Articles by Taina Meriluoto

November 22, 2023

🎭 Selfie activism: from cruel categories to presentist identities

Taina Meriluoto

To strive towards democratic transformations, we have much to learn from marginalised activists. They espouse ‘presentist identities’ to fight the dismissive categories through which other people see them. Presentist identities do not assume a past or a future. Instead, they make us simultaneously perceivable and free, writes Taina Meriluoto

🦋 Democracy – what a lovely mess!

Taina Meriluoto

Taina Meriluoto welcomes Jean-Paul Gagnon’s project to build a democracy data mountain. But she remains troubled by methodological issues pertaining to context, values and the everyday world. If we want to advance towards the total texture of democracy, these are problems we have to resolve

Taina Meriluoto

Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Sociology of Democracy, University of Helsinki

Taina specialises in experience-based political participation, and is intrigued by the self as a form of activism.

She is currently studying visual forms of politicisation among marginalised youth at the research project Imagi(ni)ng Democracy, where she explores and theorises democracy in everyday actions.

She tweets @MeriTaina

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