The research in which I and my team are currently involved focuses on contemporary feminist theory. The object of our study is thinking, and we consider central concepts and their usage as a crucial aspect of that.

Studying thoughts and concepts requires an understanding of historical contexts and a profound awareness of history. In our case, for example, this involves awareness of the past layers of feminist thinking. It also requires philosophical skill, which is needed in order to distinguish clear, precise, and nuanced distinctions of meaning.

We have to know the tradition of philosophical writing, the ideas that keep coming up, and the oppositional concepts that reoccur. However primarily, we are looking at the work that the central concepts that appear in the texts we study are made to do in them: how these concepts are set in opposition to other concepts and how they are used to construct the reality. What is distinctive in our approach is that it combines the tradition of philosophy, a sense of historical time and place, and the ability to think politically.

Research on thinking may seem abstract, but our work is driven by the fact that it is precisely ideas and concepts that often act as a strong force in changing of the world.

Indeed, during the last couple decades new thought and new concepts regarding gender have in fact changed the world in an unprecedented way. For example, the conceptual distinction sex/gender, which entails the idea of a discontinuity between biological and social gender, has already shaken things up considerably: it has changed people’s experience of themselves and it has shifted cultural norms. The debate on the gender-neutral marriage law in the Finnish Parliament is just one of its manifestations.

The change in the understanding of gender is perhaps one of the western world’s most significant societal developments recently and a particular moment in the history of humanity. How has this come about and how does it continue to occur at this particular moment in time? That is the subject of our analysis, and that is the change we hope to contribute to through our research.