Given and News : Media discourse and the construction of community on national days

National anniversaries such as independence days demand precise coordination in order to make citizens change their routines to forego work and spend the day at rest or at festivities that provide social focus and spectacle. The complex social construction of national days is taken for granted and operates as a given in the news media, which are the main agents responsible for coordinating these planned disruptions of normal routines. This study examines the language used in the news to construct the rather unnatural idea of national days and to align people in observing them. The data for the study consist of news stories about the Fourth of July in the New York Times, sampled over 150 years and are supplemented by material from other sources and other countries. The study is multidimensional, applying concepts from pragmatics (speech acts, politeness, information structure), systemic functional linguistics (the interpersonal metafunction and the Appraisal framework) and cognitive linguistics (frames, metaphor) as well as journalism and communications to arrive at an interdisciplinary understanding of how resources for meaning are used by writers and readers of the news stories. The analysis shows that on national anniversaries, nations tend to be metaphorized as persons having birthdays, to whom politeness should be shown. The face of the nation is to be respected in the sense of identifying the nation's interests as one's own (positive face) and speaking of citizen responsibilities rather than rights (negative face). Resources are available for both positive and negative evaluations of events and participants and the newspaper deftly changes footings (Goffman 1981) to demonstrate the required politeness while also heteroglossically allowing for a certain amount of disattention and even protest - within limits, for state holidays are almost never construed as Bakhtinian festivals, as they tend to reaffirm the hierarchy rather than invert it. Celebrations are evaluated mainly for impressiveness, and for the essentially contested quality of appropriateness, which covers norms of predictability, size, audience response, aesthetics, and explicit reference to the past. Events may also be negatively evaluated as dull ("banal") or inauthentic ("hoopla"). Audiences are evaluated chiefly in terms of their enthusiasm, or production of appropriate displays for emotional response, for national days are supposed to be occasions of flooding-out of nationalistic feeling. By making these evaluations, the newspaper reinforces its powerful position as an independent critic, while at the same time playing an active role in the construction and reproduction of emotional order embodied in "the nation's birthday." As an occasion for mobilization and demonstrations of power, national days may be seen to stand to war in the relation of play to fighting (Bateson 1955). Evidence from the newspaper's coverage of recent conflicts is adduced to support this analysis. In the course of the investigation, methods are developed for analyzing large collections of newspaper content, particularly topical soft news and feature materials that have hitherto been considered less influential and worthy of study than so-called hard news. In his work on evaluation in newspaper stories, White (1998) proposed that the classic hard news story is focused on an event that threatens the social order, but news of holidays and celebrations in general does not fit this pattern, in fact its central event is a reproduction of the social order. Thus in the system of news values (Galtung and Ruge 1965), national holiday news draws on "ground" news values such as continuity and predictability rather than "figure" news values such as negativity and surprise. It is argued that this ground helps form a necessary space for hard news to be seen as important, similar to the way in which the information structure of language is seen to rely on the regular alternation of given and new information (Chafe 1994).

Using an ‘interpretative model’ for contextual design of heritage landscape databases: The case of St Helena Island National Park in Queensland, Australia

Due to the increasing speed of landscape changes and the massive development of computer technologies, the methods of representing heritage landscapes using digital tools have become a worldwide concern in conservation research. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how an ‘interpretative model’ can be used for contextual design of heritage landscape information systems. This approach is explored through building a geographic information system database for St Helena Island national park in Moreton Bay, South East Queensland, Australia. Stakeholders' interpretations of this landscape were collected through interviews, and then used as a framework for designing the database. The designed database is a digital inventory providing contextual descriptions of the historic infrastructure remnants on St Helena Island. It also reveals the priorities of different sites in terms of historic research, landscape restoration, and tourism development. Additionally, this database produces thematic maps of the intangible heritage values, which could be used for landscape interpretation. This approach is different from the existing methods because building a heritage information system is deemed as an interpretative activity, rather than a value-free replication of the physical environment. This approach also shows how a cultural landscape methodology can be used to create a flexible information system for heritage conservation. The conclusion is that an ‘interpretative model’ of database design facilitates a more explicit focus on information support, and is a potentially effective approach to user-centred design of geographic information systems.

