Yesterday evening I attended a lecture by Hannu Sinisalo about “Finns vs. others — Cultural prejudices and sympathies of the Finns”.  It was fascinating and made me think about many things related to the topic.  Firstly, it made me think about my own experience of Finnish tolerance/intolerance.  Of course I have thought about it before, but this time I had to think a little more deeply about what I am basing my opinions on.  My sample of the Finnish population is small, but I’m confident that the sample of most Finnish citizens are not much bigger.

My perceptions of tolerance/intolerance in South Africa is, I think, based on an extrapolation of the subcultures I’m familiar with.  In other words, some of my perceptions are based on assumptions and generalizations.  Is this valid?  Probably.  If I discovered that my extrapolations do not hold, I would alter this approach and so far I have not done this.

It seems to me that we can make statements about either groups and individuals. People handle these two case very differently.  When talking or thinking about unseen individuals (e.g., “that guy in the news”), people are really talking about their stereotypes (i.e., generalizations) about groups.  There is really only two options:  make no statement, or make a statement based on your generalized experience of individuals from the group.

The dangers are that (1) we may make the wrong generalization, weighing our experience inaccurately, (2) make “phantom” generalization that are not based on experience at all but on information from secondary sources, (3) true prejudice by not recognizing that individuals are different from groups.  When we meet an individual it is important to weight our group generalizations much more lightly:  individuals are what they are exactly because they deviate from the group stereotype.  The danger of (2) is intolerance indoctrination: a systematic attempt to influence the generalizations people make.

Another aspect of the  lecture I found interesting:  it made me curious about anthropology and its research methods.  I’ll have to see what my future holds for next year, but I might attend some anthropology classes in Stellenbosch.

Also, the lecturer used photos, beautiful portraits of real people taken by Finnish anthropologists in the late 19th and early 20th century.  These impressed me greatly.  Sinisalo himself seemed to be involved in photography.  We chatted after the lecture and he mentioned that he is involved in teaching photography.  If I come back to Finland, I might explore this.  Maria also gave me pamphlet of PIRAMK (Pirkanmaa Ammattikorkeakoulu) that mentions that they present all their courses in English!  One more item:  Sinisalo’s photography students are publishing a book soon.  I saw some of it before the lecture and I’ll definitely try to get a copy before I leave.