The Culture of Women's Housework : A Case Study of Bihar, India

This study examines gendered housework in India, particularly in Bihar. The perspective adopted in the study was in part derived from the data but also from sociological literature published both in Western countries and in India. The primary attention is therefore paid to modern and traditional aspects in housework. The aim is not to compare Indian practices to those of Western societies, but rather to use Western studies as a fruitful reference point. In that light, Indian housework practices appear to be traditional. Consequently, traditions are given a more significant role than is usually the case in studies on gendered housework, particularly in Western countries. The study approaches the topic mainly from the socio-cultural perspective; this provides the best means to understand the persistence of traditional habits in India. To get a wide enough picture of the division of labour, three methods were applied in the study: detailed time-use data, questionnaire and theme interviews. The data were collected in 1988 in two districts of Bihar, one rural and the other urban. The different data complement each other well but also bring to light contradictory findings: on a general level Biharian people express surprisingly modern views on gender equality but when talking in more detail (theme interviews) the interviewees told about how traditional housework practices still were in 1988. In the analysis of the data set four principal themes are discussed. Responsibility is the concept by which the study aims at understanding the logic of the argumentation on which the persistence of traditional housework practices is grounded. Contrary to the Western style, Biharian respondents appealed not to the principle of choice but to their responsibility to do what has to be done. The power of tradition, the early socialization of children to the traditional division of labour and the elusive nature of modernity are all discussed separately. In addition to the principle of responsibility, housework was also seen as an expression of affection. This was connected to housework in general but also to traditional practices. The purity principle was the third element that made Biharian interviewees favour housework in general, but as in the case of affection it too was interwoven with traditional practices. It seems to be so that if housework is in general preferred, this leads to preferring the traditional division of labour, too. The same came out when examining economic imperatives. However, the arguments concerning them proved to be rational. In analysing them it became clear that the significance of traditions is also much dependent on the economics: as far as the average income in India is very low, the prevalence of traditional practices in housework will continue. However, to make this work, cultural arguments are required: their role is to mediate more smoothly the iron rules of the economy. Key words: family, gendered housework, division of labour, responsibility, family togetherness, emotion, economy of housework, modernity, traditionality

Shooting from the Wild Zone : A Study of the Chicana Art Photographers Laura Aguilar, Celia Álvarez Muñoz, Delilah Montoya, and Kathy Vargas

The dissertation analyzes and elaborates upon the changing map of U.S. ethno-racial formation from the vantage point of North American Studies, multi-disciplinary cultural studies, and the criticism of visual culture. The focus is on four contemporary Mexican American (Chicana) women photographers, whose art production is discussed, on the one hand, in the context of the Euro-American history of photographic genres and, on the other hand, in the context of so-called decolonizing cultural and academic discourses produced by Mexican Americans themselves. The manuscript consists of two parts. Part I outlines the theoretical and methodological domain of the study, positioning it in the interstices of American studies, European postmodern criticism, postcolonial feminist theory, and the theories of visual culture, particularly of art photography. In addition, the main issues and paradigms of Chicano Studies (Mexican American ethnic studies) are introduced. Part II consists of seven essays, each of which discusses rather independently a particular photographic work or a series of photographs, formulating and defending arguments about their meaning, position in the history of photographic genres, and their cultural and socio-political significance. The study closes with a discussion about ethno-racial identity formation and the role of Chicana photography therein - in embodying and reproducing new subjectivities, alternative categories of knowledge, and open ended historical narratives. It is argued that, symbolically, the "Wild Zone" of gendered and race-specific knowledge becomes associated with the body of the mother, a recurrent image in Chicana art works under discussion. Embedded in this image, the construction of an alternative notion of a family thus articulates the parameters of a matrifocal ethno-racial community unified by the proliferation of differences rather than by conformities typical of nationalistic ideologies. While focusing on art photography, the study as a whole simultaneously constructs, from a European vantage point, a "thick" description of Mexican American history, identities, communities, cultural practices, and self-representations about which very little is known in Finland.

