Power and Distribution Network Structure in the People's Republic of China - The Case of an Inland City in Transition

The aim of the current study is to examine the influence of the channel external environment on power, and the effect of power on the distribution network structure within the People’s Republic of China. Throughout the study a dual research process was applied. The theory was constructed by elaborating the main theoretical premises of the study, the channel power theories, the political economy framework and the distribution network structure, but these marketing channel concepts were expanded with other perspectives from other disciplines. The main method applied was a survey conducted among 164 Chinese retailers, complemented by interviews, photographs, observations and census data from the field. This multi-method approach enabled not only to validate and triangulate the quantitative results, but to uncover serendipitous findings as well. The theoretical contribution of the current study to the theory of marketing channels power is the different view it takes on power. First, earlier power studies have taken the producer perspective, whereas the current study also includes a distributor perspective to the discussion. Second, many power studies have dealt with strongly dependent relationships, whereas the current study examines loosely dependent relationships. Power is dependent on unequal distribution of resources rather than based on high dependency. The benefit of this view is in realising that power resources and power strategies are separate concepts. The empirical material of the current study confirmed that at least some resources were significantly related to power strategies. The study showed that the dimension resources composed of technology, know-how and knowledge, managerial freedom and reputation was significantly related to non-coercive power. Third, the notion of different outcomes of power is a contribution of this study to the channels power theory even though not confirmed by the empirical results. Fourth, it was proposed that channel external environment other than the resources would also contribute to the channel power. These propositions were partially supported thus providing only partial contribution to the channel power theory. Finally, power was equally distributed among the different types of actors. The findings from the qualitative data suggest that different types of retailers can be classified according to the meaning the actors put into their business. Some are more business oriented, for others retailing is the only way to earn a living. The findings also suggest that in some actors both retailing and wholesaling functions emerge, and this has implications for the marketing channels structure.

Seasonal fluctuations in blue-green algae, especially in heterocystous species in polluted coastal waters off Helsinki city, in the northern part of the Gulf of Finland

Tiivistelmä

"Four Ways of Writing the City" : St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

The present study discusses the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky's verse works. The chosen approach to the evolving im-age of the city in Brodsky's poetry is through four metaphors: St. Petersburg as "the common place" of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as "Paradise and/or Hell", St. Petersburg as "a Utopian City" and St. Petersburg as "a Void". This examination of the city-image focusses on the aspects of space and time as basic categories underlying the poet's poetic world view. The method used is close reading, with an emphasis on semantical interpretation. The material consists of eighteen poems dating from 1958 to 1994. Apart from investigating the spatio-temporal features, the study focusses on exposing and analysing the allusions in the scrutinised works to other texts from Russian and Western belles lettres. Terminology (introduced by Bakhtin and Yury Lotman, among others) concerning the poetics of space in literature is employed in the present study. Conceptions originating from the paradigm of possible worlds are also used in elucidating the position of fictional and actual chronotopes and heroes in Brodsky's poetry. Brodsky's image of his native city is imbued with intertextual linkings. Through reminiscences of the "Divine Comedy" and Russian modernists, the city is paralleled with Dante's "lost and accursed" Florence, as well as with the lost St. Petersburg of Mandel'shtam and Akhmatova. His city-image is related to the Petersburg myth in Russian literature through their common themes of death and separation as well as through the merging of actual realia with the fictional worlds of the Petersburg Text. In his later poems, when his view of the city is that of an exiled poet, the city begins to lose its actual world referents, turning into a mental realm which is no longer connected to any particular geographical location or historical time. It is placed outside time. The native city as the homeland in its entirety is replaced by another existence created in language.

