Abstracts 2006

Sosiologia Volume 43, Number 1, 2006

Causality and critical realism

Jaakko Kuorikoski, Master of Arts, University of Helsinki;
Petri Ylikoski, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

The article assesses the views on causality and explanation in critical realism, which has become so popular with social scientists. The views on causal forces and generative mechanisms have a pivotal role in the argumentation of critical realists, and they are also one of the main reasons for the rise of the popularity of critical realism. The writer sets out to compare the critical realist views with similar ideas recently put forward in the philosophy of science. The central argument of the article is that the basic tenets of critical realism can be further elaborated on the basis of thoughts from the philosophy of science concerning causal mechanisms, causal generalizations, and issues of explanation. The end result could be a better grounded and methodologically more useful view on the nature of social scientific explanation. This, however, would entail giving up the problematic concepts of essence and inner relationship typical of critical realism.

Keywords: critical realism, explanation, causality, philosophy of the social sciences

Are blood bonds still binding?

Individualistic kinship discourse and the dynamics of social networks with female couples living with their children

Kirsti Suoranta, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

The article deals with the construction of kinship through the collective meanings conveyed in interviews on the one hand, and through the concrete relationships within social networks, on the other. The data consist of the interviews and social networks of six female couples with children, thus of twelve women. The research methods are text analysis and qualitative network analysis, the core methodological concept of which is Norbert Elias’ configuration. It refers to the study of people’s social bonding in relation to the totality of their network relationships. Theoretically, the study draws on anthropology and the debates over individualism. On the discursive level, kinship takes shape through individualistic interpretations stressing the individual’s own freedom, feelings, and desire. However, this individualistic discourse is in conflict with the findings on the network level. They show that the women keep in contact with relatives against their own emotional preferences and against the ideal of the free choice of relationships. Specific factors governing the networks and the interaction therein are the efforts to take care of children’s kinship relationships on the one hand, and the interpretations and practices underlining the special nature of kinship on the other.

Keywords: kinship, social networks, individualism

Reconsidering altruism – the "most important problem in sociology"

Anne Birgitta Yeung, Doctor of Theology, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies;
Juho Saari, Doctor of Social Sciences, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health

In most social and economical studies, unselfish, altruistic behaviour that is not reducible to short- term selfishness is presented as a secondary ad hoc -explanation whose explanatory power is considered insignificant as compared to that of selfishness. However, attention to the various forms of altruism would make a significant contribution to efforts to understand human interaction both in theoretical discussions and empirical research. For Comte and Durkheim, altruism was one of the most crucial problems in sociology. The article approaches altruism from a theoretical point of view. Its aim is to analyse the different forms of altruism, to ponder on the factors that could explain the variation in the occurrence of altruism, and to specify the definition of altruism, its manifestations, and the related conceptual-empirical dilemmas. After a brief history of the concept, the writer looks at the ways in which altruism has been conceptualised in various disciplines, with special focus on the intersections of social-scientific and biological literature on the subject. At the end of the article, the writer outlines the main strands of the empirical study of altruism, as well as promising future developments. By way of analyses, corrections, and problematisations, the article aims at promoting and redirecting debates and research on altruism.

Keywords: altruism, helping, pro-social behaviour, sympathy, philanthropy

Sosiologia Volume 43, Number 2, 2006

Meaning, action, and structure in sociology: a cultural viewpoint

Pertti Alasuutari, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Tampere

The article addresses the recent critique levelled against cultural studies and social constructionism in Finnish sociology and presents an outline of a theoretical framework and a research agenda for cultural studies scholarship. The critique boils down to two arguments. One is that cultural sociology represents "zero research" with no societal relevance. The other argument is that researchers only analyze people's experiences and interpretations and overemphasize the significance of culture. It is argued that cultural sociologists do not study action any more; they just study interpretations. The article responds to the last point by saying that the emphasis on meaning does not mean that one abandons action; it is only that cultural sociology concentrates on making sense of people's interpretations and definitions of situations, which make it understandable that they act the way they do. Another reason for the emphasis on discourses and meanings is methodological. Different methods of textual analysis make it possible to do empirically grounded research that concentrates on speech and texts. With this linguistic turn, texts, for instance recorded interviews, are not conceived as expressions of the respondents' personalities or ways of life but, rather, as material that contains the discourses within which one talks about different topics within a society and during a particular era. However, greater emphasis laid on meanings and discourses does not mean that one jumps into idealism, in which one assumes that reality only consists of signs and simulation. In the Foucauldian sense, the concept of discourse does not only refer to language and interpretations as opposed to the so-called material world. Rather, it aims to evade such a dichotomy.

