Tyttöjen toinen koti : Etnografinen tutkimus tyttökulttuurista ratsastustalleilla

Horseback riding is a popular activity in Finland, especially among young women and girls. For centuries, however, horse husbandry and horse culture in Finland had been dominated by men. Nowadays it is mainly the girls who ride as a hobby and take care of the horses. The stable has evolved into an important social sphere for girls, a semi-public room of their own where they spend time together. A study of the girl culture in the riding stable offers a unique perspective as well as new information on becoming a girl and a young woman in Finland. The subject of my research is the girl culture and girls communities at the horseback riding stables. In this thesis I discuss what kind of girl-cultural sphere the stable is, how girls organize their community, and what different aspects and meanings the hobby entails for girls while they are actively engaged in the hobby. I focus on the construction of gender and girlhood and examine how these gender constructions can be theorized as gender tradition. The research material consists of the interviews of 22 stable girls from different parts of Finland and an observation period at one of the stables. The informants were from 13 to 27 years of age. The theoretical background is based on the anthropological study of folklore, girls studies, feminist theory and post-humanist viewpoints. I am interested in how girls culture and girlhood are produced performatively in the interview narration and participant observation. I concentrate on four aspects of this culture: 1) what girls do at the stable, and what kind of relationships they create with horses; 2) social relations focusing on the ways girls construct their own groups, the way their hierarchy is constructed and how they use power; 3) the norms and social control regarding social behaviour; and 4) the reasons girls give for their involvement in the hobby, and girls interest in horses in general. In this girl culture, gender norms and boundaries are not only stretched or transgressed, but the culture also re-produces the hierarchical and stereotypical ideas of gender. The traditions of gender express both the hegemonic gender system and those ideas of gender which girls resist, at least momentarily. Constructions of gender and gender tradition are constituted at the intersections of historical and contemporary expectations of what it means to be a girl. Conscious of these societal demands, girls support, reproduce, challenge, and make comments on them.

What should I think; How should I feel? : The balancing of personal experiences and social norms in the outgroup attitude formation of youth

The present study focused on the associations between the personal experiences of intergroup contact, perceived social norms and the outgroup attitudes of Finnish majority and Russian-speaking minority youth living in Finland. The theoretical background of the study was derived from Allport s (1954) theory of intergroup contact (i.e., the contact hypothesis), social psychological research on normative influences on outgroup attitudes (e.g., Rutland, 2004; Stangor and Leary, 2006) and developmental psychological research on the formation of explicit (deliberate) and implicit (automatically activated) outgroup attitudes in adolescence (e.g., Barrett, 2007; Killen, McGlothlin and Henning, 2008). The main objective of the study was to shed light on the role of perceived social norms in the formation of outgroup attitudes among adolescents. First, the study showed that perceived normative pressure to hold positive attitudes towards immigrants regulated the relationship between the explicit and implicit expression of outgroup attitudes among majority youth. Second, perceived social norms concerning outgroup attitudes (i.e., the perceived outgroup attitudes of parents and peers) affected the relationship between intergroup contact and explicit outgroup attitudes depending on gender and group status. Positive social norms seem to be especially important for majority boys, who need both pleasant contact experiences and normative support to develop outgroup attitudes that are as positive as girls attitudes. The role of social norms is accentuated also among minority youth, who, contrary to majority youth with their more powerful and independent status position, need to reflect upon their attitudes and experiences of negative intergroup encounters in relation to the experiences and attitudes of their ingroup members. Third, the results are indicative of the independent effects of social norms and intergroup anxiety on outgroup attitudes: the effect of perceived social norms on the outgroup attitudes of youth seems to be at least as strong as the effect of intergroup anxiety. Finally, it was shown that youth evaluate intergroup contact from the viewpoint of their ingroup and society as a whole, not just based on their own experiences. In conclusion, the outgroup attitudes of youth are formed in a close relationship with their social environment. On the basis of this study, the importance of perceived social norms for research on intergroup contact effects among youth cannot be overlooked. Positive normative influences have the potential to break the strong link between rare and/or negative personal contact experiences and negative outgroup attitudes, and norms also influence the relationship between implicit and explicit attitude expression.

