Abstracts 2005
Sosiologia Volume 42, Number 1, 2005
Genes in Post-traditional Society
Markus Jokela, Master of Arts, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
It is almost a commonplace to say that man is a bio-social entity. In the social sciences, in spite of this, the biological and the social have been treated as separate spheres, the social serving as an independent object of inquiry. The purpose of this article is to show that hereditary predispositions have their influence on many of the phenomena that sociologists traditionally investigate. Almost all behaviour is partly hereditary. Therefore, the causal mechanisms behind social behaviour may always be both socially and genetically mediated. There are at least two kinds of processes through which genetic and social factors intertwine. Firstly, the correlation between genes and environment refers to the fact that environmental factors may depend on hereditary predispositions. Secondly, environment may contribute to the way these predispositions manifest themselves, in which case the question is of gene-environment interaction. In post-traditional societies people are increasingly expected to make decisions concerning their own lives themselves. In the light of behavioural genetics, it is possible to claim that in such a situation hereditary behavioural differences are enhanced. Even in a post-traditional condition, however, people still come to face with social structures they do not have a say about. Thus, the consequences of hereditary predispositions depend in the last resort on the compatibility or incompatibility between an individual's characteristics on the one hand and the demands and expectations of the social context on the other.
Keywords: behaviour genetics, gene - environment interaction, individualization
The Formation of Consumption Patterns in Different Population Groups
Pekka Räsänen, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Turku
The article analyses the formation of the differences between the consumption patterns of different population groups in the fields of the traditional and emerging consumption of information and entertainment. The article looks at whether the differences to be found are on the increase or whether they are evening out in the course of time. The writer also sets out to assess the extent to which traditional consumption of information and entertainment and the new forms of the consumption of information technology can be understood in the light of the same structural boundary conditions. The materials used consist of the corpuses on consumption collected by the Statistics Finland for the years 1998 (N=4359) and 2001 - 2002 (N=5495). The consumption of information and entertainment is analysed with reference to the acquisition costs of books and periodicals, television fees, video rentals costs, as well as telephone and Internet service costs. The differences between population groups are analysed with reference to level of education, disposable income, household type, age and gender, and living environment. Together with household type and income, also level of education and age turn out to correlate with the consumption patterns. The differences concerning books and magazines and especially telephone and Internet services have increased around the turn of the century. The findings are interpreted in the article from the perspective of differences in social structure and social status.
Keywords: formation of consumption patterns, information technology, information and entertainment consumption
Are Finnish drinking habits changing? In search of a cultural approach
Christoffer Tigerstedt, Doctor of Social Sciences, National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES) &
Jukka Törrönen, Doctor of Social Sciences, Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies
Finnish drinking habits have changed drastically during the past few decades. Studies on drinking habits, however, consistently seem to come to the conclusion that in Finland, drinking patterns are still traditional, national, and unitary. Such conclusions rely on the notion of cultural lag and are based on stereotypical dichotomies between traditional and modern, and Finnish and European drinking habits. The article shows that analyses of drinking habits tend not to problematise the concept of habit. It is mostly used to refer to the most stereotypical kind of drinking behaviour, namely intoxication-oriented drinking, while other patterns tend to be overshadowed. The studies, which are most often based on survey data, also give little attention to the meanings the actors attribute to their drinking. For a more sensitive analysis, the article outlines a cultural model of drinking habits, which is then adapted to the analysis of the results of both statistical and qualitative studies on drinking habits carried out during the past three-four decades. The analysis shows that it would be vital, firstly, to carry out time series analyses on the epidemiological data, which would test the assumptions of the unitary nature of drinking habits on the one hand, and chart their variability on the other. Secondly, there is a need for efforts to reconcile the contradictory findings of epidemiological and qualitative studies. And thirdly, research on drinking habits should shift its focus towards the situational variability of drinking.
Keywords: drinking habits, culture, self-expression, regulation, situationality
Sosiologia Volume 42, Number 2, 2005
Genealogy as critique
Ilpo Helén, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
The article deals with Foucauldian genealogy. Emphasising the influence of the philosophy of Nietzsche, it looks at genealogy as critique, which involves the study and writing of history, but which is at the same time very consciously motivated by present-day issues. The topic is approached in the article through the analysis of two key concepts: event and problematisation. In addition, the article discusses the fundamental importance of the question of the relationship with one's own time in genealogical thinking. The nature of genealogy as Zeitdiagnose is clarified by comparing it with contemporary debates within sociology. The writer ends up suggesting that genealogy consists of the critical study of our historical ontology - or, in Ian Hacking's words, of "our possibilities of being a person" - and it focuses on ethos and praxis. Genealogy involves the history of the possibility, emergence, and formation of our life practices, which asks about the kinds of tensions, efforts, and struggles through which the present has become possible.
Keywords: Michel Foucault, genealogy, critique, practice, event
The limits of cultural studies
Matti Kortteinen, Doctor of Social Sciences, National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES)
The sociological paradigm of thought after the linguistic turn seems to be based on a pre-modern concept of the "social", and does not entail a concept of the "economical" as a net of exchange relations; as such, it fits poorly into the analysis of social change in present-day society. In this article an alternative interpretation of the classics is presented, in which the concepts "wert-rational" and "zweck-rational" (Weber) together with the "mechanic" and the "organic" (Durkheim) are interpreted as different ideal typical aspects of the same social reality. A research program for the post-linguistic empirical analysis of social change is presented, a program that tries to overcome the old tension between the "structural" and "cultural" approaches.