Grammar and disciplinary culture : a corpus-based study

The present study provides a usage-based account of how three grammatical structures, declarative content clauses, interrogative content clause and as-predicative constructions, are used in academic research articles. These structures may be used in both knowledge claims and citations, and they often express evaluative meanings. Using the methodology of quantitative corpus linguistics, I investigate how the culture of the academic discipline influences the way in which these constructions are used in research articles. The study compares the rates of occurrence of these grammatical structures and investigates their co-occurrence patterns in articles representing four different disciplines (medicine, physics, law, and literary criticism). The analysis is based on a purpose-built 2-million-word corpus, which has been part-of-speech tagged. The analysis demonstrates that the use of these grammatical structures varies between disciplines, and further shows that the differences observed in the corpus data are linked with differences in the nature of knowledge and the patterns of enquiry. The constructions in focus tend to be more frequently used in the soft disciplines, law and literary criticism, where their co-occurrence patterns are also more varied. This reflects both the greater variety of topics discussed in these disciplines, and the higher frequency of references to statements made by other researchers. Knowledge-building in the soft fields normally requires a careful contextualisation of the arguments, giving rise to statements reporting earlier research employing the constructions in focus. In contrast, knowledgebuilding in the hard fields is typically a cumulative process, based on agreed-upon methods of analysis. This characteristic is reflected in the structure and contents of research reports, which offer fewer opportunities for using these constructions.

Playing "Nordic": The Women of Niskavuori, Agri/Culture, and Imagining Finland on the Third Reich Stage

The theatrical censorship of the Third Reich considered the playwright's race and politics alongside the content of the drama. Given the political stigma of its "leftist" author, it is rather surprising that Hella Wuolijoki's Niskavuoren naiset opened in 1938 at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. The play ran for fourteen performances before being closed by the Reichsdramaturgie, apparently at the instigation of Finnish critics. Yet this was not the end of the play's or its author's fortunes in the Third Reich, as the possibility of staging the play was raised several times over the next four years, coming to a close in 1942. Playing "Nordic" examines the ideological and theatrical background of this extended "cultural performance," as a means to reopening and reconstructing the work of the 1938 Die Frauen auf Niskavuori. Written by a Finnish, northern, "Nordic" author, and preoccupied with the dynamics of rural culture in an increasingly urbanized world, Niskavuoren naiset was understood in the Third Reich to illustrate and reinforce the racial, agri/cultural themes of Blut und Boden ("veri ja maa"). Playing "Nordic" examines this thematic relationship in three phases. The first phase uses archival materials to investigate the Reichsdramaturgie's understanding of the play and its author, and its ongoing discussion of Wuolijoki from 1937 to 1942. Play evaluator Sigmund Graff's description of Niskavuoren naiset as hamsunartig, or "Hamsun-esque," inspires the second phase of the dissertation, which first elaborates the meanings of Blut und Boden through a reading of contemporary "racial" theory and anthropology, and then assesses the representation of Finland within this discourse, one of the dominant cultural paradigms of the Third Reich. Imaging Finland for German audiences, the play stood among analogous, continued efforts to represent Finland and the rural life in the Third Reich, colored by Blut und Boden: art and agricultural exhibitions, essays and propaganda literature, mass demonstrations of the peasantry. This wider framework for the performance of "Finland" materializes the abstract or theoretical program of Blut und Boden in its everyday performed meanings; as such it provides the essential background for reading the Hamburg production of Die Frauen auf Niskavuori, which sustains the third and final phase. The German translation and the Hamburg photographic record are compared with the Helsinki premiere to assess the impact of Blut und Boden on the representation of Wuolijoki's play in the Third Reich. The journalistic critical response illuminates the effect that the dramatic complex of rural and racial values - generically identified as Bauerndrama in the Third Reich - had on the reception of the play; at the same time, both visual and critical documents also suggest possible moments of theatrical dissent in the Hamburg production. Playing "Nordic" undertakes a documentary and cultural reading of the changing theatrical meanings of Wuolijoki's Niskavuoren naiset as it crossed the frontier from Finland to the stage of the Third Reich. It also provides a model for the ways theatrical signification operates within a network of cultural and ideological meanings, suggesting the ideological work of theatrical production depends on, reinforces, and contests that tissue of values. Although Finnish criticism of Niskavuoren naiset has assumed the play's Blut und Boden resonance contributed to Wuolijoki's success in the Third Reich, this study shows a considerably more complex situation. This revealing production dramatizes the changing uses of plays in a politicized national and transnational context. As part of the framing of "Nordic" identity on the wider stage of the Third Reich, Die Frauen auf Niskavuori exemplifies the conjunction of concurrent - sometimes independent, sometimes interlocking - "racial" and national ideologies.

