851 resultados para Other Social Sciences


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The dissertation analyzes Finnish consensual culture in public discussion and journalism in Helsingin Sanomat (HS). The consensual Finnish political culture has evolved and persisted over a long period of time and it has been affected by historical circumstances as well as the dynamics of political and journalistic structures and actors. A historical chronology is drawn in the study regarding the nature and development of consensus culture in 20th century Finland. This political culture is traced by looking at public discussion on globalization at the turn of the millennium. Globalization as a concept has been contested and various societal actors have given different meanings to it. This research looks at how the globalization discussion in HS during the years 1992-2004 constructs consensus. Helsingin Sanomat (and its predecessor Päivälehti) has been an important actor in Finnish journalism and the public sphere almost since its founding 120 years ago. The history of the paper is tightly connected to Finland s general political history and history of the public sphere. Moreover, the paper s connections to the societal elite have always been close. The central question in this research was to see how the globalization discussion in HS evolved in relation to consensus as well as legitimate controversies. As a result it is stated that the globalization question has clearly divided the Finnish societal actors. The most powerful societal elites (government, most civil servants, corporate sector) had a profile of being pro globalization. They communicated their globalization strategy as a national, unified way of thinking. Other elites which have been losing their influence (the president, labor union, part of members of parliament), as well as civil society actors tried to bring forward conflicting views in relation to globalization. The paper did give some room to these elements, but on the other hand it also tried to keep up the consensual discussion culture especially in the editorial section. In line with its traditions Helsingin Sanomat strived to create national unity. At the same time it did not give adequate attention to the changes brought about by globalization to the positions and roles of various elites and civil society actors. In this discussion HS seemed more like a medium of the state than as a critical and independent actor. Journalism has an important role in upholding and also reviving the Finnish political culture and public discussion. From this point of view it is problematic if the area of so called legitimate controversy in broad societal questions like globalization becomes very limited. As the Finnish elites are small and there is no considerable competition between them, journalism should actively bring up controversial issues. This task becomes complicated, however, if the elite circles are closed up and no initiatives come from their ranks. Political decision making as well as democracy can suffer, if issues are not brought to the public agenda.

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Evaluation practices have pervaded the Finnish society and welfare state. At the same time the term effectiveness has become a powerful organising concept in welfare state activities. The aim of the study is to analyse how the outcome-oriented society came into being through historical processes, to answer the question of how social policy and welfare state practices were brought under the governance of the concept of effectiveness . Discussions about social imagination, Michel Foucault s conceptions of the history of the present and of governmentality, genealogy and archaeology, along with Ian Hacking s notions of dynamic nominalism and styles of reasoning, are used as the conceptual and methodological starting points for the study. In addition, Luc Boltanski s and Laurent Thévenot s ideas of orders of worth , regimes of evaluation in everyday life, are employed. Usually, evaluation is conceptualised as an autonomous epistemic culture and practice (evaluation as epistemic practice), but evaluation is here understood as knowledge-creation processes elementary to different epistemic practices (evaluation in epistemic practices). The emergence of epistemic cultures and styles of reasoning about the effectiveness or impacts of welfare state activities are analysed through Finnish social policy and social work research. The study uses case studies which represent debates and empirical research dealing with the effectiveness and quality of social services and social work. While uncertainty and doubts over the effects and consequences of welfare policies have always been present in discourses about social policy, the theme has not been acknowledged much in social policy research. To resolve these uncertainties, eight styles of reasoning about such effects have emerged over time. These are the statistical, goal-based, needs-based, experimental, interaction-based, performance measurement, auditing and evidence-based styles of reasoning. Social policy research has contributed in various ways to the creation of these epistemic practices. The transformation of the welfare state, starting at the end of 1980s, increased market-orientation and trimmed public welfare responsibilities, and led to the adoption of the New Public Management (NPM) style of leadership. Due to these developments the concept of effectiveness made a breakthrough, and new accountabilities with their knowledge tools for performance measurement and auditing and evidence-based styles of reasoning became more dominant in the ruling of the welfare state. Social sciences and evaluation have developed a heteronomous relation with each other, although there still remain divergent tendencies between them. Key words: evaluation, effectiveness, social policy, welfare state, public services, sociology of knowledge

