The Roman Republican Navy : from the sixth century to 167 BC

Työ käsittelee Rooman laivaston kehitystä, toimintaa ja osallistumista laajenemispolitiikkaan, jossa Rooma kasvoi kaupunkivaltiosta Välimeren hallitsijaksi. Rooma on aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa nähty maavaltiona vailla kiinnostusta merenkulkuun. On katsottu, että ainoa merkittävä merisota Rooman historiassa on ensimmäinen puunilaissota (264-241 eKr.) ja että siinäkin roomalaiset (jotka historioitsija Polybius kuvaa vasta-alkajiksi) menestyivät Karthagoa vastaan turvautumalla laskusiltoihin, joiden avulla he saattoivat muuttaa meritaistelun maataisteluksi. Polybiuksen kuvaukseen on aina tähän asti luotettu. On katsottu että Roomalla ei ollut laivastoa ennen ensimmäistä puunilaissotaa ja että Rooma kaikissa sodissaan panosti merisodankäyntiin mahdollisimman vähän. Tämä työ pyrkii kumoamaan nämä käsitykset. Laivasto oli osallisena ja ehdottoman välttämätön kaikissa Rooman laajenemispolitiikan käänteissä. Arkeologian tiedot osoittavat, että ennen ensimmäistä puunilaissotaa Rooma kehittyi ja siitä tuli merkittävä kaupunki nimenomaan kaupankäynnin ja ulkomaisten kontaktien seurauksena. Se ei siis ollut puhdas agraarivaltio. Roomalaisilla oli laivasto jo viimeistään 500-luvulta lähtien eKr. ja sitä käytettiin Rooman laajentaessa valtaansa Italiassa. Näin ollen ensimmäisessä puunilaissodassa läntisen Välimeren herruudesta kilpaili kaksi merivaltiota, Rooma ja Karthago. Toinen puunilaissota (218-201) tunnetaan yleensä Hannibalin tulosta Alppien yli Italiaan, mutta se oli myöskin merkittävä merisota ja karthagolaiset hävisivät sen nimenomaan merellä. Rooma osallistui kilpailuun itäisen Välimeren hallinnasta ja kukisti Makedonian ja Syyrian laivastot, jotka eivät olleet mitenkään Rooman laivaston veroisia. Kaikista Rooman vastustajista Karthagolla olisi ollut suurin mahdollisuus pysäyttää Rooman laivaston voittokulu toisessa puunilaissodassa. Laivastoa käytettiin moniin eri tarkoituksiin. Suuret meritaistelut eivät ole ainoa osoitus laivastojen mukanaolosta ja merkityksestä, vaan on myös otettava huomion sotalaivojen rakenne ja toimintaedellytykset. Sotalaivat oli rakennettu taisteluita varten ja niissä oli hyvin niukasti säilytystilaa. Niiden oli päästävä laskemaan maihin aina kun miehistö tarvitsi vettä, ruokaa ja lepoa. Laivastot saattoivat toimia vain niiden rannikoiden tuntumassa, joiden satamiin ja laskupaikkoihin niillä oli turvallinen pääsy. Roomalaiset olivat hyvin tietoisia tästä. Suuret merentakaiset sotaretket Afrikkaan, Espanjaan, Kreikkaan ja Vähän-Aasian rannikolle perustuivat kaikki siihen, että Rooman laivasto hallitsi purjehdusreittejä ja sopivia laskupaikkoja ja saattoi huolehtia joukkojen ja varusteiden kuljettamisesta kaukana taisteleville armeijoille. Samalla Rooman laivasto kävi itsenäistä sotaa merellä ja haastoi ja kukisti kaikki Välimeren merivaltiot. 130-luvulle eKr. tultaessa se oli lyönyt vihollisensa ja riisunut aseista liittolaisensa; Rooman laivasto hallitsi Välimerta yksin.

Deus vult: Images of crusader violence c. 1095-1100.