Rauta ja Ristilukki : Vilho Helasen salapoliisiromaanisarja

Vilho Helanen (1899 1952) was a right-wing opinion leader in interwar Finland. But following the Second World War, the political situation in the country changed dramatically, and Helanen lost his job as well as his influential social station. He began to write detective fiction, and between 1946 and 1952 published seven novels (one had already been published in 1941). The novels protagonist is Kaarlo Rauta, a lawyer who acts as a private investigator. This doctoral dissertation analyzes the Rauta series from three different points of view. It investigates the extent to which the author s life and his strong political background appears in the series. The study also situates the series within Finnish society during and after the war. Finally, the study examines the Rauta series in terms of the genre conventions of detective fiction, that is, the study compares the Rauta series with other Finnish crime fiction and international crime fiction written during the 1940s. The Iron and The Cross Spider uses the term citizenship education when analyzing how Helanen implicitly continued his political teaching when writing crime fiction. The series includes a didactic register, which instructs the middle class in appropriate behaviour and manners, and the social roles entailed by gender. A special area of focus in this didacticism are norms of correct masculinity and femininity. The study devotes specific attention to the status of character in the series. The masculine detective and his beautiful wife are prominent, as is the fictive community and the tensions that criss-cross it. After the war, the Rauta series takes on a positive tone. Men can earn their place in society by fighting at the front, and after the war a homosocial bond exists between all the former soldiers. Women are shut out of the war experience. The detective hero has served in the war, but he is physically and psychologically untouched by it. The community is threatened by artists and immoral bohemians, but not the working class. Artists have affairs outside of marriage and abnormal sexual habits. The members of the upper class are also described as immoral in the series. Sadistic sexuality is often characteristic of the criminals, who are mostly femme fatales in the fashion of hard-boiled detective stories and film noir. Also, strong feelings have a negative connotation in the series, and showing them is forbidden behaviour. Men become criminals when they are insufficiently masculine or when they have not carried out their duty by fighting in the war. Helanen portrayed the communists, his political opponents from the 1930s, as criminals in his post-war series, but they were not openly represented as Russians or communists. Instead, Helanen used the cross spider as their symbol, a symbol which the readers of the time would recognize.

From a "Student" to a Lifelong "Consumer" : Constructions of Educability in Adult Students' Narrative Life Histories

The focus of this study was to examine the constructions of the educable subject of the lifelong learning (LLL) narrative in the narrative life histories of adult students at general upper secondary school for adults (GUSSA). In this study lifelong learning has been defined as a cultural narrative on education, “a system of political thinking” that is not internally consistent, but has contradictory themes embedded within it (Billig et al., 1988). As earlier research has shown and this study also confirms, the LLL narrative creates differences between those who are included and those who fall behind and are excluded from the learning society ideal. Educability expresses socially constructed interpretations on who benefit from education and who should be educated and how. The presupposition in this study has been that contradictions between the LLL narrative and the so-called traditional constructions of educability are likely to be constructed as the former relies on the all-inclusive interpretation of educability and the latter on the meritocratic model of educating individuals based on their innate abilities. The school system continues to uphold the institutionalized ethos of educability that ranks students into the categories “bright”, “mediocre”, and “poor” (Räty & Snellman, 1998) on the basis of their abilities, including gender-related differences as well as differences based on social class. Traditional age-related norms also persist, for example general upper secondary education is normatively completed in youth and not in adulthood, and the formal learning context continues to outweigh both non-formal and informal learning. Moreover, in this study the construction of social differences in relation to educability and, thereafter unequal access to education has been examined in relation to age, social class, and gender. The biographical work of the research participants forms a peephole that permits the examination of the dilemmatic nature of the constructions of educability in this study. Formal general upper secondary education in adulthood is situated on the border between the traditional and the LLL narratives on educability: participation in GUSSA inevitably means that one’s ability and competence as a student and learner becomes reassessed through the assessment criteria maintained by schools, whereas according to the principles of LLL everyone is educable; everyone is encouraged to learn throughout their lives regardless of age, social class, or gender. This study is situated in the field of adult education, sociology of education, and social psychological research on educability, having also been informed by feminist studies. Moreover, this study contributes to narrative life history research combining the structural analysis of narratives (Labov & Waletzky, 1997), i.e. mini-stories within life history, with the analysis of the life histories as structural and thematic wholes and the creation of coherence in them; thus, permitting both micro and macro analyses. On accounting for the discontinuity created by participation in general upper secondary school study in adulthood and not normatively in youth, the GUSSA students construct coherence in relation to their ability and competence as students and learners. The seven case studies illuminate the social differences constructed in relation to educability, i.e. social class, gender, age, and the “new category of student and learner”. In the data of this study, i.e. 20 general upper secondary school adult graduates’ narrative life histories primarily generated through interviews, two main coherence patterns of the adult educable subject emerge. The first performance-oriented pattern displays qualities that are closely related to the principles of LLL. Contrary to the principles of lifewide learning, however, the documentation of one’s competence through formal qualifications outweighs non-formal and informal learning in preparation for future change and the competition for further education, professional careers, and higher social positions. The second flexible learning pattern calls into question the status of formal, especially theoretical and academically oriented education; inner development is seen as more important than such external signs of development — grades and certificates. Studying and learning is constructed as a hobby and as a means to a more satisfactory life as opposed to a socially and culturally valued serious occupation leading to further education and career development. Consequently, as a curious, active, and independent learner, this educable but not readily employable subject is pushed into the periphery of lifelong learning. These two coherence patterns of the adult educable subject illuminate who is to be educated and how. The educable and readily employable LLL subject is to participate in formal education in order to achieve qualifications for working life, whereas the educable but not employable subject may utilize lifewide learning for her/his own pleasure. Key words: adult education, general upper secondary school for adults, educability, lifelong learning, narrative life history