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National identity is a general, more or less shared meaning structure. Those who share it, identify with a nation according to their beliefs of what national identity consists of. The present study examined the Finnish national identity in relation to other spatial identities, such as local or European identity. Data were drawn from a sample of 179 respondents who represented the adult population in the year 1993. The focus was on the representation of the Finnish national identity, the limits and components of this identity, and on the position of national identification among all human identifications. Categorization, the basic process in the construction of national identity, consists of inclusion and exclusion. Different forms of identification could be distinguished along with different contents. Discrimination and derogation of outgroups were associated with identification that emphasized inter-nation comparison and framed identity in an essentialistic and thus exclusionary way. The contents of national identity were examined using a quantitative word-assessment method, and related to different forms of identification. With regard to Finnish identification, few differences between age, educational or SES groups were found. Despite the lack of differences in the strength of Finnish identification, those with more education to a greater extent relativized their Finnishness. Those who held positive attitudes to immigrants associated Finnishness with both positive and negative traits. Pro-immigrant attitude was related to an emphasis on cultural Finnishness and a de-emphasis on comparative and status-oriented Finnishness. Among the respondents with lower level of education, the emphasis on cultural Finnishness clearly predicted pro-immigrant attitudes. Those who did not produce any spontaneous response to a request to define Finnishness were more likely to be anti-immigrant. Thus, reflexive self-understanding implies openness towards other nationalities. Changes in the representation of Finnishness are suggested by differential weights given by respondents to different aspects of the national identity. Older respondents regarded the moral-anthropomorphic aspects of identity as more important. The younger respondents felt relatively more Finnish in the company of foreigners than did the older generations, to whom being with friends and in other close relationships stood out as contexts of national identification. The aspect of identity which is based on categorization and comparison could be called identity for others. The other aspect of the national identity is identity for ourselves, which emphasizes self and cultural self-understanding. A modern marketing oriented “image-of-Finland” identity represents identity for others.

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The role of people as buyers and eaters of food has changed significantly. From being protected by a paternalistic welfare state, people appear to be accorded more freedom and responsibility as individuals, where attention is redirected from the state towards market relations. Many have asserted that these changes are accompanied by fragmentation, individualisation, and privatisation, leading to individual uncertainty and lack of confidence. But empirical observations do not always confirm this, distrust is not necessarily growing and while responsibilities may change, the state still plays an active role. This dissertation explores changing relationships between states and markets, on the one hand, and ordinary people in their capacities as consumers and citizens, on the other. Do we see the emergence of new forms of regulation of food consumption? If so, what is the scope and what are the characteristics? Theories of regulation addressing questions about individualisation and self-governance are combined with a conceptualisation of consumption as processes of institutionalisation, involving daily routines, the division of labour between production and consumption, and the institutional field in which consumption is embedded. The analyses focus on the involvement of the state, food producers and scientific, first of all nutritional, expertise in regulating consumption, and on popular responses. Two periods come out as important, first when the ideas of “designing the good life” emerged, giving the state a very particular role in regulating food consumption, and, second, when this “designing” is replaced by ideas of choice and individual responsibility. One might say that “consumer choice” has become a mode of regulation. I use mainly historical studies from Norway to analyse the shifting role of the state in regulating food consumption, complemented with population surveys from six European countries to study how modernisation processes are associated with trust. The studies find that changing regulation is not only a question of societal or state vs individual responsibilities. Degrees of organisation and formalisation are important as well. While increasing organisation may represent discipline and abuses of power (including exploitation of consumer loyalty), organisation can also, to the consumer, provide higher predictability, systems to deal with malfeasance, and efficiency which may provide conditions for acting. The welfare state and the neo-liberal state have very different types of solutions. The welfare state solution is based on (national) egalitarianism, paternalism and discipline (of the market as well as households). Such solutions are still prominent in Norway. Individualisation and self-regulation may represent a regulatory response not only to a declining legitimacy of this kind of interventionism, but also increasing organisational complexity. This is reflected in large-scale re-regulation of markets as well as in relationships with households and consumers. Individualisation of responsibility is to the consumer not a matter of the number of choices that are presented on the shelves, but how choice as a form of consumer based involvement is institutionalised. It is recognition of people as “end-consumers”, as social actors, with systems of empowerment politically as well as via the provisioning system. ‘Consumer choice’ as a regulatory strategy includes not only communicative efforts to make people into “choosing consumers”, but also the provision of institutions which recognise consumer interests and agency. When this is lacking we find distrust as representing powerlessness. Individual responsibility-taking represents agency and is not always a matter of loyal support to shared goals, but involves protest and creativity. More informal (‘communitarian’) innovations may be an indication of that, where self-realisation is intimately combined with responsibility for social problems. But as solutions to counteract existing imbalances of power in the food market the impacts of such initiatives are probably more as part of consumer mobilisation and politicisation than as alternative provisioning.

