Abstracts 2008
Sosiologia Volume 45, Number 4, 2008
The speaking group. An example on the use of group interview in the social scientific research design
Riie Heikkilä, Master of Arts, Candidate of Social Sciences, researcher, University of Helsinki
The writer of the article aims at characterizing the group interview as a data collection method, and to point out suitable uses for it. So far, the method has not been widely used in Finland. The article first goes through the history and different uses of the group interview and maps its strengths as an interactional context opening up new prospects for studying an entire social microcosmos. Focusing on three topics, the article introduces different perspectives on the method. The topics are: the recognition of one’s own cultural competence, the skill of focused speech, and the possible emergence of consensus. The materials drawn on consist of group interviews from a more extensive study. The article ends up showing that the group interview is an economical research method because a number of people can be interviewed at a time; on the other hand, it necessarily foregrounds certain discourses and silences others. The pros and cons of group interview materials crystallize in the fact that they consist of discourse produced by one group for one specific purpose, which means that a discourse may either stick to a certain intended topic or distract from it. However, the irregularities, too, may make up the most fruitful materials for the inquiry: the group interview may provide us with answers to the question how a group can and will address a certain topic. At the end, the writer reconsiders the applicability of group interviews in light of the analytical examples.
Keywords: capital, group interview, linguistic competence, qualitative research
Trust, rhetoric, and the rationality of science
Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila, Doctor of Arts, Professor, Helsinki School of Economics; Antti Kylänpää, Candidate of Arts, University of Helsinki
The writers analyze the interrelations between trust, rhetoric, and the rationality of science by drawing on the arguments by John Hardwig and Ricca Edmondson concerning the role of trust within science. Hardwig points out the necessity of relationships of trust between fellow researchers, without however accounting for how trustfulness can be assessed. Edmondson’s analyses of the rhetoric drawn on in the social sciences, in turn, can be seen as complementing Hardwig’s conclusions, as they point out the kind of tools for persuasion that the rules of scholarly writing provide scholars with. Drawing on a simple and widely shared definition of argument, the writers of this article show that trust is a necessary condition of scholarly knowledge formation. They also point out that the recognition of the significance of trust is by no means a new innovation. In the second part of the article, the writers discuss rhetorical devices bringing about trust in contemporary scholarly texts, drawing on Edmondson’s view that these devices are closely connected with the factual argumentation justifying the research results. They illustrate this connection by analyzing the rhetoric used in the introductions to two recent articles in the Finnish journal Sosiologia (Sociology), making use of a modified version of Swales’ structural model of the article introduction. Finally, the writers ponder on the status of rhetorical devices of trust in the social sciences within three different views on rationality. These views are: rationality as scholarly reasoning, rationality as argumentation, and instrumental rationality.
Keywords: argumentation, philosophy of science, rhetoric, trust
From symptoms to quality of life – the marketing of depression to doctors
Saara Kanula, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
The article analyzes the materials used for marketing depression medication to doctors of medicine in Finland in the 1990s and 2000s. The focus is on what kind of a disorder depression is and with what kinds of means depression is ’marketed’. The method used in the article is systematic close reading. The article draws on the vivid medicalisation-critical debates going on within sociology, which have been boosted by the progress of medical science. Along with new medical technology, also the process of medicalisation is thought to both accelerate and change its character. This observation has led to the notion of biomedicalisation. There, medical innovations, such as new drugs, are seen to shift the focus of medical science from the mere treatment of disease towards covering risk control and prevention. The article shows that the marketing materials of anti-depressants medicalise everyday problems and ’market’ depression increasingly as a relatively minor disorder. The materials give doctors advice on how to identify depression, and in doing so, they lay heavy emphasis on its symptoms. What is to be identified, however, gets to be extended first to cover individual symptoms, and then eventually the very lack of happiness. In addition to depression, the marketing materials thus also market the risk of depression as well as quality of life to be attained by means of precision medication.
Keywords: anti-depressants, biomedicalization, depression, marketing, medicalization
Sosiologia Volume 45, Number 3, 2008
The era of contingency
Hans Joas, Doctor of Social Sciences, Professor, University of Erfurt
By means of the concept of ”contingency”, the article sketches a diagnosis of our times. To begin with, the writer lays out a critique of two competing types of contemporary diagnosis: monothematic diagnoses and accounts of era shift. The main part of the article deals with the ”deconstruction” of the notions of ”modern” and ”modernization”. These are often criticized for representing processes such as secularization, democratization, and pacification erroneously as mere sub-processes of a mythical major modernization process. Seeing them instead as contingently intertwined opens up the possibility of conceiving of their changing constellations and analyzing the alleged sub-processes from an action research perspective. These theoretical takes are then applied to one case, that of religion. In a concrete sense, the contingency of religion refers to the evolution of religious bonds in the contemporary multi-optional environment, which is additionally defined by the fact that secularization no longer appears as a necessary component of modernization.