Focus on Form : J. J. Tikkanen, Giotto and Art Research in the 19th Century

My doctoral dissertation is on Johan Jakob Tikkanen (1857 1930), the first professor of art history in Finland, and his significance and methods in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century European art history. Tikkanen was one of the pioneering scholars in the field of medieval art research, and, along with Anton Springer, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aloïs Riegl, Adolfo Venturi, Franz Wickhoff, Julius von Schlosser, Aby Warburg, Emile Mâle and others, one of the scholars who defined art history as an independent academic discipline. Tikkanen s scholarly interests and his methods resemble those of many formalistically oriented German and Austrian art historians of his time. He became well known throughout Europe, mainly for his studies on illustrated medieval manuscripts. Tikkanen s dissertation, Der Malerische Styl Giotto s Versuch zu einer Characteristik Desselben, from 1884 was regarded in its day as the best form-analytical study on the painter. It has a central position in the present thesis, as it already included nearly all the methods that Tikkanen used and elaborated upon throughout his career. Giotto also gives a good perspective for comparing Tikkanen s ideas with a long art-historical tradition. Tikkanen was profoundly interested in artistic creativity. In his own words, he wanted to study das künstlerische Können , artistic ability, instead of das künstlerische Wollen or artistic will, which was an important theoretical issue in art history in the late 19th century. This starting point led him to the history of style and iconographical research. Along with the Danish art historian, Julius Lange, he was one of the first scholars who began to study the meaning of gestures and postures in art. In my dissertation I have emphasized the importance of Tikkanen s personal art education. I regard it as having influenced both his scholarly argumentation and his working methods. I have also written a short overview of the situation of art history in Finland and in Northern Countries before Tikkanen s time in order to give an idea of his scientific background. My thesis is a critical and historiographical study on J. J. Tikkanen s role in the development of art history and its methodology.

At the Limits of Presentation : Coming-into-Presence and its Aesthetic Relevance in Jean-Luc Nancy's Philosophy

This study investigates the significance of art in Jean-Luc Nancy s philosophy. I argue that the notion of art contributes to some of Nancy s central ontological ideas. Therefore, I consider art s importance in its own right whether art does have ontological significance, and if so, how one should describe this with respect to the theme of presentation. According to my central argument, with his thinking on art Nancy attempts to give one viewpoint to what is called the metaphysics of presence and to its deconstruction. On which grounds, as I propose, may one say that art is not reducible to philosophy? The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part, Presentation as a Philosophical Theme, is a historical genesis of the central concepts associated with the birth of presentation in Nancy s philosophy. I examine this from the viewpoint of the differentiation between the ontological notions of presentation and representation by concentrating on the influence of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, as well as of Hegel and Kant. I give an overview of the way in which being or sense for Nancy is to be described as a coming-into-presence or presentation . Therefore, being takes place in its singular plurality. I argue that Nancy redevelops Heidegger s account of being in two principal ways: first, in rethinking the ontico-ontological difference, and secondly, by striving to radicalize the Heideggerian concept of Mitsein, being-with . I equally wish to show the importance of Derrida s notion of différance and its inherence in Nancy s questioning of being that rests on the unfoundedness of existence. The second part, From Ontology to Art, draws on the importance of art and the aesthetic. If, in Nancy, the question of art touches upon its own limit as the limit of nothingness, how is art able to open its own strangeness and our exposure to this strangeness? My aim is to investigate how Nancy s thinking on art finds its place within the conceptual realm of its inherent difference and interval. My central concern is the thought of originary ungroundedness and the plurality of art and of the arts. As for the question of the difference between art and philosophy, I wish to show that what differentiates art from thought is the fact that art exposes what is obvious but not apparent, if apparent is understood in the sense of givenness. As for art s ability to deconstruct Nancy s ontological notions, I suggest that in question in art is its original heterogeneity and diversity. Art is a matter of differing art occurs singularly, as a local difference. With this in mind, I point out that in reflecting on art in terms of spacing and interval, as a thinker of difference Nancy comes closer to Derrida and his idea of différance than to the structure of Heidegger s ontological difference.

Teollisuuden ja yhteiskunnan palveluksessa : Arkkitehti Bertel Liljequist (1885 - 1954) tuotantolaitosten suunnittelijana maailmansotien välisenä aikana

My thesis concerns the plans drawn up by architect Bertel Liljequist (1885 1954) for an industrial corporation and a city in Finland during the interwar years. These were two quite different clients: the Kymi Company operating in Kuusankoski and the City of Helsinki. My study includes the micro-examination of the wider social issues involved. That the industrial community and factories in Kuusankoski be constructed correctly in a way supporting corporate strategy was of primary importance for the company s operations. Through the planning process for Helsinki s abattoirs, I show how a city dealt with the twin problems of hygiene and increasing demand for food resulting from a growth in population. I clarify how society and its economic, political and class structures affected the practice of architecture and its expression in the built environment. I analyse how the different backgrounds and starting points of the clients affected the construction projects under study and architect Bertel Liljequist s work. In studying Liljequist as an industrial designer, I have considered it vital to ascertain the client s intentions and objectives within the framework of the prevailing social situation. I examine the meanings the client wished the architecture to express and also to communicate to those working in the factory and the area as well as to the workers living on company land. The social outlook of the owners and management of Kymi Company implicitly affected the appearance of the factory. A brick fairface for the factories was a safe and natural material at the beginning of the 1920s when taking into consideration the events of the 1918 Civil War. To have built a White factory in the style of a defence building would have been provocative. Outside the factory gates, however, the company supported White architecture. The company used the factory buildings to manifest its power and the dwellings to bind the workers and make them loyal to the company. Architecture was thus one way in which the company manifested its position as the higher and undisputed authority. The role of the City of Helsinki within the planning process was for its officials to provide expert opinions but also to arrange study trips for the architect and the abattoir s general manager. The city also decided on the standard of the design. The city s responsibility for the health of its inhabitants and the requirements of modern meat production can be seen in the minimal architecture and clear functionality of the plant. The architecture left no doubt about the trustworthiness of the modern city. Translation: Michael Wynne-Ellis