Lukemisen vaikeuden kuntoutus ensiluokkalaisilla : Kolme pedagogista interventiota

Remediation of Reading Difficulties in Grade 1. Three Pedagogical Interventions Keywords: initial teaching, learning to read, reading difficulties, intervention, dyslexia, remediation of dyslexia, home reading, computerized training In this study three different reading interventions were tested for first-graders at risk of reading difficulties at school commencement. The intervention groups were compared together and with a control group receiving special education provided by the school. First intervention was a new approach called syllable rhythmics in which syllabic rhythm, phonological knowledge and letter-phoneme correspondence are emphasized. Syllable rhythmics is based on multi-sensory training elements aimed at finding the most functional modality for every child. The second intervention was computerized training of letter-sound correspondence with the Ekapeli learning game. The third intervention was home-based shared book reading, where every family was given a story book, and dialogic reading style reading and writing exercises were prepared for each chapter of the book. The participants were 80 first-graders in 19 classes in nine schools. The children were matched in four groups according to pre-test results: three intervention and one control. The interventions took ten weeks starting from September in grade 1. The first post-test including several measures of reading abilities was administered in December. The first delayed post-test was administered in March, the second in September in grade 2, and the third, “ALLU” test (reading test for primary school) was administered in March in grade 2. The intervention and control groups differed only slightly from each other in grade 1. However, girls progressed significantly more than boys in both word reading and reading comprehension in December and this difference remained in March. The children who had been cited as inattentive by their teachers also lagged behind the others in the post-tests in December and March. When participants were divided into two groups according to their initial letter knowledge at school entry, the weaker group (maximum 17 correctly named letters in pre-test) progressed more slowly in both word reading and reading comprehension in grade 1. Intervention group and gender had no interaction effect in grade 1. Instead, intervention group and attentiveness had an interaction effect on most test measures the inattentive students in the syllable rhythmic group doing worst and attentive students in the control group doing best in grade 1. The smallest difference between results of attentive and inattentive students was in the Ekapeli group. In grade 2 still only minor differences were found between the intervention groups and control group. The only significant difference was in non-word reading, with the syllable rhythmics group outperforming the other groups in the fall. The difference between girls’ and boys’ performances in both technical reading and text comprehension disappeared in grade 2. The difference between the inattentive and attentive students cold no longer be found in technical reading, and the difference became smaller in text comprehension as well. The difference between two groups divided according to their initial letter knowledge disappeared in technical reading but remained significant in text comprehension measures in the ALLU test in the spring of grade 2. In all, the children in the study did better in the ALLU test than expected according to ALLU test norms. Being the weakest readers in their classes in the pre-test, 52.3 % reached the normal reading ability level. In the norm group 72.3 % of all students attained normal reading ability. The results of this study indicate that different types of remediation programs can be effective, and that special education has been apparently useful. The results suggest careful consideration of first-graders’ initial reading abilities (especially letter knowledge) and possible failure of attention; remediation should be individually targeted while flexibly using different methods.