Keywords: contingency, modernity, modernization, religion, secularization
The evaluation practices of rural policies as a technology of government
Päivi Pylkkänen, Master of Arts, University of Helsinki
The various practices of evaluation, quality control and auditing that have spread rapidly in the past few years can be seen as part of the ”informative practices” that have become so topical. They not only convey apparently neutral information on ”things”, but also norms and values to exert control over citizens and to direct their behaviour. What is most interesting about them is what they tell us about the prevailing regime of government we live under. This article applies the approach called analytics of government, which draws on Foucault’s ideas, to the analysis of the evaluative practices of the rural policies of the EU and Finland, with a focus on the evaluative practices applied to the work of Leader action groups. The writer’s aim is to look into how evaluative practices are used for purposes of governing. She approaches the question through an account of two evaluative practices: the use of indicators on the one hand, and self-evaluation on the other. These two practices turn out to be flexible and multileveled techniques of government which are for their part involved in the general marketization of each and every one of us – with the entrepreneurial and market-centred ethos as its central norms. As an ethical self-practice, self evaluation is contingent, non-necessary, and opens up possibilities – in principle at least – for challenging normalizing control instead of serving as its multisited executive component. The vogue for evaluation actually incorporates several complicated processes. In the last resort, however, the breakthrough of the regime of evaluative control, the ”evaluative mentality”, does not tell us much about how the controlled subjects turn out or how they feel about themselves.
Keywords: analytics of government, evaluation, indicator, self-evaluation, technologies of government
Modern slave labour? Analysis of the justice aspect of temporary agency work
Antti Tanskanen, Master of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
The article discusses the justice issues of temporary agency work from the perspective of the workers, the focus being on temporary agency work that is taken on reluctantly. The relevance of the topic springs from the earlier studies indicating that the main reason for taking up temporary agency work is the difficulty of finding a permanent job. The main materials drawn on in the article consist of messages to Internet discussion groups, complemented with articles on temporary agency work written by the employer side, the Finnish Ministry of Labour, and the daily Helsingin Sanomat. The theoretical framework consists of works by four sociological classics – Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and Rawls. As to its perspective, the article can be placed in the field of critical working life studies, which have focused on power, domination, exploitation, control, and inequality. Temporary agency work involves a number of justice issues, both structural, economical, and social. From the perspective of the justice problems faced by workers doing temporary agency work it is justified to claim that temporary agency work represents modern slave labour.
Keywords: equality, justice, reciprocity, resistance, temporary agency work, voluntariness, working life
Sosiologia Volume 45, Number 2, 2008
The choices of single women concerning wage labour
Mia Hakovirta, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Turku
The article deals with the manifestation of economical rationality and value rationality in the choices concerning wage labour made by single mothers. The focus is on a debated issue connected with rational choice, namely the issue of the optimization of economical profi t and the signifi cance of values in human action. The writer discusses the extent to which the wage labour decisions made by single mothers are governed by economical motives on the one hand, or by their personal values and attitudes as well as their sense of responsibility for the welfare of the children and the family, on the other. The research materials drawn on consist of twenty interviews with single mothers, gathered by means of the snowball method in 2001 and 2003. Theories of rational choice provide the writer with a tool for constructing interpretations. On that basis, the writer looks for answers to the question how single mothers conceive the economical signifi cance of wage labour. In analyzing value rational action, her main attention is on the meanings attributed to wage labour, family, and children. The results show that the rational choice model, which is based on economical selfi shness and calculation, cannot satisfactorily account for the single mothers’ decisions, as the model excludes any other kinds of motives. Instead, the choices are characterised by adherence to one’s own values so that action is targeted on achieving some value-governed goal, either through wage labour or childcare at home. The mothers act in an individual fashion, but their choices are mainly governed by a sense of responsibility for the children, which manifests a neofamilist way of thinking.
Keywords: employment, family, rational choice theory, single mother, values, wage labour, welfare
Civil society theory and post-socialism
Suvi Salmenniemi, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
This article examines theoretical discussions about and articulations of civil society in the context of post-socialism and, in particular, Russia. The article explores how civil society has been studied and conceptualised in post-socialism. It introduces a distinction between spatial and functional articulation of civil society, and identifi es three different approaches to the study of civil society: evaluative, historically-bounded, and empirical-comparative. The article also suggests an alternative, discursive approach to the study of civil society. The discursive approach focuses upon the cultural meanings of civil society and investigates how civil society is produced in discursive and social practices. In this way, it opens up a fruitful perspective to understanding social change and the logic of political system. The article provides examples of discursive approach in empirical civil society research. Finally, the article suggests that the study of post-socialist societies contributes importantly to social theory by critically examining the key concepts of and knowledge production in social theory.
