Eläinsuojelu elämänpolitiikkana : Tutkimus eläinasialiikkeestä ja Eläinsuojeluliitto Animalian jäsenistä

Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan perinteiseen, maltilliseen eläinsuojelujärjestöön kuuluvien eläinsuojelijoiden elämänpolitiikkaa ja suomalaista eläinasialiikettä, joka aikaisemmin on hahmotettu lähinnä uuden, radikaalin eläinoikeusaktivismin kautta. Uskontososiologian ja -antropologian alaan sijoittuva tutkimus ottaa osaa sosiologi Anthony Giddensin elämänpolitiikan käsitteestä käytyyn keskusteluun empiirisestä näkökulmasta. Tutkimusongelma on kaksitasoinen.Yksilön tasolla tarkastelu kohdistuu Eläinsuojeluliitto Animaliassa aktiivisesti toimivien eläinsuojelijoiden elämäntapoihin, mielipiteisiin, arvoihin ja ihanteisiin. Liikkeen tasolla tarkastellaan eläinasialiikettä ja sen oletettua jakautumista eläinsuojelu- ja eläinoikeusliikkeisiin. Tutkimuksen taustateorioina ovat Giddensin teoria elämänpolitiikasta sekä filosofi Peter Singerin ja filosofi Tom Reganin teoriat eläinten hyvinvoinnista ja oikeuksista. Suomalaista näkökulmaa eläinasian teoriaan edustavat filosofi Leena Vilkan pohdinnat. Tutkimuksen primääriaineiston muodostavat 12 eläinsuojelijan yksilö- ja ryhmähaastatteluina toteutetut teemahaastattelut sekä 22 eläinsuojelijan lomakekyselynä kerätyt taustatiedot. Sekundääriaineisto koostuu eläinsuojelijoille tehdyistä taustatieto- ja sähköpostihaastatteluista, havainnointiin perustuvasta kenttäpäiväkirjasta, eläinasialiikkeen kirjallisesta materiaalista sekä tutkimusaiheeseen liittyvästä aikaisemmasta tutkimuksesta ja kirjallisuudesta. Tutkimuksen perusteella elämänpolitiikan teoria on käyttökelpoinen arvotutkimuksessa. Eläinsuojelijoiden elämänpolitiikkaa luonnehtivat reflektiivisyys; elämäntavan käyttäminen vaikutuskeinona puoluepolitiikan ohella; yhteiskuntatieteilijä Ronald Inglehartin määrittelyn mukaiset post-materialistiset arvot; tilanne- ja tuotekohtaisesti kontrolloitu tapa kuluttaa; argumentoiva ja vaativa suhtautuminen traditioihin; pyrkimys eroon hierarkioista; paikallisuus toiminnassa ja tavoitteissa; pyrkimys vaikuttaa ihmisten, eläinten ja ympäristön tulevaisuuteen ja kaksijakoinen suhtautuminen asiantuntijoihin. Tutkimuksessa asetetaan kyseenalaiseksi kahden erillisen, suomalaisen eläinasialiikkeen olemassaolo ja osoitetaan, että Suomessa voidaan puhua eläinasialiikkeestä, jossa eri aikakausina, yksilö- ja järjestökohtaisesti, painotetaan aiheittain joko maltillisia tai radikaaleja näkökulmia. Avainsanat: elämänpolitiikka, eläinsuojelu, eläinasialiike, elämäntapa, mielipiteet, arvot, ihanteet

Ikääntyminen maalaiskylässä

Aging in a country village This dissertation examines what kind of environment of aging a small country village is, who elderly villagers are and what kind of everyday life they have. The qualitative material gathered through ethnographic field work at a village situated in Southern Finland consists of a field work diary and 34 interviews of elderly villagers. The dissertation is based on social gerontology and village research. The key concepts are: the environment of aging; locality and local identity; and way of life. The village is examined as a social and physical environment of aging. Difficulties regarding mobility are the biggest challenges for elderly villagers in their everyday life. The social environment of aging is constructed by historical, cultural and local factors. The village community is formed by many small sub-communities. An elderly villager s status in a village community and her/his social competence affect the formation of her/his social network and the quality of her/his environment of aging. The dissertation examines the local identities of older villagers and their relationships to the village. The local identities can be based on the village, memories or on many places, or a place and places may not be of great importance for a person s identity. The local identity of an older villager affects her/his experiences of living in the village and her/his future plans to move away from the village. The everyday life of an older villager is constructed by rhythms, routines and repetitions. However, there are differences between how everyday lives are arranged among elderly villagers, which are explained by the concept of a way of life. Four ways of life were found. Nature and its importance are a background to all four ways of life. A traditional way of life is based on continuity and hard work, a family-oriented way of life on family members and relatives. A mobile way of life is characterized by symbolic and concrete mobility. An original way of life is marked by independent loneliness . In practice, a person s way of life is always constructed by two or many ways of life.

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.

Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality

This is an ethnographic study of the lived worlds of the keepers of small shops in a residential neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. It outlines, discusses, and analyses the categories and conceptualizations of South Korean capitalism at the level of households, neighborhoods, and Korean society. These cultural categories were investigated through the neighborhood shopkeepers practices of work and reciprocal interaction as well as through the shopkeepers articulations of their lived experience. In South Korea, the keepers of small businesses have continued to be a large occupational category despite of societal and economic changes, occupying approximately one fourth of the population in active work force. In spite of that, these people, their livelihoods and their cultural and social worlds have rarely been in the focus of social science inquiry. The ethnographic field research for this study was conducted during a 14-month period between November 1998 and December 1999 and in three subsequent short visits to Korea and to the research neighborhood. The fieldwork was conducted during the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis, colloquially termed at the time as the IMF crisis, which highlighted the social and cultural circumstances of small businesskeeper in a specific way. The livelihoods of small-scale entrepreneurs became even more precarious than before; self-employment became an involuntary choice for many middle-class salaried employees who were laid off; and the cultural categories and concepts of society and economy South Korean capitalism were articulated more sharply than before. This study begins with an overview of the contemporary setting, the Korean society under the socially and economically painful outcomes of the economic crisis, and continues with an overview of relevant literature. After introducing the research area and the informants, I discuss the Korean notion of neighborhood, which incorporates both the notions of culturally valued Koreanness and deficiency in the sense of modernity and development. This study further analyses the ways in which the businesskeepers appropriate and reproduce the Korean ideas of men s and women s gender roles and spheres of work. As the appropriation of children s labor is conditional to intergenerational family trajectories which aim not to reproduce parents occupational status but to gain entry to salaried occupations via educational credentials, the work of a married couple is the most common organization of work in small businesses, to which the Korean ideas of family and kin continuity are not applied. While the lack of generational businesskeeping succession suggests that the proprietors mainly subscribe to the notions of familial status that emanate from the practices of the white-collar middle class, the cases of certain women shopkeepers show that their proprietorship and the ensuing economic standing in the family prompts and invites inversed interpretations and uses of common cultural notions of gender. After discussing and analyzing the concept of money and the cultural categorization of leisure and work, topics that emerged as very significant in the lived world of the shopkeepers, this study charts and analyses the categories of identification which the shopkeepers employ for their cultural and social locations and identities. Particular attention is paid to the idea of ordinary people (seomin), which shopkeepers are commonly considered to be most representative of, and which also sums up the ambivalence of neighborhood shopkeepers as a social category: they are not committed to familial reproduction and continuity of the business but aspire non-entrepreneurial careers for their children, while they occupy a significant position in the elaborations of culturally valued notions and ideologies defining Koreanness such as warmheartedness and sociability.