Stroke and coronary heart disease in relation to hyperglycemia gender and age

This study was carried out to compare the fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and 2-h plasma glucose (2-h PG) criteria for diabetes with regard to their relation to stroke mortality and the incidence of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. In addition, the age-and gender difference in the incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke and their relation with known cardiovascular disease risk factors and diabetes mellitus was examined. The study was a sub-data analysis of the Diabetes Epidemiology: Collaborative analysis Of Diagnostic criteria in Europe (DECODE) study including 25 181 individuals, 11 844 (47%) men and 13 345 (53%) women aged 25 to 90 years, from 14 European cohorts. In individuals without a history of diabetes elevated 2-h post-challenge glucose was a better predictor of stroke mortality than elevated fasting glucose in men, whereas the latter was better than the former in women. Elevated FPG and 2-h PG levels were associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke incidence. 2-h PG contributed to the risk more strongly than FPG. No relationship between hyperglycemia and the risk of hemorrhagic stroke was found. The risk of CHD and ischemic stroke incidence increased with age in both genders, but was higher in all age groups in men than in women. The gender difference was, however, more marked for CHD than for ischemic stroke. Age, smoking and diabetes contributed to the development of both CHD and ischemic stroke. Elevated cholesterol levels predicted CHD only, whereas elevated blood pressure was a risk predictor for the incidence of ischemic stroke. The CHD and ischemic stroke risk was higher in men than in women with and without diabetes, however, the gender difference diminished for CHD but enlarged for ischemic stroke in diabetic individuals. The known risk factors including diabetes contributed differently to the risk of CHD and ischemic stroke in women and in men. Hyperglycemia defined by FPG or 2-h PG increases the risk of ischemic stroke in individuals without diabetes. FPG better predicts stroke mortality in women and 2-h PG in men. The risk of acute CHD and ischemic stroke is higher in men than in women in all ages, but such gender difference is more marked for CHD than for ischemic stroke. CHD risk is higher in men than in women, but the difference is reduced in diabetic population. Diabetes, however, increases stroke risk more in men than in women in all ages.

Women, environmental changes and forestry-related development : Gender-affected roles of rural people in land degradation and environmental rehabilitation in a dry region of Sudan

The purpose of the present study was to increase understanding of the interaction of rural people and, specifically, women with the environment in a dry area in Sudan. The study that included both nomadic pastoralists and farmers aimed at answering two main research questions, namely: What kinds of roles have the local people, and the women in particular, had in land degradation in the study area and what kinds of issues would a gender-sensitive, forestry-related environmental rehabilitation intervention need to consider there? The study adopted the definition of land degradation as proposed by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which describes land degradation as reduction or loss the biological or economic productivity and complexity of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. The Convention perceives desertification as land degradation. The dry study area in Sudan, South of the Sahara, has been the subject of land degradation or desertification discussions since the 1970s, and other studies have been also conducted to assess the degradation in the area. Nevertheless, the exact occurrence, scale and local significance of land degradation in the area is still unclear. This study explored how the rural population whose livelihood depended on the area, perceived environmental changes occurring there and compared their conceptions with other sources of information of the area such as research reports. The main fieldwork methods included interviews with open-ended questions and observation of people and the environment. The theoretical framework conceptualised the rural population as land users whose choices of environmental activities are affected by multiple factors in the social and biophysical contexts in which they live. It was emphasised that these factors have their own specific characteristics in different contexts, simultaneously recognising that there are also factors that generally affect environmental practices in various areas such as the land users' environmental literacy (conceptions of the environment), gender and livelihood needs. The people studied described that environmental changes, such as reduced vegetation cover and cropland production, had complicated the maintenance of their livelihoods in the study area. Some degraded sites were also identified through observations during the fieldwork. Whether a large-scale reduction of cropland productivity had occurred in the farmers' croplands remained, however, unclear. The study found that the environmental impact of the rural women's activities varied and was normally limited. The women's most significant environmental impact resulted from their cutting of trees, which was likely to contribute, at least in some places, to land degradation, affecting the environment together with climate and livestock. However, when a wider perspective is taken, it becomes questionable whether the women have really played roles in land degradation, since gender, poverty and the need to maintain livelihood had caused them to conduct environmentally harmful activities. The women have had, however, no power to change the causes of their activities. The findings further suggested that an inadequate availability of food was the most critical problem in the study area. Therefore, an environmental programme in the area was suggested to include technical measures to increase the productivity of croplands, opportunities for income generation and readiness to co-operate with other programmes to improve the local people's abilities to maintain their livelihoods. In order to protect the environment and alleviate the women's work burden, the introduction of fuel-saving stoves was also suggested. Furthermore, it was suggested that increased planting of trees on homesteads would be supported by an easy availability of tree seedlings. Planting trees on common property land was, however, perceived as extremely demanding in the study area, due to scarcity of such land. In addition, it became apparent that the local land users, and women in particular, needed to allocate their labour to maintain the immediate livelihood of their families and were not motivated to allocate their labour solely for environmental rehabilitation. Nonetheless, from the point of view of the existing social structures, women's active participation in a community-based environmental programme would be rather natural, particularly among the farmer women who had already formed a women's group and participated in communal decision making. Forming of a women group or groups was suggested to further support both the farmer women's and pastoral women's active participation within an environmental programme and their general empowerment. An Environmental programme would need to acknowledge that improving rural people's well-being and maintaining their livelihood in the study area requires development and co-operation with various sectors in Sudan.

