In this book, we argue that in order to better understand the future directions of democracies, we need a more holistic conceptualization of doing society. This concept denotes both the range of actions that constitute the manifold cultural bases of current societies, and the range of actions that direct the future by way of dreams, imagination and aspirations. To offer a view to what such a conceptualization entails, this book presents a multisited, mixed- distance data study (see the Appendix) of young people in Finland engaged in a variety of actions, ranging from social movement mobilization to private dreams of a better social position, from youth party activism to online forum discussions and to top- down participation cultures. The study compiles a multilevel understanding of cultures of doing society, what they mean to a wide variety of young citizens, and what these meanings teach us about the interlocking interpretations of individualism and collectivism in 21st- century citizens’ actions.

The hundreds of young people we met during this study were doing society at different levels of publicity, with different stakes and ambitions, engaging with others in different terms, and with different degrees of individualism and collectivism. Yet, their actions are connected by the unavoidable building of the common, and thus of society. While they are trying to forge a place for themselves, they also forge the meanings and understandings that form the society in the making around them. This connection point and constant building site is the object of the analytical gaze of our study: the imagining, engaging and acting done by young people.

Hence, we suggest in this book to not to look at either or, but to offer a view, even if empirically connected to one context, of the full gamut: from activists to young people drafted into participatory projects, from politically doubtful or apathetic citizens to ambitious and career- minded young politicians, and from all the respective actors’ range of actions to the accounts of their dreams and imagined futures. Doing so, we acknowledge, and argue that all these perspectives are needed to avoid overemphasizing some interpretation over another: the future of democracy might not be this or that, but instead this and that, and the conclusions drawn should reflect the multitude of landscapes that have fed the analysis.