La modernización entre cafetales : San José, Costa Rica, 1880-1930

This work examines the urban modernization of San José, Costa Rica, between 1880 and 1930, using a cultural approach to trace the emergence of the bourgeois city in a small Central American capital, within the context of order and progress. As proposed by Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells and Edward Soja, space is given its rightful place as protagonist. The city, subject of this study, is explored as a seat of social power and as the embodiment of a cultural transformation that took shape in that space, a transformation spearheaded by the dominant social group, the Liberal elite. An analysis of the product built environment allows us to understand why the city grew in a determined manner: how the urban space became organized and how its infrastructure and services distributed. Although the emphasis is on the Liberal heyday from 1880-1930, this study also examines the history of the city since its origins in the late colonial period through its consolidation as a capital during the independent era, in order to characterize the nineteenth century colonial city that prevailed up to 1890 s. A diverse array of primary sources including official acts, memoirs, newspaper sources, maps and plans, photographs, and travelogues are used to study the initial phase of San Jose s urban growth. The investigation places the first period of modern urban growth at the turn of the nineteenth century within the prevailing ideological and political context of Positivism and Liberalism. The ideas of the city s elite regarding progress were translated into and reflected in the physical transformation of the city and in the social construction of space. Not only the transformations but also the limits and contradictions of the process of urban change are examined. At the same time, the reorganization of the city s physical space and the beginnings of the ensanche are studied. Hygiene as an engine of urban renovation is explored by studying the period s new public infrastructure (including pipelines, sewer systems, and the use of asphalt pavement) as part of the Saneamiento of San José. The modernization of public space is analyzed through a study of the first parks, boulevards and monuments and the emergence of a new urban culture prominently displayed in these green spaces. Parks and boulevards were new public and secular places of power within the modern city, used by the elite to display and educate the urban population into the new civic and secular traditions. The study goes on to explore the idealized image of the modern city through an analysis of European and North American travelogues and photography. The new esthetic of theatrical-spectacular representation of the modern city constructed a visual guide of how to understand and come to know the city. A partial and selective image of generalized urban change presented only the bourgeois facade and excluded everything that challenged the idea of progress. The enduring patterns of spatial and symbolic exclusion built into Costa Rica s capital city at the dawn of the twentieth century shed important light on the long-term political social and cultural processes that have created the troubled urban landscapes of contemporary Latin America.

Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia: Joseph Brodsky and Travel Writing

Joseph Brodsky, one of the most influential Russian intellectuals of the late Soviet period, was born in Leningrad in 1940, emigrated to the United States in 1972, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and died in New York City in 1996. Brodsky was one of the leading public figures of Soviet emigration in the Cold War period, and his role as a model for the constructing of Russian cultural identities in the last years of the Soviet Union was, and still is, extremely important. One of Joseph Brodsky’s great contributions to Russian culture of the latter half of the twentieth century is the wide geographical scope of his poetic and prose works. Brodsky was not a travel writer, but he was a traveling writer who wrote a considerable number of poems and essays which relate to his trips and travels in the Soviet empire and outside it. Travel writing offered for Brodsky a discursive space for negotiating his own transculturation, while it also offered him a discursive space for making powerful statements about displacement, culture, history and geography, time and space—all major themes of his poetry. In this study of Joseph Brodsky’s travel writing I focus on his travel texts in poetry and prose, which relate to his post-1972 trips to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Venice. Questions of empire, tourism, and nostalgia are foregrounded in one way or another in Brodsky’s travel writing performed in emigration. I explore these concepts through the study of tropes, strategies of identity construction, and the politics of representation. The theoretical premises of my work draw on the literary and cultural criticism which has evolved around the study of travel and travel writing in recent years. These approaches have gained much from the scholarly experience provided by postcolonial critique. Shifting the focus away from the concept of exile, the traditional framework for scholarly discussions of Brodsky’s works, I propose to review Brodsky’s travel poetry and prose as a response not only to his exilic condition but to the postmodern and postcolonial landscape, which initially shaped the writing of these texts. Discussing Brodsky’s travel writing in this context offers previously unexplored perspectives for analyzing the geopolitical, philosophical, and linguistic premises of his poetic imagination. By situating Brodsky’s travel writing in the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial postmodernity, I attempt to show how Brodsky’s engagement with his contemporary cultural practices in the West was incorporated into his Russian-language travel poetry and prose and how this engagement thus contributed to these texts’ status as exceptional and unique literary events within late Soviet Russian cultural practices.