Gender, Politics and Democratisation in Cameroon

Gender perceptions, religious belief systems, and political thought have excluded women from politics, for ages, around the world. Combining feminist and modernisation theorists in my theoretical framework, I examine the trends in patriarchal Europe and I highlight the gender-sensitive model of the Nordic countries. Retracing local gender patterns from precolonial to postcolonial eras in sub-Saharan Africa, I explore the links between perceptions, needs, resources, education and women's political participation in Cameroon. Democratisation is supposed to open up political participation, to grant equal opportunities to all adults. One ironic feature of the liberalisation process in Cameroon has been the decrease of women in parliamentarian representation (14% in 1988, 6% in 1992, 5% in 1997 and 10% in 2002). What social, cultural and institutional mechanisms produced this paradoxical outcome, the exclusion of half the population? The gender complementarity of the indigenous context has been lost to male prevalence privileged by education, church, law, employment, economy and politics in the public sphere; most women are marginalised in the private sphere. Nation building and development have failed; ethnicism and individualism are growing. Some hope lies in the growing civil society. From two surveys and 21 focus groups across Cameroon, in 2000 and 2002, some significant results of the processed empirical data reveal low electoral registration (34.5% women and 65.9% men), contrasted by the willingness to run for municipal elections (33.3 % women and 45.2% men). The co-existence of customary and statutory laws, the corrupt political system and fraudulent practices, contribute to the marginalisation of women and men who are interested in politics. A large majority of female respondents consider female politicians more trustworthy and capable than their male counterparts; they even foresee the appointment of a female Prime Minister. The Nordic countries have institutionalised gender equality in their legislation, policies and practices. France has improved women's political inclusion with the parity laws; Rwanda is another model of women's representation, thanks to its post-conflict constitution. From my analysis, Cameroonian institutions, men and more so women, may learn and borrow from these experiences, in order to design and implement a sustainable and gender-balanced democracy. Keywords: democratisation, politics, gender equality, feminism, citizenship, Cameroon, Nordic countries, Finland, France, United Kingdom, quotas, societal social psychology.

Basic Human Values in the Workplace

Työntekijöiden henkilökohtaisia arvoja ja niiden yhteyksiä asenteisiin ei ole juuri tutkittu. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, onko suomalaisessa metalliteollisuuden yrityksen henkilöstön (N=1314) arvojen rakenne S. H. Schwartzin arvoteorian mukainen. Lisäksi tutkittiin arvojen yhteyksiä organisaatiomuutosta koskeviin asenteisiin ja tiedon jakamiseen työyhteisössä. Arvomittarina käytettiin uutta 40-osioista Portrait Value Questionnairea (PVQ). Mittarin validiteetti osoitettiin ver-taamalla nyt kerätyn aineiston arvorakennetta aikaisemmalla mittarilla kerättyihin arvoteorian mukaisiin yliopisto-opiskelijoiden vastauksiin. Organisaatiomuutosta koskevien asenteiden ja tiedonjakamisen mittarit luotiin laadullisissa esitutkimuksissa. Tilastolliset analyysit osoittivat, että toimihenkilöiden ja työntekijöiden arvojen rakenteet noudattivat pääosin Schwartzin teoriaa, mutta turvallisuusarvot sijaitsivat molemmissa ryhmissä universalismin ja hyväntahtoisuuden joukossa. Universalismi ja hyväntahtoisuus ennustivat myönteistä asennetta organisaatiomuutoksia kohtaan, mutta perinteiden ja mielihyvän arvostaminen liittyivät kielteisiin muutosasenteisiin. Sosiaalisia normeja kunnioittavien eli yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavien henkilöiden muut arvot vaikuttivat muutosasenteisiin vähemmän kuin niillä, joille yhdenmukaisuus ei ollut tärkeää. Lisäksi suoriutumisarvon yhteys muutosasenteisiin oli yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavilla henkilöillä positiivinen, mutta niillä, jotka eivät arvostaneet yhdenmukaisuutta, yhteys oli negatiivinen. Itseohjautuvuutta arvostavat henkilöt pitivät työyhteisönsä tiedon jakamista heikompana, kun taas hyväntahtoisuutta ja yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavat pitivät sitä muihin nähden parempana. Suoriutumisarvo oli yhteydessä tiedonjakamiseen vain silloin, kun yhdenmukaisuus oli tärkeää. Työpaikkojen (N=19) keskiarvoja vertailtaessa havaittiin, että ne työpaikat, joissa arvostettiin paljon universalismia, hyväntahtoisuutta ja yhdenmukaisuutta sekä vähän valtaa ja suoriutumista saivat henkilöstöltään parhaat arvioinnit tiedon jakamisesta. Tutkimukseen osallistuneet henkilöt jaettiin työtehtäviensä perusteella kolmeen ammatilliseen ympäristöön: konven-tionaaliseen (mm. taloushallinto), realistiseen (mm. tuotanto) ja yrittäjämäiseen (mm. myynti). Yrittäjämäisessä ammatillisessa ympäristössä toimivat arvostivat enemmän kuin konventionaalisessa ympäristössä toimivat valtaa, itseohjautuvuutta ja suoriutumista. Realistisessa ympäristössä arvostettiin enemmän perinteitä ja mielihyvää kuin yrittäjämäisessä ympäristössä. Ryhmien väliset erot arvoissa johtuivat koulutuksesta, iästä ja sukupuolijakaumasta.

