IASR Lectures 2014-2015, Spring
Lecturers’ power point presentations (pdf) will be added
Time: on Tuesdays, at 16.15-17.45, starting from 20 January 2015
Place: University of Tampere, Pinni B, Lecture Hall B1096, except for 12 May 2015, Atalpa 140, 1st fl.
Programme (updated 7 May 2015)
20.01. Disabilities in Roman Antiquity (pdf)
Lecture handout (pdf)
Dr Christian Laes, Senior Research Fellow, IASR, YKY
This lecture will be based on my recent monograph Beperkt? Gehandicapten in het Romeinse rijk (Leuven, 2014). After methodological reflections on the issue of disability history for Roman Antiquity, I will opt for an a capite ad calcem approach: mental disabilities, eye problems, deafness and muteness, speech impairment and mobility impairment will be touched upon by presenting case studies. For each issue, the problem of “continuity and change” regarding Christianity will be treated. Text fragments as well as iconographical evidence will be the starting point of this lecture.
17.02. Two Faces of “Relational Turn” in the Social Sciences (pdf)
Dr Peeter Selg, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IASR, JKK
“Relational” has become a buzz word. Over the past couple of decades, the talk of “relational” approaches in the social sciences has been growing so rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep track of the most recent developments. Almost all social scientific disciplines have had their call for “relational turn” ranging from sociology and social psychology to economics and political science. Many of the established as well as emerging topics of social research have had their relational treatment – from identities, democratization, and social movements to postcolonialism, workplace inequalities and terrorism. In the lecture I outline two major understandings of “relational approaches” in the social sciences, which I refer to as “Continental” and “Anglo-American”. I argue that the major difference between these understandings is not in their emphasis on the centrality of social relations in making sense of social phenomena – it is hard to imagine a social-scientific approach without such an emphasis – but in their implicit understanding about the form of those relations. In addition to outlining the major differences between those two understandings, I also discuss possible dialogue between them and illustrate it with examples from political science.
03.03. Accounting, Accountability and Sustainability (pdf)
Dr Hannele Mäkelä, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IASR, JKK
Sustainable development is causing pressure for business organisations to identify and manage their sustainability performance and to develop accountability practices that support sustainable business operations. Accounting as a “language of business” is used to measure and report corporate performance to the affected parties and society at large. Current forms of accounting are usually corporate-centric, giving priority to companies in defining their impact on society, and they are accused for neglecting social and environmental issues. These accounts further influence how we constitute the role of business in society, as what is accounted for can shape our views of what is important. The lecture reviews the contemporary practices for accounting for sustainability, critically evaluates the relationships between accounting, business operations, and sustainable development, and elaborates on the possibility of alternative and multiple accountabilities.
17.03. Youth in the Roman Empire (pdf)
Lecture handout (pdf)
Dr Christian Laes, Senior Research Fellow, IASR, YKY
Modern society has a negative view of youth as a period of storm and stress, but at the same time cherishes the idea of eternal youth. How does this compare with ancient Roman society? Did a phase of youth exist there with its own characteristics? How was youth appreciated? This lecture will treat the lives and the image of youngsters (around 15–25 years of age) in the Latin West and the Greek East in the Roman period. Boys and girls of all social classes come to the fore; their lives, public and private, are sketched with the help of a range of textual and documentary sources, while I will also employ the results of recent sociology, anthropology and neuropsychological research.
I will also discuss for the first time the impact of Christianity and the Christian Church on youth.
31.03. The Vices of Learning (pdf)
Dr Sari Kivistö, Principal Investigator, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Moral criticism of the learned was a favourite theme of Latin dissertations, treatises and satires written in Germany ca. 1670–1730. Works on scholarly pride, logomachy, curiosity and other vices kept the presses running at German Protestant universities as well as farther north in Scandinavia. The book industry, plagiarism and impressive titles were all labelled dishonest means of advancing a career. This lecture will be based on my recent book, The Vices of Learning: Morality and Knowledge at Early Modern Universities (Brill, 2014), in which I examined scholarly vices in the late Baroque and early Enlightenment periods. In my paper I will discuss how scholars constructed fame and how the process involved various means of producing celebrity. I am especially interested in reading these sins as intellectual vices connected with knowledge and in examining what kinds of epistemological consequences and effects self-love and pride produced in academia. I argue that scholarly ethics was an essential part of the early modern intellectual framework, and the late Baroque views on this topic gain new value when read in the context of the present.
