Genetic background of bipolar disorder and related cognitive impairments

Bipolar disorder (BP) is a complex psychiatric disorder characterized by episodes of mania and depression. BP affects approximately 1% of the world’s population and shows no difference in lifetime prevalence between males and females. BP arises from complex interactions among genetic, developmental and environmental factors, and it is likely that several predisposing genes are involved in BP. The genetic background of BP is still poorly understood, although intensive and long-lasting research has identified several chromosomal regions and genes involved in susceptibility to BP. This thesis work aims to identify the genetic variants that influence bipolar disorder in the Finnish population by candidate gene and genome-wide linkage analyses in families with many BP cases. In addition to diagnosis-based phenotypes, neuropsychological traits that can be seen as potential endophenotypes or intermediate traits for BP were analyzed. In the first part of the thesis, we examined the role of the allelic variants of the TSNAX/DISC1 gene cluster to psychotic and bipolar spectrum disorders and found association of distinct allelic haplotypes with these two groups of disorders. The haplotype at the 5’ end of the Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 gene (DISC1) was over-transmitted to males with psychotic disorder (p = 0.008; for an extended haplotype p = 0.0007 with both genders), whereas haplotypes at the 3’ end of DISC1 associated with bipolar spectrum disorder (p = 0.0002; for an extended haplotype p = 0.0001). The variants of these haplotypes also showed association with different cognitive traits. The haplotypes at the 5’ end associated with perseverations and auditory attention, while the variants at the 3’ end associated with several cognitive traits including verbal fluency and psychomotor processing speed. Second, in our complete set of BP families with 723 individuals we studied six functional candidate genes from three distinct signalling systems: serotonin-related genes (SLC6A4 and TPH2), BDNF -related genes (BDNF, CREB1 and NTRK2) and one gene related to the inflammation and cytokine system (P2RX7). We replicated association of the functional variant Val66Met of BDNF with BP and better performance in retention. The variants at the 5’ end of SLC6A4 also showed some evidence of association among males (p = 0.004), but the widely studied functional variants did not yield any significant results. A protective four-variant haplotype on P2RX7 showed evidence of association with BP and executive functions: semantic and phonemic fluency (p = 0.006 and p = 0.0003, respectively). Third, we analyzed 23 bipolar families originating from the North-Eastern region of Finland. A genome-wide scan was performed using the 6K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array. We identified susceptibility loci at chromosomes 7q31 with a LOD score of 3.20 and at 9p13.1 with a LOD score of 4.02. We followed up both linkage findings in the complete set of 179 Finnish bipolar families. The finding on chromosome 9p13 was supported (maximum LOD score of 3.02), but the susceptibility gene itself remains unclarified. In the fourth part of the thesis, we wanted to test the role of the allelic variants that have associated with bipolar disorder in recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We could confirm findings for the DFNB31, SORCS2, SCL39A3, and DGKH genes. The best signal in this study comes from DFNB31, which remained significant after multiple testing corrections. Two variants of SORCS2 were allelic replications and presented the same signal as the haplotype analysis. However, no association was detected with the PALB2 gene, which was the most significantly associated region in the previous GWAS. Our results indicate that BP is heterogeneous and its genetic background may accordingly vary in different populations. In order to fully understand the allelic heterogeneity that underlies common diseases such as BP, complete genome sequencing for many individuals with and without the disease is required. Identification of the specific risk variants will help us better understand the pathophysiology underlying BP and will lead to the development of treatments with specific biochemical targets. In addition, it will further facilitate the identification of environmental factors that alter risk, which will potentially provide improved occupational, social and psychological advice for individuals with high risk of BP.

