Re-thinking teacher quality in high-poverty schools in Australia

As is the case globally, Australian schools that serve high-poverty communities most often employ the least experienced, least prepared teachers. Beginning with a discussion of poverty in Australia this chapter draws on 6 years of learnings from Australia's National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program to examine how social justice can be taught within a mainstream Initial Teacher Education program in an increasingly neoliberal climate where teacher education curriculum around social justice struggles to find a place within the current discourses of quality teaching and its preoccupations with standards, accountability, and high-stakes testing.

Tohtoriksi tulemisen tarina

The study examines the dissertation process. The thesis is based on twenty-three autobiographical stories. They were collected from PhDs who had taken their doctoral degrees at the University of Helsinki. The purpose is to investigate the experiences of these PhD recipients and find out what they recall of the events, traditions, and meanings associated with their PhD studies. An anthology collected from PhDs in the historical sciences, which was published in 1998, was used as reference material. This study begins with a general presentation of the history and values of the university and the traditions of the academic community in Finland. Thereafter, the data and the methodological framework of the study are presented. Attention is paid to the discipline background, sex and age of these PhDs, which may have affected their storytelling. The former studies concerning the academic life together with the experiences of the writers revealed that the process of becoming a PhD graduate is generally considered as an academic rite of passage. The change from student status to becoming a fully accepted professional member of one’s field is real, transforming and at certain points, ritualized. The finding of an inner logic to the doctoral process, which included meaningful turning points, was central to the narrative analysis approach. During the process there were different kinds of struggles and highlights. The family background, university studies and time in employment had directed the doctoral studies of some PhD students enormously. But generally the most memorable and value laden were the phases of actually writing the dissertation, the public examination, and the celebration party in the evening called “karonkka”. The picture that emerged from these various life-stories demonstrated that there was no ivory tower where doctoral candidates live an isolated existence. Everyday cares in ordinary life and tasks in academic life are both demanding and rewarding at the same time. The main point is that the academic community in general and PhD supervisors in particular should concentrate not only on the thesis-writing process their students but also on the doctoral students´ wider life situation. Doctoral students need scientific, financial, and mental support. Somebody must be available to inspire and offer encouragement otherwise the process will be disturbed. The successful completion of the PhD ritual gives the PhD graduate self-confidence and respect but its’ influence on the doctors’ subsequent academic career is diverse. The dissertation process is a personal and unique experience. The aim of the PhD graduation is that this traditional ritual leads to a successful completion and ensures a positive reward for the PhD graduate and the academic community. Keywords: autobiography, narratives, academic traditions, PhD graduates.

Noviisiopettajana peruskoulussa : Aloittelevien opettajien autenttisia kokemuksia ensimmäisestä opettajavuodesta

