Siirtonaisena Singaporessa : Ulkomaantyökomennuksille mukaan muuttaneet suomalaisnaiset kertovat kokemuksistaan

The objective of this qualitative study is to reveal the discursive reality of Finnish women, who have chosen to follow their husbands to expatriate assignments. The research material includes interviews of seventeen (17) Finnish housewives who lived in Singapore in 1999. The primary theoretical framework of the study is a social-constructive view, in which the reality is seen to have been constructed through meanings that create and maintain cultural practices, social roles and institutions. Gender is interpreted as produced socially, politically and in language. Human beings in the study exist as cultural and social beings with sex. An underlying assumption of the analysis is that the women in the study do not recognize their experience from their position that has been located to the prompt box in a play of expatriate assignment a role that is offered to them by the business sciences. Referring to Somers (1994) these women suffer of narrative silence as they lack public narratives that correspond to their circumstances. According to Williams (1983), an experience is an evidence of conditions. Therefore, the experiences of the women, who have followed their husbands to expatriate assignments, include information of their conditions. The analysis of the interview material has been performed in two phases: First, the women's experiences are identified from the research material. Thereafter, by means of discourse analysis the experiences are revealed analytically. This revealing process can also be regarded as an articulation of a counter-narrative. The research results can be found from three such discursive interpretations that are offered to the women and from eight such discursive interpretations that can be drawn from the women's own experiences. One of the discursive interpretations, which came out from the women's own experiences, is named as cultural dysphasia. In the study, cultural dysphasia is defined as a condition, in which the women have a difficulty in making their lived reality understood by others outside the sphere of their situation. Finnish women do not only lack public narrative, but the absence of a housewife-culture in Finland prevents them from any public narrative that would have a positive tone. To avoid dependence on the housewife concept, a woman's decision to follow her husband to an expatriate assignment is interpreted as a demonstration of solidarity to the relationship. In this connection, these Finnish women are re-named as 'siirtonainen' (Finnish, literally 'transfer woman'). This is the first scientific study to make visible the lived reality of Finnish women who have followed their husbands to expatriate assignments. The study will help the women in similar circumstances to find their marks among the current narratives. By reducing dichotomy between housewives and career women, which is damaging to women, and by creating the concept of 'siirtonainen' it will be possible to expand the cultural space of Finnish women. Finally, the study argues that a Finnish career woman, grown together with the imperative of self-support, has been lifted up as one symbol of modern Finland. Key words: expatriate research, experience, public narrative, narrative silence, cultural dysphasia, siirtonainen - transfer woman

Memory Meanders : Place, Home and Commemoration in an Ex-Rhodesian Diaspora Community

Memory Meanders is an ethnographic analysis of a postcolonial migrant community, white former Rhodesians, who have emigrated from Zimbabwe to South Africa after Zimbabwe s independence in 1980. An estimated 100 000 whites left the country during the first years of independence. Majority of these emigrants settled in South Africa. In recent years President Mugabe s land redistribution program has inflicted forced expulsions and violence against white farmers and black farm workers, and instigated a new wave of emigration. Concerning the study of Southern Africa, my research is therefore very topical. In recent years there has been a growing concern to study postcolonialism as it unfolds in the lived realities of actual postcolonies. A rising interest has also been cast on colonial cultures and white colonials within complex power relationships. My research offers insight to these discussions by investigating the ways in which the colonial past affects and effects in the present activities and ideas of former colonials. The study also takes part in discussing fundamental questions concerning how diaspora communities socially construct their place in the world in relation to the place left behind, to their current places of dwelling and to the community in dispersal. In spite of Rhodesia s incontestable ending, it is held close by social practices; by thoughts and talks, by material displays, and by webs of meaningful relationships. Such social memory practices, I suggest, are fundamental to how the community understands itself. The vantage points from which I examine how the ex-Rhodesians reminisce about Rhodesia concern ideas and practices related to place, home and commemoration. I first focus on the processes of symbolic investment that go into understanding place and landscape in Rhodesia and ask how the once dwelled-in places, iconic landscapes and experiences within places are reminisced about in diaspora. Secondly, I examine how home both as a mundanely organized sphere of everyday lives and as an idea of belonging is culturally configured, and analyze how and if homes travel in diaspora. In the final ethnographic section I focus on commemorative practices. I first analyze how food and culturally specific festive occasions of commensality are connected to social and sensual memory, considering the unique ways in which food acts as a mnemonic trigger in a diaspora community. The second example concerns the celebration of a centenary of Rhodesia in 1990. Through this case I describe how the mnemonic power of commemoration rests on the fact that culturally meaningful experiences are bodily re-enacted. I show how habitual memory connected to performance is one example of how memory gets passed-on in non-textual ways.