14.04. Media Capital in the Political Field (pdf)
Dr Esa Reunanen, Senior Research Fellow, IASR, CMT
This lecture elaborates Aeron Davis and Emily Seymour’s idea to use Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of “field” and “capital” in analyzing the role of the media in politics. The media and politics are conceived as different fields, each having its own kind of capital or steering medium. Following Talcott Parsons, it is suggested that the medium of politics is power. It is also suggested that the medium of media is attention. These elaborations aim at a theoretical understanding of the mediatization of politics. The lecture also gives some empirical results of how media capital is evaluated and transformed into political capital in the political field. These results are based on two recent research projects in which Finnish decision-makers were interviewed about the role of the media in their work.
Dr Eriikka Oinonen, Senior Research Fellow, IASR, YKY
Education, and higher education in particular, is underlined as a crucial factor in the economic revival of European societies in the EU and national-level policy programmes and recommendations. Education is also seen as a guarantee of an individual’s social integration, working careers, steady income and upward social mobility. Socio-economic statistics, the media and contemporary everyday reality, however, challenge these widely shared understandings and ideas. In this lecture, the interest is in the university students’ own thoughts and accounts concerning their studies, the education they have attained, and the work and career they dream of and, on the other hand, expect to do and achieve. I will concentrate on methodological issues and discuss how to study individual dreams, plans and realities by using creative methods. I will provide examples and base my discussion on my methodological experiments and applications of using pictures and photographs and empathy-based stories.
12.05. Film as Social Critique (NB. Atalpa 140, 1st floor)
Dr Heikki A. Kovalainen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IASR, YKY
Gilles Deleuze has famously quipped that the American dream came to an end when Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, and European art film (what Deleuze calls cinema as *time-image*) was born. This is an obvious provocation, but how might the provocation be used for seeing which dreams cinema as time-image might destroy? How might film function as an engine for social critique? In the lecture, I trace a tradition of European art films acting as engines of social criticism, beginning with Krzysztof Kieslowski and ending with the British socialist director Ken Loach. Indeed, we will have the privilege of watching one of Loach’s short films on the spot, setting the stage for a conversation.
XX.09. For a Broad Concept of Power RESCHEDULED for Autumn 2015
Professor Risto Heiskala, Director, IASR
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What is the IASR? – The Institute for Advanced Social Research, IASR) is the research collegium of the University of Tampere. It grants annually one- or two-year research positions for Professorial Fellows, Senior Research Fellows and Postdoctoral Research Fellows studying society to promote high-level multidisciplinary research and international interaction in the university.
What are the IASR Lectures? – The IASR Lectures is a series of Studia Generalia Lectures in the Study of Society, which the University of Tampere Institute for Advanced Social Research organizes bimonthly. IASR Lectures are given by research fellows as well as distinguished guests of the institute. Please check the IASR website www.uta.fi/iasr/ and bulletin boards regularly. Most doctoral students can also get 2 ECTS for attending a minimum of six IASR Lectures, altogether 6 ECTS at the maximum. These 2 ECTS for attending 6 lectures can be earned during two successive terms.
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IASR Lectures 2014-2015, Fall
Lecturers’ power point presentations (pdf) will be added
IASR lectures from Spring 2014 and earlier lectures available in Radio Moreeni as podcasts here
Time: On Tuesdays, at 16.15-17.45, starting from 16 September 2014
Place: University of Tampere, Lecture Hall Pinni B, B1096
Programme
Updated on 27 October 2014
16.09. China meets the West: Early humanism and Yan Fu’s translations (pdf)
Professor Kirill Thompson, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
30.09. Promotion of work ability during ageing (pdf)
Professor Clas-Håkan Nygård, IASR, HES
The ageing of the population has been recognized as an important matter throughout the world during the last decades. Economically it means that fewer working-age people should take care of an increasing number of people outside work life (age dependency ratio). This has made governments discuss solutions for keeping the economy in balance. For work life in Finland it has meant, for example, discussions on how to increase the retirement age, how to get students out into work life faster, or how to promote the work ability of middle-aged employees. A proper work ability throughout work life is the key point in that sense. Work ability is a complex system but could shortly be defined as a matching of work demands to individual capacities. Work ability decreases with age, depending on work exposure and individual capacities but could mostly be kept on a proper level, keeping the productivity on a reasonable level throughout work life. Recent longitudinal studies show that work ability during midlife predicts disability severity in daily functions and even mortality during old age. This emphasizes that promotion of work ability is also a public health issue for all ages. Promotion of work ability could be done basically in many ways, but matching work demands to the decreasing capacity of the ageing employees is essential because job demands do not change automatically with the ageing of the worker. In addition, a healthy lifestyle to keep up both physical and mental fitness is needed to balance the work demands.