This study sets out to provide new information about the interaction between abstract religious ideas and actual acts of violence in the early crusading movement. The sources are asked, whether such a concept as religious violence can be sorted out as an independent or distinguishable source of aggression at the moment of actual bloodshed. The analysis concentrates on the practitioners of sacred violence, crusaders and their mental processing of the use of violence, the concept of the violent act, and the set of values and attitudes defining this concept. The scope of the study, the early crusade movement, covers the period from late 1080 s to the crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 15 July 1099. The research has been carried out by contextual reading of relevant sources. Eyewitness reports will be compared with texts that were produced by ecclesiastics in Europe. Critical reading of the texts reveals both connecting ideas and interesting differences between them. The sources share a positive attitude towards crusading, and have principally been written to propagate the crusade institution and find new recruits. The emphasis of the study is on the interpretation of images: the sources are not asked what really happened in chronological order, but what the crusader understanding of the reality was like. Fictional material can be even more crucial for the understanding of the crusading mentality. Crusader sources from around the turn of the twelfth century accept violent encounters with non-Christians on the grounds of external hostility directed towards the Christian community. The enemies of Christendom can be identified with either non-Christians living outside the Christian society (Muslims), non-Christians living within the Christian society (Jews) or Christian heretics. Western Christians are described as both victims and avengers of the surrounding forces of diabolical evil. Although the ideal of universal Christianity and gradual eradication of the non-Christian is present, the practical means of achieving a united Christendom are not discussed. The objective of crusader violence was thus entirely Christian: the punishment of the wicked and the restoration of Christian morals and the divine order. Meanwhile, the means used to achieve these objectives were not. Given the scarcity of written regulations concerning the use of force in bello, perceptions concerning the practical use of violence were drawn from a multitude of notions comprising an adaptable network of secular and ecclesiastical, pre-Christian and Christian traditions. Though essentially ideological and often religious in character, the early crusader concept of the practise of violence was not exclusively rooted in Christian thought. The main conclusion of the study is that there existed a definable crusader ideology of the use of force by 1100. The crusader image of violence involved several levels of thought. Predominantly, violence indicates a means of achieving higher spiritual rewards; eternal salvation and immortal glory.

Space in Musical Semiosis : An Abductive Theory of the Musical Composition Process

Space in musical semiosis is a study of musical meaning, spatiality and composition. Earlier studies on musical composition have not adequately treated the problems of musical signification. Here, composition is considered an epitomic process of musical signification. Hence the core problems of composition theory are core problems of musical semiotics. The study employs a framework of naturalist pragmatism, based on C. S. Peirce’s philosophy. It operates on concepts such as subject, experience, mind and inquiry, and incorporates relevant ideas of Aristotle, Peirce and John Dewey into a synthetic view of esthetic, practic, and semiotic for the benefit of grasping musical signification process as a case of semiosis in general. Based on expert accounts, music is depicted as real, communicative, representational, useful, embodied and non-arbitrary. These describe how music and the musical composition process are mental processes. Peirce’s theories are combined with current morphological theories of cognition into a view of mind, in which space is central. This requires an analysis of space, and the acceptance of a relativist understanding of spatiality. This approach to signification suggests that mental processes are spatially embodied, by virtue of hard facts of the world, literal representations of objects, as well as primary and complex metaphors each sharing identities of spatial structures. Consequently, music and the musical composition process are spatially embodied. Composing music appears as a process of constructing metaphors—as a praxis of shaping and reshaping features of sound, representable from simple quality dimensions to complex domains. In principle, any conceptual space, metaphorical or literal, may set off and steer elaboration, depending on the practical bearings on the habits of feeling, thinking and action, induced in musical communication. In this sense, it is evident that music helps us to reorganize our habits of feeling, thinking, and action. These habits, in turn, constitute our existence. The combination of Peirce and morphological approaches to cognition serves well for understanding musical and general signification. It appears both possible and worthwhile to address a variety of issues central to musicological inquiry in the framework of naturalist pragmatism. The study may also contribute to the development of Peircean semiotics.