Kansallisen konsensuskulttuurin jäljillä : Globalisaatioajan Suomi Helsingin Sanomissa

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.

Rethinking Media Pluralism : A Critique of Theories and Policy Discourses

This study examines different ways in which the concept of media pluralism has been theorized and used in contemporary media policy debates. Access to a broad range of different political views and cultural expressions is often regarded as a self-evident value in both theoretical and political debates on media and democracy. Opinions on the meaning and nature of media pluralism as a theoretical, political or empirical concept, however, are many, and it can easily be adjusted to different political purposes. The study aims to analyse the ambiguities surrounding the concept of media pluralism in two ways: by deconstructing its normative roots from the perspective of democratic theory, and by examining its different uses, definitions and underlying rationalities in current European media policy debates. The first part of the study examines the values and assumptions behind the notion of media pluralism in the context of different theories of democracy and the public sphere. The second part then analyses and assesses the deployment of the concept in contemporary European policy debates on media ownership and public service media. Finally, the study critically evaluates various attempts to create empirical indicators for measuring media pluralism and discusses their normative implications and underlying rationalities. The analysis of contemporary policy debates indicates that the notion of media pluralism has been too readily reduced to an empty catchphrase or conflated with consumer choice and market competition. In this narrow technocratic logic, pluralism is often unreflectively associated with quantitative data in a way that leaves unexamined key questions about social and political values, democracy, and citizenship. The basic argument advanced in the study is that media pluralism needs to be rescued from its depoliticized uses and re-imagined more broadly as a normative value that refers to the distribution of communicative power in the public sphere. Instead of something that could simply be measured through the number of media outlets available, the study argues that media pluralism should be understood in terms of its ability to challenge inequalities in communicative power and create a more democratic public sphere.

Parisuhde ja ero : Sosiologinen analyysi terapeuttisesta ymmärryksestä

This study takes as its premise the prominent social and cultural role that the couple relationship has acquired in modern society. Marriage as a social institution and romantic love as a cultural script have not lost their significance but during the last few decades the concept of relationship has taken prominence in our understanding of the love relationship. This change has taken place in a society governed by the therapeutic ethos. This study uses material ranging from in-depth interviews to various mass media texts to investigate the therapeutic logic that determines our understanding of the couple relationship. The central concept in this study is therapeutic relationship which does not refer to any particular type of relationship. In contemporary usage the relationship is, by definition, therapeutic. The therapeutic relationship is seen as an endless source of conflict and a highly complex dynamic unit in constant need of attention and treatment. Notwithstanding this emphasis on therapy and relationship work the therapeutic relationship lacks any morally or socially defined direction. Here lies the cultural power and according to critics the dubious aspect of the therapeutic ethos. For the therapeutic logic any reason for divorce is possible and plausible. Prosaically speaking the question is not whether to divorce or not, but when to divorce. In the end divorce only attests to the complexity of the relationship. The therapeutic understanding of the relationship gives the illusion that relationships with their tensions and conflicting emotions can be fully transferred to the sphere of transparency and therapeutic processing. This illusion created by relationship talk that emphasizes individual control is called omnipotence of the individual. However, the study shows that the individual omnipotence is inevitably limited and hence cracks appear in it. The cracks in the omnipotence show that while the therapeutic relationship based on the ideal of communication gives an individual a mode of speaking that stresses autonomy, equality and emotional gratification, it offers little help in expressing our fundamental dependence on other people. The study shows how strong an attraction the therapeutic ethos has with its grasp on the complexities of the relationship in a society where divorce is so common and the risk of divorce is collectively experienced.