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The purpose of this research is to draw up a clear construction of an anticipatory communicative decision-making process and a successful implementation of a Bayesian application that can be used as an anticipatory communicative decision-making support system. This study is a decision-oriented and constructive research project, and it includes examples of simulated situations. As a basis for further methodological discussion about different approaches to management research, in this research, a decision-oriented approach is used, which is based on mathematics and logic, and it is intended to develop problem solving methods. The approach is theoretical and characteristic of normative management science research. Also, the approach of this study is constructive. An essential part of the constructive approach is to tie the problem to its solution with theoretical knowledge. Firstly, the basic definitions and behaviours of an anticipatory management and managerial communication are provided. These descriptions include discussions of the research environment and formed management processes. These issues define and explain the background to further research. Secondly, it is processed to managerial communication and anticipatory decision-making based on preparation, problem solution, and solution search, which are also related to risk management analysis. After that, a solution to the decision-making support application is formed, using four different Bayesian methods, as follows: the Bayesian network, the influence diagram, the qualitative probabilistic network, and the time critical dynamic network. The purpose of the discussion is not to discuss different theories but to explain the theories which are being implemented. Finally, an application of Bayesian networks to the research problem is presented. The usefulness of the prepared model in examining a problem and the represented results of research is shown. The theoretical contribution includes definitions and a model of anticipatory decision-making. The main theoretical contribution of this study has been to develop a process for anticipatory decision-making that includes management with communication, problem-solving, and the improvement of knowledge. The practical contribution includes a Bayesian Decision Support Model, which is based on Bayesian influenced diagrams. The main contributions of this research are two developed processes, one for anticipatory decision-making, and the other to produce a model of a Bayesian network for anticipatory decision-making. In summary, this research contributes to decision-making support by being one of the few publicly available academic descriptions of the anticipatory decision support system, by representing a Bayesian model that is grounded on firm theoretical discussion, by publishing algorithms suitable for decision-making support, and by defining the idea of anticipatory decision-making for a parallel version. Finally, according to the results of research, an analysis of anticipatory management for planned decision-making is presented, which is based on observation of environment, analysis of weak signals, and alternatives to creative problem solving and communication.

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The increase in drug use and related harms in the late 1990s in Finland has come to be referred to as the second drug wave. In addition to using criminal justice as a basis of drug policy, new kinds of drug regulation were introduced. Some of the new regulation strategies were referred to as "harm reduction". The most widely known practices of harm reduction include needle and syringe exchange programmes for intravenous drug users and medicinal substitution and maintenance treatment programmes for opiate users. The purpose of the study is to examine the change of drug policy in Finland and particularly the political struggle surrounding harm reduction in the context of this change. The aim is, first, to analyse the content of harm reduction policy and the dynamics of its emergence and, second, to assess to what extent harm reduction undermines or threatens traditional drug policy. The concept of harm reduction is typically associated with a drug policy strategy that employs the public health approach and where the principal focus of regulation is on drug-related health harms and risks. On the other hand, harm reduction policy has also been given other interpretations, relating, in particular, to human rights and social equality. In Finland, harm reduction can also be seen to have its roots in criminal policy. The general conclusion of the study is that rather than posing a threat to a prohibitionist drug policy, harm reduction has come to form part of it. The implementation of harm reduction by setting up health counselling centres for drug users with the main focus on needle exchange and by extending substitution treatment has implied the creation of specialised services based on medical expertise and an increasing involvement of the medical profession in addressing drug problems. At the same time the criminal justice control of drug use has been intensified. Accordingly, harm reduction has not entailed a shift to a more liberal drug policy nor has it undermined the traditional policy with its emphasis on total drug prohibition. Instead, harm reduction in combination with a prohibitionist penal policy constitutes a new dual-track drug policy paradigm. The study draws on the constructionist tradition of research on social problems and movements, where the analysis centres on claims made about social problems, claim-makers, ways of making claims and related social mobilisation. The research material mainly consists of administrative documents and interviews with key stakeholders. The doctoral study consists of five original articles and a summary article. The first article gives an overview of the strained process of change of drug policy and policy trends around the turn of the millennium. The second article focuses on the concept of harm reduction and the international organisations and groupings involved in defining it. The third article describes the process that in 1996 97 led to the creation of the first Finnish national drug policy strategy by reconciling mutually contradictory views of addressing the drug problem, at the same as the way was paved for harm reduction measures. The fourth article seeks to explain the relatively rapid diffusion of needle exchange programmes after 1996. The fifth article assesses substitution treatment as a harm reduction measure from the viewpoint of the associations of opioid users and their family members.