A Literary Turn : Rethinking the Roles of Generalization and Theory in Anglo-American Moral Philosophy

This work investigates the role of narrative literature in late-20th century and contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy. It aims to show the trend of reading narrative literature for purposes of moral philosophy from the 1970 s and early 80 s to the present day as a part of a larger movement in Anglo-American moral philosophy, and to present a view of its significance for moral philosophy overall. Chapter 1 provides some preliminaries concerning the view of narrative literature which my discussion builds on. In chapter 2 I give an outline of how narrative literature is considered in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy, and connect this use to the broad trend of neo-Aristotelian ethics in this context. In chapter 3 I connect the use of literature to the idea of the non-generalizability of moral perception and judgment, which is central to the neo-Aristotelian trend, as well as to a range of moral particularisms and anti-theoretical positions of late 20th century and contemporary ethics. The joint task of chapters 2 and 3 is to situate the trend of reading narrative literature for the purposes of moral philosophy in the present context of moral philosophy. In the following two chapters, 4 and 5, I move on from the particularizing power of narrative literature, which is emphasized by neo-Aristotelians and particularists alike, to a broader under-standing of the intellectual potential of narrative literature. In chapter 4 I argue that narrative literature has its own forms of generalization which are enriching for our understanding of the workings of ethical generalizations in philosophy. In chapter 5 I discuss Iris Murdoch s and Martha Nussbaum s respective ways of combining ethical generality and particularity in a philosophical framework where both systematic moral theory and narrative literature are taken seriously. In chapter 6 I analyse the controversy between contemporary anti-theoretical conceptions of ethics and Nussbaum s refutation of these. I present my suggestion for how the significance of the ethics/literature discussion for moral philosophy can be understood if one wants to overcome the limitations of both Nussbaum s theory-centred, equilibrium-seeking perspective, and the anti-theorists repudiation of theory. I call my position the inclusive approach .

Representing the epistemic nature of teachers’ practical knowledge : The case of class teachers’ general pedagogy

The present study addressed the epistemology of teachers’ practical knowledge. Drawing from the literature, teachers’ practical knowledge is defined as all teachers’ cognitions (e.g., beliefs, values, motives, procedural knowing, and declarative knowledge) that guide their practice of teaching. The teachers’ reasoning that lies behind their practical knowledge is addressed to gain insight into its epistemic nature. I studied six class teachers’ practical knowledge; they teach in the metropolitan region of Helsinki. Relying on the assumptions of the phenomenographic inquiry, I collected and analyzed the data. I analyzed the data in two stages where the first stage involved an abductive procedure, and the second stage an inductive procedure for interpretation, and thus developed the system of categories. In the end, a quantitative analysis nested into the qualitative findings to study the patterns of the teachers’’ reasoning. The results indicated that teachers justified their practical knowledge based on morality and efficiency of action; efficiency of action was found to be presented in two different ways: authentic efficiency and naïve efficiency. The epistemic weight of morality was embedded in what I call “moral care”. The core intention of teachers in the moral care was the commitment that they felt about the “whole character” of students. From this perspective the “dignity” and the moral character of the students should not replaced for any other “instrumental price”. “Caring pedagogy” was the epistemic value of teachers’ reasoning in the authentic efficiency. The central idea in the caring pedagogy was teachers’ intentions to improve the “intellectual properties” of “all or most” of the students using “flexible” and “diverse” pedagogies. However, “regulating pedagogy” was the epistemic condition of practice in the cases corresponding to naïve efficiency. Teachers argued that an effective practical knowledge should regulate and manage the classroom activities, but the targets of the practical knowledge were mainly other “issues “or a certain percentage of the students. In these cases, the teachers’ arguments were mainly based on the notion of “what worked” regardless of reflecting on “what did not work”. Drawing from the theoretical background and the data, teachers’ practical knowledge calls for “praxial knowledge” when they used the epistemic conditions of “caring pedagogy” and “moral care”. It however calls for “practicable” epistemic status when teachers use the epistemic condition of regulating pedagogy. As such, praxial knowledge with the dimensions of caring pedagogy and moral care represents the “normative” perspective on teachers’ practical knowledge, and thus reflects a higher epistemic status in comparison to “practicable” knowledge, which represents a “descriptive” perception toward teachers’ practical knowledge and teaching.

