Gender, Politics and Democratisation in Cameroon

Gender perceptions, religious belief systems, and political thought have excluded women from politics, for ages, around the world. Combining feminist and modernisation theorists in my theoretical framework, I examine the trends in patriarchal Europe and I highlight the gender-sensitive model of the Nordic countries. Retracing local gender patterns from precolonial to postcolonial eras in sub-Saharan Africa, I explore the links between perceptions, needs, resources, education and women's political participation in Cameroon. Democratisation is supposed to open up political participation, to grant equal opportunities to all adults. One ironic feature of the liberalisation process in Cameroon has been the decrease of women in parliamentarian representation (14% in 1988, 6% in 1992, 5% in 1997 and 10% in 2002). What social, cultural and institutional mechanisms produced this paradoxical outcome, the exclusion of half the population? The gender complementarity of the indigenous context has been lost to male prevalence privileged by education, church, law, employment, economy and politics in the public sphere; most women are marginalised in the private sphere. Nation building and development have failed; ethnicism and individualism are growing. Some hope lies in the growing civil society. From two surveys and 21 focus groups across Cameroon, in 2000 and 2002, some significant results of the processed empirical data reveal low electoral registration (34.5% women and 65.9% men), contrasted by the willingness to run for municipal elections (33.3 % women and 45.2% men). The co-existence of customary and statutory laws, the corrupt political system and fraudulent practices, contribute to the marginalisation of women and men who are interested in politics. A large majority of female respondents consider female politicians more trustworthy and capable than their male counterparts; they even foresee the appointment of a female Prime Minister. The Nordic countries have institutionalised gender equality in their legislation, policies and practices. France has improved women's political inclusion with the parity laws; Rwanda is another model of women's representation, thanks to its post-conflict constitution. From my analysis, Cameroonian institutions, men and more so women, may learn and borrow from these experiences, in order to design and implement a sustainable and gender-balanced democracy. Keywords: democratisation, politics, gender equality, feminism, citizenship, Cameroon, Nordic countries, Finland, France, United Kingdom, quotas, societal social psychology.

Calculating life : Nation, Nature, and the Nativisation of Nonhuman Genetics

In recent decades, nation-states have become major stakeholders in nonhuman genetic resource networks as a result of several international treaties. The most important of these is the juridically binding international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 by some 150 nations. This convention was a watershed for the identification of global rights related to genetic resources in recognising the sovereign power of signatory nations over their natural resources. The contracting parties are legally obliged to identify their native genetic material and to take legislative, administrative, and/or policy measures to foster research on genetic resources. In this process of global bioprospecting in the name of biodiversity conservation, the world's nonhuman genetic material is to be indexed according to nation and nationality. This globally legitimated process of native genetic identification inscribes national identity into nature and flesh. As a consequence, this new form of potential national biowealth forms also what could be called novel nonhuman genetic nationhoods. These national corporealities are produced in tactical and strategic encounters of the political and the scientific, in new spaces crafted through technical and institutional innovation, and between the national reconfiguration of the natural and cultural as framed by international political agreements. This work follows the creation of national genetic resources in one of the biodiversity-poor countries of the North, Finland. The thesis is an ethnographic work addressing the calculation of life: practices of identifying, evaluating, and collecting nonhuman life in national genetic programmes. The core of the thesis is about observations made within the Finnish Genetic Resources Programmes in 2004 2008, gathered via multi-sited ethnography and related methods derived from the anthropology of science. The thesis explores the problematic relations of the communal forms of human and nonhuman life in an increasingly technoscientific contemporaneity  the co-production and coexistence of human and nonhuman life in biopolitical formations called nations.

Suomalaisten yritysten vapaaehtoinen sosiaalinen vastuu : Sidosryhmäviitekehys yritysten ja ulkoisten sidosryhmien edustajien näkemyksissä

