Acknowledgements
This book is a result of a research project called ‘History of Society: Re-thinking Finland 1400–2000’, a Finnish Centre of Excellence in Historical Research, University of Tampere (2012–2017), funded by the Academy of Finland.
The Centre of Excellence employed a transnational, comparative perspective and a longue duree approach to the history of society. The work was organised around four research teams, one of which focused on communities. This book is produced by the ‘community team’. The team, led by Professor Pirjo Markkola (University of Tampere), studied how people have organised their everyday lives in their own communities. It explored the historical rules, divisions, limits, and spaces of social life and discussed how these related to local, regional, and national structures and transnational ideologies. The editors of this collection of essays were members of the community team. The collection is based on a series of workshops, organised by the editors in 2014–2015 and funded by the above-mentioned Centre of Excellence. The editors want to thank Professor Pirjo Markkola and the anonymous reviewers for their fruitful comments, as well as Matthew James (University of Tampere) for proofreading the manuscript.