Growing Flowers in the Frost: Civic Activity, Citizenship and Gender in Russia

This study analyzes civic activity, citizenship and their gendered manifestations in contemporary Russia. It is based on a case study conducted in the city of Tver , located in the vicinity of Moscow, during 2001-2005. The data consists of interviews with civic activists and municipal and regional authorities; observations of civic organizations; and a quantitative survey conducted among local civic groups. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study draws upon a micro perspective on organization, discourse analysis, gender and citizenship theories and Pierre Bourdieu s theory of fields and capital. This study develops theoretical understanding of the characteristics and logic of civic organization in Russia. It shows that social class centrally structures the field of civic activity. Organizations can be seen as a vehicle of the educated class to advocate their interests, help themselves and seek both social and individual-level change. The study also argues that civic organizations founded during the post-Soviet era are often an institutionalized form of informal social networks. Networks, which were a central element of everyday interaction in Soviet society, are a resource and often the only resource available that can be made use of in contemporary organizational activities. The study argues that gender operates as a key structuring principle in the Russian socio-political community. Civic activity is often discursively associated with femininity and institutional politics with masculinity. Women tend to participate more than men in civic organizations, while men dominate the formal political domain. The study shows that civic organizations are important loci of communality. This communality, however, differs from the communality envisioned in the communitarian and social capital debates in the West. It is selective communality , as it is restricted to the members of the organizations and does not create generalized reciprocity and trust. Civic organizations tend to build upon and reproduce the traditional Russian organizational form of circles , kruzhki. Along with the analysis of civic activities, the study also examines the redefinition of the role and functions of the state. The authorities interviewed in this study understand civic organizations as serving those goals and interests determined by the authorities, instead of viewing them as sites of citizens self-organization around interests and problems citizens themselves deem important, or as a counterforce to the state. By contrast, civic activists understand the core of organizational activity to be advocacy of their interests and rights, tackling social problems, the pursuit of wider social change and self-help. Co-operation between authorities and organizations tends to be personified and based upon unequal, hierarchical patron-client arrangements, which inhibits the development of democratic governance. The study will be published in Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series later this year.

Personporträttet som tidningsgenre : En närläsningsstudie med fokus på innehållsliga teman, berättarkonventioner och kön