As a Novice Teacher at Comprehensive School: The authentic experiences of the beginning teachers during their first year of teaching The aim of this study is to explicate the novice year of teaching in the light of teachers´ authentic experiences. The subject of this investigation is the teachers´ subjective world of experience during their first academic year of teaching and the sharing of these experiences in collaborative consulting meetings. The themes discussed in the meetings were introduced into the collaborative group by the novice teachers themselves, and the progress of discussion was con-trolled by them. The research data was gathered in a consultative working group where the way a novice teacher starts to interpret, analyze and identify his/her own complex and dynamic teaching situations was observed. The research data gathered in this way illuminates novice teachers´ world of experience and mental picture as well as the unconscious sides of school life. In a theoretical frame of reference, the work of a teacher is identified, according to systemic scientific thought, as a dynamic triangle in which the basic elements are the personality of the teacher, the role of the teacher and the school as an organization. These basic elements form a whole within which the teacher works. The dynamics of this triangle in a teacher’s work are brought to light through the study of the phenomena of groups and group dynamics since a teacher works either as a member of a group (working community), as a leader of a group (teaching situations) or in a network (parent – teacher cooperation). Therefore, tension and force are always present in teaching work. The main research problem was to explain how a novice teacher experiences his/her first working year as a teacher. The participants (n=5) were teaching at five different comprehensive schools in the city of Helsinki. This was their first long-term post as a teacher. The research data consists of seven collaborative consulting meetings, as well as recordings and transcripts of the meetings. A classificatory framework was developed for data analysis which enabled a sys-tematic qualitative content analysis based on theory and material. In addition to the consulting meetings, the teachers were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the process of collecting the research material. The interviews were used to interpret the meanings of the content analysis based on raw data. The findings show that there is a gap between teacher education and the reality of school life, which causes difficulties for a novice teacher during his/her first teaching year. The gap is rather a global educational problem than a national one, and therefore it is independent of cultural factors. Novice teachers desire a well-structured theory of teacher education and a clear programme where the themes and content delve deeper and deeper into the subject matter during the study years. According to the novice teachers, teacher education frequently consists of sporadic and unconnected study and class situations. An individual content weakness of teacher education is the lack of insufficient initiation into evaluation processes. The novice teachers suggest that a student must be provided good-quality and competent guidance during the study years and during his or her induction. There should be a well-organized, structured and systematic induction program for novice teachers. The induction program should be overseen by an organization so that the requirements of a qualified induction can be met. The findings show that the novice teachers find the first year of teaching at comprehensive school emotionally loaded. The teachers experienced teaching as difficult work and found the workload heavy. Nevertheless, they enjoyed their job because, as they said, there were more pleasant than unpleasant things in their school day. Their main feeling at school was the joy of success in teaching. The novice teachers felt satisfaction with their pupils. The teachers experienced the more serious feelings of anger and disgust when serious violence took place. The most difficult situations arose from teaching pupils who had mental health problems. The toughest thing in the teacher´s work was teaching groups that are too heterogeneous. The most awkward problems in group dynamics happened when new immigrants, who spoke only their own languages, were integrated into the groups in the middle of the school year. Teachers wanted to help children who needed special help with learning but restated at the same time that the groups being taught shouldn’t be too heterogeneous. The teachers wished for help from school assistants so that they could personally concentrate more on teaching. Not all the parents took care of their children according to the comprehensive school law. The teachers found it hard to build a confidential relationship between home and school. In this study, novice teachers found it hard to join the teaching staff at school. Some of the teachers on staff were very strong and impulsive, reacting loudly and emotionally. These teachers provoked disagreement, conflicts, power struggles and competition among the other teachers. Although the novice teachers of the study were all qualified teachers, three of them were not interested in a permanent teaching job. For these teachers teaching at a primary school was just a project, a short period in their working life. They will remain in the teaching profession as long as they are learning new things and enjoying their teaching job. This study is an independent part of the research project on Interplay – Connecting Academic Teacher Education and Work, undertaken by the Department of Applied Sciences of Education at the University of Helsinki. Key words: novice teacher, emotions, groups and group dynamics, authority, co-operation between home and school, teacher community, leadership at school, induction, consulting

Of old and new. Messages conveyed by Australian Universities

On arriving at the University of Queensland, I walked from where the taxi dropped me off towards the Great Court. As I walked I could see the carvings in the sandstone on the façade of the building in front of me. The carvings depict images of land, flora, fauna, settlers, and us. In the corner of my right sight of vision, I could see Mayne Hall. My mind flicked back in what was an instant to a time 30 plus years ago. I remember putting on some of my best clothes when my family would travel form the suburb of Inala to the Alumni book fair held in the Hall. We needed to act ‘discrete’ and like we were ‘meant to be there’. Members of my family would work hard to save money to buy the books that had far more substance than the books at our local community or school library. This was my first interaction with the University of Queensland. On the first day of Courting Blakness, I walked towards and then into the Great Court. I began to explore and engage with the artworks and allow them to engage with me. I was conscious of being in the University of Queensland as I had been on all my past visits. I was conscious of the public and the private aspects of the artworks along with the public observance and surveillance of the viewers of the artworks. The contradictions and struggles that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience are everywhere when moving in spaces and places, including universities. They contain prevailing social, political and economic values in the same way that other places do. The symbols of place and space within universities are never neutral, and they can work to either marginalise and oppress Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, or demonstrate that they are included and engaged. The artworks in the Great Court were involved in this matrix of mixed messages and the weaves of time contained the borders of the Court and within the minds of those present.

