0000000000893459
AUTHOR
Jukka Jouhki
THE IMAGINED WEST: EXPLORING OCCIDENTALISM
Venäjä, Ukraina ja sumea länsi: Banaali oksidentalismi Helsingin Sanomissa
Analysoin artikkelissani Helsingin Sanomien pääkirjoitusaukeaman tekstejä vuodelta 2014 ja selvitän, millaisen kuvan ne rakentavat länsimaista. Pohdin myös, millä tavalla Ukrainan kriisi ja Venäjän osallisuus siinä osaltaan vahvistavat näkemystä länsimaista kaikessa heterogeenisuudessaan yhtenäisenä toimijana. Artikkelini osoittaa, että maantieteellisestä laajuudestaan ja poliittisesta epäyhtenäisyydestään huolimatta (tai sen vuoksi) länsimaat on hyvä esimerkki Benedict Andersonin ja Michael Billigin kuvailemasta median, sananvalintojen ja pienten arkipäiväisten käytäntöjen avulla ylläpidetystä kuvitellusta yhteisöstä. Se on yhteisö, jonka olemassaololle on tärkeää, että siihen uskotaan ja …
The Grinders : Making Meaning in the Online and Offline Lives of Internet Poker Players
Problem gambling affects only 1–3 percent of the gambling population but still most research on gambling is problem-oriented (Raento 2011, 76). Thus, the negative “cover story” (Gubrium 2008, 512) of gambling needs to be unsettled and complemented, because it obscures the complexities of the lived reality of mainstream gambling culture (Reith & Dobbie 2011; Matilainen & Raento 2014, 433; Jouhki 2011a, 79). Most gamblers are not the marginalized, addicted persons so often envisioned in both research and the media (Vuorento 2011; Binde 2007, 152–157): the mainstream of gambling is about entertainment, excitement, mental challenge and social value. To some it is also a profession. This article…
Emerituksen innostava mutta perinteinen johdatus antropologiaan tuo esiin tieteenalan eksotiikkaa
Arvio teoksesta Metcalf, Peter. Antropologia: Johdatus perusteisiin. Suomentaneet Matti Eräsaari, Timo Kallinen ja Katja Uushakala. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. 2018 [2005]. 286 s. ISBN 978-952-495-484-6. nonPeerReviewed
Tekoäly tappaa… ainakin työn
Etnologinen kenttätyö ja tutkimus : metodin monimuotoisuuden pohdintaa ja esimerkkitapauksia
Jyväskylän yliopiston etnologian oppiaine yhdistää aineksia kolmesta lähitieteestä: kansatieteestä, folkloristiikasta ja kulttuuriantropologiasta. Etnologit tutkivat kulttuuria (väljästi määriteltynä ihmisen erilaisia tapoja elää ja toimia) sen eri muodoissa, erityisesti kulttuurin kansanomaisia ilmauksia (kreik. etnos = kansa). Tutkimuksen kohteita ovat muun muassa esineet, sosiaaliset organisaatiot ja symboliset järjestelmät, ihmisten käsitykset ja arvostukset, muisti, mentaliteetit sekä suullinen perinne. Tutkimuskohteen valintaa ei rajaa aika tai paikka. Siksi etnologit tekevät kenttätyötä lähellä ja kaukana, mihin teemaan tässä artikkelissa paneudutaan. nonPeerReviewed
Väärin autettu?