The thesis The portrait interview as a newspaper genre. A qualitative close reading focussing on topical motifs, conventions of narration, and gender defines the portrait interview as a newspaper genre and analyses how the personalities in the portraits are constructed textually. The main body of material consists of 107 portrait interviews in two morning newspapers, Dagens Nyheter (published in Stockholm, Sweden) and Hufvudstadsbladet (published in Swedish in Helsinki, Finland), during two one-week periods (week 46/1999 and week 38/2002). There is also complementary material of 59 portraits from four magazines. The study is carried out within the research traditions of journalistic genre studies, gender and journalism, and critical text analysis. It is comprised of a qualitative close reading focussing on content (topical motifs or themes), conventions of narration, and gender. The methods used to carry out the study are qualitative close reading and quantitative content analysis. The analysis identifies the stylistic elements that differentiate the portrait genre from other journalistic genres, as well as from the autobiographical genre, and explores what opportunities and limitations these elements present for the inclusion of even more women protagonists in the portrait genre. The portrait interview is an exception from the critical mission of journalism in general, with its position as a genre of politeness. Since a typical characteristic of the portrait interview genre is that it pays tribute to the protagonist, the genre reveals the kind of personalities and lives that are seen as admirable in society. Four levels of portrait interview are defined: the prototype portrait, the pure portrait, the hybrid portrait and the marginal portrait. The prototype is a raw version of a portrait that fulfils the criteria but may be lacking in content and stylistics. The pure portrait does not lack these qualities and resembles an ideal portrait. The hybrid is a borderline case which relates to another genre or is a mixture between the portrait and some other genre, most commonly the news genre. The marginal portrait does not fulfil the criteria, and can therefore be seen as an inadequate portrait. For example, obituaries and caricatures are excluded if the protagonist s voice is never quoted. The analysis resulted in three factors that in part help to explain why the portrait interview genre has somewhat more female protagonists than journalistic news texts do in general. The four main reasons why women are presented somewhat more in the portrait genre than in other journalistic genres are: (i) women are shown as exceptions to the female norm when, for example, taking a typical male job or managing in positions where there are few women; (ii) women are shown as representing female themes ; (iii) use of the double bind as a story-generating factor; and (iv) the intimisation of journalism. The double bind usually builds up the narration on female ambiguity in the contradiction between private and public life, for example family and career, personal desire and work. The intimisation of journalism and the double bind give women protagonists somewhat more publicity also because of the tendency of portrait interviews to create conflicts within the protagonist, as an exception to journalism in general where conflicts are created or seen as existing between, for example, persons, groupings or parties. Women protagonists and their lives create an optimal narration of inner conflicts originating in the double bind as men are usually not seen as suffering from these conflicts. The analysis also resulted in gendered portrait norms: The feminine portrait norm and the masculine portrait norm or more concretely, professional life and family life as expectation and exception. Women are expected to be responsible parents and mediocre professionals, while men are expected to be professionals and in their free time engaging fathers. Key words: journalism, genre, portrait interview, gender, interview, newspaper, women s magazine.

Psychosocial processes of health behaviour change in a lifestyle intervention : Influences of gender, socioeconomic status and personality

Background: The onset of many chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes can be delayed or prevented by changes in diet, physical activity and obesity. Known predictors of successful behaviour change include psychosocial factors such as selfefficacy, action and coping planning, and social support. However, gender and socioeconomic differences in these psychosocial mechanisms underlying health behaviour change have not been examined, despite well-documented sociodemographic differences in lifestyle-related mortality and morbidity. Additionally, although stable personality traits (such as dispositional optimism or pessimism and gender-role orientation: agency and communion) are related to health and health behaviour, to date they have rarely been studied in the context of health behaviour interventions. These personality traits might contribute to health behaviour change independently of the more modifiable domain-specific psychosocial factors, or indirectly through them, or moderated by them. The aims were to examine in an intervention setting: (1) whether changes (during the three-month intervention) in psychological determinants (self-efficacy beliefs, action planning and coping planning) predict changes in exercise and diet behaviours over three months and 12 months, (2) the universality assumption of behaviour change theories, i.e. whether preintervention levels and changes in psychosocial determinants are similar among genders and socioeconomic groups, and whether they predict changes in behaviour in a similar way in these groups, (3) whether the personality traits optimism, pessimism, agency and communion predict changes in abdominal obesity, and the nature of their interplay with modifiable and domain-specific psychosocial factors (self-efficacy and social support). Methods: Finnish men and women (N = 385) aged 50 65 years who were at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes were recruited from health care centres to participate in the GOod Ageing in Lahti Region (GOAL) Lifestyle Implementation Trial. The programme aimed to improve participants lifestyle (physical activity, eating) and decrease their overweight. The measurements of self-efficacy, planning, social support and dispositional optimism/pessimism were conducted pre-intervention at baseline (T1) and after the intensive phase of the intervention at three months (T2), and the measurements of exercise at T1, T2 and 12 months (T3) and healthy eating at T1 and T3. Waist circumference, an indicator of abdominal obesity, was measured at T1 and at oneyear (T3) and three-year (T4) follow-ups. Agency and communion were measured at T4 with the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ). Results: (1) Increases in self-efficacy and planning were associated with three-month increases in exercise (Study I). Moreover, both the post-intervention level and three-month increases (during the intervention) in self-efficacy in dealing with barriers predicted the 12-month increase in exercise, and a high postintervention level of coping plans predicted the 12-month decrease in dietary fat (Study II). One- and three-year waist circumference reductions were predicted by the initial three-month increase in self-efficacy (Studies III, IV). (2) Post-intervention at three months, women had formed more action plans for changing their exercise routines and received less social support for behaviour change than men had. The effects of adoption self-efficacy were similar but change in planning played a less significant role among men (Study I). Examining the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), psychosocial determinants at baseline and their changes during the intervention yielded largely similar results. Exercise barriers self-efficacy was enhanced slightly less among those with low SES. Psychosocial determinants predicted behaviour similarly across all SES groups (Study II). (3) Dispositional optimism and pessimism were unrelated to waist circumference change, directly or indirectly, and they did not influence changes in self-efficacy (Study III). Agency predicted 12-month waist circumference reduction among women. High communion coupled with high social support was associated with waist circumference reduction. However, the only significant predictor of three-year waist circumference reduction was an increase in health-related self-efficacy during the intervention (Study IV). Conclusions: Interventions should focus on improving participants self-efficacy early on in the intervention as well as prompting action and coping planning for health behaviour change. Such changes are likely to be similarly effective among intervention participants regardless of gender and educational level. Agentic orientation may operate via helping women to be less affected by the demands of the self-sacrificing female role and enabling them to assertively focus on their own goals. The earlier mixed results regarding the role of social support in behaviour change may be in part explained by personality traits such as communion.