Murtuva säätyvalta, kestävä eliitti : Senaattori Lennart Gripenbergin sukupiiri ja sääty-yhteiskunnan muodonmuutos

This study examines the transformation of the society of estates in the Finnish Grand Duchy through the case study of Senator Lennart Gripenberg and his family circle. While national borders and state structures changed, the connections between old ruling elite families remained intact as invisible family networks, ownership relations, economic collaboration and power of military families. These were the cornerstones of trust, which helped to strengthen positions gained in society. Also, these connections often had a central if unperceivable impact on social development and modernization. Broadly speaking, the intergenerational social reproduction made it possible for this network of connections to remain in power and, as an imperceptible factor, also influenced short-term developments in the long run. Decisions which in the short term appeared unproductive, would in the long run produce cumulative immaterial and material capital across generations as long-term investments. Social mobility, then, is a process which clearly takes several generations to become manifest. The study explores long-term strategies of reproducing and transferring the capital accumulated in multinational elite networks. Also, what was the relationship of these strategies to social change? For the representatives of the military estate the nobility and for those men of the highest estates who had benefited from military training, this very education of a technical-military nature was the key to steering, controlling and dealing with the challenges following the industrial breakthrough. The disintegration of the society of estates and the rising educational standards also increased the influence of those professionals previously excluded, which served to intensify competition for positions of power. The family connections highlighted in this study overlapped in many ways, working side by side and in tandem to manage the economic and political life in Finland, Russia and Sweden. The analysis of these ties has opened up a new angle to economic co-operation, for example, as seen in the position of such family networks not only in Finnish, but also Swedish and Russian corporations and in the long historical background of the collaboration. This also highlights in a new way the role of women in transferring the cumulative social capital and as silent business partners. The marriage strategies evident in business life clearly had an impact on the economic life. The collaborative networks which transcended generations, national boundaries and structures also uncover, as far as the elites are concerned, serious problems in comparative studies conducted from purely national premises. As the same influential families and persons in effect held several leading positions in society, the line would blur between public and invisible uses of power. The power networks thus aimed to build monopolies to secure their key positions at the helm. This study therefore examines the roles of Lennart Gripenberg senator, business executive, superintendent of the Department of Industry, factory inspector, and founding member of industrial interest groups as part of the reproduction strategies of the elite. The family and other networks of the powerful leaders of society, distinguished by social, economic and cultural capital, provided a solid backdrop for the so-called old elites in their quest for strategies to reproducing power in a changing world. Crucially, it was easier for the elites to gain expertise to steer the modernization process and thereby secure for the next generation a leading position in society, something that they traditionally, too, had had the greatest interest in.

Ylirajaisia suhteita : Helsingin olympialaiset, Armi Kuusela ja ylikansallinen historia

In 1952 Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympic Games and Armi Kuusela, the current “Maiden of Finland”, was at the same time crowned Miss Universe. In popular history writing, these events have been designated as a crucial turning point – the end of an era marked by war and deprivation and the beginning of a modern, Western nation. Symptomatically, both events were marked by Finnish women’s sexual relationships with foreign men. The Olympics were shadowed by a concern over Finnish women’s “undue friendliness” with the Olympic guests, and Armi Kuusela's world tour was cut short by her surprise marriage in Tokyo and subsequent emigration to the Philippines. This study is an inquiry into the Helsinki Olympics and the public persona of Armi Kuusela from the point of view of transnational heterosexuality and the constitution of Finnish national identity. Methodologically the two main components of the study are intersectionality, defined here as a focus on the mutual histories and effects of discourses of gender, sexuality, race and nation; and transnational history as a way of exploring the ways that both nations and sexual subjects are embedded in global relations of power. The analysis proceeds by way of contextual and intertextual readings of various sources. Part one, centering on the Olympics, involves a campaign mounted by certain women’s organizations before the Games in order to educate young women about the potential dangers of the forthcoming international event as well as magazine and newspaper articles published during and after the Games concerning the encounter between young Finnish women and foreign, especially “Southern,” men. It places the debates during the Olympics within the framework of wartime understandings of women’s sexuality; the history of the concept of decency (siveellisyys); post-war population policy; the intersectional histories of conceptions pertaining to race and sexuality; and finally, the post-war concerns over women’s migration from rural areas to the capital city and their potential emigration abroad. Part two deals with the persona of Armi Kuusela and the public reception of her world tour and marriage, based on material from both Finland and the Philippines (newspapers, magazines, advertisements, books and films). It examines the persona of Armi Kuusela as a figure of national import in terms of the East/West divide; the racialized images of different geographic climates and Oriental “Others;” the meaning of whiteness in the Philippines; the significance of class and colonial history for the domestication of sexual and racial transgressions implied by an unconventional transnational marriage; as well as the cultural logics of transnational desire and its possible meanings for women in 1950s Finland. The study develops two arguments. First, it suggests that instead of being purely oppositional to national discourses, transnational desire may also be viewed as a product of these very discourses. Second, it claims that the national significance of both the Olympics and the persona of Armi Kuusela was due to the new points of comparison they both offered for national identity construction. In comparison with the sexualized Southern men at the Olympics and the racialized Orient in the representations of Armi Kuusela’s travels and marriage, Finland emerged as part of the civilized North, placed firmly within the perimeters of Western Europe. As such, both events mark a “whitening” of the Finnish people as well as a distancing from their previous designations in racial hierarchies. At the same time, however, the process of becoming a white nation inevitably meant complying with and reproducing racial hierarchies, rather than simply abolishing them.

