Search results for "Gender studies"

Why Did the ‘Flying Finns’ Walk? A Footnote to the History of Athletics Training

2012

In the twenty-first century, distance runners invariably train by running. A few generations ago, however, virtually all elite runners were dedicated walkers; they sought to improve their running prowess by vigorous walking exercises. As idiosyncratic as their training philosophy retrospectively sounds, it needs to be assessed in its original context. Of all modern sports, distance running seemed a particularly suspicious activity to contemporary observers, as suggested by evidence from Finland and other leading sporting nations. A grown-up person dashing about in skimpy clothes easily ended up being classified as a mental case. Serious athletes therefore chose walking work-outs over unabas…

The Adaptation of an Ethnic Minority in Finland in the 1940s and 1950s: Orthodox displaced persons and the Lutheran indigenous population

2013

This article examines the imposed adaptation of Orthodox Finns, who were evacuated from territories ceded to the Soviet Union during the Second World War in the areas where they were settled. It elucidates both the settlement measures taken by the Finnish authorities and the unofficial forms of control, such as labelling and other discriminatory practices, exercised by the local populations. By controlling the behaviour of the displaced persons, the original inhabitants were able to make the newcomers conform to the values, norms and habits of the Lutheran community at both local and national levels.

The Warm Water in my Heart - The Meanings of Love among the Finnish Country Population in the Second Half of the 17th Century

2011

This article examines the meanings and contents given to the emotion called love in early modern Finnish culture. The study takes as its starting point three distinct love affairs found in the district court records. These cases violated the boundaries between the estates, for the women were of noble birth and the men came from peasant backgrounds. Historical love is here approached using the theories of Catherine A. Lutz, Carol & Peter Stearns and Barbara Rosenwein. Following these scholars, love is seen as a cultural and social phenomenon, bound up with the culture and mentalities of the era. In early modern times marriage was the basis of society and promoted by both the state and the ch…

Post-Supernatural Cultures: There and Back Again

2020

The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has evoked competing explanations, many of which enjoy empirical support. We synthesize six of the most influential social-science explanations, demonstrating that they provide complementary perspectives on a complex causal architecture. We incorporate t…

On Forced Migrations: Transnational Realities and National Narratives in Post-1945 (West) Germany

2014

This article examines tensions between the transnational realities of the extensive forced migrations that accompanied the end of the Second World War in Europe and the nationally focused public portrayals of those forced migrations that have prevailed in individual European countries since the war. The article does so through a case study of West Germany, which became home to some eight million forced migrants defined as ethnic Germans. It argues that a nationally oriented, highly selective public narrative of the forced migrations soon emerged in the Federal Republic, a narrative that stressed German suffering, relativized German crimes, and, crucially, elided differences among the forced…

Reports on Encounters of Medical Cultures: Two Physicians in Sweden’s Medical and Colonial Connections in the Late Eighteenth Century

2019

Kontturi’s chapter focuses on two Swedish physicians reporting from London and Caribbean Swedish colony St. Barthélemy to Swedish medical college in 1798. The emphasis is on their participation in the global networks of colonial medicine, shaping and sharing medical information from colonies outside of Europe. Their reports show how they promoted the hybridisation of different medical cultures with their distinctly open-minded curiosity towards new information, which was in line with the old Linnaean tradition of scientific travelling. The chapter also draws attention to their impact on how global diseases such as syphilis and smallpox were managed and treated in their own sphere of influen…

Marriage Guidance, Women and the Problem(s) of Returning Soldiers in Finland, 1944-1946

2017

When former military chaplains began to give marital guidance to troubled couples after the end of hostilities with the Soviet Union (1941–1944) in Finland, new information about the causes and experiences of marital problems and divorces emerged during guidance sessions. Even lengthy marriages were seen to be burdened due to the stress of reunion and men’s wartime infidelity, increased inclination to drinking and aggressive behaviour. The article discusses the meaning and construction of marital expectations with respect to the development of post-war marital dissolution, and argues that wives in particular tried to adjust their marital expectations in accordance with the general developme…

‘Then we were ready to be radicals!’ : school student activism in Finnish upper secondary schools in 1960–1967

2021

In the Western countries, Scandinavia and Finland included, the legacy of the student movement of the 1960s has been extensive and established a fixed narrative of a radical movement. This article challenges the elitists and university-centred grand narrative and argues that the student movement was more multifaceted and mobilized young people of various ages and backgrounds. This is done by addressing the international student movement from the perspective of school-aged students in Finnish upper secondary schools, focusing on student activism carried out in school-sanctioned student associations. Above all, this article aims to distinguish the relatively unknown history of the Scandinavia…

Rieke Trimçev, Politik als Spiel. Zur Geschichte einer Kontingenzmetapher im politischen Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2018, 398 p.…

2019

The concept of the Royal Prerogative in parliamentary debates on the deployment of military in the British House of Commons, 1982–2003

2014

The article will discuss how one political key concept, the Royal Prerogative, was discussed in the British House of Commons in relation to the right to deploy and use armed troops abroad during the period 1982-2003, a time when the role of the British Parliament in decisions to deploy and commit troops to an armed conflict abroad was under extensive discussion in Parliament. This discussion began increasingly to address the state of the constitutional arrangements, more specifically the redefinition of the Royal Prerogative rights, the residual powers of the executive, as outdated in the understanding of modern representative democracy. The use of the concept was studied to reveal the atti…