Search results for "ta517"
showing 10 items of 59 documents
The (de)politicisation of nuclear power: The Finnish discussion after Fukushima
2017
When the Fukushima accident occurred in March 2011, Finland was at the height of a nuclear renaissance, with the Government’s decision-in-principle in 2010 to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors. This article examines the nuclear power debate in Finland after Fukushima. We deploy the concepts of (de)politicisation and hyperpoliticisation in the analysis of articles in the country’s main newspaper. Our analysis indicates that Finnish nuclear exceptionalism manifested in the safety-related depoliticising and the nation’s prosperity-related hyperpoliticisation arguments of the pro-nuclear camp. The anti-nuclear camp used politicisation strategies, such as economic arguments, to sho…
Rethinking Civil Society in Development: Scales and Situated Hegemonies
2016
Ethnic residential segregation is often explained with the claim that ‘immigrants don’t want to integrate—they prefer to stick together with co-ethnics’. By contrast, mixed neighbourhoods are seen as crucial for achieving social cohesion. In line with spatial assimilation theory there is a normative assumption that people interact with those living nearby. From interviews on neighbourhood qualities and locations valued by Oslo residents of Turkish, Somali and Polish backgrounds, we raise questions about the validity of two assumptions: that most immigrants want to live in the same neighbourhoods as co-ethnics; and that they want to live close to co-ethnics because they do not want to integr…
Resilience, security and the politics of processes
2014
The prominence of resilience thinking in contemporary governance and security policies has received increasing critical attention. By engaging in dialogue with some of these recent critiques, predominantly leaning on biopolitics or neoliberal governmentality, this article develops an Arendtian reading of resilience as a temporal regime of processuality. Originating from life sciences such as ecology and complexity thinking, the increasingly malleable resilience discourse privileges the functioning of societal life processes over political action and human artifice. The article argues that this ‘rule of nobody’ is in danger of suffocating the concept of public space, so crucial for politics …
The dawn of the secular state? Heritage and identity in Swedish church and state debates 1920–1939
2015
This article provides a study of political positions concerning the role of religion in modern society in Sweden between 1920 and 1939. It aims to increase understanding of the Swedish secularization path, with special emphasis on issues related to heritage and national identity, by comparing the dominant perspectives on these issues in the Church of Sweden and in the Social Democratic Party during that period. It addresses how these positions have influenced policies during the period, as well as some of their implications for later path dependence. It explores relations between religious issues and the concept of national heritage, as well as how the fact that both were at that time commo…
Visualising political thinking on the screen : a dialogue between von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt and its protagonist
2016
This article analyses Margarethe von Trotta’s film Hannah Arendt: The Woman Who Saw Banality in Evil through its protagonist’s own writings on visual culture, visibility and invisibility in the context of political thinking. We start by clarifying Arendt’s understanding of political theory as an activity aiming to provoke thinking. We then discuss systematically the visual language of the film and offer a typology of its representations of political thinking, subdivided into a part on internalisation and one on externalisation (dialogue). We emphasise von Trotta’s reliance on a negative approach, i.e. the representation of thinking through the absence of any other activity while thinking, c…
Establishing Video Game Genres Using Data-Driven Modeling and Product Databases
2015
Establishing genres is the first step toward analyzing games and how the genre landscape evolves over the years. We use data-driven modeling that distils genres from textual descriptions of a large collection of games. We analyze the evolution of game genres from 1979 till 2010. Our results indicate that until 1990, there have been many genres competing for dominance, but thereafter sport-racing, strategy, and action have become the most prevalent genres. Moreover, we find that games vary to a great extent as to whether they belong mostly to one genre or to a combination of several genres. We also compare the results of our data-driven model with two product databases, Metacritic and Mobyga…
African Immigrants in Finland in Onward Translocal and Transnational Mobility and Migration, and the Political Implications
2016
This article examines the onward translocal and transnational mobility and migration of African immigrants in Finland, and finds that this is because of racism, and hence more of a search for belonging than just for greener pastures. In the process of this mobility/migration, they represent translocal and transnational identities that crisscross translocal and transterritorial spaces, experiencing transcultural practices. Along the way, they acquire transcultural, multicultural, and cosmopolitan skills with which they negotiate their identities and belonging in the places they visit or reside. This article argues that these multifaceted forms of mobility and migration say something about ne…
This time it’s different? Effects of the Eurovision Debate on young citizens’ and its consequence for EU democracy – evidence from a quasi-experiment…
2017
For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties’ ‘lead candidates’. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU’s lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called ‘Eurovision Debate’, a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission Presiden…
Into the world of e-waste: mobility among e-scrappers in Nigeria
2017
AbstractIn the management of e-waste, mobility of e-scrappers plays a pivotal role, especially in e-waste acquisition and sales of extracted materials. This research examines the relationship between e-scrappers and the locations of their work by analysing the influence of environmental and social factors on their mobility behaviour in Nigeria. A qualitative analysis of video material collected from 29 male e-scrappers in Nigeria between 2014 and 2015 reveals that e-waste has inherent properties that intermittently mobilise e-scrappers to search for recyclable and valuable electronic trash. Applying the new mobilities paradigm and the new materialism theory, we present that e-scrappers’ mob…
Foucault, pastoral power, and optics
2015
The article shows that in Foucault’s late 1970s and early 1980s analyses of pastoral, conductive power—most essentially in early and medieval Christianity—the issue of sight and visual perception recurs and occupies a crucial status. In Foucault’s discussion, these Christian relations of power, knowledge, and truth are attached with a surveying gaze that is both totalizing as well as individualizing, one that is mobilized by the thrust towards perfect visibility, transparency, and illumination of the subject turned into an object. The intention is also to develop Foucault’s analysis further, by demonstrating how Christian, providential government can be and actually has been detached from …