Velocity-Space Contours of Collision Integrals

Based on the recently found closed-form expressions of the Boltzmann collision integrals in a rigid-sphere gas for multi-Maxwellian distributions, a few typical sets of contour surfaces of the integrals in the space of molecular velocities are presented. These show graphically the tendency toward equilibrium under the influence of collisions. A brief preliminary comparison with Monte Carlo results is also given.

The oscillation of a spheroid along its axis in a non-Newtonian fluid

The present paper investigates the nature of the fluid flow when a spheroid is suspended in an infinitely extending elastico-viscous fluid defined by the constitutive equations given by Oldroyd or Rivlin and Ericksen, and is made to perform small amplitude oscillations along its axis. The solution of the vector wave equation is expressed in terms of the solution of the corresponding scalar wave equation, without the use of Heine's function or spheroidal wave functions. Two special cases (i) a sphere and (ii) a spheroid of small ellipticity, are studied in detail.

Puolustuskykyinen valtio vai Ruotsin hälytyskello? : Suomen sotilasstrateginen asema kylmän sodan alkuvuosien asiantuntija-arvioissa

The doctoral thesis deals with Finnish and foreign expert s analyses of Finland s military strategic position and defence capability, dating back to the early years of the Cold War. Finland s military high command prepared assessments of the country s strategic position and of the capability of the Defence Forces as grounds for defence planning. Since Finland was located on the Cold War dividing line, the foreign powers were also monitoring the development of Finland s situation. The research carried out had access to the armed forces internal assessments, as well as to analyses prepared by the military intelligence services of Sweden, Britain and the United States. One of the working hypotheses was that after the WWII the ability military leadership to estimate the security political needs of the country and the organisation of its defence was severely weakened so that the dangers of the international development were not perceived and the gradual erosion of defence capability was partly unnoticed. This hypothesis proved to be wrong. Even if the Finnish military intelligence was much weaker than during the war, it was able to provide the military leadership with information of the international military development for the most part. The military leadership was also fully aware of the weakening of the defence capability of the country. They faced the difficult task of making the country s political leadership, i.e. President Paasikivi and the government, also understand the gravity of the situation. Only in the last years of his term in office Paasikivi started to believe the warnings of the military. According to another hypothesis, outside observers considered the Finnish armed forces to primarily act as reinforcements for the Soviet Red Army, and they believed that, in the event of a full-scale war, the Finns would not have been able or even willing to resist a Soviet invasion of Sweden and Norway through Finland. The study confirmed that this was approximately the view the Swedes, the British and the Americans had of the Finnish forces. Western and Swedish intelligence assessments did not show confidence in Finland s defence ability and the country was regarded almost as a Soviet satellite. Finland s strategic position was, however, considered slightly different from that of the Soviet-occupied Eastern European countries. Finland had been forced to become part of the Soviet sphere of interest and security system and this was sealed by the Finno-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance in 1948. Finland had little importance to the military interests of the Western powers. In Sweden s defence planning, however, Finland played a significant role as an alarm bell of a possible Soviet surprise attack, as well as defensive frontline and buffer zone.

The EU and Institutional Twinning in Morocco - An inquiry into the motives of cooperation through discourse ethics