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The Eastern Mafia Threat policy, crime phenomena, and cultural meanings An interdisciplinary research on the crime phenomena and the threat policy relating to the organized crime and the mafia of Russia and Estonia is based on 151 expert interviews, statistics, documents, research literature, and press material. The main part of the material consists of interviews of the Finnish, Estonian and Russian police authorities specialized in the problem of organized crime, and the reports on the crime situation drawn up in the Finnish diplomatic representations in Tallinn and St Petersburg. The interviews have been gathered in the years 1996-2001. The main theoretical tools of the research are constructivist research on social problems, and political psychology. Definitional processes of social problems and cultural semantic structures behind them are identified in the analysis and connected to the analysis of the crime cases. Both in the Anglo-American and Russian cultural frames there appears an inflated and exaggerated talk, according to which the mafia rules everything in Russia and is spreading everywhere. There is the traditional anti-Semitic paranoia in the core of this cultural symbiosis produced by Russian legal nihilism, the theory of totalitarianism of Sovietology, and the inertia of Russian anti-capitalism. To equate the Sicilian Mafia with Russia is an anachronism, since no empirical proof of systematic uncontrolled violence or absolute power vacuum in Russia can be found. In the Anglo-American policy of threat images, "the Russian mafia" was seen as a commodified conspiracy theory, which the police, the media, and the research took advantage of, blurring the line between fact and fiction. In Finland, the evolution of the policy of threat images proceeded in three phases: Initially, extensive rolling of refugees and criminals from Russia to Finland was emphasized in the beginning of the 1990's. In the second phase, the eastern mafia was said to infiltrate all over Finnish society and administration. Finland was, however, found immune to this kind of spreading. In the third phase, in the 21st century, the organized crime of Finland was said to be lead from abroad. In Finland, the policy of threat images was especially canalised to moral panics connected to "eastern prostitution". In Estonia, the policy of threat images emphasized the crime organized by the Russian authorities and politicians in order to weaken Estonia. In Russia, the policy of threat images emphasized the total criminalizing of society caused by criminal capitalism. In every country, the policy of threat images was affected by a so-called large-group identity, a term by Vamik Volkan, in which a so-called chosen trauma caused a political paranoia of an outer and inner danger. In Finland, procuring, car theft, and narcotics crimes were at their widest arranged by the Finnish often with the help of the Estonians. The Russians had no influence in the most serious violent crimes in Finland, although the number of assassinations were at least 5, 000 in Russia in the 1990's. In Russia, the assassinations were on one hand connected to marital problems, on the other hand to the pursuit of public attention and a hoped-for effect by the aid of the murder of an influential person. In the white-collar crime phenomena between Finland and Russia, the Finnish state and Finnish corporations gained remarkable benefit of the frauds aimed at the states of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1980's-21st century. The situation of Estonia was very difficult compared to that of Russia in the 1990's, which was manifested in the stagnation of the Estonian police and judicial authorities, the crimes of the police and the voluntary paramilitary organization, bomb explosions, the rebellion called "the jaeger crisis" in the voluntary paramilitary organization, and the "blood autumn" of Eastern Virumaa, in other words terror. The situation of Estonia had a powerful effect on the crime situation of Finland and on the security of the Finnish diplomats. In the continuum of the Finnish policy of threat images, Russia and the Russians were, however, presented as a source of a marked danger.