Consumers and the conceptual and practical appropriation of functional foods

Taking the appropriation of objects as a theoretical starting point, this study makes a distinction between a conceptual and practical level of adopting new objects and products in everyday life. The study applies the concept of appropriation in social food research and examines consumers appropriation of functional foods, i.e., foods developed to improve health and well-being or reduce the risk of disease beyond the usual nutritional effects of foods. The study uses the concept of appropriation to understand the adoption and the process of making functional foods our own . First, the study focuses on the conceptual appropriation by analysing consumers interpretations and opinions on functional foods. Second, it analyses the use of functional foods and examines the role of sociodemographic and food- and health-related background factors in the use of functional foods. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used in the study. Altogether 1210 Finns representative of the population took part in a survey carried out in 2002 as computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI). The survey examined the acceptability and use of functional foods in Finland. In 2004, eight focus group discussions were organised for 45 users and non-users of cholesterol-lowering spreads. The qualitative study focused on consumers interpretative perspectives on healthy eating and functional foods. The findings are reported in four original articles and a summary article. The results show that the appropriation of functional foods is a multifaceted phenomenon. The conceptual appropriation is related to consumers interpretations of functional foods in the context of healthy foods and healthy eating; their trust in the products, their manufacturers, research and control; and the relationship of functional foods and the ideal of natural foods. The analysis of the practical appropriation of four different types of foods marketed as functional showed that there are sociodemographic differences between users and non-users of the products, but more importantly, the differences are related to consumers food- and health-related views and practices. Consumers ways of appropriating functional foods in the conceptual and practical sense take shape in a complex web of ideas and everyday practices concerning food, health and eating as a whole. The results also indicate that the conceptual and practical appropriation are not necessarily uniform or coherent processes. Consumers interpret healthy eating and functional foods from a variety of perspectives and there is a multiplicity of rationales of using functional foods. Appropriation embraces many opposing dimensions simultaneously: good experiences and doubts, approval and criticism, expectations and things taken for granted.

Rukous on perintöä suvusta sukuun : Ikääntyneet ja uskonto vuosituhannen vaihteen Suomessa

"Prayer, a heritage from generation to generation" The elderly and religion in Finland at the turn of the 21st century The strong demographic changes in Europe mean that research on the elderly is highly needed, and also from the viewpoint of their resources and opportunities. Further, it is important to determine, how the elderly could find a meaningful place as members of the chain of generations in our rapidly changing society. The aim of this study was to find out how the elderly build and perceive their place in the society through religious texts. The study was based on religious texts written by elderly people in the study groups of the Finnish pensioners organization Pension Union (Eläkeliitto). These 943 short prayers, poems, and aphorisms were collected during the Tree of Life (Elämänpuu) project in 1998-1999 and were then analysed applying qualitative content analysis and grounded theory methodology. The social construction of aging and the view of communication as a collective signifying process were used as the mainstays of the research perspective. The themes brought forward by the elderly writers were grouped around three key themes: the self, the world and religion. In this examination religion with its forms of expression appeared to be deeply rooted to each of these themes and thus seems a vital part of the elderly writers' culture. In connection with the theme of the self, the religious forms of expression provided a means of building a coherent and culturally accepted self-image which is further supported by positive views of personal history and current life situation. In relation to the world theme, the elderly writers stressed the importance of close social relationships and at the same time expressed anxiety with regard to the changing world. Concerning the theme of religion, the religious forms of expression were first and foremost used in building and creating a sense of personal safety and a belief in the future. The study suggests that skill in the use of religious language enable the elderly to cope with equivocal life events and cognitive dissonance. At the social level the religious forms of expression seemed to connect the writers to the Finnish linguistic culture and identity, as well as to the collective memory, where religion plays a central part. By using religious language the elderly both exploit and maintain these considerable social resources. The key result of the study is that the elderly were found to have a significant and separate role in the continuity and well-being of society. Bound to the religious tradition, the elderly seem to carry significant information as regards the identity of the Finnish people, information which is essentially passed on to future generations. By sustaining traditions and thus the collective identity, they perform a uniquely productive task and their life experience could be seen as a particular type of capital in the society. This result also raises a grave question: Will the elderly of the future be able to undertake this task that so profoundly requires religious literacy?