Sekä kehitysyhteistyöjärjestöt että niiden kriitikot käyttävät valtaansa saadakseen maailman toimimaan paremmin. Kummatkin kokevat olevansa moraalisesti oikeassa, Jyväskylän yliopiston etnologian dosentti Jukka Jouhki kirjoittaa. nonPeerReviewed
A-klinikan ylilääkäri medikalisoi somen
Balancing Between Narratives of the West and Hindu Nationalism in Emerging India
India has been an important point of reference for Western identity, and the construction of an Orient. Vice versa, people in India have constructed their own Occidentalisms about Westerners, and the global position of ‘the West’, as well as to form an Indian identity. The West has represented the colonizer in India, but at the same time a source of valuable ideologies, values, policies, and innovations benefiting India. Moreover, many nationalist narratives in India emphasize self-reliance from and even superiority to the West. During Narendra Modi’s administration, the ‘New India’ has concentrated on taking a more active role in the world. Traditional elements of Indian tradition have bee…
The apparatgeist of the moon landing
Heittoja: Työt roboteille ja elämän tarkoitus hallituksen kärkihankkeeksi
The axes of the modern age
Adapting to new technologies often is a challenge to the hegemony of the experts mastered in the related older technology. In this editorial, the challenge that the smartphone and social media bring to an older and more prestigious technology—the book—and the literati is discussed. Recent technological changes and the associated social consequences are compared to a classical anthropological study about how the steel ax challenged and succeeded the stone ax but, in the process, changed the power balance and social norms in the Yir Yoront society, a hunter-gatherer aboriginal group in Australia. nonPeerReviewed
Causes and motives of early marriage in the Gambia and Tanzania : is new legislation enough?
Both The Gambia and Tanzania have high rates of under-18 marriage for girls and both also raised the legal age of marriage for girls to 18 in 2016. This ethnographic study of the urban Muslim poor in Tanzania and The Gambia explores the causes behind and meanings of early marriage in these countries and discusses the likelihood of the recent legislative changes to have effect on actual practice among the poor in the towns and cities of these countries.
Erittäin laadullinen sisällönanalyysi haitallisesta rahapelilyriikasta
Do humans dream of prophetic robots?
Social robotics is a technology that, as its definition varies, encompasses conceptually diverse fields materializing in innovations from simple chatbots to sophisticated androids talking about the peaceful coexistence of humans and robots. The advances in social robotics have led to promising applications in education, work, entertainment, and even religion. Yet a measure of fear and confusion about the capabilities of contemporary and future robots exists, with one of the reasons being the presentation of some contemporary robots as being more advanced than they really are.
Orientalism and India
In this article Orientalism, a special hegemonic discourse about "the Orient" by Europeans is discussed by focusing on how it is manifested in a "Western" view of India. Orientalism as a discourse about the Orient is a concept first coined by Edward Said in his book Orientalism (1978) and contains a long history of European way of relating to the Orient as a counterpart of European/Western culture. In this article Orientalist discourses about India by hegemonically Western (and particularly Anglo-Saxon) sources are portrayed and the so-called Indo-Orientalist essentialism defining Indianness from the outside analyzed. Moreover, a Indo-Orientalism as an imported ideology to be used in Indian…
The Hyperreal Gambler : On the Visual Construction of Men in Online Poker Ads
Online poker, like gambling in general, is predominantly a male activity. Thus, poker ads most often depict men as their protagonists. According to Jean Baudrillard, advertising can be seen as a ‘plebiscite whereby mass consumer society wages a perpetual campaign of self- endorsement.’ Ads often use stereotypical imagery for establishing a shared experience of identification with the consumer, and since their role is to sell rather than to portray the realities of life, they often have an exaggerated and monolithic – or, hyperreal – way of representing gender. This article offers an analysis of the ways in which men are portrayed in the ads of Poker Magazine Finland in the volume of 2009 (a…
Saving Technologies that are not Used to Save Lives
A hundred years ago in July, thanks to the advancement of medical technology, the first human received the vaccine Bacille Calmette-Guérin—or BCG—to prevent tuberculosis (TB), a disease that killed at least 20% of the European population during the 19th century. Since then, hundreds of millions of lives have been saved by BCG, as well as other vaccinations for dangerous diseases. However, although TB is quite preventable and curable, it remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent in the world. It is an example of how humans can invent technologies to improve and save lives but fail to do so because of unevenly distributed resources, lack of media coverage, and other ec…
