: Ever yday aesthetics in the practices of shopping, gym exercise and art making
Drawing on interviews we discuss everyday aesthetics in recreational shopping, gym exercise and art making. For our interviewees these practices represent a sphere of autonomy and self-fulfilment, constituted by a constant balancing between restraint and pleasure. In a process which resembles ‘dancing on the tightrope’, freedom and restriction, moments of release and self-discipline, desire and enforcement produce one another. Our comparative mat…
Any Room For Aesthetics: Shopping Practices of Heavily Indebted Consumers
This article describes the everyday practices of consumption of heavily indebted people and discusses the links between economic resources and everyday aesthetics. It is based on interviews with people in a Finnish debt adjustment programme. Becoming overindebted has markedly changed the interviewees' habits of consumption that are now characterized by constant and careful control of the resources and a self-understanding of never buying anything…
The Domestication of New Technologies as a Set of Trials
This article examines the domestication of technologies by following different phases of adoption. These phases are studied as a set of trials in which the capabilities of humans and non-humans are tested in many ways. I will begin the article by investigating the period in which interest in a piece of technology is slowly aroused. This involves the collective assessment of the ‘need’ for an object and, before an actual acquisition is made, consu…
Climate change and insurance
This special collection examines insurance as an increasingly central mechanism in shaping how the effects of climate change are transforming local economies and ways of life. The papers study a range of exemplary cases, ranging from agricultural micro-insurance in development policy and regional sovereign risk facilities in the Caribbean to public and private insurance in the United States. This framing essay situates these papers in a longer tr…
Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance
Objectifying Climate Change: Weather-Related Catastrophes as Risks and Opportunities for Reinsurance
For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to …
Justifications for commodified security: The promotion of private life insurance in Finland 1945-90
This article examines the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 1990. Although a fully-fledged social insurance system was established during this period, private insurance did not become obsolete. How were people encouraged to engage in voluntary forms of insurance in the new situation? We study the ways in which insurance was marketed by justifying its usefulness in relation to the 'goods' that were presumed common to …
Picturing How Life Insurance Matters
What kind of object is private life insurance? To discuss this question, this article examines how life insurance is pictured, that is, explained and concretized with words and visual images, in the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 2000. In principle, life insurance can only be used for assessing and securing the economic value of life. The empirical material shows, however, that life insurance, as an object, can on…
The Ethos of Thrift: The Promotion of Bank Saving in Finland During the 1950s
This article examines the promotion and legitimization of bank saving in Finnish magazines during the 1950s. While trying to educate Finnish citizens to save, articles and advertisements ended up outlining a general model for the good life, structured by the ethos of thrift. At the household level, thrift meant a plurality of activities, not only passivity or restraint. The bank-saving discourse introduced new techniques of governing oneself and …
Latour's empirical metaphysics
In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social scientific and philosophical project. In contrast to Graham Harman's recent reading of his work, we take seriously how adamant Latour is about not creating a metaphysical system, and how he is thus essentially sharing the anti-metaphysical tenor of much of the twentieth-century philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not shun making bold claims concerning the …
The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called 'waste-based commodity frontiers', reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift t…
The Public, the Private and the Changing Expectations for Everyday Welfare Services: The Case of Finnish Parents Seeking Private Health Care for their Children
This article sheds light on a policy area where the notion of the active citizen has gained prominence as part of the transformation of the welfare state: purchasing private health services and private health insurance for children in Finland. Although the country’s universal health care system offers free primary health care for children, 40 per cent of children now have private insurance. Drawing on interviews with parents who seek private solu…
On Simmel's conception of philosophy
Dancing on the tightrope: Ever yday aesthetics in the practices of shopping, gym exercise and art making
Drawing on interviews we discuss everyday aesthetics in recreational shopping, gym exercise and art making. For our interviewees these practices represent a sphere of autonomy and self-fulfilment, constituted by a constant balancing between restraint and pleasure. In a process which resembles ‘dancing on the tightrope’, freedom and restriction, moments of release and self-discipline, desire and enforcement produce one another. Our comparative mat…
Any Room For Aesthetics: Shopping Practices of Heavily Indebted Consumers
This article describes the everyday practices of consumption of heavily indebted people and discusses the links between economic resources and everyday aesthetics. It is based on interviews with people in a Finnish debt adjustment programme. Becoming overindebted has markedly changed the interviewees' habits of consumption that are now characterized by constant and careful control of the resources and a self-understanding of never buying anything…
Any Room For Aesthetics: Shopping Practices of Heavily Indebted Consumers
This article describes the everyday practices of consumption of heavily indebted people and discusses the links between economic resources and everyday aesthetics. It is based on interviews with people in a Finnish debt adjustment programme. Becoming overindebted has markedly changed the interviewees' habits of consumption that are now characterized by constant and careful control of the resources and a self-understanding of never buying anything…
Dancing on the tightrope: Ever yday aesthetics in the practices of shopping, gym exercise and art making