Diary of a Jewish mother.

Brief synopsis of life of Toni Ringel by Robert Ringel; translated diary of Toni Ringel during hiding in Amsterdam, September 1942 - April 1945: struggles to survive; diet; observance of Passover and other Jewish holidays; sickness of husband; death of husband.

Contested Lands: Land Disputes in Semi-Arid Parts of Northern Tanzania : Case Studies of the Loliondo and Sale Divisions

This study Contested Lands: Land disputes in semi-arid parts of northern Tanzania. Case Studies of the Loliondo and Sale Division in the Ngorongoro District concentrates on describing the specific land disputes which took place in the 1990s in the Loliondo and Sale Divisions of the Ngorongoro District in northern Tanzania. The study shows the territorial and historical transformation of territories and property and their relation to the land disputes of the 1990s'. It was assumed that land disputes have been firstly linked to changing spatiality due to the zoning policies of the State territoriality and, secondly, they can be related to the State control of property where the ownership of land property has been redefined through statutory laws. In the analysis of the land disputes issues such as use of territoriality, boundary construction and property claims, in geographical space, are highlighted. Generally, from the 1980s onwards, increases in human population within both Divisions have put pressure on land/resources. This has led to the increased control of land/resource, to the construction of boundaries and finally to formalized land rights on village lands of the Loliondo Division. The land disputes have thus been linked to the use of legal power and to the re-creation of the boundary (informal or formal) either by the Maasai or the Sonjo on the Loliondo and Sale village lands. In Loliondo Division land disputes have been resource-based and related to multiple allocations of land or game resource concessions. Land disputes became clearly political and legal struggles with an ecological reference.Land disputes were stimulated when the common land/resource rights on village lands of the Maasai pastoralists became regulated and insecure. The analysis of past land disputes showed that space-place tensions on village lands can be presented as a platform on which spatial and property issues with complex power relations have been debated. The reduction of future land disputes will succeed only when/if local property rights to land and resources are acknowledged, especially in rural lands of the Tanzanian State.

Welfare outcomes for 3- and 6-month-old beef calves in a tropical environment castrated surgically or by applying rubber rings

Castration of cattle using rubber rings is becoming increasingly popular due to the perceived ease of the procedure and greater operator safety when compared with surgical castration. Few comparative studies have investigated the effects of different castration methods and calf age on welfare outcomes, particularly in a tropical environment. Thirty Belmont Red (a tropically adapted breed), 3-month-old (liveweight 71–119 kg) and 30, 6-month-old (liveweight 141–189 kg) calves were assigned to a two age × three castration (surgical, ring and sham) treatment factorial study (Surg3, Surg6, Ring3, Ring6, Sham3 and Sham6, n = 10 for each treatment group). Welfare outcomes were assessed post-castration using: behaviour for 2 weeks; blood parameters (cortisol and haptoglobin concentrations) to 4 weeks; wound healing to 5 weeks; and liveweights to 6 weeks. More Surg calves struggled during castration compared with Sham and Ring (P < 0.05, 90 ± 7% vs. 20 ± 9% and 24 ± 10%) and performed more struggles (1.9 ± 0.2, 1.1 ± 0.3 and 1.1 ± 0.3 for Surg, Sham and Ring, respectively), suggesting that surgical castration caused most pain during performance of the procedure. A significant (P < 0.05) time × castration method × age interaction for plasma cortisol revealed that concentrations decreased most rapidly in Sham; the Ring6 calves failed to show reduced cortisol concentrations at 2 h post-castration, unlike other treatment groups. By 7 h post-castration, all treatment groups had similar concentrations. A significant (P < 0.01) interaction between time and castration method showed that haptoglobin concentrations increased slightly to 0.89 and 0.84 mg/mL for Surg and Ring, respectively over the first 3 days post-castration. Concentrations for Surg then decreased to levels similar to Sham by day 21 and, although concentrations for Ring decreased on day 7 to 0.76 mg/mL, they increased significantly on day 14 to 0.97 mg/mL before reducing to concentrations similar to the other groups (0.66 mg/mL) by day 21. Significantly (P < 0.05) more of the wounds of the 3-month compared with the 6-month calves scored as ‘healed’ at day 7 (74% vs. 39%), while more (P = 0.062) of the Surg than Ring scored as ‘healed’ at day 21 (60% vs. 29%). At day 14 there were significantly (P < 0.05) fewer healed wounds in Ring6 compared with other treatment groups (13% vs. 40–60%). Liveweight gain was significantly (P < 0.05) greater in 3-month (0.53 kg/day) than in 6-month calves (0.44 kg/day) and in Sham calves (P < 0.001, 0.54 kg/day), than in Ring (0.44 kg/day) and Surg (0.48 kg/day) calves. Overall, welfare outcomes were slightly better for Surg than Ring calves due to reduced inflammation and faster wound healing, with little difference between age groups.

