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Areas of expertise
Biography
Haavisto is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Turku working on connecting intellectual and environmental history in contexts of forestry in Finland at the turn of the century.
His project, funded by Kone Foundation (2024–2027), is titled Economic utility and environmentalism in the Finnish forest thought in the twentieth century. This project continues his former investigations is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. His previous academic positions include working as a Project Researcher at the project titled Culture of Unsustainability led by professor Taina Syrjämaa which was funded by the Academy of Finland.
Juha Haavisto defended his PhD titled William Temple’s Political and Economic Thought—A Restoration View of Consequences of Human Nature, 1628–1699, at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Research
The forests of Finland have been the cultural and economic foundation of the Finnish identity and society, however, the consequences of treating forests primarily with economic utility has hidden environmental problems. Some of these problems are caused by the climate change but most importantly forests suffer from the loss of biodiversity as a consequence of human action such as vast clear cuttings, drainages, and monoculture plantations. Economic utility and environmentalism argues that these problems cannot be solve without engaging with their intellectual origins. To mend this, the proposed project investigates the origins and developments of the justifications for exploiting natural resources. It explores how rational of these uses was provided by their economic utility and how other justifications were disregarded or downplayed. It employs contextualism to produce an environmental intellectual history and a post-humanist perspective on Finland's engagement with its forests.
To investigate the seemingly inevitable nature of our contemporary problems, the project analyses the path dependencies created and strengthened during the twentieth century: the argument of economic utility was challenged environmentalism that emerged to propose an alternative in the 1950s.
By analysing works by forestry professionals and environmentalist such as A. K. Cajander, A. E. Järvinen, E. Lähde P. Linkola and N. A. Osara; archives of government offices such as luonnonsuojeluvalvoja and comparing these views with Swedish and British texts on the development of scientific forestry and, it can be shown, how forestry industry continuously developed and vigorously defended their justifications of exploiting natural resources and how the environmentalist tried to counter them. Economic utility and environmentalism opens up new avenues of investigation of the developing, transnational, scientific, modernised forestry and impact of human beings had on the forests as a multi-species entity.
Economic utility and environmentalism in the Finnish forest thought in the twentieth century is a three year research project funded by Kone Foundation.