Abstracts 2001
Sosiologia Volume 38, Number 1, 2001:
Paradigms and Vicissitudes in the Perspectives of 20th Century Nordic Sociology
Erik Allardt, Doctor of Social Sciences,University of Helsinki
As regards both its own development and its cultural impact, the 20th century was an era of importance of sociology. There were, however, considerable vicissitudes in the central focuses of sociological enquiry. The changes are clearly observable when studying the development of sociology in the Nordic countries, i.e. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
The developmental patterns in sociology can be divided roughly into three periods: (1) an emphasis on evolution and evolutionary explanations of social behaviour up to the First World War; (2) a sociology emphasising socialisation and societies as wholes with their own social structures, normative rules and social functions. Such a sociology was dominant during most of the 20th century, although its heyday occurred in the 1950’s and 1960’s; (3) the rise of a new cosmology with a focus on risk, contingency, agency and semiotic interpretation during the last two decades of the century.
The formative years of academic sociology in the Nordic countries took place after the Second World War, in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It was strong-ly dominated by structuralist and functionalist orientations, based on beliefs in the impact of socialisation and social learning. Towards the turn of the 1960’s and 1970’s, new orientations and protests against the prevailing sociology were emerging. These can be summarised as (1) antipositivism, (2) cultural sociology with an emphasis on the social construction of reality, (3) a new interest in Marxist thought, and (4) feminist theory. There were also developments based on combinations of continuity and reorientation. In the Nordic sociologies, (5) systematic measurements of well-being in the Nordic welfare states, and (6) historically oriented macro-sociology obtained a special importance. In the course of the development, some of these protests lost their strength and faded away. This was for instance true of the Marxism which had been popular among students during a ten-year period from the late 1960’s to the late 1970’s. The dominant research interests and orientations today, especially among younger scholars, may be summed up in the following four orientations; cultural sociology with an emphasis on semiotic interpretations of reality, feminist sociology with a special interest in gendered experiences of women, studies on the conditions in the Nordic welfare state, and historically oriented macro-sociology with a special focus on large-scale European transformations.
Microhistory as an Answer to the Dilemma in Historical Sociology
Marja Suoninen, Master of Social Sciences, Researcher, University of Turku
This article presents a microhistorical model of analysis as the answer to the dilemma in historical sociology. The dilemma occurs when the traditions of historical and sociological research are brought together in one study; historical enquiry pays attention to the concrete details of the studied object, whereas sociology aims for generalisations and theoretical interpretations. Hence, the problem is how to combine sensitivity towards historical details with the production of theoretically structured interpretations.
The dilemma of historical sociology has been dealt with in methodological discussion. From the 1980’s onwards, the postmodern paradigm has influenced this discussion, which has been represented in the criticism of macro-level comparisons and general theories. It has been emphasised that closer attention should be paid to the time-related dimensions of the research, which means placing the enquiry in its historical context and inspecting the studied phenomena as processes that take place in time. This perspective draws attention to the interaction between action and structure and to the multilayered nature of time. The precondition for understanding certain events is careful reconstruction.
Narrative analysis, i.e. understanding history as a series of events that are constructed in time, has often been seen as a solution to the dilemma. Narratives, however, cannot offer a satisfying solution because they cannot produce sufficient explanations for understanding historical events. Additionally, the multilayered nature of time causes problems in forming narratives. Hence, the narrative model of analysis has been further developed into different types of formal models of analysis.
This article presents an alternative way of developing narrative analysis. Microhistory is a model of analysis developed in the historical research tradition, and it uses narratives as the starting point of an analysis. Microhistorical analysis is able to deal with the multilayered nature of time, since it does not aim only to construct narratives. The actual analysis is conducted with the help of abduction, which is a mode of problem solving that focuses on surprising observations and tries to explain them. In its explanations, abductive reasoning employs both empirical observations and theoretical assumptions. This microhistorical mode of problem solving makes it possible to combine the focus on concrete details prevalent in the historical research tradition with the sociological aim for generalisations and theory.
Sosiologia Volume 38, Number 2, 2001:
Qualitative Sources and Their Representativeness
Matti Virtanen, Master of Social Sciences, National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES)
Depending on the research question, the same empirical object can be looked at either as a structure or a process since they exist within each other and reality is both at the same time. However, in order to look at the relationship between them and how one may transform into the other, one must be able to distinguish between them.
Research data can be representative either statistically or based on a choice as this article will show. The latter is not defined by the researcher but by the supporters of the researched object. Both sociological and historical research can employ choice-based representativeness in the case of all those objects that people choose to prefer or reject either at the level of a whole culture or different subcultures. These choices can concern e.g. other people, films, political parties, books, restaurants or nature paths.
Regardless of the way in which the data is representative, it is possible to use it as the basis for analysing both structures and processes. Statistical data can be used to analyse processes and similarly data whose representativeness is choice-based can be used to analyse structures.
However, the article claims that when the aim is to study the way in which social subjects – individuals, small groups, political or other traditions – develop in interaction with other social subjects, the best approach is to understand the research data as sources in the sense that historical research does.
