An english version
Me, briefly in English
I am 52 years old economic sociologist. I have studied at the University of Vaasa and I've worked as a researcher and lecturer at the same University (my CV in Finnish here ).
I have spent several years trying to finish my doctoral thesis Misunderstanding the economic Crisis of 1990's in Finland - a Journey from Consensus to post-industrial paranoia or as a matter of fact after a thorough revision and some new ideas The Economic depression of 90's in Finland and its alternatives from a Science Park point of wiew (Not approved and I've already given up). You can find an abstract here.
My interests in research have been in Sociology of family, small business economics ( especially rapid growth of small enterprises ) and economic sociology as a study of a society based mainly on economy. My sociology of economy has an amount of resemblance to political economics. Through 1990's I have become more and more interested on the continuing development of information society especially based on nordic model of welfare state and science parks as a small scale model of information society.
If You have any ideas for me to start a new project with or if You could offer me a job, please email me to anterohartikainen@lycos.com.
ABSTRACT
The Economic crisis of early 1990*s in Finland and its alternatives from a Science Park point of view.
In my study the major challenge was at first to search if there were any alternatives for the chosen economic policy during the great depression in Finland in the first half of the 1990's. More than one real alternatives existed as a contrary to the official governmental opinion. How could these alternatives become completely neglected?
I had also in mind finding a kind of understanding the developing information society as seen through universities and science parks. My strategy throughout the whole research was in combining a chronicle of real events in Finnish politics and national economy with an on-going discussion between different aspects of public opinion as shown in media and expressed as the basis of chosen politics.
The results of this study show how the Crisis of the financial system in Finland (bank-Crisis) was survived with a rapid. growth in governmental debt and with a massive growth of unemployment. This chain of events became possible with political decisions that meant a shift of power from democracy to economy. The privatization of public services and profitable public organizations during economic depression moved not merely resources but also power to private economy. The Finnish welfare state survived the Crisis and even held Finnish society fairly peaceful. Under the surface there existed many growing seeds of conflicts. Many of them are still buried in governmental debt and in the rate of unemployment. An open market-economy has differences to a mixed-model-economy in Finland as it was until the early 1990's. However the Finnish economy was in many senses deeply market oriented network economy even then and especially the roots of Nokia and many other successful high-tech companies are in the Finnish welfare-state and its economy.
The developing information society has a possibility to grow to a more democratic model of post industrial society, if the welfare state can stay alive and in an on-going development. However there is a lot to do and to deal with. The advantages of competition are traditionally highly overestimated in neo-classivcal economic theory. Co-operation and consensus are still possible over the political borders and also in the labour-market of Finnish society and there exists a great amount of power for days to come in global competition. The structure of the Finnish economy represented its own kind of network system long before information technology started its revolution.