Self-made modernity. The bicycle, the gramophone and the photography in the life of Finns from the 1880s to the 1940s 

The subject of this thesis is the material modernity and the change in material culture in Finland from the 1880s to the 1940s. It studies, how bicycle, gramophone and photography, three international everyday technologies, were used by Finns, and examines the local phenomena that developed around them. 



The thesis consists of an introductory and summary part as well as six articles that deal with the following subjects: self-made bicycles, the use of “carte de visite” photographs in rural ouseholds, cycling in the countryside and its remembering, the 1929 gramophone fever, photography as a technical hobby, and rural uses of the gramophone. 



Sources for the study include large collections of written memories, newspaper articles, magazines and other printed sources such as leaflets and guide books as well as archival materials and museum objects. These sources have been used microhistorically to look for clues of user practices of the bicycle, gramophone and photography. I argue that memory sources, when used in combination with other sources, offer a good opportunity to study such everyday practices that are difficult or almost impossible to study through other sources alone. 



The theoretical framework of the study combines influences from the social construction of technology, the history of everyday life, the material culture studies, the history of consumer culture as well as the practice theory. All of these guide the researcher to consider the activity of users as the shapers and negotiators of technological change. On the basis of these theoretical references I have developed the concepts of self-made modernity and vernacular innovation, which help us to understand the ways of shaping and defining technology as well as the local technological innovativeness which are typical to the specific time and place studied. 



The concept of self-made modernity allows us to focus on the material changes and continuities in the time period from the late 19th century to the Second World War. Finns shaped a modernity of their own, where novelties merged to the resilient and slowly changing ways of rural society and gradually reshaped it. Self-made modernity was a mixture of self-sufficiency and consumer culture, skillfulness based on the handicraft tradition and technical knowledge acquired by education, local materials and international influences. By the concept of vernacular innovations I have highlighted the possibility of such combinations on the grass-root level and the arrangement of mass-produced devices as part of a largely self-made and self-sufficient material world.