Inna M. Perheentupa

Investigating how consultants pursue just and sustainable change in Finland, Sweden and Belgium

Speaker is doctoral student Inna M. Perheentupa from the University of Helsinki.

About

Inna Perheentupa works as an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology. She specialises in political sociology issues, such as activism and social change, equality, democracy and sustainability, political imagination, feminist research, and ethnographic and creative methodologies. She is the author of Feminist Politics in Neoconservative Russia. An Ethnography of Resistance and Resources (Bristol University Press 2022) and one of the authors of Feminismiä talouteen! Opas kriittiseen lukutaitoon (Towards a Feminist Economy. A Guide to Critical Economic Literacy, Gaudeamus 2024).

Her current research project maps the growing field of sustainability consultation and the porous threshold between sustainability consultation, activism, and politics in three EU countries: Finland, Sweden, and Belgium. While the market for sustainability experts expanded rapidly due to the EU Green Deal and related corporate sustainability directives, it finds itself in 2026 in a novel and uncertain situation following the dismantling of these rulings by the new EU commission. In this project, Perheentupa combines her two occupational backgrounds: her earlier background in consultation and communications with her more recent scholarly endeavor.

Hosts

This seminar is part of the GP seminar series.

 

Abstract

In this presentation, I discuss my research project, which maps the politics of sustainability consultation in three EU countries: Finland, Sweden, and Belgium. While the fieldwork in Sweden and Belgium is only about to begin, I will present early findings from Finland. In more detail, I will outline a research article that will delve into one of the suggested political dimensions of sustainability consultation: consultants engaging in covert everyday resistance to diversify economic ideas among their clientele, company management and personnel. I suggest that some consultants engage in such hidden acts via their work as they try to navigate the discrepancy between two key imperatives in their work: economic growth and planetary boundaries.

As economic imperatives tend to be dominant (while action related to so-called strong sustainability tends to remain subaltern) among those consulted, these cannot be questioned directly by the consultants. Hence, some consultants engage in discursive covert resistance to smuggle in alternative ideas about the economy and advance an economy within planetary boundaries. In addition, I argue that the consultants engage in a series of undoings to craft a more sustainable working life and a more sustainable consultation industry. I suggest that such discursive and productive resistance is enabled by the relatively diverse field of sustainability consultation, which in Finland consists of many smaller specialised consultation companies alongside larger transnational consultation houses.

Following my presentation, I would be curious to know what the participants think not only of my early analysis, but also of the sustainability experts’ industry in Sweden and beyond.

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