Cultural practices, young people and the ethos of vulnerability in Finland

Abstract

In this article, we delve into an examination of how the ethos of vulnerability is manifested within cultural practices related to young people in Finland, thereby shaping and determining the conditions of what is possible for the kinds of subjects that young people can become. We employed the term ‘affective subjectivation’ to elucidate the processes through which young people from diverse life situations are inclined to turn themselves into vulnerabilised subjects within the ethos of vulnerability, thereby amplifying the prevalence of highly individualised and psycho-emotional interventions and elements. Our affective-discursive analysis centres on two distinct categories of cultural practice: youth support systems and an extensive questionnaire survey about young men’s mental health. We scrutinise how the ethos of vulnerability operates within these contexts, influencing and shaping the conditions of possibility for young people. Moreover, we extend our analysis to examine how therapeutic power contributes to the affective landscapes of masculinity, and the ambivalences of young Finnish men’s gendered and therapeutic, vulnerabilised subjectivities.