Keywords: cultural studies, social change, semiotic perspective, structure, social relation
Sosiologia Volume 42, Number 3, 2005
Frame analysis in the study of gender representations in media images
Eeva Luhtakallio, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
The goal of the article is to refine the methodology of sociological research focusing on visual materials. A version of Erving Goffman's frame analysis is proposed to complement content analysis and the semiotic approach. The article first outlines the basic concepts and points of departure of frame analysis, and then puts forth an approach suitable for the analysis of images. There the dynamic character of frame analysis, based on the situational and shifting character of frames, is concretised as the interplay of primary and secondary frames. The writer then applies frame analysis to a research material consisting of cover pictures of magazines from the years 1955, 1975, and 1995 involving gender representations. The material divides into four primary frames on the basis of the pictorial and textual elements: desire, reproduction, politics, and culture. Of these, the writer takes the primary frame of culture under closer scrutiny, and the secondary frames in force therein are made the focus of the analysis. The writer thus manages to capture repetitions, changes, and ruptures that took place during the period of five decades in the representation of gender.
Keywords: image studies, visual culture, frame analysis, gender, representation, media, magazines
Strength and care-giving in the gendered imagery of TV advertising
Harri Sarpavaara, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Tampere
In a traditional gender system, strength and care are central modes of action with reference to which manhood and womanhood are defined. This article deals with the representations of these modes of action in advertising films. The analysis focuses on the images of the genders in the TV advertising films broadcast in autumn 1999 by the Finnish MTV3 channel. The writer looks at how these images reproduce or undermine the kind of gender system in which strength is associated with manhood and care-giving with womanhood. The films are approached in the article as cultural texts working on meanings at the core of media and consumer culture, and producing conceptions of what things like manhood and womanhood are and what they should be. These texts are analysed by means of Roland Barthes' semiotic codes. The gender images of TV advertising films mainly turn out to reproduce the images of the traditional gender system. The few signs of subversion of these images to be found seem to involve the extension of the woman's field of operation to cover the use of strength.
Keywords: TV advertising films, representations of strength and care-giving, gender system, semiotic analysis
The balance model of structural social capital
Ville Siivonen, Master of Social Sciences, Master of Economic Sciences, University of Helsinki
Theories describing the emergence of social capital in a social structure are seemingly contradictory. The cohesion approach emphasises the importance of a dense social structure whereas the structural holes approach views the missing ties as the source of social capital. In order to reconcile these theories, a model of social structure should be identified in which both mechanisms could operate simultaneously. In this article, a mathematical network model is connected with the discussion on social capital. Using the model it can be shown that there are social structures that demonstrate high cohesion and richness of structural holes at the same time. The balance model helps to reconcile 1) the view of cohesion with the view of structural holes as the structural conditions for social capital and 2) the view of an individual with the view of a community with the benefits of the social structure.
Keywords: social capital, social structure, cohesion, structural holes
Sosiologia Volume 42, Number 4, 2005
A genealogy of the tuberculosis sanitarium
The methods of knowledge production and care-giving in a Finnish sanitarium for pulmonary tuberculosis in 1932 – 1960
Simo Järvelä, Master of Social Sciences, Helsinki School of Economics
The article analyses the logic of operation of the Finnish sanitarium for pulmonary tuberculosis from two interconnected perspectives. First, the author discusses the genealogy of sanatorium treatment – that is, the process through which sanatorium treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis obtained the form it had during the period studied. Second, the analysis also focuses on the ways of thinking, the methods for spatial control, and the means of information gathering that enabled the very operation of the sanitarium. The theoretical point of departure consists of Michel Foucault’s views on disciplinary power and the intertwining of knowledge and power, as well as his genealogical approach. The case studied is the tuberculosis sanitarium of Ahvenisto. The research materials consist of manuals for nurses in use during the period, the ground plan of the Ahvenisto sanatorium building, and memories written by patients who had been staying at the sanatorium. The study links with the recent debates over the state and development of Finnish health care institutions. The main conclusion made by the writer is that the fields of operation produced by the sanatorium for the doctors and nurses depended on both the ways of thinking governing the operation of the sanatorium and the totality of practices systematically linked with each other.
Keywords: knowledge production, discipline, tuberculosis sanatorium, health care
Locality as read and lived
Anita Kärki, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä
The article looks at the way in which the reader of a newspaper reads and interprets locality as constructed by the paper. The research materials consist of thematic autobiographies in which the writers relate the role of newspapers in their everyday life. The autobiographies turn out to depict two types of locality. Firstly, they talk of locality that has to do with the writers’ present surroundings. Secondly, the texts describe the kind of locality that has to do with the roots and place of birth of the person in question, which she is still interested in, even when she may not have visited the region for years. In the article, the former type of locality is called present locality, and the latter absent locality. These two types of locality are then further analysed by means of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopy. The concept is used to shed light on the dialogue between centres and peripheries that is related with the two types of locality. In neither type do the centre and the periphery, or the global and the local, appear as mutually exclusive. Instead, present and absent locality together bring about a new kind of locality which helps the reader to position and define herself in the postmodern world by giving her a point of reference on which to anchor.
Keywords: newspaper reading, autobiography, locality, heterotopy, identity
Community and agency in Durkheim’s theory of religion
Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Doctor of Theology, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
This article deals with the relationship between individual and community on the basis of Durkheim’s theory of religion. The writer’s aim is to show how in the Elementary forms of the religious life community is viewed as an agent that emerges on the basis of shared knowledge and is represented in the form of gods. In the light of the debates over methodological individualism and holism in the social sciences, cognitive science, and biology, Durkheim’s views are increasingly relevant. His view on the relationship between the individual and society is more dynamic than has been realized; thus it offers a good basis for new theoretical developments.
Keywords: the social, group selection, religion, agency