This study examines Institutional Twinning in Morocco as a case of EU cooperation through the pragmatic, ethical and moral logics of reason in Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics. As a former accession tool, Twinning was introduced in 2004 for legal approximation in the context of the European Neighborhood Policy. Twinning is a unique instrument in development cooperation from a legal perspective. With its long historical and cultural ties to Europe, Morocco presents an interesting case study of this new form of cooperation. We will analyse motives behind the Twinning projects on illegal immigration, environment legislation and customs reform. As Twinning is a new policy instrument within the ENP context, there is relatively little preceding research, which, in itself, constitutes a reason to inquire into the subject. While introducing useful categories, the approaches discussing “normative power Europe” do not offer methodological tools precise enough to analyse the motives of the Twinning cooperation from a broad ethical standpoint. Helene Sjursen as well as Esther Barbé and Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués have elaborated on Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics in determining the extent of altruism in the ENP in general. Situating the analysis in the process-oriented framework of Critical Theory, discourse ethics provides the methodological framework for our research. The case studies reveal that the context in which they operate affects the pragmatic, ethical and moral aspirations of the actors. The utilitarian notion of profit maximization is quite pronounced both in terms of the number of Twinning projects in the economic sphere and the pragmatic logics of reason instrumental to security and trade-related issues. The historical background as well internal processes, however, contribute to defining areas of mutual interest to the actors as well as the motives Morocco and the EU sometimes described as the external projection of internal values. Through its different aspects, Twinning cooperation portrays the functioning of the pragmatic, ethical and moral logics of reason in international relations.

Rare-earth trichloroacetates

The rare-earth trichloroacetates having the formula Ln(Cl3CCOO)3. 3H2O, where Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd or Y, were investigated by conductimetric, cryoscopic and infrared methods. The results suggest a structure in which the acetate anion coordinates to the metal through both the oxygen and the water molecules remain outside the coordination sphere.

Secondary flow of Rivlin-Ericksen fluids between two concentric spheres oscillating about a fixed diameter

The paper deals with the study of the nature of secondary flow of aRivlin-Ericksen fluid, contained between two concentric spheres, which perform oscillations about a fixed diameter. The steady part of the secondary flow is discussed in detail in the following three cases (i) the outer sphere at rest, the inner oscillating, (ii) the two spheres oscillating with the same angular velocity in the same sense and (iii) the spheres oscillating with the same angular velocity in opposite sense. In a previous paper, a similar problem was discussed for theOldroyd fluids. We find that the secondary flow is strongly dependent on the common frequency of oscillation of the two spheres and on the rotational nature of the motion for the present investigation also. Certain contrasting features of interest between the secondary flow field of the two fluids are also noted.

Studies on oxovanadium (IV) oxalate hydrates

The oxalato complexes, VOC2O4·2H2O and VOC2O4·4H2O, are described. Their magnetic moments correspond to one unpaired electron showing the tetravalency of vanadium. They are monomeric in aqueous solution. Thermal studies suggest VO2 formation when the compounds are decomposed. Infrared spectra reveal covalent bonding between the vanadium and the oxalate group and the coordinated water. The tetrahydrate has also some lattice held water. The weak band at 780 mμ and a shoulder at 600 mμ are due to d ↔ d transitions and the absorption in the ultra violet is due to charge transfer within the VO2+ group. The dihydrate is assigned a stable five co-ordinated pyramidal structure; while the tetrahydrate, a distorted octahedron with one water molecule loosely bound along the V---O axis and the other outside the co-ordination sphere.

Reversible polyelectrolyte capsules as carriers for protein delivery

A reversible drug delivery system based on spontaneous deposition of a model protein into preformed microcapsules has been demonstrated for protein delivery applications. Layer-by-Layer assembly of poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and poly(methacrylic acid) (PMA) onto polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) doped CaCO3 particles, followed by core removal yielded intact hollow microcapsules having a unique property to induce spontaneous deposition of bovine serum albumin (BSA) at pH below its isoelectric point of 4.8, where it was positively charged. These capsules showed reversible pH dependent open and closed states to fluorescence labeled dextran (FITC-Dextran) and BSA (FITC-BSA). The loading capacity of BSA increased from 9.1 x 10(7) to 2.03 x 10(8) molecules per capsule with decrease in pH from 4.5 to 3.The loading of BSA-FITC was observed by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), which showed homogeneous distribution of protein inside the capsule. Efficient loading of BSA was further confirmed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).The interior capsule concentration was as high as 209 times the feeding concentration when the feeding concentration was increased from 1 to 10 mg/ml. The deposition was initially controlled by spontaneous loading mechanism at lower BSA concentration followed by diffusion controlled loading at higher concentration; which decreased the loading efficiency from 35% to 7%. Circular dichroism (CD) measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) confirmed that there was no significant change in conformation of released BSA in comparison with native BSA. The release was initially burst in the first 0.5 h and sustained up to 5 h. The hollow capsules were found to be biocompatible with mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells during in vitro cell culture studies. Thus these pH sensitive polyelectrolyte microcapsules may offer a promising delivery system for water soluble proteins and peptides. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Non-linear couette flow with heat transfer using the B-G-K model

