“Voice” or “Sound” in Two Contemporary Finnish Healing Modalities

Abstract

The author presents the results of his extensive fieldwork studying the phenomenon of ‘lament revival’ in contemporary Finland. He analyses the practices of two contemporary Finnish organizations devoted to “healing” through some sort of use of ääni, ‘voice’, consistently developing an argument that they take two different metacultural stances (two “politics of culture”) – the one “modernist” and the other “postmodern”.

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Notes

1. *Acknowledgments — This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0822512. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Support also came from Michael Stevenson, George Gumerman IV, and Robert Trotter. My heartfelt gratitude goes to all those in Finland who gave generously of their time, advice, instruction, correction, etc.