Health-Related Quality of Life and Mental Disorders in Finland

Quality of life (QoL) and Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are becoming one of the key outcomes of health care due to increased respect for the subjective valuations and well-being of patients and an increasing part of the ageing population living with chronic, non-fatal conditions. Preference-based HRQoL measures enable estimation of health utility, which can be useful for rational rationing, evidence-based medicine and health policy. This study aimed to compare the individual severity and public health burden of major chronic conditions in Finland, including and focusing on reliably diagnosed psychiatric conditions. The study is based on the Health 2000 survey, a representative general population survey of 8028 Finns aged 30 and over. Depressive, anxiety and alcohol use disorders were diagnosed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (M-CIDI). HRQoL was measured with the 15D and the EQ-5D, with 83% response rate. This study found that people with psychiatric disorders had the lowest 15D HRQoL scores at all ages, in comparison to other main groups of chronic conditions. Considering 29 individual conditions, three of the four most severe (on 15D) were psychiatric disorders; the most severe was Parkinson s disease. Of the psychiatric disorders, chronic conditions that have sometimes been considered relatively mild - dysthymia, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder and social phobia - were found to be the most severe. This was explained both by the severity of the impact of these disorders on mental health domains of HRQoL, and also by the fact that decreases were widespread on most dimensions of HRQoL. Considering the public health burden of conditions, musculoskeletal disorders were associated with the largest burden, followed by psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders were associated with the largest burden at younger ages. Of individual conditions, the largest burden found was for depressive disorders, followed by urinary incontinence and arthrosis of the hip and knee. The public health burden increased greatly with age, so the ageing of the Finnish population will mean that the disease burden caused by chronic conditions will increase by a quarter up to year 2040, if morbidity patterns do not change. Investigating alcohol consumption and HRQoL revealed that although abstainers had poorer HRQoL than moderate drinkers, this was mainly due to many abstainers being former drinkers and having the poorest HRQoL. Moderate drinkers did not have significantly better HRQoL than abstainers who were not former drinkers. Psychiatric disorders are associated with a large part of the non-fatal disease burden in Finland. In particular anxiety disorders appear to be more severe and have a larger public health burden than previously thought.