Drawing on interviews we discuss everyday aesthetics in recreational shopping, gym exercise and art making. For our interviewees these practices represent a sphere of autonomy and self-fulfilment, constituted by a constant balancing between restraint and pleasure. In a process which resembles ‘dancing on the tightrope’, freedom and restriction, moments of release and self-discipline, desire and enforcement produce one another. Our comparative mat…
The Ethos of Thrift: The Promotion of Bank Saving in Finland During the 1950s
This article examines the promotion and legitimization of bank saving in Finnish magazines during the 1950s. While trying to educate Finnish citizens to save, articles and advertisements ended up outlining a general model for the good life, structured by the ethos of thrift. At the household level, thrift meant a plurality of activities, not only passivity or restraint. The bank-saving discourse introduced new techniques of governing oneself and …
The Domestication of New Technologies as a Set of Trials
This article examines the domestication of technologies by following different phases of adoption. These phases are studied as a set of trials in which the capabilities of humans and non-humans are tested in many ways. I will begin the article by investigating the period in which interest in a piece of technology is slowly aroused. This involves the collective assessment of the ‘need’ for an object and, before an actual acquisition is made, consu…
On Simmel's conception of philosophy
Justifications for commodified security: The promotion of private life insurance in Finland 1945-90
This article examines the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 1990. Although a fully-fledged social insurance system was established during this period, private insurance did not become obsolete. How were people encouraged to engage in voluntary forms of insurance in the new situation? We study the ways in which insurance was marketed by justifying its usefulness in relation to the 'goods' that were presumed common to …
Picturing How Life Insurance Matters
What kind of object is private life insurance? To discuss this question, this article examines how life insurance is pictured, that is, explained and concretized with words and visual images, in the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 2000. In principle, life insurance can only be used for assessing and securing the economic value of life. The empirical material shows, however, that life insurance, as an object, can on…
Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance
Latour's empirical metaphysics
In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social scientific and philosophical project. In contrast to Graham Harman's recent reading of his work, we take seriously how adamant Latour is about not creating a metaphysical system, and how he is thus essentially sharing the anti-metaphysical tenor of much of the twentieth-century philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not shun making bold claims concerning the …
Domesticating insurance, financializing family lives: The case of private health insurance for children in Finland
This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service with very low costs, if any. Yet, some 40 percent of families want to supplement this service wi…
Objectifying Climate Change: Weather-Related Catastrophes as Risks and Opportunities for Reinsurance
For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to …
From Trash to Treasure
The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster diving as a practice of valuation. Its main questions are: How is voluntary dumpster diving intertwined with the question of value? And, conversely, what can dumpster diving teach us about practices of valuation more generally? The article proceeds via three steps. First, in order to emphasize the creative side of dumpster diving as a practice of val…
The Public, the Private and the Changing Expectations for Everyday Welfare Services: The Case of Finnish Parents Seeking Private Health Care for their Children
This article sheds light on a policy area where the notion of the active citizen has gained prominence as part of the transformation of the welfare state: purchasing private health services and private health insurance for children in Finland. Although the country’s universal health care system offers free primary health care for children, 40 per cent of children now have private insurance. Drawing on interviews with parents who seek private solu…
La sociologie en Finlande
Climate change and insurance
This special collection examines insurance as an increasingly central mechanism in shaping how the effects of climate change are transforming local economies and ways of life. The papers study a range of exemplary cases, ranging from agricultural micro-insurance in development policy and regional sovereign risk facilities in the Caribbean to public and private insurance in the United States. This framing essay situates these papers in a longer tr…
La sociologie en Finlande
Frictional rhythms of climate work in city governance
Cities are crucially but problematically positioned to take on the climate crisis. Although local governance seems an appropriate scale for adaptation and mitigation measures, numerous barriers to implementing them effectively have been diagnosed. We argue that a focus on pinpointable barriers neglects the intrinsic organisational dynamics that often impede effective climate action. Drawing on interviews with climate specialists in Finnish munici…
The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called 'waste-based commodity frontiers', reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift t…
Disjointed modes of building resilience to socio-environmental crises
Socio-environmental crises are bound to worsen and bring about unprecedented uncertainties regarding their anticipation and management. We studied how public organizations in Finland build resilience to such crises (that is, the capacity needed to deal with and recover from disruptions) and how and why their efforts appear dysfunctional in the face of worsening crises. Our data-driven qualitative analysis draws on interviews with 58 experts in Fi…
Fieldwork in Philosophy: Articulating a Theoretical Sensibility
The phrase ‘fieldwork in philosophy’ has its genealogy in the writings of Austin, Bourdieu and Rabinow. In this paper, we follow these authors but take a step forward; we use their phrase for naming a theoretical sensibility that has gained ground in recent years. To develop a systematic articulation of this sensibility, we draw on Foucault, Hacking, Latour, and Mol, whose research characteristically originates from within philosophy but relies o…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works)