Upcoming NIES workshop in Finland

Rural landscape is often represented as unchanging and continuous, whereas townscape stands for change and modernisation. In national discourses countryside is framed as an intermediate zone between core areas and nature peripheries, acting as a site for (invented) traditions. Consequently, modernisation of rural landscape may be seen as a threat to the alleged harmony, to be dismissed and criticised.

The workshop will look at the modernisation of rural landscape, already begun in the 18th century and accelerating in the postwar period. Different angles will be examined: The technolandscapes of rural infrastructures, the introduction of centralised regional planning, the institutional redefinition of rural architecture and the evolving of large-scale agriculture driven by technological innovation, and other relevant topics.