Doing marriage and parenthood: The division of household labour across two life course events

The current study is a longitudinal investigation into changes in the division of household labour across transitions to marriage and parenthood in the UK. Previous research has noted a more traditional division of household labour, with women performing the majority of housework, amongst spouses and couples with children. However, the bulk of this work has been cross-sectional in nature. The few longitudinal studies that have been carried out have been rather ambiguous about the effect of marriage and parenthood on the division of housework. Theoretically, this study draws on gender construction theory. The key premise of this theory is that gender is something that is performed and created in interaction, and, as a result, something fluid and flexible rather than fixed and stable. The idea that couples ‘do gender’ through housework has been a major theoretical breakthrough. Gender-neutral explanations of the division of household labour, positing rational acting individuals, have failed to explicate why women continue to perform an unequal share of housework, regardless of socio-economic status. Contrastingly, gender construction theory situates gender as the key process in dividing household labour. By performing and avoiding certain housework chores, couples fulfill social norms of what it means to be a man and a woman although, given the emphasis on human agency in producing and contesting gender, couples are able to negotiate alternative gender roles which, in turn, feed back into the structure of social norms in an ever-changing societal landscape. This study adds extra depth to the doing gender approach by testing whether or not couples negotiate specific conjugal and parent roles in terms of the division of household labour. Both transitions hypothesise a more traditional division of household labour. Data comes from the British Household Panel Survey, a large, nationally representative quantitative survey that has been carried out annually since 1991. Here, data tracks the same 776 couples at two separate time points – 1996 and 2005. OLS regression is used to test whether or not transitions to marriage and parenthood have a significant impact on the division of household labour whilst controlling for host of relevant socio-economic factors. Results indicate that marriage has no significant effect on how couples partition housework. Those couples making the transition from cohabitation to marriage do not show significant changes in housework arrangements from those couples who remain cohabiting in both waves. On the other hand, becoming parents does lead to a more traditional division of household labour whilst controlling for socio-economic factors which accompany the move to parenthood. There is then some evidence that couples use the site of household labour to ‘do parenthood’ and generate identities which both use and inform socially prescribed notions of what it means to be a mother and a father. Support for socio-economic explanations of the division of household labour was mixed although it remains clear that they, alone, cannot explain how households divide housework.

Conflits de norms de justice distributive dans les fusions entre égaux Le cas de BioM.rieux-Pierre Fabre

Les strictes fusions entre égaux constituent un phénomène très rare. Pourtant, de nombreux dirigeants communiquent sur l’aspect égalitaire des fusions et acquisitions qu’ils conçoivent. Dans cet article, les auteurs expliquent pourquoi les dirigeants <> leurs F&A en <> ; montrent en quoi le postulat égalitaire initial accroît la probabilité de conflits entre deux normes de justice distributive pourtant compl.mentaires : l’égalité et l’équité ; et illustrent leurs propos avec un cas spectaculaire : la fusion égalitaire, puis la separation des entreprises BioMérieux et Pierre Fabre. Paradoxalement, la simple formulation en termes égalitaire des F&A favorise la diffusion de sentiments d’injustice distributive, qui nuit in fine à la performance de l’opération.