Keywords: civic organisations, civil society, democracy, post-socialism, Russia
The challenges of survey based research and the applicability of web questionnaires
Arto Selkälä, Master of Social Sciences, University of Lapland
As a sociological research method, the survey using questionnaires has shifted from its heyday in the 1960s to a marginal position as qualitative methods now dominate mainstream sociology. Survey based research, however, was criticized from the 1950s onwards already. Alongside the critical view, there have nevertheless all the time been several epistemological views on surveys. The most recent one, called the interactional perspective, only entered the Finnish debates during the 1990s. Its roots, however, are in the observations made in the 1950s already, concerning the context dependency of variables. However, researchers doing surveys often ignore the interactional perspective altogether. For sociology, survey based research thus still appears as a method whose possibilities and limitations remain poorly known. A new twist is brought along by the web questionnaires that today are widely used in both research and various kinds of reports. They often manifest features diverging from the paper questionnaire, e.g. the possibility of controlling the visual context of the responding process more fl exibly than in the case of the paper questionnaire. The writer suggests that this possibility can advance survey based research above all in the case of questions concerning opinions, which has, in the history of survey based research, been seen as one of the most problematic types of survey.
Keywords: contextual effect, interactional perspective, survey, web questionnaire
Sosiologia Volume 45, Number 1, 2008
Citizens’ attitudes towards the reformulation of welfare state
Johanna Kallio, Master of Social Sciences, University of Turku
The article deals with attitudes among citizens in Finland towards the reformulation of welfare state. The focus is on welfare and health services, pensions, and unemployment benefits. ‘Reformulation’ in this context refers to promotion of labour market participation as well as social policy solutions strengthening the labour market. The writer analyses the attitudes with reference to interests, ideologies, and perceived risks. Her aim is to show how this reformulation of welfare state is reflected in the differences of opinion between social groups – in other words, whether the new policies give rise to new dividing lines in terms of attitudes. The article is based on a quantitative study, the materials of which come from a survey carried out in 2006. The analytical methods are frequency distribution and multinomial logistic regression analysis. The results show that citizens are most supportive of those changes that do not constitute a significant transformation of the present system. The differences of opinion between groups of people turned out to be quite traditional. Respondent’s ideological stance is the factor that produced the clearest differences in attitudes to increasing labour market participation, private provision of public services, and voluntary pension insurance.
Keywords: citizen opinion, Finland, reformulation, welfare state
A minor genealogical event. Case study of foreign wild berry pickers in Finland
Pekka Rantanen, Master of Social Sciences, University of Tampere; Jarno Valkonen, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi
The article sketches the possibility of studying what the writers call a minor genealogical event. The case discussed is the use of foreign workers in the wild berry business in Finnish Lapland. The article draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of eventualisation, which the writers further elaborate by connecting it with the four Foucauldian types of technology, namely the technologies of production, representation, power, and self. The article makes the point that the activities of the foreign wild berry pickers constitute a minor event which has reshaped the wild berry business and its practices. The writers suggest that the study of minor genealogical events opens the way for the analysis of the relationship between local specificity and transnational global tendencies.
Keywords: event, genealogy, seasonal work, technologies,wild berry business
Explanation by mechanisms
Hannu Ruonavaara, Doctor of Social Sciences, University of Turku
Recently, the idea of explanation by mechanisms has gained support among sociologists representing different conceptions of science, research orientations, and methodologies. On the background of the idea is the critique of the covering law model, which is widely accepted within philosophy of science. According to that critique, explanation cannot be reduced to logical argumentation where a proposition referring to the phenomenon to be studied is deduced from propositions concerning general laws and initial conditions. In critical realism, and in some other orientations as well, explanation involves, above all, the description of the generative or causal mechanism governing the interdependencies between phenomena. The notion of explanation by mechanisms can be divided into two theses. According to the elaboration thesis, mere observation of interdependency between factors does not go for a full explanation of the phenomenon in question. What is needed is an elaboration of the causal connection through a description of how that connection comes about. The mechanism thesis, in turn, claims that the elaboration of a causal connection equals the description of the generative or causal mechanisms that give rise to it. These theses are of so general a nature that they can be embraced from widely divergent theoretical and methodological stances. The writer discusses the kinds of practical methodological guidelines that these theses provide sociologists with. He notes that the elaboration thesis is of crucial importance, but presents reservations concerning the mechanism thesis: the metaphor of “mechanism” can be misleading, and the notion of intentional action is not easy to reconcile with mechanistic thinking.
Keywords: causal explanation, methodology, social mechanisms