“The Good Domestic Owner”: Group Logics and Tribalism as Substitutes for the Critique of Inequality

As far-right and anti-immigrant populism gains ground across liberal democracies, the critique of economic inequality has increasingly been displaced by boundary-drawing along ethnic and national lines. The second lecture examines this shift by tracing the rise of the “good domestic owner” as a key cultural figure legitimizing the new era of wealth accumulation in Finland. Analyzing the changing terms of debate in the Finnish parliament and business media since the deregulation of capital flows in the 1980s, the lecture demonstrates how systemic critique of capitalism has gradually given way to nationalistic and tribalist group logics that celebrate domestic ownership and capital. In this emerging imaginary, the domestic wealthy are symbolically admired and often granted policy advantages, while criticism is redirected toward foreign capital and global financial flows. The result is not the disappearance of critique, but its reorientation: Inequality becomes reframed through the lens of belonging rather than class.

Hanna Kuusela is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and the MPIfG Scholar in Residence 2026. During her stay at the Institute, she presents a lecture series entitled "The Redistributive Ethos in Crisis: Three Imaginaries Dismantling the Welfare State." The three lectures will take place on May 5, and May 26, and June 2, 2026.

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