Ihanne ja todellisuus : Jäsenyyteen sitoutuminen Suomen evankelis-luterilaisessa kirkossa 1960-luvulta 2000-luvulle

The subject of the study is the ideal and reality of commitment to membership in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland from the 1960s to the 2000s. The research task is to ascertain what manner of commitment the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland expects from its members (the ideal) and how in reality membership of the Church is realized (empiria). The research object is also to study the extent to which the ideal of commitment evinced by the Church and the actual relation of commitment to the Church changed during the research period. Additionally, those factors were analysed which influence the relation between the ideal and reality of commitment. In the analysis of the ideal of commitment the research data are official documents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. They include confessions of the Church, Catechisms, Christian doctrine, joint strategies and plans of the Church, likewise the Church Act and Church Order. The reality of commitment is explored on the basis of Church membership, participation in parish activity and the private practice of religion, likewise attitude to Christian faith. The empirical data of the study comprise Church statistics, material from Statistics Finland and relevant surveys implemented during the research period. The ideal of commitment alongside membership includes knowing the basic tenets of Christian faith and family life based on prayer and participation in liturgical cycles. A member of the Church is expected to take care of his/her faith by living in participation of the Word and sacrament, bearing responsibility for the parish and faithfully discharging his/her worldly obligations. There have been no major changes in the ideal of commitment during the research period. On the contrary, the reality of commitment has changed. Although the majority of Finns are still members of the Church, there has been a constant decline in their share of the population. The same can be stated with respect to parish life. This has its own strengths, among them Church rites, parish activity around feast days and also work with children and confirmation training. However, the general trend is towards a decline in participation. There has also been a decrease in commitment to belief in God as taught by the Church. On the other hand, private religious observance has not changed at all. From the perspective of commitment the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland exists in a state of tension between the theological ideal and sociological empiria. Matters exerting a particular influence over the relation between ideal and reality are communality and varying conceptions of the Church, likewise contextuality and the related private Christianity. Societal change poses a challenge to traditional Church communality. A decline in communality has in turn led to a decline in belonging to the Church. Weakening awareness of membership has undermined the handing down of the tradition among younger generations. Modernization has influence the identity of the Church and brought the Church to an internal divergence. This way it has been able to retain its structure as a folk church but at the same time it has lost its opportunities for the formation of a clear identity. The Church has adjusted to societal change by outward-directed activities (performance) alongside the purely religious message (function). The tension between an unchanged message and a changed operating environment has increased. The challenge of contextuality has led the Church to review parish life, the nature of teaching and activity and the language used by the Church, likewise the cultural modus. Increasingly privatized Christianity challenges above all the theology and teaching of the Church, but also the life of worship and relation to cultural life.