Governance and regional variation of homicide rates: Evidence from cross-national data

Criminological theories of cross-national studies of homicide have underestimated the effects of quality governance of liberal democracy and region. Data sets from several sources are combined and a comprehensive model of homicide is proposed. Results of the spatial regression model, which controls for the effect of spatial autocorrelation, show that quality governance, human development, economic inequality, and ethnic heterogeneity are statistically significant in predicting homicide. In addition, regions of Latin America and non-Muslim Sub-Saharan Africa have significantly higher rates of homicides ceteris paribus while the effects of East Asian countries and Islamic societies are not statistically significant. These findings are consistent with the expectation of the new modernization and regional theories.

Melaleuca densispicata in Currawinya National Park, South-West Queensland: Ecology and preliminary implications for management of a rare plant species

Melaleuca densispicata Byrnes is an uncommon species with a limited distribution, comprising disjunct populations in inland southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, Australia. It is a dense, woody shrub, 2–4 m in height, which exhibits a marked 'clumping' growth habit. It has thick, papery bark and displays many white flowers during spring or early summer. Although it has long been known to exist, M. densispicata was only formally described in 1984, and very little is currently known about its ecology or specific management requirements. There are only seven known subpopulations of the species across its range. A major population at the western limit of its distribution occurs on Currawinya National Park (28°52'S, 144°30'E). Here, it is locally abundant and listed as a noteworthy plant species under the Management Plan (Queensland Parks & Wildlife Service 2001). This study aimed to identify patterns in the distribution of M. densispicata in Currawinya National Park, describe its ecological niche and role, and provide management recommendations for the species within the study area. Recent anecdotal observations of recruitment failure in south-western Queensland (Peter McRae, QPWS, October 2004, pers. comm.; Dick O'Connell, local grazier, July 2005 pers. comm.) caused additional emphasis to be placed on the examination of recruitment and recruitment factors.

Understanding the determinants of Australian hospital nurses' hand hygiene decisions following the implementation of a national hand hygiene initiative

Hand hygiene is the primary measure in hospitals to reduce the spread of infections, with nurses experiencing the greatest frequency of patient contact. The ‘5 critical moments’ of hand hygiene initiative has been implemented in hospitals across Australia, accompanied by awareness-raising, staff training and auditing. The aim of this study was to understand the determinants of nurses’ hand hygiene decisions, using an extension of a common health decision-making model, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), to inform future health education strategies to increase compliance. Nurses from 50 Australian hospitals (n = 2378) completed standard TPB measures (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control [PBC], intention) and the extended variables of group norm, risk perceptions (susceptibility, severity) and knowledge (subjective, objective) at Time 1, while a sub-sample (n = 797) reported their hand hygiene behaviour 2 weeks later. Regression analyses identified subjective norm, PBC, group norm, subjective knowledge and risk susceptibility as the significant predictors of nurses’ hand hygiene intentions, with intention and PBC predicting their compliance behaviour. Rather than targeting attitudes which are already very favourable among nurses, health education strategies should focus on normative influences and perceptions of control and risk in efforts to encourage hand hygiene adherence.