Welfare outcomes for 3- and 6-month-old beef calves in a tropical environment castrated surgically or by applying rubber rings

Castration of cattle using rubber rings is becoming increasingly popular due to the perceived ease of the procedure and greater operator safety when compared with surgical castration. Few comparative studies have investigated the effects of different castration methods and calf age on welfare outcomes, particularly in a tropical environment. Thirty Belmont Red (a tropically adapted breed), 3-month-old (liveweight 71–119 kg) and 30, 6-month-old (liveweight 141–189 kg) calves were assigned to a two age × three castration (surgical, ring and sham) treatment factorial study (Surg3, Surg6, Ring3, Ring6, Sham3 and Sham6, n = 10 for each treatment group). Welfare outcomes were assessed post-castration using: behaviour for 2 weeks; blood parameters (cortisol and haptoglobin concentrations) to 4 weeks; wound healing to 5 weeks; and liveweights to 6 weeks. More Surg calves struggled during castration compared with Sham and Ring (P < 0.05, 90 ± 7% vs. 20 ± 9% and 24 ± 10%) and performed more struggles (1.9 ± 0.2, 1.1 ± 0.3 and 1.1 ± 0.3 for Surg, Sham and Ring, respectively), suggesting that surgical castration caused most pain during performance of the procedure. A significant (P < 0.05) time × castration method × age interaction for plasma cortisol revealed that concentrations decreased most rapidly in Sham; the Ring6 calves failed to show reduced cortisol concentrations at 2 h post-castration, unlike other treatment groups. By 7 h post-castration, all treatment groups had similar concentrations. A significant (P < 0.01) interaction between time and castration method showed that haptoglobin concentrations increased slightly to 0.89 and 0.84 mg/mL for Surg and Ring, respectively over the first 3 days post-castration. Concentrations for Surg then decreased to levels similar to Sham by day 21 and, although concentrations for Ring decreased on day 7 to 0.76 mg/mL, they increased significantly on day 14 to 0.97 mg/mL before reducing to concentrations similar to the other groups (0.66 mg/mL) by day 21. Significantly (P < 0.05) more of the wounds of the 3-month compared with the 6-month calves scored as ‘healed’ at day 7 (74% vs. 39%), while more (P = 0.062) of the Surg than Ring scored as ‘healed’ at day 21 (60% vs. 29%). At day 14 there were significantly (P < 0.05) fewer healed wounds in Ring6 compared with other treatment groups (13% vs. 40–60%). Liveweight gain was significantly (P < 0.05) greater in 3-month (0.53 kg/day) than in 6-month calves (0.44 kg/day) and in Sham calves (P < 0.001, 0.54 kg/day), than in Ring (0.44 kg/day) and Surg (0.48 kg/day) calves. Overall, welfare outcomes were slightly better for Surg than Ring calves due to reduced inflammation and faster wound healing, with little difference between age groups.