Essays in Philosophical Moral Psychology

The dissertation consists of four essays and a comprehensive introduction that discusses the topics, methods, and most prominent theories of philosophical moral psychology. I distinguish three main questions: What are the essential features of moral thinking? What are the psychological conditions of moral responsibility? And finally, what are the consequences of empirical facts about human nature to normative ethics? Each of the three last articles focuses on one of these issues. The first essay and part of the introduction are dedicated to methodological questions, in particular the relationship between empirical (social) psychology and philosophy. I reject recent attempts to understand the nature of morality on the basis of empirical research. One characteristic feature of moral thinking is its practical clout: if we regard an action as morally wrong, we either refrain from doing it even against our desires and interests, or else feel shame or guilt. Moral views seem to have a conceptual connection to motivation and emotions – roughly speaking, we can’t conceive of someone genuinely disapproving an action, but nonetheless doing it without any inner motivational conflict or regret. This conceptual thesis in moral psychology is called (judgment) internalism. It implies, among other things, that psychopaths cannot make moral judgments to the extent that they are incapable of corresponding motivation and emotion, even if they might say largely the words we would expect. Is internalism true? Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in so-called experimental philosophy, which is a methodological view according to which claims about conceptual truths that appeal to our intuitions should be tested by way of surveys presented to ordinary language users. One experimental result is that the majority of people are willing to grant that psychopaths make moral judgments, which challenges internalism. In the first article, ‘The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy’, I argue that these results pose no real threat to internalism, since experimental philosophy is based on a too simple conception of the relationship between language use and concepts. Only the reactions of competent users in pragmatically neutral and otherwise conducive circumstances yield evidence about conceptual truths, and such robust intuitions remain inaccessible to surveys for reasons of principle. The epistemology of folk concepts must still be based on Socratic dialogue and critical reflection, whose character and authority I discuss at the end of the paper. The internal connection between moral judgment and motivation led many metaethicists in the past century to believe along Humean lines that judgment itself consists in a pro-attitude rather than a belief. This expressivist view, as it is called these days, has far-reaching consequences in metaethics. In the second essay I argue that perhaps the most sophisticated form of contemporary expressivism, Allan Gibbard’s norm-expressivism, according to which moral judgments are decisions or contingency plans, is implausible from the perspective of the theory of action. In certain circumstances it is possible to think that something is morally required of one without deciding to do so. Morality is not a matter of the will. Instead, I sketch on the basis of Robert Brandom’s inferentialist semantics a weak form of judgment internalism, according to which the content of moral judgment is determined by a commitment to a particular kind of practical reasoning. The last two essays in the dissertation emphasize the role of mutual recognition in the development and maintenance of responsible and autonomous moral agency. I defend a compatibilist view of autonomy, according to which agents who are unable to recognize right and wrong or act accordingly are not responsible for their actions – it is not fair to praise or blame them, since they lacked the relevant capacity to do otherwise. Conversely, autonomy demands an ability to recognize reasons and act on them. But as a long tradition in German moral philosophy whose best-known contemporary representative is Axel Honneth has it, both being aware of reasons and acting on them requires also the right sort of higher-order attitudes toward the self. Without self-respect and self-confidence we remain at the mercy of external pressures, even if we have the necessary normative competence. These attitudes toward the self, in turn, are formed through mutual recognition – we value ourselves when those who we value value us. Thus, standing in the right sort of relations of recognition is indirectly necessary for autonomy and moral responsibility. Recognition and valuing are concretely manifest in actions and institutions, whose practices make possible participation on an equal footing. Seeing this opens the way for a kind of normative social criticism that is grounded in the value of freedom and automomy, but is not limited to defending negative rights. It thus offers a new way to bridge the gap between liberalism and communitarianism.

Stadilaispojat, rikokset ja lastensuojelu : Viisi tapaustutkimusta kuudelta vuosikymmeneltä

Societal reactions to norm breaking behavior of children reveal, how we understand childhood, the relations between generations and communitie's ratio of tolerance. In Finland the children that repeatedly commit crimes receive social service measures that are based on Child Welfare Act. In the city of Helsinki (Stadi in the slang of Helsinki) existed an agency specifically established for ill-behaving children until the 1980's, agter which an unified agency for the maltreated and maladjusted children was founded. Through five boys' welfare cases, this research aims at defining what kind of positions, social relations and structures are constructed in the social dynamics of these children's everyday lives. The cases cover different decades from the 1940s to the present. At the same time the cases reflect the child welfare and societal practices, and reveal how the communities have participated in constructing deviance in different eras. The research is meta-theoretically based on critical realism and specifically on Roy Bhaskar's transformative model of social activity. The cases are analyzed in the framework of Edwin M. Lemert's societal reaction theory. Thus the focus of the study is on the wide structural context of the institutional and societal definitions of deviance. The research is methodologically based on a qualitative multiple case study research. The primary data consist of classified child welfare case files collected from the archives of the city of Helsinki. The data of the institutional level consist of the annual reports from 1943 to 2004 and the ordinances from 1907 onwards, and of various committee documents produced in the law-making process of child welfare, youth and criminal legislation of the 20th century. Empirical finding are interpreted in a dialogue with previous historical and child welfare research, contemporary literature and studies on the urban development. The analysis is based on Derek Layder's model of adaptive theory. The research forms a viewpoint to the historical study of child welfare, in which the historical era, its agents and the dynamics of their mutual relations are studied through an individual level reconstruction based on the societal reaction theory. The case analyses reveal how the positions of the children form differently in the different eras of child welfare practices. In the 1940s the child is positioned as a psychopath and a criminal type. The measures are aimed at protecting the community from the disturbed child, and at adjusting the individual by isolation. From 1960s to 1980s the child is positioned as a child in need of help and support. The child becomes a victim, a subject that occupies rights, and a target of protection. In the turn of the millennium a norm breaking child is positioned as a dangerous individual that, in the name of the community safety, has to be confined. The case analyses also reveal the prevailing academic and practical paradigms of the time. Keywords: childhood, youth, child protection, child welfare, delinquency, crime, deviance, history, critical realism, case study research