A statistical sample represents the studied population whereas, in historical research, sources reveal the "basic process", i.e. a course of events that proceed in time. When research material is understood as a source in the sense of historical research, it also needs to be collected following a different logic: the aim is to reproduce, with the sources, a chain of events that has actually taken place, and therefore the sources must form a chronological trail to enable the reconstruction.
The ‘critical review of sources’ model of historical research can be successfully applied to sociological research. To put it more strongly, in the empirical research of the birth and development of social subjects, the difference between quantitative and qualitative research can be reduced to the difference between statistical and historical research.
Class Society and Finnish Nationalism in the Fashion-talk of Newspapers in the Late 19th Century
Pekka Rantanen, Master of Social Sciences, University of Tampere
The article examines debates on fashion in the Finnish newspapers of the late 19th century. This is, in the article, called fashion-talk, and it defines the place of fashion in social debate. The debate on clothes and dressing-up is looked at in relation to two discourses i.e. class society and Finnish nationalism. Grounds and justifications for the identifications and distinctions that were used in differentiating between classes (estates) were looked for in the data.
The data reveals that attitudes towards fashion were often critical and it was seen to be harmful, especially to the common people. On the other hand, newspapers could criticise social inequalities through interpreting fashion as being a preserve of the upper classes. The data also reveals some effects of the late 19th century antagonism between the Finnish-minded and the Swedish-minded Finns: the foreign origin of fashion, which was linked to the Swedish gentry, was criticised for being pretentious, shallow and foreign to Finnishness. Since Finnishness was imagined as a community, fashion that created distinctions did not fit in.
At the same time as the common people were being accused of becoming slaves to fashionable clothes, they were also being offered a simple mode of dress which was coming to be seen as a symbol of virtue, and even as the very core of Finnishness. In newspaper articles, common people who followed fashion were stigmatised for being morally weak. It has been claimed that a transition took place in Finland in the early 20th century, in that the hitherto romanticised common people came to be perceived as frightening and foreign. However, this transition can already be seen in late 19th century fashion-talk in the way that certain distinctions were used in defining relations between the classes.
Fashion-articles were mainly written from the point of view of the educated classes and the gentry, which enabled the criticism of both the common people and the higher classes alike, although it was the commoners who were criticised the most. Fashion served to reproduce so-called closed class-based fashions, although in some articles a new form of fashion-talk was emerging; fashion was coming to be seen as important for individuals and also as a sign of cultivation.
How Do People in Traffic Estimate Each Other? The Taste-based Battle for Normality
Kalle Toiskallio, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
Traffic is one area of everyday life that sociology has not been interested in, only a few studies have been done on traffic as a social phenomenon. This has been mostly from the point of view of environmental protection, the aim being to look for new means of traffic reduction. However, hardly any research has been done on the social practices and meanings of urban street traffic, apparently because the impersonal sociality that is typical of traffic has seemed sociologically uninteresting, and it has even been seen as asocial action determined by technology and regulative norms.
The research question is the following; when everyday traffic consists largely of smooth co-operation and an ethos is emphasised in which traffic disturbs nobody and enables everybody to move around easily, why is traffic still discussed in such conflicting terms? Why do conversations about traffic consist of an endless fight about the correct taste regarding moving around in traffic?
The data consists of six interviews of the following groups 1) male drivers, 2) female drivers, 3) people who do not drive or ride at all and 4) cyclists and, finally, 5) bus drivers and 6) tram drivers of the Helsinki City Transport.
In the interviews people demanded two things: 1) discipline i.e. adherence to the traffic regulations and 2) consideration for others. My aim is to show, through analysing these views, that participants in urban traffic understand themselves and the traffic itself on the basis of social interaction, namely the social-spatial "route-negotiation" that occurs in encounters. When the interviews are interpreted with Bourdieu’s concepts of different forms of symbolic capital and taste as distinction, a tri-polar space is created. This space draws from the social worlds of Unruh and Bourdieu and the interviewees place themselves and each other in it.
Firstly, the interviewees create around themselves a naturalised group of "normal ones". This group is based on the members’ similarities in "route-negotiation" and material status in traffic. Secondly, with fewer words, the interviewees place themselves below people with a strong status in traffic combined with a high material standing. Thirdly, moral judgements are largely targeted at those who show poor taste in "route-negotiation" i.e. those whose movements are difficult to predict.
Traffic culture, or rather its social practices, should not only be looked at from the point of view of the following or breaking of rules. In doing so, following the rules is reduced to "good" traffic culture and breaking the rules to "bad" culture. What keeps traffic culture alive are the more or less symbolic battles between participants in which the appropriate level of applying the rules is defined.