Intercultural Learning and Hybridity in the Culture Laboratory

The number of immigrant students in vocational education and training is steadily increasing in Finland. This poses challenges for teachers and schools. This research focuses on emerging questions of intercultural learning in the context of immigrant training, and on a method the Culture Laboratory that was developed in an attempt to respond to the challenges. The main methodological and theoretical framework lies in cultural-historical activity theory, developmental work research, and in the concepts of the intercultural and hybridity. The empirical material consists of videotaped recordings of discussions in the Culture Laboratory. The five main research questions focused on the strengths and limitations of the Culture Laboratory as a tool for intercultural learning, the significance of disturbances in it, the potential of suggestions for intercultural learning, paper as a mediating artifact , and the concept of intercultural space. The findings showed that the Culture Laboratory offered a solid background for developing intercultural learning. The disturbances manifested revealed a multitude of scripts and activities. It was also suggested that the structure of expansive learning could start from externalization instead of internalization. The suggestions the participants made opened up a hybrid learning space for intercultural development, and offered a good springboard for new ideas. Learning in Paperland posed both challenges and opportunities for immigrant students, and different paper trails emerged. Intercultural space in the Culture Laboratory was a developmental zone in which a hybrid process of observing, comparing, and creating took place. Key words: intercultural learning, immigrant training, cultural-historical activity theory, developmental work research,

Assessing organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems : Methodological evidence from studies in nuclear power plant maintenance organizations

Failures in industrial organizations dealing with hazardous technologies can have widespread consequences for the safety of the workers and the general population. Psychology can have a major role in contributing to the safe and reliable operation of these technologies. Most current models of safety management in complex sociotechnical systems such as nuclear power plant maintenance are either non-contextual or based on an overly-rational image of an organization. Thus, they fail to grasp either the actual requirements of the work or the socially-constructed nature of the work in question. The general aim of the present study is to develop and test a methodology for contextual assessment of organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. This is done by demonstrating the findings that the application of the emerging methodology produces in the domain of maintenance of a nuclear power plant (NPP). The concepts of organizational culture and organizational core task (OCT) are operationalized and tested in the case studies. We argue that when the complexity of the work, technology and social environment is increased, the significance of the most implicit features of organizational culture as a means of coordinating the work and achieving safety and effectiveness of the activities also increases. For this reason a cultural perspective could provide additional insight into the problem of safety management. The present study aims to determine; (1) the elements of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems; (2) the demands the maintenance task sets for the organizational culture; (3) how the current organizational culture at the case organizations supports the perception and fulfilment of the demands of the maintenance work; (4) the similarities and differences between the maintenance cultures at the case organizations, and (5) the necessary assessment of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. Three in-depth case studies were carried out at the maintenance units of three Nordic NPPs. The case studies employed an iterative and multimethod research strategy. The following methods were used: interviews, CULTURE-survey, seminars, document analysis and group work. Both cultural analysis and task modelling were carried out. The results indicate that organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems can be characterised according to three qualitatively different elements: structure, internal integration and conceptions. All three of these elements of culture as well as their interrelations have to be considered in organizational assessments or important aspects of the organizational dynamics will be overlooked. On the basis of OCT modelling, the maintenance core task was defined as balancing between three critical demands: anticipating the condition of the plant and conducting preventive maintenance accordingly, reacting to unexpected technical faults and monitoring and reflecting on the effects of maintenance actions and the condition of the plant. The results indicate that safety was highly valued at all three plants, and in that sense they all had strong safety cultures. In other respects the cultural features were quite different, and thus the culturally-accepted means of maintaining high safety also differed. The handicraft nature of maintenance work was emphasised as a source of identity at the NPPs. Overall, the importance of safety was taken for granted, but the cultural norms concerning the appropriate means to guarantee it were little reflected. A sense of control, personal responsibility and organizational changes emerged as challenging issues at all the plants. The study shows that in complex sociotechnical systems it is both necessary and possible to analyse the safety and effectiveness of the organizational culture. Safety in complex sociotechnical systems cannot be understood or managed without understanding the demands of the organizational core task and managing the dynamics between the three elements of the organizational culture.