Pelon ja toivon välissä : Pätkätyöläisen urakerronta

This study analyzes the forming of the occupational identity of the well-educated fixed-term employees. Fixed-term employment contracts amongst the well-educated labour force are exceptionally common in Finland as compared to other European countries. Two groups of modern fixed-term employees are distinguished. The first comprises well-educated women employed in the public sector whose fixed-term employment often consists of successive periods as temporary substitutes. The other group comprises well-educated, upper white-collar men aged over 40, whose fixed-term employment careers often consist of jobs of project nature or posts that are filled for a fixed period only. Method of the study For the empirical data I interviewed 35 persons (26 women and 9 men) in 33 interviews, one of which was conducted by e-mail and one was a group interview. All the interviews were electronically recorded and coded. All the interviewees have two things in common: fixed-term employment and formal high education. Thirteen (13) of them are researchers, four nurses, four midwives, four journalists, and ten project experts. I used the snowball method to get in touch the interviewees. The first interviewees were those who were recommended by the trade unions and by my personal acquaintances. These interviewees, in turn, recommended other potential interviewees. In addition, announcements on the internet pages of the trade unions were used to reach other interviewees. In analysing process I read the research material several times to find the turning points in the narrative the interviewees told. I also searched for the most meaningful stories told and the meaning the interviewees gave to these stories and to the whole narrative. In addition to that I paid attention to co-production of the narrative with the interviewees and analyzed the narrative as performance to be able to search for the preferred identities the interviewees perform. (Riesman 2001, 698-701). I do not pay much attention to the question of truth of a narrative in the sense of its correspondence with facts; rather I think a working life narrative has two tasks: On the one hand one has to tell the facts and on the other hand, he/she has to describe the meaning of these facts to herself/himself. To emphasize the double nature of the narrative about one’s working life I analyzed the empirical data both by categorizing it according to the cultural models of storytelling (heroic story, comedy, irony and tragedy) and by studying the themes most of the interviewees talked about. Ethics of the study I chose to use narrative within qualitative interviews on the grounds that in my opinion is more ethical and more empowering than the more traditional structured interview methods. During the research process I carefully followed the ethical rules of a qualitative research. The purpose of the interviews and the research was told to the interviewees by giving them a written description of the study. Oral permission to use the interview in this research was obtained from the interviewees. The names and places, which are mentioned in the study, are changed to conceal the actual identity of the interviewees. I shared the analysis with the interviewees by sending each of them the first analysis of their personal interview. This way I asked them to make sure that the identity was hidden well enough and hoped to give interviewees a chance to look at their narratives, to instigate new actions and sustain the present one (Smith 2001, 721). Also I hoped to enjoy a new possibility of joint authorship. Main results As a result of the study I introduce six models of telling a story. The four typical western cultural models that guide the telling are: heroic story, comedy, tragedy and satirical story (Hänninen 1999). In addition to these models I found two ways of telling a career filled with fixed-term employments that differ significantly from traditional career story telling. However, the story models in which the interviewees pour their experience locates the fixed term employers work career in an imagined life trajectory and reveals the meaning they give to it. I analyze the many sided heroic story that Liisa tells as an example of the strength of the fear of failing or losing the job the fixed term employee feels. By this structure it is also possible to show that success is felt to be entirely a matter of chance. Tragedy, the failure in one’s trial to get something, is a model I introduce with the help of Vilppu’s story. This narrative gets its meaning both from the sorrow of the failure in the past and the rise of something new the teller has found. Aino tells her story as a comedy. By introducing her narrative, I suggest that the purpose of the comedy, a stronger social consensus, gets deeper and darker shade by fixed-term employment: one who works as a fixed term employee has to take his/her place in his/her work community by him/herself without the support the community gives to those in permanent position. By studying the satiric model Rauno uses, I argue that using irony both turns the power structures to a carnival and builds free space to the teller of the story and to the listener. Irony also helps in building a consensus, mutual understanding, between the teller and the listener and it shows the distance the teller tells to exist between him and others. Irony, however, demands some kind of success in one’s occupational career but also at least a minor disappointment in the progress of it. Helmi tells her story merely as a detective story. By introducing Helmi’s narrative, I argue that this story model strengthens the trust in fairness of the society the teller and the listener share. The analysis also emphasizes the central position of identity work, which is caused by fixed-term employment. Most of the interviewees talked about getting along in working life. I introduced Sari’s narrative as an example of this. In both of these latter narratives one’s personal character and habits are lifted as permanent parts of the actual professional expertise, which in turn varies according to different situations. By introducing these models, I reveal that the fixed-term employees have different strategies to cope with their job situations and these strategies vary according to their personal motives and situations and the actual purpose of the interview. However, I argue that they feel the space between their hopes and fears narrow and unsecure. In the research report I also introduce pieces of the stories – themes – that the interviewees use to build these survival strategies. They use their personal curriculum vitae or portfolio, their position in work community and their work morals to build their professional identity. Professional identity is flexible and varies in time and place, but even then it offers a tool to fix one’s identity work into something. It offers a viewpoint to society and a tool to measure one’s position in surrounding social nets. As one result of the study I analyze the position the fixed-term employees share on the edge of their job communities. I summarize the hopes and fears the interviewees have concerning employers, trade unions, educational institutions and the whole society. In their opinion, the solidarity between people has been weakened by the short-sighted power of the economy. The impact the fixed-term employment has on one’s professional identity and social capital is a many-sided and versatile process. Fixed-term employment both strengthens and weakens the professional identity, social capital and the building of trust. Fixed-term employment also affects one’s day-to-day life by excluding her/him from the norm and by one’s difficulty in making long-term plans (Jokinen 2005). Regardless of the nature of the job contract, the workers themselves are experts in making the best of their sometimes less than satisfying work life and they also build their professional identity by using creatively their education, work experiences and interpersonal relations. However, a long career of short fixed-term employments may seriously change the perception of employee about his/her role. He/she may start concentrating only in coping in his/her unsatisfactory situation and leaves the active improvement of the lousy working conditions to other people. Keywords: narrative, fixed-tem employment, occupational identity, work, story model, social capital, career  

Ikääntyminen maalaiskylässä

Aging in a country village This dissertation examines what kind of environment of aging a small country village is, who elderly villagers are and what kind of everyday life they have. The qualitative material gathered through ethnographic field work at a village situated in Southern Finland consists of a field work diary and 34 interviews of elderly villagers. The dissertation is based on social gerontology and village research. The key concepts are: the environment of aging; locality and local identity; and way of life. The village is examined as a social and physical environment of aging. Difficulties regarding mobility are the biggest challenges for elderly villagers in their everyday life. The social environment of aging is constructed by historical, cultural and local factors. The village community is formed by many small sub-communities. An elderly villager s status in a village community and her/his social competence affect the formation of her/his social network and the quality of her/his environment of aging. The dissertation examines the local identities of older villagers and their relationships to the village. The local identities can be based on the village, memories or on many places, or a place and places may not be of great importance for a person s identity. The local identity of an older villager affects her/his experiences of living in the village and her/his future plans to move away from the village. The everyday life of an older villager is constructed by rhythms, routines and repetitions. However, there are differences between how everyday lives are arranged among elderly villagers, which are explained by the concept of a way of life. Four ways of life were found. Nature and its importance are a background to all four ways of life. A traditional way of life is based on continuity and hard work, a family-oriented way of life on family members and relatives. A mobile way of life is characterized by symbolic and concrete mobility. An original way of life is marked by independent loneliness . In practice, a person s way of life is always constructed by two or many ways of life.