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is no longer only an issue of companies but a concern shared by e.g. the European Union, the International Labour Organization, labour market organizations and many others. This thesis examines what kind of voluntary corporate social responsibility exceeding the minimum level set in the legislation can be expected from the Finnish companies. The research was based on the interviews of some representatives of Finnish companies and of external stakeholders. Earlier Finnish empirical research on the topic has solely analysed the stakeholder thinking and the ethics of the views of the company representatives. The views of the external stakeholders brought ht up a much more versatile perspective on the voluntary corporate social responsibility of the companies. That is the particular surplus value of this research. This research, founded on stakeholder thinking, evaluated what kind of starting points and ideas on responsibility the views of the representatives of the companies and the external stakeholders were based on the voluntary social responsibility. Furthermore, the research also investigated how their views about the corporate social responsibility indicated the benefits achieved on the cooperative actions with different partners - for example companies, communities and public administration. To fulfil the aims of the research, the following questions were used as part tasks in mapping the basic foundations and starting points expressed by the representatives of the companies and the external stakeholders: 1) How do laws, directions concerning social responsibility of companies, and opinions and demands of the stakeholders guide and affect the voluntary corporate social responsibility? 2) How can companies assume voluntary corporate social responsibility in addition to their core functions and without compromising their profitability, and how does, for example, the tightening competition affect the possibility of taking responsibility? 3) What kind of ethic and moral foundations is the corporate social responsibility based on? 4) What kind of roles can companies have in securing and promoting the well-being of citizens in Finland and on the global market as one subsystem of the society? The views on the voluntary corporate social responsibility of nine big companies, one medium-sized company and one small company, all considered responsible pioneer companies, were studied with surveys and half-structured theme interviews between 2003 and 2004. The research proceeded as a theory-bounded study. The empirical material and the previous stakeholder thinking theories (Takala 2000b, Vehkaperä 2003) guided the thesis and worked abductively in interplay with each other during the research process. (Tuomi, Sarajärvi 2002.) The aims and the methods of the research and the themes of the interviews were defined on the basis of that information. The aims of the research were surveyed qualitatively with the strategy of a multiple case study. Representatives from nine big peer companies and nine external stakeholders were interviewed with half-structured themes between 2004 and 2005. The external stakeholders and the peer companies were chosen with the "thinking" of theoretical replication by Yin, according to which the views of the representatives of those groups would differ from those of the pioneer companies and also from those of each others. The multiple case study supports analysing the internal cohesion of the views of different groups and comparing their differences, and it supports theoretical evaluation and theory-building as well. (Yin 2003.) Another reason for choosing the external stakeholders was their known cooperation with companies. The spoken argumentations of the company and stakeholder representatives on the voluntary social responsibility of the companies were analysed and interpreted in the first place with an analytic discourse analysis, and the argumentations were classified allusively into the stakeholder discourses in three of the part tasks. In the discourse analysis, argumentations of the speech is seen to be intervowen with cultural meanings. (Jokinen, Juhila 1999.) The views of the representatives of the pioneer companies and the external stakeholders were more stakeholder-orientated than the views of the representatives of the peer companies. For the most part, the voluntary corporate social responsibility was seemingly targeted on single, small cooperation projects of the companies and external stakeholders. The pioneer companies had more of those projects, and they were participating in the projects more actively than the peer companies were. The significant result in this research was the notion that, in particular, the representatives of the pioneer companies and external stakeholders did not consider employing and paying taxes to be enough of reciprocal corporate social responsibility. However, they still wanted to preserve the Finnish welfare model, and the interviewees did not wish major changes in the present legislation or the social agreements. According to this study, the voluntary corporate social responsibility is motivated by ethical utilitarianism which varied from very narrow to very wide in relation to benefits achieved by companies and stakeholders (Velasquez 2002, Lagerspetz 2004). Compared with the peer companies, more of the representatives of the pioneer companies and of external stakeholders estimated that companies in their decision-making and operations considered not only the advantages and the benefits of the owners and other internal stakeholders, but also those of the external stakeholders and of the whole society. However, all interviewees expressed more or less strongly that the economic responsibility guides the voluntary responsible actions of the companies in the first place. This kind of utilitarian foundation of behaviour appeared from this research was named as business-orientated company moral. This thesis also presents a new voluntary corporate social responsibility model with four variables on the stakeholder discourses and their distinctive characteristics. The utilitarian motivation of a company s behaviour on their operations has been criticized on the grounds that the end justifies the means. It has also been stated that it is impossible to evaluate the benefits of the utilitarian type of actions to the individuals and the society. It is expected however that companies for their part promote the material and immaterial well-being of the individuals on the global, national and local markets. The expectations are so strong that if companies do not take into account the ethical and moral values, they can possibly suffer significant financial losses. All stakeholders, especially consumers, can with their own choices promote the responsible behaviour of the companies. Key words: voluntary corporate social responsibility, external stakeholders, corporate citizenship, ethics and morality, utilitarianism, stakeholder discourses, welfare society, globalisation

Psykoterapia, masennus ja sisäinen tarina

Psychotherapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for depression, but not enough is known about the subjective meanings of therapy for human life. This study focuses on experiences of the effects of psychotherapy, thoughts about changes in depression and meanings of the therapy in the inner narratives of persons who sought psychotherapy for their depression. The study was based on interviews of 14 persons, who took part in the Helsinki Psychotherapy Study (HPS). Half of them took part in short-term solution-focused therapy and half in long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. The sample included both women and men. Part of them had recovered from their depression by the end of therapy (BDI<10), part had not. Therapy was experienced to have effects on one s immediate feelings, thoughts and social actions. Some barriers were also connected to the therapy and the HPS research frame. The relief of depression was explained by enhanced understanding and perspective changes. Also the therapeutic alliance and factors not connected to therapy were seen to have influence on the experienced changes. The resumption of depression was regarded as the consequence of ill-fitting therapy or therapist, incompleteness of the therapy or other reasons not connected to the therapy itself. With the narrative analysis three interpretations were constructed concerning how the persons had sought for therapy, what was the image they had about themselves and their problems and what were their expectations for the therapy. The interpretations were summed up to the life historical, situational and moral inner narrative. Through the psychotherapy some inner narratives came true. In these cases psychotherapy reinforced the original inner narrative. In other cases psychotherapy did not meet the inner narrative of the person, neither had the narrative changed. For some persons the inner narrative got new forms during the therapy: the analyses showed that psychotherapy had reconstructed the persons conceptions about themselves and their problems, which led to changes in the expectations concerning the therapy. Key words: psychotherapy, depression, inner narrative, qualitative research, analysis of narrative, narrative analysis

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