Sosiologia Volume 38, Number 3, 2001:
Missing
Sosiologia Volume 38, Number 4, 2001:
Pragmatist perspectives on the procurement of information and action. Methodological relationalism in concrete action
Osmo Kivinen, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Turku
Pekka Ristelä, Master of Social Sciences, University of Turku
From a pragmatist's point of view, knowledge is action and knowing how. Richard Rorty's and John Dewey's respective ideas about language and habits have been previously held to be in conflict. This article presents a way in which they can be combined to form a fruitful perspective for the study of human action. The point of view that unites them is methodological relationalism; research that builds on it focuses on the mechanisms that organise action. For pragmatists, the core of scientific knowledge is not a question of representing the world truthfully, but rather concretely enabling actors to cope with their environment, themselves and others, and finding new solutions to any problems they might encounter in their actions. From the pragmatist's point of view, there is no gap between the everyday procurement of information and scientific research: both consist of experimental action. The article clarifies the role of non-linguistic ability in functional behaviour with the help of the concept of habit and Gilbert Ryle's ideas. The authors look at the links that exist between their Dewey-Rortyan perspective and both Peircean pragmatism and Jürgen Habermas' - who was influenced by Pierce - and the non-pragmatist "practicist" Pierre Bourdieu's ideas on the scientific inquiry. Finally, the authors outline what pragmatist research means to the academic community.
Confidence and commitment in post-industrial work organisations
Kimmo Kevätsalo, Doctor of Social Sciences, Tietopalvelu Käyttötieto Oy
With regard to the last decades, many analysts agree that the mid-1970s was a watershed in the organisation of production and markets during the last period of the industrial age. The period of change which followed has been described as consisting of the transition from mass production to flexible production, from "Fordism" to "post-Fordism"; it has even been called the information age, incorporating the rapid adoption and diffusion of information technology. The thrust of this article is the elaboration of employee commitment to management and trade unions throughout this period of transition.
Tasks that are typical of the post-industrial and information eras are labelled e.g. "service" and "knowledge " tasks. I have endeavoured to resolve weaknesses implicit in the terms "interactive services" and "specialist services".
The results from the analysis of the quantitative data do not support the traditional double-bind hypothesis. On the other hand, it proved useful to employ the "interactive service work" category in analysing the whole phenomenon. Interactive service workers are different from blue-collar manufacturing workers in their clearly female gender structure, higher levels of education, smaller workplace sizes and the larger proportion of them who are working in the public sector. Because of these structural factors, they are more competent than blue-collar workers in dealing with management problems and challenges. In this sense they might be more independent from the national trade union bodies than blue-collar workers are.
This group is, on average, more committed to management and trade unions than blue-collar workers are. Even though there is no correlation between the commitment to both management goals and trade unions among this employee group, we can find a higher-level double-bind relationship in the whole society.
There is another result which also has important implications for the whole debate concerning the post-industrial and information eras. It concerns interactive specialists, who are, relatively speaking, the most rapidly growing employee group. Their confidence in their trade union representatives is the highest among those groups we studied, but we also detected a high level of confidence in their local management.
"Testing the theory of social disorganisation - is destructive deviant behaviour more common in linguistically heterogeneous communities?"
Ralf Lillbacka, Doctor of Social Sciences, Åbo Akademi University
Theory: It is suggested that social interaction in a community is guided by a set of social symbols or a cultural pattern of reference. This pattern of reference can be used by individual members to identify appropriate behaviour in various situations. The theory of social disorganisation implies a higher rate of deviant behaviour in communities with ambiguous cultural symbols, which are less efficient as tools for coordinating interaction. Ethnic and cultural diversity may accordingly generate social disorganisation due to divergent cultural reference patterns.
Hypothesis: In contexts involving two ethnic groups, the relationship between the rate of deviant behaviour and the relative presence of the other group will be, ceteris paribus, inversely U-shaped (ethnic heterogeneity being high in contexts where both groups are equally predominant).
Method and data: The analysis was based on Finnish municipal data from 1995. Contexts with various proportions of Swedish and Finnish speakers were compared. The measure of the rate of deviant behaviour was created by means of a confirmative factor analysis, with property crimes, violent crime and drunken and disorderly behaviour as indicators (N=204). In order to control exogenous factors, the final analysis was based on a sample of municipalities with as similar sociostructural and socioeconomic properties as possible (N=36). The hypothesis was tested by means of a curvelinear regression model.
Results: The result was highly consistent with the hypothesis.
The subculture of illegal abortion in Finland in the early 20th century
Mianna Meskus, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
The article examines illegal abortion in Finland in the early 20th century, and analyses how illegal abortion became a paramedical subculture with established methods, role expectations and ethical practices of care. The article provides an insight into how and why the social conflict concerning people's reproductive practices was brought into the open by illegal abortion, which had a subsequent effect regarding the legalisation of abortion.
The empirical data consists of trial and pre-trial investigation material from the Helsinki City Court. Theoretically the article is based on Michel Foucault's analysis of power and Michel de Certeau's ideas on the tactics of everyday practices. In the interpretation of the relations of power and resistance caused by the practices of illegal abortion, the focus is on power as interaction, ability and action.
As the number of illegal abortions increased, it became an orderly subculture, largely based on the use of abortion as a means of contraception. In the medical and judicial debate of the time, it was seen as being both a political problem that posed a threat to the nation's health and a challenge to medical expertise from lay knowledge and skill. Solving the social problem created by illegal abortion was linked to the creation and increasing effectiveness of the welfare state.