14.10. Fall break
28.10. Disabilities in Roman Antiquity CANCELLED (rescheduled for 20.1.2015)
Senior Research Fellow Christian Laes, IASR, YKY
This lecture will be based on my recent monograph Beperkt? Gehandicapten in het Romeinse rijk (Leuven, 2014). After methodological reflections on the issue of disability history for Roman Antiquity, I will opt for an a capite ad calcem approach: mental disabilities, eye problems, deafness and muteness, speech impairment and mobility impairment will be touched upon by presenting case studies. For each issue, the problem of “continuity and change” regarding Christianity will be treated. Text fragments as well as iconographical evidence will be the starting point of this lecture.
11.11. Social foundations of freedom and equality: Honneth vs Rosanvallon (pdf)
Professor Arto Laitinen, YKY
Doctoral student Hans Arentshorst, DSSP, University of Jyväskylä
This talk explores recent work by Axel Honneth and Pierre Rosanvallon to see if their calls for a “new philosophy of social relations” and their attempts to revitalize the ideals of social freedom and equality respectively could result in fruitful convergences. Their historically informed approaches to social and political theory differ from the normative political ethics of e.g. John Rawls in stressing both the “social” and “political” aspects of contemporary democratic life. They suggest that egalitarian politics, in the age that seems to have lost its faith in the ideal of social equality, should aim at something beyond the traditional idea of welfare state. Instead, Rosanvallon promotes the revitalization of the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that should more accurately reflect today’s realities. Honneth’s book “Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life” is an attempt to re-actualize Hegel’s Philosophy or Right in studying contemporary forms of economy, political state and family as realizations of social freedom (to be distinguished from negative liberty and reflexive autonomy) to be cashed out in terms of mutual recognition.
25.11. On the importance of financial markets being wrong (pdf)
Professor Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, YKY
In this lecture, the importance of the market being right or wrong is discussed through reviewing three case studies on financial markets. One of these, written by Beunza & Garud, studies the so-called fundamental analysis of stock markets. The second, by Zaloom, scrutinizes ethnographically the practices of day trading. Finally, the third empirical example is the study of the so-called technical analysis by Preda. Juxtaposing these three cases reveals the heterogeneity in the market agents’ understanding of the workings of the market; in fact, these agents do not share much else in common than the belief that the market will be ‘right’ in due time. But what is regarded as ‘due time’ can vary enormously; it can be a question of anything from milliseconds to many years. And of course, in order to make profits they all rely on the market not being right at a given point of time; they hope and think that they know what is right before others know it, and before the market ‘corrects itself’. This lecture juxtaposes these three ways of working on the fuzzy areas where being wrong/right is analyzed, negotiated and decided. Each of them is based on a rational understanding on how the financial market works but, importantly, these rational understandings do not seem compatible with each other.
09.12. Tracking societal change: Contributions from qualitative longitudinal research
Senior Research Fellow, Dr Pirjo Nikander, IASR, YKY
Developing new visions and understanding concerning the ongoing dynamics of societal change lies at the heart of social scientific research practice. The complexity, intricacy and speed of change also calls for the adoption of innovative methodological tools and interdisciplinary collaboration. This lecture discusses the potential impact and research evidence gained from qualitative longitudinal research (QLR). This research strategy has, in recent years, been found anew, and discussion on its benefits have been discussed across academic fields. QLR methodology allows “walking alongside” individuals, groups or institutions, the observation of people’s everyday meaning and choice making, “habitus in process” and the analysis of the dynamics between people’s agency and structural or local determinants.
Based on recent discussions concerning qualitative longitudinal research in the UK, this lecture discusses 1) the rationale for utilizing QLR, 2) the potential benefits and challenges of such projects, and 3) the contributions QLR can make to our understanding of ongoing change and transition processes, as well as the qualitative evidence it provides for policy planning, and administrative and policy evaluation.
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What is the IASR? – The Institute for Advanced Social Research, IASR) is the research collegium of the University of Tampere. It grants annually one- or two-year research positions for Professorial Fellows, Senior Research Fellows and Postdoctoral Research Fellows studying society to promote high-level multidisciplinary research and international interaction in the university.
What are the IASR Lectures? – The IASR Lectures is a series of Studia Generalia Lectures in the Study of Society, which the University of Tampere Institute for Advanced Social Research organizes bimonthly. IASR Lectures are given by research fellows as well as distinguished guests of the institute. Please check the IASR website www.uta.fi/iasr/ and bulletin boards regularly. Most doctoral students can also get 2 ECTS for attending a minimum of six IASR Lectures, altogether 6 ECTS at the maximum. These 2 ECTS for attending 6 lectures can be earned during two successive terms.
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