What people talk about when they talk about quitting

As part of an ongoing project to explore the design of behaviour-change technology for smoking cessation, we analysed a successful community who come together on the popular Reddit website to discuss quitting and to encourage each other's quit attempts. We found that users remain anonymous but identify according to their quit stage. We examined the form and content of posts, finding that narratives about people and events are more common than other rhetorical forms. Many speak of ongoing struggles with quit attempts. Our analysis reveals forms of sociality spontaneously enacted in a self-managed community of quitters. We compare our results with earlier work on social media and behaviour change.

Calm or storm? : Wind power actors perceptions of Finnish wind power and its future

Wind power has grown fast internationally. It can reduce the environmental impact of energy production and increase energy security. Finland has turbine industry but wind electricity production has been slow, and nationally set capacity targets have not been met. I explored social factors that have affected the slow development of wind power in Finland by studying the perceptions of Finnish national level wind power actors. By that I refer to people who affect the development of wind power sector, such as officials, politicians, and representatives of wind industries and various organisations. The material consisted of interviews, a questionnaire, and written sources. The perceptions of wind power, its future, and methods to promote it were divided. They were studied through discourse analysis, content analysis, and scenario construction. Definition struggles affect views of the significance and potential of wind power in Finland, and also affect investments in wind power and wind power policy choices. Views of the future were demonstrated through scenarios. The views included scenarios of fast growth, but in the most pessimistic views, wind power was not thought to be competitive without support measures even in 2025, and the wind power capacity was correspondingly low. In such a scenario, policy tool choices were expected to remain similar to ones in use at the time of the interviews. So far, the development in Finland has followed closely this pessimistic scenario. Despite the scepticism about wind electricity production, wind turbine industry was seen as a credible industry. For many wind power actors as well as for the Finnish wind power policy, the turbine industry is a significant motive to promote wind power. Domestic electricity production and the export turbine industry are linked in discourse through so-called home market argumentation. Finnish policy tools have included subsidies, research and development funding, and information policies. The criteria used to evaluate policy measures were both process-oriented and value-based. Feed-in tariffs and green certificates that are common elsewhere have not been taken to use in Finland. Some interviewees considered such tools unsuitable for free electricity markets and for the Finnish policy style, dictatorial, and being against western values. Other interviewees supported their use because of their effectiveness. The current Finnish policy tools are not sufficiently effective to increase wind power production significantly. Marginalisation of wind power in discourses, pessimistic views of the future, and the view that the small consumer demand for wind electricity represents the political views of citizens towards promoting wind power, make it more difficult to take stronger policy measures to use. Wind power has not yet significantly contributed to the ecological modernisation of the energy sector in Finland, but the situation may change as the need to reduce emissions from energy production continues.

Can an Ecdysiast Fag speak the voice of transgender? Phoenix (un)rising and the assumptions in Re Kevin revisited

"Each night the men look so surprised I change my sex before their eyes Tell me if you can What makes a man a man" - Charles Aznavour, ‘What makes a man a man (Comme ils disent)’. In (the few) Western jurisdictions in which marriage remains a forensic artefact constructed on the basis of a man|woman binary, the anatomical and heteronormative assumptions which underlie the construction of marriage remain as artificial constructs which do not map well (if indeed at all) to current social, or even medical, approaches to gender. In Re Kevin (Validity of Marriage of Transsexual) [2001] FamCA 1074, Justice Chisolm sought to recast the forensic ascription of sex against a broader set of criteria, expanding the range of sexually dimorphic anatomy used to determine sex for the purposes of marriage in Australia and incorporating observations of psycho-social gender-differentiation as factors relevant to the ultimate question for the Court — ‘What makes a man a man?’ Yet neither expansion is unproblematic. This article explores this fundamental forensic question against the background of Aznavour’s ‘Comme ils dissent’, in which the persona of un(e) stripteaseuse travesti struggles to answer precisely the same question. It concludes that Re Kevin might offer no more sophisticated an analysis of the lived reality of trans than Aznavour’s ecdysiast fag — not trans, but un travesti: "I shop and cook and sew a bit Though mum does too, I must admit I do it better."