Kahdestaan kotona : Tutkimus vanhoista pariskunnista

In this study, which pertains to the field of social gerontology and family research, I analyse the meaning of everyday life as perceived by elderly couples living at home. I use the ethnographic approach, with the aim of interpreting meanings from the elderly people s personal point of view and to increase understanding of their way of life. The study deepens our conception of what gives purpose to the everyday life of elderly people. The number of elderly couples is growing and, to an increasing extent, a couple will live and cope together to a ripe old age. Such coping can also be viewed as an important resource for society. Ethnography tries to get close to people's life practices. I examine the day-to-day life of elderly couples based on textual data, which I obtained by visiting the homes of 16 couples in a total of five small municipalities in Southern Finland. The couples had married soon after the war or in the early 1950s. I found that the aspiration towards continuity, which unites the concepts of place and home, housework and a long marriage, is the most important notion connecting the discussion themes. The results show that in the opinion of the elderly, the concept of a good life is intertwined with a long marriage spent at home, as well as its values. Old people find that they lead an independent life if they feel that they can hold on to the key features of their way of life. Elderly couples ability to cope with everyday life involves taking care of housework and other tasks around the home together. This means that they support one another and have common goals and aspirations. Daily tasks provide substance in the lives of elderly couples. Each day has its rhythm, and the pace of this rhythm is set by routine and habits. Satisfaction stems from the fact that you can do something you are good at. The couples have also revised the division of housework. Men have learned to perform new tasks around the house when their wives can no longer manage them by themselves. Some tasks are given up. Day-to-day life at home and around the house provides room for men s participation. Mutual support and care between husband and wife can also protect them from having to resort to outside or official help. Old couples integrate their life experiences and memories, as well as present and future risks and opportunities. They wish to carry on their lives as before, and still think that their present life corresponds with their idea of a good life. Key words: elderly couples, continuity theory of aging, everyday life, social gerontology, family research

Työkykyarviokokous moniammatillisen työryhmän päätöksentekotilanteena : Tutkimus vuorovaikutuksesta ja potilaan osallisuudesta

Work capacity assessment meeting as a decision-making situation of a multi-professional team a study on interaction and patient participation Multi-professional working has become an increasingly popular method of work in social and health care. The introduction of the viewpoints of several professionals is seen as a way to enhance the openness and quality of decision-making. However, so far relatively few study results are available on the implementation of this method in actual operations. This study examines one work method, a work capacity assessment meeting, along with medical certificates B and their enclosures written by the doctor to the patient after a meeting. After the theoretical and methodological chapter, providing background information, the study describes the structure of the meeting and the medical certificate as a constructive factor. This is followed by a discussion on the manner of assessing the various domains of the patient s functional capacity and the decision-making based on the assessed factors. Next, the study moves on to examine the effect of patient involvements on the conclusions and decisions that professionals make at the meeting. In conclusion, the study looks into how the voices of the professionals and the customer are transferred to the medical certificate. The material of the study consists of 11 meetings recorded on video, of which eight are work capacity assessment meetings and three are rehabilitation examination meetings. The first type of meeting is attended by a patient and a number of professionals, while the latter is attended only by the professionals. All the patients, whose cases are discussed in the work capacity assessment meetings, have a musculoskeletal disorder, while the rehabilitation meetings are related to patients who all also have some additional problem. The study material also consists of seven medical certificates B, written after a work capacity assessment meeting. For the most part, the material has been collected by the conversation analysis method. Moreover, also discourse analysis and a rhetorical approach were used. By using conversation analysis, it is possible to study closely how interaction is built up at the meeting and to examine how the actors implement their institutional assessment tasks in a co-operation that takes its form turn by turn. The four main findings of the study are as follows: firstly, the meeting is structured to a great extent on the basis of the medical certificate form to various phases of the meeting and the headings of the certificate are seen as communicative affordances at the meeting, directed primarily to the professionals that have assessed the patient s work capacity with various tests. The medical certificate is the ethno-method of the doctor acting as the chairman of the meeting that functions in two directions: it constructs the meeting and constitutes the task of the professionals as they produce contents for it. Secondly, the study describes the ways that are used to assess the different domains of the patient s work capacity, how they are described at the meeting and how a decision is taken when the assessment information has been saturated in the opinion of the team. Thirdly, the study brings up ways, with which the patient can influence the conclusions and decisions made by the professionals at the meeting. The study showed that the patient can affect the preconditions of his or her own future and wellbeing. Fourthly, the study describes how the wealth of expressions at the meeting is transferred to the certificate as an argumentative micro-cosmos, where the patient is classified to be recommended for rehabilitation or disability pension. An important finding is also how objective and subjective information and the voices of actors at the meeting are transferred to the statement in a strategic and intentional manner, with an orientation to the decision that will be taken at the insurance institution. The study results can be utilized in the training of professionals and in developing the operations of organisations performing the assessment of the work capacity of people suffering from musculoskeletal disorders.

Sinusta kiinni : Tutkimus puolisohoivan arjen toimijuuksista

Depending on you – A study of spousal care, everyday life and agency The present aim of the aging policy is to promote old peoples´ possibilities to live at their own home. It is also many elderly couples´ own wish. At home a persons spouse is the most natural care giver, if she or he is able to give care. Spousal care means living together, giving and receiving care and interdependency between the spouses. The aim of the policy is to support spousal care by paying financial support to a carer and arrang-ing formal home care services. The purpose of this research is to study the agency of care giving and receiving spouses as care givers and receivers and also as home care service users. The data of the study consist of the interviews of 21 elderly couples. Both spouses were interviewed seper-ately, with the exception of five couples who were interviewed together. In these inter-views a care receiver had difficulties in communicating by speaking and a spouse was her or his interpreter. The study is based on a social constructionistic and a discourse analytical view of con-struction of meanings in human communication. Talking is a social action: people achieve identities, realities, social order and social relationship through talking. In inter-pretating the spouses agency I have used of Harvey Sack´s method of Membership Categorization Device (MCD). The spouses construct social categories which made the meaning of their agency visible. Care changes the routines and actions of everyday life. The couples have to negotiate their duties and rights between each other. Care giving and receiving are both physical and emotional actions. In the end it becomes a part of the couples´ normal life. The pur-pose of couples´ action is to live together as long as possible. They want to strengthen both their own agency and their spouses´ agency. The living together depends on both of them. The spouses decided together what home care services they would like to use and on which conditions they have to use services. Spouses have different kind of agencies as service users which describe their relationship and confidency on formal home care support and services. Services must support the elderly couples´ shared life at home. They cannot be against the conditions on the spousal care. When you want to arrange services to elderly care giving and receiving couples, you have to consider their own wishes and the meanings of their own relationship and shared life.

Näkökulmia eurooppalaiseen sosiaalipolitiikkaan : malli, väestö, resurssit ja kommunikaatio

The study analyses European social policy as a political project that proceeds under the guidance of the European Commission. In the name of modernisation, the project aims to build a new idea for the welfare state. To understand the project, it is necessary to distance oneself from both the juridical competence of the European Union and the traditional national welfare state models. The question is about sharing problems, as well as solutions to them: it is the creation and sharing of common views, concepts and images that play a key role in European integration. Drawing on texts and speeches produced by the European Commission, the study throws light on the development of European social policy during the first years of the 2000s. The study "freeze-frames" the welfare debate having its starting points in the nation states in the name of the entity of Europe. The first article approaches the European social model as a story in itself, a preparatory, persuasive narrative that concerns the management of change. The article shows how the audience can be motivated to work towards a set target by using discursive elements in a persuasive manner: the function of a persuasive story is to convince the target audience of the appropriateness of the chosen direction and to shape their identity so that they are favourably disposed to the desired political targets. This is a kind of "intermediate state" where the story, despite its inner contradictions and inaccuracies, succeeds in appearing as an almost self-evident path towards a modern social policy that Europe is currently seen to be in need of. The second article outlines the European social model as a question of governance. Health as a sector of social policy is detached from the old political order, which was based on the welfare state, and is closely linked to economy. At the same time the population is primarily seen as an economic resource. The Commission is working towards a "Europe of Health" that grapples with the problem of governance with the help of the "healthisation" of society, healthy citizenship and health economics. The way the Commission speaks is guided by the Union's powerful interest to act as "Europe" in the field of welfare policy. At the same time, the traditional separateness of health policy is effaced in order to be able to make health policy reforms a part of the Union's wider modernisation targets. The third article then shows the European social policy as its own area of governance. The article uses an approach based on critical discourse analysis in examining the classification systems and presentation styles adopted by Commission communications, as well as the identities that they help build. In analysing the "new start" of the Lisbon strategy from the perspective of social policy, the article shows how the emphasis has shifted from the persuasive arguments for change with necessary common European targets in the early stages of the strategy towards the implementation of reforms: from a narrative to a vision and from a diagnosis to healing. The phase of global competition represents "the modern" with which European society with its culture and ways of life now has to be matched. The Lisbon strategy is a way to direct this societal change, thus building a modern European social policy. The fourth article describes how the Commission uses its communications policy to build practices and techniques of governance and how it persuades citizens to participate in the creation of a European project of change. This also requires a new kind of agency: agents for whom accountability and responsibilities mean integration into and commitment to European society. Accountability is shaped into a decisive factor in implementing the European Union's strategy of change. As such it will displace hierarchical confrontations and emphasise common action with a view to modernising Europe. However, the Union's discourse cannot be described as being a political language that would genuinely rouse and convince the audience at the level of everyday life. Keywords: European social policy, EU policy, European social model, European Commission, modernisation of welfare, welfare state, communications, discoursiveness.