Chances and Challenges of Computational Data Gathering and Analysis
Digital and social media and large available data-sets generate various new possibilities and challenges for conducting research focused on perpetually developing online news ecosystems. This paper presents a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook. We demonstrate how to use this technique for detecting and analysing issue-attention cycles and news flows in Facebook groups and pages. Although the paper concentrates on a Finnish Facebook group as a case study, the demonstrated method can be used for gathering and analysing large sets of data from various social network sites and national contexts. The paper also discusses Facebook pla…
Life-saving technologies that are not used to save lives
A hundred years ago in July, thanks to the advancement of medical technology, the first human received the vaccine Bacille Calmette-Guérin—or BCG—to prevent tuberculosis (TB), a disease that killed at least 20% of the European population during the 19th century. Since then, hundreds of millions of lives have been saved by BCG, as well as other vaccinations for dangerous diseases. However, although TB is quite preventable and curable, it remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent in the world. It is an example of how humans can invent technologies to improve and save lives but fail to do so because of unevenly distributed resources, lack of media coverage, and other ec…
Monikulttuurisuus on musteläiskätesti
Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Experiment as a Challenge to Research Ethics
This article analyzes the ethical discussion focusing on the Facebook emotional contagion experiment published by the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> in 2014. The massive-scale experiment manipulated the News Feeds of a large amount of Facebook users and was successful in proving that emotional contagion happens also in online environments. However, the experiment caused ethical concerns within and outside academia mainly for two intertwined reasons, the first revolving around the idea of research as manipulation, and the second focusing on the problematic definition of informed consent. The article concurs with recent research that the era of social med…
Humans and Their Technologies Play the Infinite Game
Technology is increasingly about intuitive use and automation, as is evident to some degree in all the papers published in this issue. Technological--and one could say, even civilizational--progress is made possible by automating necessary but often tedious and tiresome processes. This then frees people's time and energy for a variety of recreational, inspirational, and/or developmental tasks. However, as the automation of society advances, the meaning of work changes and new existential and ethical questions emerge. nonPeerReviewed
We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us
The current and incoming editors in chief present the articles of this current issue of Human Technology. Additionally, they discuss the human component of recent technological macrotrends and the journal’s editorial interests in responding to and exploring them. During Editor in Chief Pertti Hurme’s 3-year term, research reflecting a wide range of topics has been published in Human Technology. This online journal, proudly open-access since its beginning, and will continue to invite innovative and interesting manuscripts for open-access publishing under its new editor in chief, Jukka Jouhki.
GLOBAL ISSUES, WESTERN FOCI: BANAL OCCIDENTALISM IN A FINNISH NEWSPAPER
‘The West’ is an imagined community par excellence with a plethora of connotations that often contradict each other. Although it is often not at all certain exactly what the West or things Western refer to, the concepts are used as if there was some distinct cultural reality corresponding to them. Like any other ethnic group, tribe, nation state, or even village, the West is both fantasy and real, a social construction and, to some extent, an observable social formation. The Western world exists because people believe in its unity and share the connotations but also for a more mundane—or banal— reason: because these are constantly expressed in text and speech. This article examines the news…
Ylitodellinen Murheellisten laulujen maa
Joulupukki tulee - oletko valmis valehtelemaan lapselle?
Jos kaikki puhuisivat englantia, maailma olisi parempi paikka
Imagining the other : orientalism and occidentalism in Tamil-European relations in South India
Jouhki on tutkinut idän ja lännen problematiikkaa Edward Saidin (1935–2003) vuonna 1978 kirjoittaman teoksen Orientalism - Western Conceptions of the Other ja sitä seuranneen mittavan akateemisen keskustelun pohjalta. Jouhki on myös kerännyt kenttätyöaineistoa tamileiden ja eurooppalaisten suhteesta Etelä-Intiassa.Kirjassaan Edward Said hyökkäsi euroamerikkalaisen kulttuurin luutuneita käsityksiä vastaan ja väitti, että itää koskevaa diskurssia hallitsee yhä kolonialismin eurosentrinen perintö. Euroopan ulkopuolisiin kansoihin suhtaudutaan ennakkoluuloisesti ja polarisoivasti, ikään kuin idän ja lännen kansat olisivat toistensa vastakohtia. Kun länsi on yleensä rationaalisuuden, yksilöllisy…