In recent years a large number of investigators have devoted their efforts to the study of flow and heat transfer in rarefied gases, using the BGK [1] model or the Boltzmann kinetic equation. The velocity moment method which is based on an expansion of the distribution function as a series of orthogonal polynomials in velocity space, has been applied to the linearized problem of shear flow and heat transfer by Mott-Smith [2] and Wang Chang and Uhlenbeck [3]. Gross, Jackson and Ziering [4] have improved greatly upon this technique by expressing the distribution function in terms of half-range functions and it is this feature which leads to the rapid convergence of the method. The full-range moments method [4] has been modified by Bhatnagar [5] and then applied to plane Couette flow using the B-G-K model. Bhatnagar and Srivastava [6] have also studied the heat transfer in plane Couette flow using the linearized B-G-K equation. On the other hand, the half-range moments method has been applied by Gross and Ziering [7] to heat transfer between parallel plates using Boltzmann equation for hard sphere molecules and by Ziering [83 to shear and heat flow using Maxwell molecular model. Along different lines, a moment method has been applied by Lees and Liu [9] to heat transfer in Couette flow using Maxwell's transfer equation rather than the Boltzmann equation for distribution function. An iteration method has been developed by Willis [10] to apply it to non-linear heat transfer problems using the B-G-K model, with the zeroth iteration being taken as the solution of the collisionless kinetic equation. Krook [11] has also used the moment method to formulate the equivalent continuum equations and has pointed out that if the effects of molecular collisions are described by the B-G-K model, exact numerical solutions of many rarefied gas-dynamic problems can be obtained. Recently, these numerical solutions have been obtained by Anderson [12] for the non-linear heat transfer in Couette flow,

The Art of Adaptation : A study on the Europeanization of Finland's foreign and security policy

This study examines how Finnish foreign and security policy has been influenced by the European Union and its Common Foreign and Security Policy. It points to a growing interplay and misfit between the external expectations originating from the European level and the domestic expectations and traditional ways-of-doing-things. It is concluded that the deepening European integration in the sphere of foreign, security and defence policy has played a significant role in a number of transformations in the Finnish policies since 1995. New, more European, meanings have been attached to the key concepts of Finnish foreign and security policy. Neutrality and traditional peacekeeping have been replaced by a minimalist reading of military non-alignment and participation in crisis management operations and EU battle groups. Traditional small state identity has been recast more and more as small member stateness . At the same time Finland has entered an era of post-consensus in national foreign and security policy. A key theoretical argument in the background of the study is that collective understandings attached to European policies, when not resonating well with domestic understandings, cause adaptation pressures on domestic-level processes and may lead to changes in the way interests and identities are constructed. This means that Europeanization is principally seen as identity reconstruction. Consequently, the theoretical framework of the study builds on the Europeanization research literature and constructivist IR theory on state identity. Foreign and security policy is defined as the practice in which state identity is reproduced, and the key foreign and security policy concepts are seen as the vehicles of identity production. It is concluded that for Finland, participation in the EU s foreign, security and defence policies represents not only a tool for responding to the changes in the international security environment but also a new means of self-identification. Concerning the Finnish attempts of projecting national interests on the European security policy agenda, it is concluded that they mainly relate to the compatibility of the potential development of EU s defence dimension with the Finnish military non-alignment. Although neutrality was cast aside in the official security policy when Finland joined the EU, the analysis shows that its impact has continued in the domestic political debate and in the mind-set of the decision-makers. The primary research material includes official Finnish foreign and security policy documentation and the related parliamentary debates from 1994 to 2007. This study serves also as a comprehensive empirical overview on Finland s reactions and contributions to the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy.