For the Environment, Against Bureaucracy

The relationship between economic activity and environmental protection was hotly debated in Finland in the 1980s. Contemporaries conceived of themselves as existing on the verge of a knowledge society, and when rhetorically presenting contesting economic and ecological futures for this novel society, they used new, short-lived concepts. This article argues that one such concept, soft values, highlights a clash between futures. In one possible future, environmental equilibrium was a new model for economic activity, while in another, environmental protection would take place as a result of the current economic model. The former was quickly synchronized into the latter. Soft values were thus used to harmonize environmental protection with notions of efficiency and national competitiveness under a linear temporality based on a belief in the necessity of economic growth.