Käsityön sukupuolirajat ja rajojen rikkojat

Gender-specific division of crafts is significant in Finnish culture. The aim of craft education in comprehensive schools has been to unify education for both girls and boys during the thirty years of modern comprehensive education, but in reality crafts has diverged into two different subjects for girls and boys. Craft education has taught different things: girls have been taught things that are feminine and included in private life, while the boys’ education has been mostly directed at public and working life. At the same time girls and boys have been educated and socialized towards a certain womanhood and manhood. Craft as a hobby is also very gender divided but there are some clues that tell of the changing positions on the border areas. The starting point of this study has been the assumption that gender structures within crafts can be transformed. But it is important to know the background that creates and maintains these constructions and the expedients for dismantling the structures. The main purpose of this study is to find out how the gender-specific crafts are changing and how they are still maintained. My study analyses why men and woman have chosen untypical hobbies and through that I shall discuss how gendered structures can be dismantled. In the autumn of 2008 I interviewed borderline breakers within crafts: men who had an interest in textile crafts and women who had an interest in technical work. Informants of this study were 20-31 years old and they studied behavioural sciences. The data was collected in 12 theme interviews and document analysis was used to study the results. The dismantling of the gender divide in crafts is slow, but new borders are drawn all the time. The informants have started textile and technical handicrafts soon after comprehensive school or during their studies at university. A main motivation for the new hobby has been the possibility to study for a teacher’s degree with technology or textile studies as a main or a secondary subject. Gender-specific division of crafts is constructed early in childhood as different skills are taught to girls and boys. School teaches gender specific skills and the different skills of girls and boys have not been taken into account. Instead, it has been assumed through comprehensive school that both girls and boys share certain basic skills, and attention has not been paid to the differences between genders. At university the same assumption has still thrived. Skill levels between men and women are substantial and that may have hindered a move by women to technical studies and by men to textile studies. Hence an assumption of naturally gendered crafts has been developed.

Beasts on Fields. Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Nature-Culture Borderlands

Human-wildlife conflicts are today an integral part of the rural development discourse. In this research, the main focus is on the spatial explanation which is not a very common approach in the reviewed literature. My research hypothesis is based on the assumption that human-wildlife conflicts occur when a wild animal crosses a perceived borderline between the nature and culture and enters into the realms of the other. The borderline between nature and culture marks a perceived division of spatial content in our senses of place. The animal subject that crosses this border becomes a subject out of place meaning that the animal is then spatially located in a space where it should not be or where it does not belong according to tradition, custom, rules, law, public opinion, prevailing discourse or some other criteria set by human beings. An appearance of a wild animal in a domesticated space brings an uncontrolled subject into that space where humans have previously commanded total control of all other natural elements. A wild animal out of place may also threaten the biosecurity of the place in question. I carried out a case study in the Liwale district in south-eastern Tanzania to test my hypothesis during June and July 2002. I also collected documents and carried out interviews in Dar es Salaam in 2003. I studied the human-wildlife conflicts in six rural villages, where a total of 183 persons participated in the village meetings. My research methods included semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, questionnaire survey and Q- methodology. The rural communities in the Liwale district have a long-history of co-existing with wildlife and they still have traditional knowledge of wildlife management and hunting. Wildlife conservation through the establishment of game reserves during the colonial era has escalated human-wildlife conflicts in the Liwale district. This study shows that the villagers perceive some wild animals differently in their images of the African countryside than the district and regional level civil servants do. From the small scale subsistence farmers point of views, wild animals continue to challenge the separation of the wild (the forests) and the domestics spaces (the cultivated fields) by moving across the perceived borders in search of food and shelter. As a result, the farmers may loose their crops, livestock or even their own lives in the confrontations of wild animals. Human-wildlife conflicts in the Liwale district are manifold and cannot be explained simply on the basis of attitudes or perceived images of landscapes. However, the spatial explanation of these conflicts provides us some more understanding of why human-wildlife conflicts are so widely found across the world.