Res Communis? A critical legal geography of outer space, Antarctica, and the deep seabed

This chapter provides a critical legal geography of outer Space, charting the topography of the debates and struggles around its definition, management, and possession. As the emerging field of critical legal geography demonstrates, law is not a neutral organiser of space, but is instead a powerful cultural technology of spatial production. Drawing on legal documents such as the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Treaty, as well as on the analogous and precedent-setting legal geographies of Antarctica and the deep seabed, the chapter addresses key questions about the legal geography of outer Space, questions which are of growing importance as Space’s available satellite spaces in the geostationary orbit diminish, Space weapons and mining become increasingly viable, Space colonisation and tourism emerge, and questions about Space’s legal status grow in intensity. Who owns outer Space? Who, and whose rules, govern what may or may not (literally) take place there? Is the geostationary orbit the sovereign property of the equatorial states it supertends, as these states argued in the 1970s? Or is it a part of the res communis, or common property of humanity, which currently legally characterises outer Space? Does Space belong to no one, or to everyone? As challenges to the existing legal spatiality of outer Space emerge from spacefaring states, companies, and non-spacefaring states, it is particularly critical that the current spatiality of Space is understood and considered.

The InstaBooth: Making common ground for media architectural design

Media architecture has emerged from and relies upon a range of different disciplinary traditions and areas of expertise. As this field develops, it is timely to reflect upon the ways in which designers of different disciplinary stripes can be brought together to collaborate in a design process. What are the means by which design teams can establish a ‘common ground’ where design work can take place while recognizing the diversity of ways of working those different disciplines bring to the process? A co-design approach has been the fundamental backbone of the InstaBooth project, which has brought together a multidisciplinary design team of academics and practitioners. The intention of this project has been to explore the combination of digital and physical interactions within a small media architecture installation to intervene with urban environments and public places for the purposes of community engagement. It is by exploring the design process of the InstaBooth project that we highlight the value of multi-disciplinary collaborations, the lessons that can be learned, and the struggles and hurdles along the way. This paper highlights the iterative process of design, the materials and physical prototypes that were employed to ultimately create a working version of the InstaBooth, a media architecture that evolves as users push its boundaries and take ownership of the installation. The concept of the InstaBooth continues to develop not only as more data are collected on its mechanics and potentials through observations, interviews and workshops, but also as more and more users engage with the installation in their individual ways.

Sukupolvien ongelma : Tutkielmia sukupolven käsitteestä, sukupolvitietoisuudesta ja suurista ikäluokista

