Rural schoolteachers and the pressures of community life: local and cosmopolitan coping strategies in mid-twentieth-century Finland |
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| Authors: | Erkko Anttila Ari Väänänen |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Social Research , University of Helsinki , Finland erkko.anttila@helsinki.fi;3. Work Life in Transition Team , Finnish Institute of Occupational Health , Helsinki , Finland |
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| Abstract: | This article discusses rural schoolteachers’ relationships with local village communities in mid-twentieth-century Finland. At the time, Finnish rural teachers were typically very public figures in their local community. To deal with the pressures of their position, teachers resorted to coping strategies which the authors name ‘local’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ after Robert K. Merton’s well-known categories. The local strategy required that teachers adapt themselves to the social demands of community life, whereas the cosmopolitan strategy was manifested in the teachers’ efforts to distance themselves from the local community, reflecting the increasing professionalisation of Finnish schoolteachers as well as a general social transition in which traditional community ties were gradually replaced by modern individualism. |
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| Keywords: | community life local cosmopolitan schoolteachers Finland |
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