Supistamista, rationalisointia vai kehittämistä? : Valtiovarainministeriön järjestelyosaston järjestämän henkilöstökoulutus- ja tutkimustoiminnan rakentuminen osaksi valtionhallintoa vuosina 1943-1971

The study examines the personnel training and research activities carried out by the Organization and Methods Division of the Ministry of Finance and their becoming a part and parcel of the state administration in 1943-1971. The study is a combination of institutional and ideological historical research in recent history on adult education, using a constructionist approach. Material salient to the study comes from the files of the Organization and Methods Division in the National Archives, parliamentary documents, committee reports, and the magazines. The concentrated training and research activities arranged by the Organization and Methods Division, became a part and parcel of the state administration in the midst of controversial challenges and opportunities. They served to solve social problems which beset the state administration as well as contextual challenges besetting rationalization measures, and organizational challenges. The activities were also affected by a dependence on decision-makers, administrative units, and civil servants organizations, by different views on rationalization and the holistic nature of reforms, as well as by the formal theories that served as resources. It chose long-term projects which extended to the political decision-makers and administrative units turf, and which were intended to reform the structures of the state administration and to rationalize the practices of the administrative units. The crucial questions emerged in opposite pairs (a constitutional state vs. the ideology of an administratively governed state, a system of national boards vs. a system of government through ministries, efficiency of work vs. pleasantness of work, centralized vs. decentralized rationalization activities) which were not solvable problems but impossible questions with no ultimate answers. The aim and intent of the rationalization of the state administration (the reform of the central, provincial, and local governments) was to facilitate integrated management and to render a greater amount of work by approaching management procedures scientifically and by clarifying administrative instances and their respon-sibilities in regards to each other. The means resorted to were organizational studies and committee work. In the rationalization of office work and finance control, the idea was to effect savings in administrative costs and to pare down those costs as well as to rationalize and heighten those functions by developing the institution of work study practitioners in order to coordinate employer and employee relationships and benefits (the training of work study practitioners, work study, and a two-tier work study practitioner organization). A major part of the training meant teaching and implementing leadership skills in practice, which, in turn, meant that the learning environment was the genuine work community and efforts to change it. In office rationalization, the solution to regulate the relations between the employer and the employees was the co-existence of the technical and biological rationalization and the human resource administration and the accounting and planning systems at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. The former were based on the school of scientific management and human relations, the latter on system thinking, which was a combination of the former two. In the rationalization of the state administration, efforts were made to find solutions to stabilize management ideologies and to arrange the relationships of administrative systems in administrative science - among other things, in the Hoover Committee and the Simon decision making theory, and, in the 1960s, in system thinking. Despite the development-related vocabulary, the practical work was advanced rationalization. It was said that the practical activities of both the state administration and the administrative units depended on professional managers who saw to production results and human relations. The pedagogic experts hired to develop training came up with a training system, based on the training-technological model where the training was made a function of its own. The State Training Center was established and the training office of the Organization and Methods Division became the leader and coordinator of personnel training.