The Rocky Road of Social Sustainability : The Impact of Integrated Biodiversity Conservation and Development on the Local Realities in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar

The objective of this study is to examine the social impacts of the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) aimed at biodiversity conservation and local socio-economic development in the Ranomafana National Park (RNP), Madagascar. Furthermore, the study explores social sustainability and justice of the ICDP in Ranomafana. This ethnographically informed impact study uses of various field methods. The research material used consists of observation, interviews (key-person and focus group), school children's writings, official statistics and project documents. Fieldwork was conducted in three phases in 2001, 2002 and 2004 in twelve villages around the park, as well as in neighbouring areas of Ranomafana. However, four of those twelve villages were chosen for closer study. This study consists of five independent articles and a concluding chapter. Social impacts were studied through reproductive health indicators as well as a life security approach. Equity and distribution of benefits and drawbacks of ICDP were analysed and the actors related to the conservation in Ranomafana were identified. The children and adolescents' environmental views were also examined. The reproductive health indicators studied showed a poor state of reproductive health in the park area. Moreover, the existing social capital in the villages seemed to be fragmented due to economic difficulties that were partly caused by the conservation regulations. The ICDP in Ranomafana did not pay attention to the heterogeneity of the affected communities even though the local beneficiaries of the ICDP varied according to their ethnicity, living place, wealth, social position and gender. In addition, various conservation actors (local people in various groups, local authorities, tourist business owners, conservation NGOs and scientists) contest their interests over the forest, conservation and its related activities. This study corroborates the same type of evidence and conclusions discussed in other similar cases elsewhere: so called social conservation programmes still cannot meet the needs of the people living near the protected areas; on the contrary, they even have a reverse impact on the people's lives. A fundamental misunderstood assumption in the conservation process in Ranomafana was to consider the local people as a problem for biodiversity conservation. Major reasons for the failure of the ICDP in Ranomafana include a lack of local institutions that would have been able to communicate as equals with the conservation NGOs as well as to transfer the tradition of the authoritarian governance in conservation management together with the over-appreciation of scientific biodiversity, and lack of will to understand the local people's rights to use the forest for their livelihoods.

A Success Story or a Failure? : Representing the European Integration in the Curricula and Textbooks of Five Countries