Eron aika : Tyttärien kertomuksia ikääntyneen vanhemman kuolemasta

There is a relative absence of sociological and cultural research on how people deal with the death of a family member in the contemporary western societies. Research on this topic has been dominated by the experts of psychology, psychiatry and therapy, who mention the social context only in passing, if at all. This gives an impression that the white westerners bereavement experience is a purely psychological phenomenon, an inner journey, which follows a natural, universal path. Yet, as Tony Walter (1999) states, ignoring the influence of culture not only impoverishes the understanding of those work with bereaved people, but it also impoverishes sociology and cultural studies by excluding from their domain a key social phenomenon. This study explores the cultural dimension of grief through narratives told by fifteen of recently bereaved Finnish women. Focussing on one sex only, the study rests on the assumption of the gendered nature of bereavement experience. However, the aim of the study is not to pinpoint the gender differences in grief and mourning, but to shed light on women s ways of dealing with the loss of a loved one in a social context. Furthermore, the study focuses on a certain kind of loss: the death of an elderly parent. Due to the growth in the life expectancy rate, this has presumably become the most typical type of bereavement in contemporary, ageing societies. Most of population will face the death of a parent as they reach the middle years of the life course. The data of this study is gathered with interviews, in which the interviewees were invited to tell a narrative of their bereavement. Narrative constitutes a central concept in this study. It refers to a particular form of talk, which is organised around consequential events. But there are also other, deeper layers that have been added to this concept. Several scholars see narratives as the most important way in which we make sense of experience. Personal narratives provide rich material for mapping the interconnections between individual and culture. As a form of thought, narrative marries singular circumstances with shared expectations and understandings that are learned through participation in a specific culture (Garro & Mattingly 2000). This study attempts to capture the cultural dimension of narrative with the concept of script , which originates in cognitive science (Schank & Abelson 1977) and has recently been adopted to narratology (Herman 2002). Script refers to a data structure that informs how events usually unfold in certain situations. Scripts are used in interpreting events and representing them verbally to others. They are based on dominant forms of knowledge that vary according to time and place. The questions that were posed in this study are the following. What kind of experiences bereaved daughters narrate? What kind of cultural scripts they employ as they attempt to make sense of these experiences? How these scripts are used in their narratives? It became apparent that for the most of the daughters interviewed in this study the single most important part of the bereavement narrative was to form an account of how and why the parent died. They produced lengthy and detailed descriptions of the last stage of a parent s life in contrast with the rest of the interview. These stories took their start from a turn in the parent s physical condition, from which the dying process could in retrospect be seen to have started, and which often took place several years before the death. In addition, daughters also talked about their grief reactions and how they have adjusted to a life without the deceased parent. The ways in which the last stage of life was told reflect not only the characteristic features of late modernity but also processes of marginalisation and exclusion. Revivalist script and medical script, identified by Clive Seale as the dominant, competing models for dying well in the late modern societies, were not widely utilised in the narratives. They could only be applied in situations in which the parent had died from cancer and at somewhat younger age than the average. Death that took place in deep old age was told in a different way. The lack of positive models for narrating this kind of death was acknowledged in the study. This can be seen as a symptom of the societal devaluing of the deaths of older people and it affects also daughters accounts of their grief. Several daughters told about situations in which their loss, although subjectively experienced, was nonetheless denied by other people.

Keho: Omaa sukupuolta koskevan tiedon ja ymmärryksen muotoutumisen perusta transsukupuolisilla

Body: The foundation for the formation of the knowledge and conception of gender identity among the transgendered The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the experiential formation of the knowledge and conception of one's gender and the foundation of that experience. This study is based on qualitative method and phenomenological approach. The research material consists: Herculine Barbin's Herculine Barbin, Christine Jorgensen's Christine Jorgensen. A Personal Autobiography Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw and Deirdre McCloskey's Crossing. A Memoir. The theoretical frame of reference for the study is Michel Henry's phenomenology of the body. The most important relations regarding the formation of the knowledge and conception of gender identity at which the sensing of the body is directed are human being's own subjective, organic and objective bodily form and other people and representatives of institutions. The concept of resistance reveals that gender division and the stereotypes and accountability related to it have dual character in culture. As a resistance they contain the potential for triggering the reflections about one's own gender. As an instrument they may function as means of exercising power and, as such, of monitoring gender normality. According to the research material the sources for the knowledge and conception of gender identity among the transgendered are literature, medical articles and books, internet, clerical and medical professionals, friends and relatives, and the peer group, that is, other transgendered. The transgendered are not only users of gender knowledge, but many of them are also active producers and contributors of gender knowledge and especially of knowledge about transgenderness. The problem is that this knowledge is unevenly distributed in society. The users of gender knowledge are mainly the transgendered, researchers of different disciplines specialized in gender issues, and medical and healthcare professionals specialized in gender adjustments. Therefore not everyone has the sufficient knowledge to support one's own or someone other's life as a gendered being in a society and ability to achieve gender autonomy. The quality of this knowledge is also rather narrow from the gender multiplicity point of view. The feeling of strangeness and the resulting experience of enstrangement have, like stereotypes, dual character in culture. They may be the reason for people's social disadvantage or exclusion, but the experiences may just as well be a resource for people's gender maturity and culture. As a cultural resource in gender issue this would mean innovativity in creating, upholding and changing cultural gender division, stereotypes and accounting customs. A transgendered may then become a liminal that aspires to change the limits related to resistances in society. Transgenderness is not only a medical issue but, first and foremost, an issue bearing upon human situation as a whole, or, in other words, related to the art of life. The subject of gender adjustment treatments is not only gender itself but the art of life as a gendered being. Transgenderness would then require multi-discipline co-operation.