The aims of the thesis are (1) to present a systematic evaluation of generation and its relevance as a sociological concept, (2) to reflect on how generational consciousness, i.e. generation as an object of collective identification that has social significance, can emerge and take shape, (3) to analyze empirically the generational experiences and consciousness of one specific generation, namely Finnish baby boomers (b. 1945 1950). The thesis contributes to the discussion on the social (as distinct from its genealogical) meaning of the concept of generation, launched by Karl Mannheim s classic Das Problem der Generationen (1928), in which the central idea is that a certain group of people is bonded together by a shared experience and that this bonding can result in a distinct self-consciousness. The thesis is comprised of six original articles and an extensive summarizing chapter. In the empirical articles, the baby boomers are studied on the basis of nationally representative survey data (N = 2628) and narrative life-story interviews (N = 38). In the article that discusses the connection of generations and social movements, the analysis is based on the member survey of Attac Finland (N = 1096). Three main themes were clarified in the thesis. (1) In the social sense the concept of generation is a modern, problematic, and ultimately a political concept. It served the interests of the intellectuals who developed the concept in the early 20th century and provided them, as an alternative to the concept of social class, a new way of think about social change and progress. The concept of generation is always coupled with the concept of Zeitgeist or some other controversial way of defining what is essential, i.e. what creates generations, in a given culture. Thus generation is, as a product of definition and classification struggles, a contested concept. The concept also clearly implies elitist connotations; the idea of some kind of vanguard (the elite) that represents an entire generation by proclaiming itself as its spokesman automatically creates a counterpart, namely the others in the peer group who are thought to be represented (the masses). (2) Generational consciousness cannot emerge as a result of any kind of automatic process or endogenously; it must be made. There has to be somebody who represents the generation in order for that generation to exist in people s minds and as an object of identification; generational experiences and their meanings must be articulated. Hence, social generations are, in a fundamental manner, discursively constructed. The articulations of generational experiences (speeches, writings, manifests, labels etc.) can be called as the discursive dimension of social generations, and through this notion, how public discourse shapes people s generational consciousness can be seen. Another important element in the process is collective memory, as generational consciousness often takes form only retrospectively. (3) Finnish baby boomers are not a united or homogeneous generation but are divided into many smaller sections with specific generational experiences and consciousnesses. The content of the generational consciousness of the baby boomers is heavily politically charged. A salient dividing line inside the age group is formed by individual attitudes towards so-called 1960s radicalism. Identification with the 1960s generation functions today as a positive self-definition of a certain small leftist elite group, and the values and characteristics usually connected with the idea of the 1960s generation do not represent the whole age group. On the contrary, among some of the members of the baby boomers, the generational identification is still directed by the experience of how traditional values were disgraced in the 1960s. As objects of identification, the neutral term baby boomers and the charged 1960s generation are totally different things, and therefore they should not be used as synonyms. Although the significance of the group of the 1960s generation is often overestimated, they are however special with respect to generational consciousness because they have presented themselves as the voice of the entire generation. Their generational interpretations have spread through the media with the help of certain iconic images of the generation insomuch that 1960s radicalism has become an indirect generational experience for other parts of the baby boom cohort as well.

Local Politicizations : A Comparison of Finns and French Practicing Democracy

This study examines how do the processes of politicization differ in the Finnish and the French local contexts, and what kinds of consequences do these processes have on the local civic practices, the definitions and redefinitions of democracy and citizenship, the dynamics of power and resistance, and the ways of solving controversies in the public sphere. By means of comparative anthropology of the state , focusing on how democracy actually is practiced in different contexts, politicizations the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy are analyzed. The focus of the study is on local activists engaged in different struggles on various levels of the local public spheres, and local politicians and civil servants participating in these struggles from their respective positions, in two middle-size European cities, Helsinki and Lyon. The empirical analyses of the book compare different political actors and levels of practicing democracy simultaneously. The study is empirically based on four different bodies of material: Ethnographic notes taken during a fieldwork among the activities of several local activist groups; 47 interviews of local activists and politicians; images representing different levels of public portrayals from activist websites (Helsinki N=274, Lyon N=232) and from city information magazines (Helsinki-info N=208, Lyon Citoyen N= 357); and finally, newspaper articles concerning local conflict issues, and reporting on the encounters between local citizens and representatives of the cities (January-June in 2005; Helsingin Sanomat N=96 and Le Progrès N= 102). The study makes three distinctive contributions to the study of current democratic societies: (1) a conceptual one by bringing politicization at the center of a comparison of political cultures, and by considering in parallel the ethnographic group styles theory by Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, the theory on counter-democracy by Pierre Rosanvallon and the pragmatist justification theory by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot; (2) an empirical one through the triangulation of ethnographic, thematic interview, visual, and newspaper data through which the different aspects of democratic practices are examined; and (3) a methodological one by developing new ways of analyzing comparative cases an application of Frame Analysis to visual material and the creation of Public Justification Analysis for analyzing morally loaded claims in newspaper reports thus building bridges between cultural, political, and pragmatic sociology. The results of the study indicate that the cultural tools the Finnish civic actors had at their disposal were prone to hinder more than support politicization, whereas the tools the French actors mainly relied on were frequently apt for making politicization possible. This crystallization is defined and detailed in many ways in the analyses of the book. Its consequences to the understanding and future research on the current developments of democracy are multiple, as politicization, while not assuring good results as such, is central to a functioning and vibrant democracy in which injustices can be fixed and new directions and solutions sought collectively.