Keywords: cultural studies, meaning, action, structure, sociology

Institutions in economics and sociology: a pragmatistic critique

Antti Gronow, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

The article discusses the different conceptions of institution in economical and sociological theories and their underlying theoretical presumptions. This is done with the help of Richard Scott's classification of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive theories, as well as pragmatistic institutionalism, as identified by Risto Heiskala, which in this article is called habitual institutionalism because its main point is that institutions are based on habitual action. Pragmatistically inclined habitual institutionalism derives conscious action from habitual action and it portrays human rationality more extensively than neoclassical economics and sociology. Due to these factors, it avoids the problems associated with other institutional theories.

Keywords: institutionalism, institution, theory of action, Thorstein Veblen, pragmatism

Religion as subject matter in Finnish sociology

Titus Hjelm, Doctor of Theology, University of Helsinki

In the work of many of the classics of sociology, religion plays a major role. In post-war sociology, however, the study of religion gradually ended up in a marginal position. This article discusses the status of the sociological study of religion in Finland from Edvard Westermarck to the present. The focus in the article is on the institutional evolution of the field and the influence of that evolution on the role of the sociology of religion within Finnish sociology. The writer divides Finnish sociology of religion into three categories: studies carried out at sociology departments, sociological studies carried out within religious studies, and church sociology. He then looks at the development and characteristics of each of these disciplines as well as the consequences of institutional scattering for the sociology of religion. As the reasons for the marginal position of the sociology of religion, the writer identifies the aversion of religion within sociology, the focus of folklore in religious studies, and the identification of church sociology with theology. At the end he gives a review of recent studies in the sociology of religion and the “new rise” of the field due to the rise in the societal significance of religion.

Keywords: sociology of religion, history of sociology, religious studies, church sociology

Sosiologia Volume 43, Number 3, 2006

Anger as a menopause symptom: reducing menopause to a personal issue in working life

Sari Charpentier, Licentiate of Social Sciences, Åbo Akademi University

Inspired by feminist debates over materialisation, notably Karen Barad’s notion of agential realism, this article is a critical take on the bio-medical and part of the feminist debates concerning menopause, and on the presupposition in both of these that menopause is a “personal” problem. Bio-medical menopause studies have been criticised for ignoring the social context, and the goal of the article is to show the importance of taking context into account as an integral part of the menopause phenomenon. The writer deals with menopause as it comes to appear in the gendered practices of working life, which practices have been addressed remarkably seldom in menopause studies. In addition, she points out how giving attention to menopause might be relevant for worklife studies as well, to the extent that the meanings attributed to menopause are part and parcel of the practices of working life. The empirical data of the study consist of thematic interviews with women and men between 56 and 64 years of age, concerning ageing in working life. As the interviewees repeatedly took up the issue of irritation and anger in connection with menopause, the writer focuses on this particular issue, at the same time touching on the feminist debates over anger and agency.

Keywords: menopause, working life, gender, constructivism

Andrew Sayer’s notion of moral economy as critique of the cultural turn

Ilkka Kauppinen, Master of Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä

This article analyses and contextualises the notion of moral economy as reconstructed by Andrew Sayer. According to the article, the notion enables the analysis of the idea of the intertwinedness of culture and economy vs. their relative autonomy especially from the perspective of culturally constituted moral values, norms, and feelings. The contextualisation is carried out by means of an analysis of the core features of the cultural turn in the social sciences, above all from the point of view of the social scientific study of economy. The writer distinguishes between a strong and a moderate version of the cultural turn, taking a stand for the latter. Next, he shows the interconnections between the concept of moral economy and the moderate version of the cultural turn, and analyses the three levels of Sayer’s concept – the normative, the social theoretical, and the empirical levels. After this, the writer discusses in brief the need to lower the concept’s level of abstraction by means of the concept of power, as well as the need to pay more attention than before to the way institution is conceptualised in connection with the multidimensional research of moral economy. In addition, the writer points out the way in which Sayer’s concept differs from the classical mode of conceptualising moral economy.