Transition to parenthood after assisted reproductive treatment: Follow-up study of singleton pregnancies

Infertility treatments are relatively easily available in most Western countries today, but the psychological consequences of these high-tech treatments have scarcely been addressed. The purpose of this controlled longitudinal study was to explore the early environment of the infant born by assisted reproductive treatment (ART). We focused on the parents mental well-being, marital relations and experience of parenting. In addition to this, we assessed parent child interaction and parents mental representations of their child after long-standing infertility and several unsuccessful ART attempts. The subjects were infertile couples who achieved a singleton pregnancy by in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The control group comprised of spontaneously conceiving couples with singleton pregnancies. ART women showed fewer depressive symptoms than controls during pregnancy and after delivery, but the difference vanished by the end of the child s first year. ART men consistently had lower levels of anxiety symptoms, sleeping difficulties, and social dysfunction than control men. Control women experienced a decrease in dyadic consensus during the child s first year, which did not happen among ART women. After the child was born, ART men reported a higher level of sexual affection compared with control men. Psychic symptoms and stressful life events were differently related to marital relations in ART and control groups. The parenting experiences of ART mothers were in general at a higher level, compared with controls, and they changed in a positive direction during the child s first year. Fathering experiences were at the same level in both groups, and they changed positively in both groups by the end of the child s first year. The parenting experiences of ART mothers and fathers were more resilient to certain child-related stressors than those of control group. Both mothers and fathers with long-term infertility showed more sensitive behaviour with their child in toddler-age than in infancy. Correspondingly, children s cooperation increased. Mothers often mentioned a fear of miscarriage and difficulty in creating representations of the child during pregnancy. Descriptions of the infants were mainly rich, vivid and loaded with positive features. In conclusion, ART parents in general seem to adapt well to the transition to parenthood. Former infertility and ART do not seem to constitute a risk for parents mental health, marital relations or experience of parenting. Even longstanding infertility with several unsuccessful treatment attempts did not create a risk as regards parenting behaviour or parents mental representations of their child. In this group, however, women were found to have fear for losing the child and difficulty in creating representations of the child during pregnancy, which in some cases may indicate need for psychosocial support. Even though our results are encouraging, infertility and infertility treatments are generally considered as a stressful experience. It is a challenge for health authorities to recognize those couples who need professional help to overcome the distressing experiences of infertility and ART.

Tsoi Yuen Resistance and Post-80s Generation: A new wave of domestic social movement

Hong Kong was once a British colony and has been under the sovereignty of People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1997. However, some of the unjust practices and colonial legacies are infiltrated into the development ideology as well as the social structures. The construction of intercity express railway project announced in 2008 causing the demolishment of Tsoi Yuen Tsuen, a “non-indigenous” agricultural village in Hong Kong, was one of the current examples. Tsoi Yuen village was established under the former colonial sovereignty sixty years ago. Approximately 450 populations were affected that they had to relocate their homeland involuntarily. However, these villagers were very attached to their homelands and were unwilling to move, and meanwhile they found that they were absent in the government’s consultation and decision-making process. Soon they began their resistance and demanded for “No Move! No Demolish!”. Their movement was strongly supported by a group of “Post-80s generation” and turned into the most important social movement of the city in recent years. In fact, demolition of Tsoi Yuen Village for city development is not an isolated case in the city. Meanwhile the situation is getting worse in Mainland China. I chose the case study of Tsoi Yuen Resistance from 2008 to 2011 for revelation of the complicated colonial history and postcolonial era of Hong Kong. I focused on discussing the Tsoi Yuen Resistance and the Post-80s movement, and how they have exposed the tension between top-down urban planning and development and public movements fighting for a more democratic process in choosing their way of living. Through the study of a village movement which as well as the rationale behind the Post-80s’ support, I hoped to illustrate how this movement has awaken a different sense of living for the new generations in the midst of the high-sounding urban development. It is an opportunity to examine Hong Kong’s colonial epoch in a different perspective: through studying the Tsoi Yuen Village, let them (subalterns) speak for themselves. Furthermore, the significance of this resistance, taking place eleven years after the handover to the PRC, is an important fact that I shall not miss in later discussion. Last but not least, during the resistance, advanced technology and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, iPhone were used by Post 80s generation to spread the latest information in order to attract public’s concern and participation. Therefore, apart from studying Tsoi Yuen Resistance as a local social movement, I also regard it as a part of the global movement in perusing ecological lifestyle and civil society. How Post 80s’ generation manipulates the global idea in a local context will also be examined.