The economic, political and social face of Europe has been changing rapidly in the past decades. These changes are unique in the history of Europe, but not without challenges for the nation states. The support for the European integration varies among the countries. In order to understand why certain developments or changes are perceived as threatening or as desired by different member countries, we must consider the social representations of the European integration on the national level: how the EU is represented to its citizens in media and in educational systems, particularly in the curricula and textbooks. The current study is concerned with the social representations of the European integration in the curricula and school textbooks in five European countries: France, Britain, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Besides that, the first volume of the common Franco-German history textbook was analyzed, since it has been seen as a model for a common European history textbook. As the collective representations, values and identities are dominantly mediated and imposed through media and educational systems, the national curricula and textbooks make an interesting starting point for the study of the European integration and of national and European identities. The social representations theory provides a comprehensive framework for the study of the European integration. By analyzing the curricula and history and civics textbooks of major educational publishers, the study aimed to demonstrate what is written on the European integration and how it is portrayed how the European integration is understood, made familiar and concretized in the educational context in the five European countries. To grasp the phenomenon of the European integration in the textbooks in its entirety, it was investigated from various perspectives. The two analysis methods of content analysis, the automatic analysis with ALCESTE and a more qualitative theory-driven content analysis, were carried out to give a more vivid and multifaceted picture of the object of the research. The analysis of the text was complemented with the analysis of visual material. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, the contents, processes, visual images, transformations and structures of the social representations of European integration, as well as the communicative styles of the textbooks were examined. This study showed the divergent social representations of the European integration, anchored in the nation states, in the five member countries of the European Union. The social representations were constructed around different central core elements: French Europe in the French textbooks, Ambivalent Europe in the British textbooks, Influential and Unifying EU in the German textbooks, Enabling and Threatening EU in the Finnish textbooks, Sceptical EU in the Swedish textbooks and EU as a World Model in the Franco-German textbook. Some elements of the representations were shared by all countries such as peace and economic aspects of the European cooperation, whereas other elements of representations were found more frequently in some countries than in others, such as ideological, threatening or social components of the phenomenon European integration. The study also demonstrated the linkage between social representations of the EU and national and European identities. The findings of this study are applicable to the study of the European integration, to the study of education, as well as to the social representation theory.

Vapaaehtoiset vuodeosastolla : Etnografinen tutkimus vanhusten ja vapaaehtoisten kohtaamisesta

This ethnographic study investigates encounters between volunteers and older people at the Kerava Municipal Health Centre inpatient ward for chronic care. Volunteer activities have been under development, in cooperation with the Voluntary Work Center (Talkoorengas), since the start of the 1990s. When my research began in 2003, nine of the volunteers came to the ward on set days per week or visited the ward according to their own timetables. The volunteers ranged in age from 54 to 78 years. With one exception, all of them were on pension. Nearly all of them had been volunteers for more than ten years. My study is research on ageing, the focal point being older people, whether volunteers or those receiving assistance. The research questions are: How is volunteer work implemented in daily routines at the ward? How is interaction created in encounters between the older people and the volunteers? What meanings does volunteer work create for the older people and the volunteers? The core material of my research is observation material, which is supplemented by interviews, documentation and photographs. The materials have been analysed by using theme analysis and ethnomethodological discussion analysis. In the presentation of the research findings, I have structured the materials into three main chapters: space and time; hands and touch; and words and tones. The chapter on space and time examines time and space paths, privacy and publicness, and celebrations as part of daily life. The volunteers open and create social arenas for the older people through chatting and singing together, celebrations in the dayroom or poetry readings at the bedside. The supporting theme of the chapter on hands and touch is bodily closeness in care and the associated concrete physical presence. The chapter highlights the importance of everyday routines, such as meals and rituals, as elements that bring security. Stimuli in daily life, such as handicrafts in groups, pass time but also give older people the experience of meaningful activity and bring back positive memories of their own life. The chapter on words and tones focuses on the social interaction and identity. The volunteers’ identity is built up into the identity of a helper and caregiver. The older people’s identity is built up into a care recipient’s identity, which in different situations is shaped into, among others, the identity of one who listens, remembers, does not remember, defends, composes poetry or is dying. The cornerstones of voluntary social care are participation, activity, trust and presence. Successful volunteer work calls for mutual trust between the older people, volunteers and the health care personnel, and for clear agreements on questions of responsibility, the status of volunteers and their role alongside professional personnel. This study indicates that volunteer work is a meaningful resource in work with older people.

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.

Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality

This is an ethnographic study of the lived worlds of the keepers of small shops in a residential neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. It outlines, discusses, and analyses the categories and conceptualizations of South Korean capitalism at the level of households, neighborhoods, and Korean society. These cultural categories were investigated through the neighborhood shopkeepers practices of work and reciprocal interaction as well as through the shopkeepers articulations of their lived experience. In South Korea, the keepers of small businesses have continued to be a large occupational category despite of societal and economic changes, occupying approximately one fourth of the population in active work force. In spite of that, these people, their livelihoods and their cultural and social worlds have rarely been in the focus of social science inquiry. The ethnographic field research for this study was conducted during a 14-month period between November 1998 and December 1999 and in three subsequent short visits to Korea and to the research neighborhood. The fieldwork was conducted during the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis, colloquially termed at the time as the IMF crisis, which highlighted the social and cultural circumstances of small businesskeeper in a specific way. The livelihoods of small-scale entrepreneurs became even more precarious than before; self-employment became an involuntary choice for many middle-class salaried employees who were laid off; and the cultural categories and concepts of society and economy South Korean capitalism were articulated more sharply than before. This study begins with an overview of the contemporary setting, the Korean society under the socially and economically painful outcomes of the economic crisis, and continues with an overview of relevant literature. After introducing the research area and the informants, I discuss the Korean notion of neighborhood, which incorporates both the notions of culturally valued Koreanness and deficiency in the sense of modernity and development. This study further analyses the ways in which the businesskeepers appropriate and reproduce the Korean ideas of men s and women s gender roles and spheres of work. As the appropriation of children s labor is conditional to intergenerational family trajectories which aim not to reproduce parents occupational status but to gain entry to salaried occupations via educational credentials, the work of a married couple is the most common organization of work in small businesses, to which the Korean ideas of family and kin continuity are not applied. While the lack of generational businesskeeping succession suggests that the proprietors mainly subscribe to the notions of familial status that emanate from the practices of the white-collar middle class, the cases of certain women shopkeepers show that their proprietorship and the ensuing economic standing in the family prompts and invites inversed interpretations and uses of common cultural notions of gender. After discussing and analyzing the concept of money and the cultural categorization of leisure and work, topics that emerged as very significant in the lived world of the shopkeepers, this study charts and analyses the categories of identification which the shopkeepers employ for their cultural and social locations and identities. Particular attention is paid to the idea of ordinary people (seomin), which shopkeepers are commonly considered to be most representative of, and which also sums up the ambivalence of neighborhood shopkeepers as a social category: they are not committed to familial reproduction and continuity of the business but aspire non-entrepreneurial careers for their children, while they occupy a significant position in the elaborations of culturally valued notions and ideologies defining Koreanness such as warmheartedness and sociability.

Homeowners' Associations in Russia after the 2005 Housing Reform

The thesis examines homeowners associations as a part of the large-scale housing reform, implemented in Russia since 2005. The reform transferred housing management from the public sector to the private sector and to the citizens responsibility. The reform is a continuation to the privatisation of the housing stock that was started in Russia in the beginning of the 1990s, aiming to build a market-oriented housing sector in the country. The reform makes a fundamental change to the Soviet system, in which ownership along with management and maintenance of housing were monopolised by the state. Homeowners are now responsible for the management of the common areas in privatised houses, which is often realised by establishing a homeowners association. Homeowners associations are examined by using the so-called common-pool resource regime approach, with the main question being the ways in which taking care of common property collectively succeeds in practice. The study is based on interview data of St. Petersburg s homeowners associations. Using the common-pool resource theory the study demonstrates why implementation of the housing reform has not succeeded as expected. Certain elements that characterise a successful common-pool resource regime do not fulfill sufficiently in St. Petersburg s homeowners associations. Firstly, free-riding, that is, withdrawal from the association s joint decision-making and not making the housing payments is common, as effective sanctions to prevent it are missing in the legislation. That is, eviction or expelling a non-paying member from the association is not possible. Secondly, ownership of the land plot and common areas of the house, such as basements and attics, are often disputed between the associations and authorities. In the Soviet era, these common areas were public property along with the apartments, but in privatised houses they should, according to the legislation, belong to the associations property. Thirdly, solution of disputes between the associations and authorities and within the associations is difficult, as the court system tends to be bureaucratic and inefficient. In addition to the common-pool resource approach, the study also examines how social capital contributes to the associations effectiveness and democratic governance. The study finds that although homeowners associations have increased cooperation and tightened social relations between neighbours, social capital has not been able to prevent free-riding. The study shows that unlike it is often claimed, the so-called Soviet mentality , that is, residents passiveness and unwillingness to participate, is not the most important obstacle to the reform. Instead, the reform is impeded most of all by imperfect institutional arrangements and local authorities that prevent the associations from working as independent, self-governing associations.

Drug cultures in Estonia : contexts, meanings and patterns of illicit drug use.

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