Kilpailukykyvaltion koululainsäädännön rakentuminen : Suomen eduskunta ja 1990-luvun koulutuspoliittinen käänne

Finnish education policy, educational legislation and the entire education system changed significantly during the 1990s as part of a general restructuring of public administration. There has been a clear divergence from the former tradition of a system of regulation, founded on detailed legislation and the principle of equality. The new governance, which is based more on individual choice, efficiency and evaluation, emphasizes that the development of a high standard of education is a necessity in the light of global competition. This study explores the legislative process regarding education policy in the Finnish Parliament during the 1990s, and highlights in particular how the international discourse on education policies was restructured in the context of Finnish legislation. The research material consists of all the public parliamentary documents relating to education, including government proposals, minutes from the discussions in the chamber and archive material (final protocols, reports and statements) for the Committee for Education and Culture. The discourse on the process of drafting and passing education legislation is modelled on three interrelated policy technologies (market, management and performance), which are understood here as mechanisms connecting general political ideas to normative legislation. The changes in the regulation of education were part of a general public administration reform instigated during the mid 1980s. The research results will prove that during the left-right coalition cabinet of PM Harri Holkeri, new policy technologies affected the parliamentary discourse on education policy. This was particularly influenced by a change in the preconditions for the management of education that was created as a result of the numerous demands to deregulate and delegate decision-making authority to the local and school levels while rendering the whole education system more effective. At the turn of the decade, market-type mechanisms were more indirectly manifested in the forms of individuality and freedom of choice, which were reflected, for example, in proposals to “lower the hurdles” by separating general from vocational secondary education with a view to encouraging students to select courses from other educational establishments, in addition to relaxing the requirements for establishing private schools and abolishing a hundred-year-old strict national catchment-area system. Later, in the course of the 1990s, after the subjects, players, and methods of evaluation had been more precisely defined, evaluation based on performance would result in the active measurement of the attainment of set objectives. In the spring of 1991, from the outset of PM Esko Aho's right-centre coalition cabinet, the education budget suffered cutbacks as a result of a global recession and this influenced the legislative work of, and discourses in, parliament. Representatives of the parties in power regarded the recession solely as an external factor that was remote from the political arena. In their view, the education system should rise to the challenge by ensuring the efficient and innovative use of the resources available and by developing new forms of indicators for evaluating results. Representatives of the opposition opposed the cabinet’s standpoint as a result of the recession, criticized the measures taken by pointing out the harmful effect of constantly cutting the budget and argued that the government had made political capital out of the recession by using it as an opportunity to give more room to market, management and performance technologies within the Finnish education system. Criticism of the new education policy became even stronger during PM Paavo Lipponen's first “rainbow” coalition cabinet with critical views being expressed not only from the opposition but also from representatives within the government. Representatives from the left demanded legislative restrictions and the instigation of measures to relieve the presumed negative effects of market, management and performance in the name of educational equality. The new management by results steering method within the university sector and the introduction of commercial education services in compulsory education were fiercely criticized. The argument over “setting outer limits” including, for example, the demands for more detailed legislation and earmarked state subsidies was characteristic of Parliament’s legislative discourse in the latter part of the 1990s. Keywords: education policy, education legislation, Parliament of Finland

A Guide to Disability Statistics from the National Health Interview Survey – Disability Supplement

The National Health Interview Survey - Disability supplement (NHIS-D) provides information that can be used to understand myriad topics related to health and disability. The survey provides comprehensive information on multiple disability conceptualizations that can be identified using information about health conditions (both physical and mental), activity limitations, and service receipt (e.g. SSI, SSDI, Vocational Rehabilitation). This provides flexibility for researchers in defining populations of interest. This paper provides a description of the data available in the NHIS-D and information on how the data can be used to better understand the lives of people with disabilities.

Social supply of cannabis in Australia

While cannabis is the most prolifically used illicit drug in Australia, there is a gap in our understanding concerning the social interactions and friendships formed around its supply and use. The authors recruited cannabis users aged between 18 and 30 years throughout Australia, to explore the impact of supply routes on young users and their perceived notions of drug dealing in order to provide valuable insight into the influence that reciprocal relationships have on young people’s access to cannabis. Findings reveal that the supply of cannabis revolves around pre-existing connections and relationships formed through associates known to be able to readily source cannabis. It was found that motivations for proffering cannabis in a shared environment were related more to developing social capital than to generating financial gain. Given this, often those involved in supply do not perceive that they are breaking the law or that they are ‘dealers’. This social supply market appears to be built on trust and social interactions and, as such, presents several challenges to law enforcement. It is suggested that there would be benefit in providing targeted education campaigns to combat social supply dealing among young adults.