Tiedostumaton nykytaiteessa : Katse, ääni ja aika vuosituhannen taitteen suomalaisessa nykytaiteessa

Leevi Haapala explores moving image works, sculptures and installations from a psychoanalytic perspective in his study The Unconscious in Contemporary Art. The Gaze, Voice and Time in Finnish Contemporary Art at the Turn of the Millennium . The artists included in the study are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Hans-Christian Berg, Markus Copper, Liisa Lounila and Salla Tykkä. The theoretical framework includes different psychoanalytic readings of the concepts of the gaze, voice and temporality. The installations are based on spatiality and temporality, and their detailed reading emphasizes the medium-specific features of the works as well as their fragmentary nature, heterogeneity and affectivity. The study is cross-disciplinary in that it connects perspectives from the visual culture, new art history and theory to the interpretation of contemporary art. The most important concepts from psychoanalysis, affect theory and trauma discourse used in the study include affect, object a (objet petit a) as articulated by Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud s uncanny (das Unheimliche) and trauma. Das Unheimliche has been translated as uncanny in art history under the influence of Rosalind Krauss. The object of the study, the unconscious in contemporary art, is approached through these concepts. The study focuses on Lacan s additions to the list of partial drives: the gaze and voice as scopic and invocative drives and their interpretations in the studies of the moving image. The texts by the American film theorist and art historian Kaja Silverman are in crucial role. The study locates contemporary art as part of trauma culture, which has a tendency to define individual and historical experiences through trauma. Some of the art works point towards trauma, which may appear as a theoretic or fictitious construction. The study presents a comprehensive collection of different kinds of trauma discourse in the field of art research through the texts of Hal Foster, Cathy Caruth, Ruth Leys and Shoshana Felman. The study connects trauma theory with the theoretical analysis of the interference and discontinuity of the moving image in the readings by Susan Buck-Morss, Mary Ann Doane and Peter Osborn among others. The analysis emphasizes different ways of seeing and multisensoriality in the reception of contemporary art. With their reflections and inverse projections, the surprising mechanisms of Hans-Christian Berg s sculptures are connected with Lacan s views on the early mirroring and imitation attempts of the individual s body image. Salla Tykkä s film trilogy Cave invites one to contemplate the Lacanian theory of the gaze in relation to the experiences of being seen. The three oceanic sculpture installations by Markus Copper are studied through the vocality they create, often through an aggressive way of acting, as well as from the point of view of the functioning of an invocative drive. The study compares the work of fiction and Freud s texts on paranoia and psychosis to Eija-Liisa Ahtila s manuscripts and moving image installations about the same topic. The cinematic time in Liisa Lounila s time-slice video installations is approached through the theoretical study of the unconscious temporal structure. The viewer of the moving image is inside the work in an in-between state: in a space produced by the contents of the work and its technology. The installations of the moving image enable us to inhabit different kinds of virtual bodies or spaces, which do not correspond with our everyday experiences. Nevertheless, the works of art often try to deconstruct the identification to what has been shown on screen. This way, the viewer s attention can be fixed on his own unconscious experiences in parallel with the work s deconstructed nature as representation. The study shows that contemporary art is a central cultural practice, which allows us to discuss the unconscious in a meaningful way. The study suggests that the agency that is discursively diffuse and consists of several different praxes should be called the unconscious. The emergence of the unconscious can happen in two areas: in contemporary art through different senses and discursive elements, and in the study of contemporary art, which, being a linguistic activity is sensitive to the movements of the unconscious. One of the missions of art research is to build different kinds of articulated constructs and to open an interpretative space for the nature of art as an event.