Rural Leisure Time in the Making: Self-Created Youth Activities and Leisure Time in Sparsely Populated Rural Finland
摘要
This chapter discusses leisure activities as individually and socially constructed everyday life spaces for rural youth in Finland. The chapter portrays local ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) or ‘do-it-together’ (DIT) youth cultures in the sparsely populated Finnish countryside. Discussion about free time activities in the countryside often focuses on the lack of arranged, adult-led activities and long distances that prevent participation in hobbies. This may overlook the meaning-making of young people themselves, who may be—or may have to be—very innovative in arranging activities on their own. The chapter shows that in sparsely populated regions, characterised by long distances and a small number of peers, self-created youth spaces become significant rationalities of leisure. Young people turned, for example, public or semi-public village spaces into their own, youth culturally important spaces where they could get together. In addition, homes, nature and online communities offered spaces for self-created activities. However, some of these spaces could also become stigmatised and subject to moral conflicts in the communities. Even in small communities, these spaces are rarely open for all young people: local youth cultures often involve non-articulated practices of inclusion and exclusion. The focus of this chapter is on the most sparsely populated areas of Finland. The chapter is based on qualitative longitudinal data from three different regions: from a withering industrial region in eastern Finland, a region characterised by agriculture and forestry in central Finland, and the northernmost Sámi homeland.