Rescue and Exchange: Tracing sprouts of viable living in the field of help and care in Finland

In this doctoral dissertation I trace what I call ‘sprouts of viable living’—emerging forms of living together sustainably in ways that can be experienced as worth living by everyone—in the field of help and care in Finland. Examining the field anthropologically, my research participates in discussions about the possibilities and restrictions governing living well in the contemporary world, one characterised by growing social inequalities and ecological destruction, thus making it urgent that we widen our perspectives on how to live together in more caring and less destructive ways. As I demonstrate in this study, anthropology is well equipped to contribute to such a task, while the field of help and care is a fruitful social setting in which to trace possibilities for living together differently.

Finland has traditionally represented a relatively strong exemplar of the welfare state, which, like welfare regimes all over the world, has been under heavy reconstruction in recent decades. This is evident in the increasing decentralisation of welfare provision from the public sector to private actors (both commercial and non- profit), and the growing influence of market logics, practices, and language in the field of help and care, as well as in society at large. Discussions concerning that change have often revolved around the question of how to keep welfare services going in the changing circumstances in order to help individuals to live with and integrate into the existing structures of society. In this study I take a different approach. By starting from the anthropological perspective that to live in the world is to participate in its continuous formation, I look at the contemporary field of help and care as a specific kind of sphere of living in and making the world.

What makes the field specific is that it draws in and welcomes people for whom life under existing conditions is difficult; it also places help and care, the prerequisites for life to be possible at all, at the centre of operations. It is constituted by some people’s conscious efforts to better other people’s lives, as well as by the actions of those who attend and use whatever support the institutions have to offer. However, understandings of this task of bettering other people’s lives can take many forms, and the field of help and care in present-day Finland is the outcome of several traditions that have taken partly differing, even conflicting views on what it takes to live a good or valuable life. Yet, at the same time, they all must somehow deal with— and to a varying degree adapt to—the same assimilative framework of the neoliberal welfare state. To name and define such a field analytically, I use the concept of ‘the rescue industry’, which allows me to focus on how those different traditions and projects of help come together in people’s lives and entwine with issues of power, morality, and exchange.

The research is based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, during which time I participated in, and gathered experiences concerning life in various sites and contexts of help, including those provided by mental healthcare and places organised by NGOs, parishes, and the city where people could socialise in urban, café-like settings and atmosphere—called, for example, meeting places, day centres, or civic houses—as well as Christian food charity. I carried out the fieldwork by following the personal networks that spanned these various sites, which resulted in a central observation: many people make good use of the diversity of the field by moving around it, forming relationships, negotiating moralities, circumventing hierarchies, and participating in collaborative projects and resource-circulation between different contexts of help. In such a social milieu people not only navigate between these different sites, they also encounter and act with others who live in similarly disadvantaged positions for various reasons: poverty, refugee background, issues with mental health and health in general, substance abuse, or old age.

By analysing the ways and forms of living together more viably that arise through such encounters, three overarching themes become apparent: first, the loosening of overly rigid forms of living together to make room for relating differently with others and the surrounding world; second, building, negotiating, and experimenting with the conditions of shared life; and third, attempts to change the course of the world by contributing to something that differs from the usual goals of the surrounding society. I further argue that these ‘sprouts of viable living’ also help to clarify more generally that a central barrier to living viably in the contemporary world is the narrow view of what counts as productive or valuable activity, which, if broadened, would help us all to cultivate better lives and futures.