The methodology of the articles comprising this study is built on a critical adaptation of contemporary approaches in human geography. The approach common to the articles is constructivist in nature: identity, it is argued with Benwell and Stokoe (2006), is constituted in discourse rather than reflected within it13. The study will examine historical and contemporary narratives related to local identity formation in the Karelian border town of Sortavala since the Second World War, by analysing official documents and newspaper publications.
The present study investigates the uses of geographical reasoning in the service of state power (Dalby 1996, 656) and clarify connection between the linguistic and symbolic representations of local identity and political practices. Particular attention has been paid to forms of novyaz, or Soviet ‘newspeak’, in the local context.
The methodology of the critical geopolitics presupposes examination the linguistic and symbolic means by which the identity is constructed and represented. The local symbolism such as popular culture, celebrations, military and ‘patriotic rituals’ et cetera are key issues for this kind of analysis. Rhetoric of the media and documentary texts, as well as forms of reasoning, figures of speech and metaphors are vital part of the analysis. As Appadurai has noted, public rituals (festivals, celebrations, demonstrations etc.), in addition to such activities as building houses, marking roads and paths or creating fields and gardens, play a major role in producing locality, because ‘space and time are themselves socialised and localised through complex and deliberate practices of performance, representation and action’ (Appadurai 1996, 180). In general terms, the interpretation of texts applied in the case studies of this dissertation is inspired by methods of hermeneutics and semiotics. The language used in media during both the Soviet and post-Soviet period, is filled with signs and symbols aimed at portraying of social, political and geopolitical realities. It thus creates meanings that form basic elements for constructing identities.
13 Discourse analysis is rooted in twentieth-century philosophy that focuses on language and its proper-ties, as well as on attempts to explain the world from the meaning that language expresses (Carver 2002).
As the German geographer Stefan Zimmermann has noted, ‘physical places have lost the function of hosting all social activities; mass media accommodates a significant quantity of social actions in today’s world’ (Zimmermann 2007, 61). At the same time, he argues that ‘although media geography is often considered a new trend, it has a long and vivid tradition in scientific and everyday geography. … Mass media are today’s social and cultural cartography of meaning creation and identity formation.’ (ibid. 59) Media geography has, indeed, become an important component of studies of place in geography. Entrikin, for example, interprets place-making efforts of various local institutions, including municipalities, as ‘strategies for resisting the alienation and isolation of modern life through the self-conscious creation of meaning’ (Entrikin 1991, 64). The present study, that relies to a great extent on the interpretation of local newspaper publications from Soviet and post-Soviet Sortavala, will therefore pay great attention to the question how these publications have contributed to constituting communities through promoting collective narratives and memories.
Carrie Buchanan (2009) has examined how newspapers create a sense of place in the locality they serve, insisting that a paper’s content as well as its form are important for this process. The press is not only about politics and reporting, but can be seen as a cultural representation that creates an environment through which readers experience and share the local. Newspapers are producing local subjects, abounding with notices, stories and reports about events linked, for example, to various rites of passage that represent milestones for individual lives. Local media thus link individuals to the community and offer a space through which communities can transmit their core values and ensure cultural continuity through knitting together different generations (ibid. 62, 66).
The ontological and epistemological assumptions of Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis have essentially informed the methodology of this study. According to Fairclough, discourse analysis allows us to find how changes in the use of language can be seen as a sign of general social changes in a society, which, in turn, have to do with changes in power relations. Fairclough (2010) explains that his discourse analysis includes (1) interdiscursive analysis, which begins with the idea that texts often articulate multiple discourses, genres and styles; thus the analyst looks at how discourses, genres and styles are used within a text and how they articulate together; (2) linguistic and/or multimodal analysis: this level of analysis focuses on the realization of concrete forms of discourses, genres and styles as they appear through semiotic ‘models’ of language, visual images, body language, sound, and so on; (3) critical analysis should identify emergent discourses in society and the ways in which these are linked with agency, emergent strategies and politics.
The study of local newspaper articles has also benefitted from the socio-cognitive approach introduced by Teun van Dijk (1993), which has emphasised the cognitive, social, political and cultural contexts of publications for the examination
of meanings, opinions and ideology expressed in the structure of a text. This method has provided a better understanding of the relationship between ideology, society, cognition and discourse. Van Dijk points out that an essential prerequisite for discourse analysis is an explicit, systematic account of structures, strategies, and processes of texts in a sense of theoretical notions in this field. This method is especially important for studying political texts published in the media. It allows to understand mechanisms of the creation of meanings in these texts. Information in these texts is never expressed fully, it is always being presented by taking into account general beliefs about the world of the reader. Most important for the examination of local newspapers in this study has been the conclusion of van Dijk that an analysis of the ‘unspoken’ is sometimes more productive than exploring what really has been written. This method also informs the way in which a model of existing communicative contexts is linked with the local social situation and local structures.
The discursive nature of boundaries has been strongly emphasised in the recently published literature in the field of border studies. According to Vladimir Kolossov, ‘the functions of boundaries and sometimes their very delineation are determined by the formation of discourse and mass representation’ (Kolossov 2005, 624). Local media significantly contributes to the creation of meanings of the border in discourse. It is assumed here that in this manner the local experience of life in the border area is manifested in discourse. As Newman and Paasi have noted, local contexts ‘present several theoretical and methodological challenges for the study of borders and border areas, not least in the case of research methods, where qualitative, interpretative and ethnographic methods may be useful’ (Newman and Paasi 1998, 198). Analysis of discourses allows investigating diverging local contexts of identities, and in particular the adoption of locally produced vocabularies in processes of territory-building (see Paasi 1996b, 99–100). This aspect will become particularly important for the post-Soviet era and the question how local actors view prospects of a possibly emerging cross-border integrated community.
Important part of research methodology is the work on the sources of the study.
In my dealing with the empirical material, I have applied the scheme of differentiating between data, information and evidence (see e.g. Harvey 2017).
According to this thinking, the collected data (the raw material, ‘facts’) becomes information when it starts to have meaning and in order to become evidence information should have the support of theory that can explain, interpret or understand a social phenomenon.
Finally, the chosen critical ‘textual’ strategy of the study is not limited to a
‘remote sensing’ of geopolitical problem (Paasi 2000, 283). The subject of this study has a profound personal significance: Sortavala is my hometown, where I grew up and spent the first eighteen years of my life. Consequently, I personally know many people mentioned in this thesis, have been familiar with the local situation since my
childhood and have witnessed numerous events described below. The research undertaken has also included several visits to Sortavala, during which vital observations were made. My ongoing regular visits have been private as well as field trips, during which occasional conversations with old familiars can turn into semi-formal interviews and shopping into a sort of participant observation of everyday life in town. My experience and my personal knowledge mean that this research has involved me deeply and engaged my personality, my feelings and my memories. In this biographical sense, my personal involvement goes well beyond that practiced commonly in contemporary studies of human geography.