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My doctoral dissertation in sociology and Russian studies, Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, employs a "micro" or "grassroots" perspective on the transition. The study is a collection of articles detailing social networks in five different contexts. The first article examines Russian birthdays from a network perspective. The second takes a look at health care to see whether networks have become obsolete in a sector that is still overwhelmingly public, but increasingly being monetarised. The third article investigates neighbourhood relations. The fourth details relationships at work, particularly from the vantage point of internal migration. The fifth explores housing and the role of networks and money both in the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The study is based on qualitative social network and interview data gathered among three groups, teachers, doctors and factory workers, in St. Petersburg during 1993-2000. Methodologically it builds on a qualitative social network approach. The study adds a critical element to the discussion on networks in post-socialism. A considerable consensus exists that social networks were vital in state socialist societies and were used to bypass various difficulties caused by endemic shortages and bureaucratic rigidities, but a more debated issue has been their role in post-socialism. Some scholars have argued that the importance of networks has been dramatically reduced in the new market economy, whereas others have stressed their continuing importance. If a common denominator in both has been a focus on networks in relation to the past, a more overlooked aspect has been the question of inequality. To what extent is access to networks unequally distributed? What are the limits and consequences of networks, for those who have access, those outside networks or society at large? My study provides some evidence about inequalities. It shows that some groups are privileged over others, for instance, middle-class people in informal access to health care. Moreover, analysing the formation of networks sheds additional light on inequalities, as it highlights the importance of migration as a mechanism of inequality, for example. The five articles focus on how networks are actually used in everyday life. The article on health care, for instance, shows that personal connections are still important and popular in post-Soviet Russia, despite the growing importance of money and the emergence of "fee for service" medicine. Fifteen of twenty teachers were involved in informal medical exchange during a two-week study period, so that they used their networks to bypass the formal market mechanisms or official procedures. Medicines were obtained through personal connections because some were unavailable at local pharmacies or because these connections could provide medicines for a cheaper price or even for free. The article on neighbours shows that "mutual help" was the central feature of neighbouring, so that the exchange of goods, services and information covered almost half the contacts with neighbours reported. Neighbours did not provide merely small-scale help but were often exchange partners because they possessed important professional qualities, had access to workplace resources, or knew somebody useful. The article on the Russian work collective details workplace-related relationships in a tractor factory and shows that interaction with and assistance from one's co-workers remains important. The most interesting finding was that co-workers were even more important to those who had migrated to the city than to those who were born there, which is explained by the specifics of Soviet migration. As a result, the workplace heavily influenced or absorbed contexts for the worker migrants to establish relationships whereas many meeting-places commonly available in Western countries were largely absent or at least did not function as trusted public meeting places to initiate relationships. More results are to be found from my dissertation: Anna-Maria Salmi: Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, Kikimora Publications, 2006, see www.kikimora-publications.com.

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In Estonia, illicit drug use hardly existed before the social changes of the 1990s when, as a result of economic and cultural transformations, the country became part of a world order centred in the West. On the one hand, this development is due to the spread of international youth culture, which many young people have perceived as being associated with drugs; on the other hand, it results from the marginalisation of a part of the population. The empirical part of the study is based mostly on in-depth interviews with different drug users conducted during between 1998 and 2002. Complementary material includes the results of participant observations, interviews with key experts, and the results of previous quantitative studies and statistics. The young people who started experimenting with illicit drugs from the 1990s and onwards perceived them as a part of an attractive lifestyle - a Western lifestyle, a point which is worth stressing in the case of Estonia. Although the reasons for initiation into drug use were similar for the majority of young people, their drug use habits and the impact of the drug use on their lives began to differ. I argue that the potential pleasure and harm which might accompany drug use is offset by the meanings attached to drugs and the sanctions and rituals regulating drug use. In the study both recreational and problem use have been analysed from different aspects in seven articles. I have investigated different types of drug users: new bohemians, cannabis users, in whose case partying and restrictive drug use is positively connected to their lives and goals within established society; stimulant-using party people for whom drugs are a means of having fun but who do not have the same restrictive norms regulating their drug use as the former and who may get into trouble under certain conditions; and heroin users for whom the drug rapidly progressed from a means of having fun to an obligation due to addiction. The research results point at the importance not only of the drug itself and the socio-economic situation of the user, but also of the cultural and social context within which the drug is used. The latter may on occasions be a crucial factor in whether or not initial drug use eventually leads to addiction.