E-learning in a rural context: Alternative media and contemporary applications

This report has been written as part of the E-ruralnet –project that addresses e-learning as a means for enhancing lifelong learning opportunities in rural areas, with emphasis on SMEs, micro-enterprises, self-employed and persons seeking employment. E-ruralnet is a European network project part-funded by the European Commission in the context of the Lifelong Learning Programme, Transversal projects-ICT. This report aims to address two issues identified as requiring attention in the previous Observatory study: firstly, access to e-learning for rural areas that have not adequate ICT infrastructure; and secondly new learning approaches introduced through new interactive ICT tools such as web 2.0., wikis, podcasts etc. The possibility of using alternative technology in addition to computers is examined (mobile telephones, DVDs) as well as new approaches to learning (simulation, serious games). The first part of the report examines existing literature on e-learning and what e-learning is all about. Institutional users, learners and instructors/teachers are all looked at separately. We then turn to the implementation of e-learning from the organizational point of view and focus on quality issues related to e-learning. The report includes a separate chapter or e-learning from the rural perspective since most of Europe is geographically speaking rural and the population in those areas is that which could most benefit from the possibilities introduced by the e-learning development. The section titled “Alternative media”, in accordance with the project terminology, looks at standalone technology that is of particular use to rural areas without proper internet connection. It also evaluates the use of new tools and media in e-learning and takes a look at m-learning. Finally, the use of games, serious games and simulations in learning is considered. Practical examples and cases are displayed in a box to facilitate pleasant reading.

The Feminist Transformation of Bioethics : An Analysis of Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Applications in Feminist Bioethics

The purpose of this study is to examine how transformation is defining feminist bioethics and to determine the nature of this transformation. Behind the quest for transformation is core feminism and its political implications, namely, that women and other marginalized groups have been given unequal consideration in society and the sciences and that this situation is unacceptable and should be remedied. The goal of the dissertation is to determine how feminist bioethicists integrate the transformation into their respective fields and how they apply the potential of feminism to bioethical theories and practice. On a theoretical level, feminist bioethicists wish to reveal how current ways of knowing are based on inequality. Feminists pay special attention especially to communal and political contexts and to the power relations endorsed by each community. In addition, feminist bioethicists endorse relational ethics, a relational account of the self in which the interconnectedness of persons is important. On the conceptual level, feminist bioethicists work with beliefs, concepts, and practices that give us our world. As an example, I examine how feminist bioethicists have criticized and redefined the concept of autonomy. Feminist bioethicists emphasize relational autonomy, which is based on the conviction that social relationships shape moral identities and values. On the practical level, I discuss stem cell research as a test case for feminist bioethics and its ability to employ its methodologies. Analyzing these perspectives allowed me first, to compare non-feminist and feminist accounts of stem cell ethics and, second, to analyze feminist perspectives on the novel biotechnology. Along with offering a critical evaluation of the stem cell debate, the study shows that sustainable stem cell policies should be grounded on empirical knowledge about how donors perceive stem cell research and the donation process. The study indicates that feminist bioethics should develop the use of empirical bioethics, which takes the nature of ethics seriously: ethical decisions are provisional and open for further consideration. In addition, the study shows that there is another area of development in feminist bioethics: the understanding of (moral) agency. I argue that agency should be understood to mean that actions create desires.

Taking the linguistic turn seriously: Strategy as a multifaceted interdiscursive phenomenon

Although we have seen a proliferation of studies examining the discursive aspects of strategy, the full potential of the linguistic turn has not yet been realized. This paper argues for a multifaceted interdiscursive approach that can help to go beyond simplistic views on strategy as unified discourse and pave the way for the new research efforts. At the meta-level, it is important to focus attention on struggles over competing conceptions of strategy in this body of knowledge. At the meso-level it is interesting to examine alternative strategy narratives to better understand the polyphony and dialogicality in organizational strategizing. At the micro-level, it is useful to reflect on the rhetorical tactics and skills that are used in strategy conversations to promote or resist specific views. This paper calls for new focused analyses at these different levels of analysis, but also for studies of the processes linking these levels.