Keywords: cultural turn, Andrew Sayer, moral economy

Why did I interrogate Mirjami? The story of an interview

Marjatta Pakkanen, Master of Education, University of Jyväskylä

The writer collected interview materials dealing with the life of mentally handicapped adults as seen from their own perspectives. She aimed at interviews which would be as open, conversational, and dialogical as possible. One of the interviewees was Mirjami, a 70-year-old mentally retarded person. The interview did not proceed as expected, as the interviewee, who was positive about the situation at first, gradually became distressed and finally declined any cooperation. This experience made the writer to look more closely at the way the two contributed to the situation with their own interpretations of it. The case brings up two more general problems concerning interviews. First, when the persons involved have divergent social statuses, the issue of power needs to be considered on two levels. The interview situation always involves both the interviewers’ power itself on the one hand, and the social or societal power that the persons involved always carry with them, on the other. And secondly, because of the differences of backgrounds and experiences, the participants necessarily speak different languages.

Keywords: interview, conversation analysis, difference of interpretations, contradiction

Sosiologia Volume 43, Number 4, 2006

2004 American Sociological Association Presidential address: For public sociology

Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley

Responding to the growing gap between the sociological ethos and the world we study, the challenge of public sociology is to engage multiple publics in multiple ways. These public sociologies should not be left out in the cold, but brought into the framework of our discipline. In this way we make public sociology a visible and legitimate enterprise, and, thereby, invigorate the discipline as a whole. Accordingly, if we map out the division of sociological labour, we discover antagonistic interdependence among four types of knowledge: professional, critical, policy, and public. In the best of all worlds the flourishing of each type of sociology is a condition for the flourishing of all, but they can just as easily assume pathological forms or become victims of exclusion and subordination. This field of power beckons us to explore the relations among the four types of sociology as they vary historically and nationally, and as they provide the template for divergent individual careers. Finally, comparing disciplines points to the umbilical chord that connects sociology to the world of publics, underlining sociology’s particular investment in the defence of civil society, itself beleaguered by the encroachment of markets and states.

Fatherhood, family and governmentality: equality or care?

Kirsi Eräranta, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

Over the past few decades, we have seen significant changes in society: the transformation of the welfare state, the opening of the economy and the diversification of family forms. In this context the previous position and meaning of the male parent, the father, seems to have been called into question. This article focuses on the societal problematization of male parenthood in Finland in the 1990’s and the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing on the literature on analytics of government, the author studies the ways in which male parenting, and simultaneously the customary policing of families, is problematized in a set of educational materials and policy texts dealing with fatherhood. The results indicate that the most crucial questions concerning male parenthood are the position of the father in divorce and the role of the father in balancing work and family life. These problems, attached to a divorced and to a nuclear family, are based not only on conflicts between men and women but also on two rationalities. These are the rationality of care, related to psychosocial knowledge, and the rationality of equality, descending from social scientific forms of knowledge. Via these rationalities, the problematization of fatherhood expresses Michel Foucault's characterisation of the ‘welfare-state problem’, which results from a difficult compromise between two forms of subject and governing, namely the city–citizen game and the shepherd–flock game.

Keywords: fatherhood, parenting, family, gender, governmentality, expertise

Living with things. Consumer research and materiality

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Doctor of Social Sciences, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

The contemporary way of life is often called ”materialistic”. Sociology has not, however, provided tools to think about the relationship with things and commodities in other ways than as reducible to production or to consumption; and the latter, for its part, has often been simply reduced to the acts of purchase. This article analyses the role of things through four aspects. First, in everyday life the use of things is fundamentally manifold and it cannot be reduced to the simple satisfaction of “needs”. Second, different materialities imply each other in specific “material domains”; in these, heterogeneous material elements are linked with each other in use and in manners which, to an extent, remain outside of linguistic expression. Third, the biographies of things reveal that their exchangeability, i.e. their potential qualification as commodities, is not fixed but dynamic, bound to change. Fourth and finally, in order to understand the contemporary Euro-American way of life, it is crucial to scrutinize how things are disposed of and how they become waste. All in all, these four aspects prove together that paying systematic attention to the materialities creates new understanding of contemporary way of life. On a more general level, this result encourages a new orientation to thinking about the manners of being together – a central theme in the social sciences. Because the material mediations are fundamental to the nature of collectivity, attention should be paid not only to the human but also to the non-human entities that participate in the interactions and make them possible.

Keywords: things, commodity, waste, material domains, material culture, biographies of things

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