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From Strangers to Peer Acquaintances Mothers and Fathers with a First Born and their Experiences of the New Family Training Process in Espoo This research is composed of two interrelated case studies. The first case was a family training experiment conducted in the City of Espoo during 2003 2005. In the experiment, the content, duration and procedures were modified from the previous family training policy. The new family training system stressed peer group activities and the peer support formed between the participating mothers and fathers. The second case comprised the stories of 14 parents about the family training process. The aim of the research was to find out whether peer group activities and support was demonstrated between the participating parents during the family training process. The second case and its narrative material constituted the main research material. The narrative material was collected by interviews. Eight mothers and six fathers were interviewed twice within a year between their sessions. The parents also filled in questionnaires about their daily life and participated in a drawing exercise, in which they visualized how they experienced the family training during the antenatal period, labour and the postnatal period. A narrative approach was applied to the analysis of the narrative material. The analysis consisted of several stages. In the final stage, the fathers main story was combined with all the participating fathers personal stories. The mothers main story was also constructed from their personal stories. The study implicated that in some parts the mothers and fathers main stories were similar. During the family training, previously unacquainted parents became peer acquaintances. In particular, the first born as a focus created interaction and cooperation among the parents. Parents in similar circumstances became significant to each other. Different figurations formed during the family training. However, the main stories did not always entwine. The mothers were in contact with the other mothers almost daily using mobile phones, email and mother-child activities. The fathers employed outside home met each other only during the family training meetings, but felt being supported by the other fathers. Some families visited one another outside of the family training. This new type of family training had characteristics typical of the project society. The parents peer activities were based on trust, negotiation and contracts between partners. The parents evaluated the benefits of participation in the family training. If they appreciated the activities with peers and peer compassion, they were willing to participate in the family training during the postnatal period. Keywords: family training, parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood, peer, peer group, peer support, social support, social relationships, figurations, the project society, pastoral power, epistolary power

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The study focuses on the emergence of tuberculosis as a public health problem and the development of the various methods to counteract it in Finland before the introduction of efficient methods of treatment in the 1940s and 50s. It covers a time period from year 1882 when the tuberculosis bacterium was identified to the 1930s when the early formation of tuberculosis work became established in Finland. During this time there occurred important changes in medicine, public health thinking and methods of personal health care that have been referred to as the bacteriological revolution. The study places tuberculosis prevention in this context and shows how the tuberculosis problem affected the government of health on all these three dimensions. The study is based on foucauldian analytics of government, which is supplemented with perspectives from contemporary science and technology studies. In addition, it utilises a broad array of work in medical history. The central research materials consist of medical journals, official programs and documents on tuberculosis policy, and health education texts. The general conclusions of the study are twofold. Firstly, the ensemble of tuberculosis work was formed from historically diverse and often conflicting elements. The identification of the pathogen was only the first step in the establishment of tuberculosis as a major public health problem. Important were also the attention of the science of hygiene and statistical reasoning that dominated public health thinking in the late 19th century. Furthermore, the adoption of the bacteriological tuberculosis doctrine in medicine, public health work and health education was profoundly influenced by previous understanding of the nature of the illness, of medical work, of the prevention of contagious diseases, and of personal health care. Also the two central institutions of tuberculosis work, sanatorium and dispensary, have heterogeneous origins and multifarious functions. Secondly, bacteriology represented in this study by tuberculosis remodelled medical knowledge and practices, the targets and methods of public health policy, and the doctrine of personal health care. Tuberculosis provided a strong argument for specific causes (if not cures) as well as laboratory methods in medicine. Tuberculosis prevention contributed substantially to the development whereby a comprehensive responsibility for the health of the population and public health work was added to the agenda of the state. Health advice on tuberculosis and other contagious diseases used dangerous bacteria to motivate personal health care and redefined it as protecting oneself from the attacks of external pathogens and strengthening oneself against their effects. Thus, tuberculosis work is one important root for the contemporary public concern for the health of the population and the imperative of personal health care.