From Ways of Life to Cultural Stratification and Culturally Oriented Political Sociology: Half a Century of Cultural Sociology in Finland

This article offers the first systematic account of Finnish cultural sociology. More precisely, the article examines the emergence and development of cultural sociology in Finland, arguing that its contemporary configuration cannot be understood without recognizing the enduring influence of the 1980s’ ‘ways of life’ studies. Although Finnish sociology can be portrayed as a small, institutionally concentrated discipline responding to international theoretical currents, we demonstrate that the current field of Finnish cultural sociology incorporates distinctive national adaptations and intellectual innovations. Employing a dual strategy, the article combines a narrative account of key scholars, works, and debates with a computational analysis of all articles and bibliographies published in Sosiologia , the leading Finnish-language sociological journal, between 1964 and 2024. This mixed approach enables us to situate influential works and research groups within broader disciplinary trends and shifting theoretical climates. We argue that the cultural turn of the late 1970s and 1980s marked both rupture and continuity in Finnish sociology. The ‘ways of life’ tradition bridged earlier structural concerns with emerging qualitative approaches and later provided conceptual and empirical foundations for contemporary research streams. Today, Finnish cultural sociology is organized around three major currents: cultural stratification and two strands of culturally oriented political sociology, pursued in either French pragmatist or neoinstitutionalist modes. Each bears the imprint – direct or indirect – of the ways of life legacy. By demonstrating how a small national field has adapted global currents while generating distinctive intellectual contributions, the article illuminates the interplay between local traditions and international paradigms in shaping cultural sociology.