P Alasuutari
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 12875 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | P Alasuutari |
| NOMBRES | P |
| APELLIDO | Alasuutari |
| FIRMA | ALASUUTARI P |
| AFILIACIONES | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4111-9641 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 57 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 299 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 57 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1985 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
The vertical metaphor of power
The article discusses how power is conceptualized via the vertical metaphor. Within it, people’s roles and positions are described in terms of a spatial structure, in which being higher or lower means having more or less power or prestige. To show its use, I analyze a dataset of floor debates in national parliaments. The results show that this metaphor is used in three instances: social class, civilization, and structures of governance. In conclu…
Navigating in the global discourse
This article examines Sweden's COVID-19 strategy from the perspective of the global epistemic field. We propose that the policy choices of national governments are conditioned by the global epistemic field that constitutes the problem, the range of potential techniques to handle it, and relevant viewpoints used in assessing their advantages and risks. New, innovative techniques can emerge, and choices can vary, but they are debated and justified …
Evoking ‘other countries’ in media discourses
The COVID-19 pandemic did not only imply a spread of a virus, it also set in motion a series of global measures and discourses that likewise diffused worldwide. This article explores the global dissemination of knowledge and cross-national comparisons in the context of a global pandemic. We approach the question by analysing coverage of COVID-19 in newspapers published in Australia, Russia, Singapore, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the United …
Conversation analysis, institutions, and rituals
By relating conversation analysis (CA), in particular CA research on institutional interaction to such research traditions as sociological institutionalism, new materialism, and ritual theory, the article illustrates how CA scholarship can contribute to macrosociological theorizing. This argument is illustrated by how national parliaments are organized as institutions. The main point made in the article is that occasions of what CA calls institut…
Managing the crisis
This paper analyzes legitimation practices of international organisations in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse a sample of 252 major international governmental organisations (IGOs) and 250 international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), using information collected from their websites in September – December 2020. We seek to understand why the vast majority of both IGOs and INGOs responded to the crisis and what were the d…
The Discursive Side of Sociological Institutionalism in the Study of Religion
This article introduces sociological institutionalism and proposes a discursive addition for enhancing its utility for the study of religion. The article reviews neoinstitutionalist social theorizing and underlines its argument that agentic actorhood is constituted by and embedded in a world-spanning culture. We point out that the potential of this line of scholarship for the study of religion remains unexplored partly because it does not say muc…
The Rising Social Media and Declining Alcohol Use
The article aims to make understandable a significant change that has taken place in the adolescent drinking habits: throughout the world, the teens are drinking much less than previous generations. Previous research has approached this phenomenon through survey research methodology, trying to identify the variables that correlate with individuals’ alcohol consumption level, thereby explaining the phenomenon. The impact of social media use on dri…
Intergovernmental organizations in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic
When Covid-19 broke out, many interpreted it as a crisis that would lead to fundamental changes in different areas of life. The article aims to assess whether this also applies to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). By analysing the websites of a sample of intergovernmental organizations, we ask: How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the behaviour of intergovernmental organizations? How can one explain this behaviour of intergovernmental organ…
Between rationalism and romanticism
Peer reviewed
The global spread of the concept of cultural policy
The article studies UNESCO's program that, from the late 1960s onward, aimed at spreading globally the concept of cultural policy. An essential part of the program, UNESCO invited member states from different regions of the world to prepare reports on national cultural policy. That was successful in spreading cultural policy as a concept and as a governmental structure. Except for only Australia, Canada and the United States, in which cultural po…
Authority as Epistemic Capital
The Spread and Domestication of the Term “Austerity
This article explores what happens when the term “austerity” becomes a global catchword. Specifically, we study how this term has been used in national policy making in the Portuguese and Spanish parliaments from the 1970s until recently. We show that although Portugal and Spain were in a somewhat different situation regarding the 2008 economic crisis, the increased popularity of the term austerity occurred practically simultaneously in the Portu…
Globalisation of education policies
The paper examines the role of PISA in the globalisation of education policies. It approaches the question by assessing the effects of PISA on the ways in which new legislation was debated in national contexts in the period 1994–2013. The study asks: Has there been an increase in the number of references to the international community in debates on education policy due to PISA, and, if so, is this change confined to debates on education policy? O…
Epistemic Governance
Russia in world society
This article explores how international references in parliaments build a synchronized world polity, even in countries that are often portrayed as being at odds with the rest of the world. The article asks whether and how Russian parliamentarians refer to the international community, and how such references compare with parliamentary debates in other countries. The 'mesophenomenological' argument developed here connects World Society Theory, whic…
Shattering the Single European Sky
The article scrutinises the European Commission’s Single European Sky (SES) initiative from a neoinstitutionalist epistemic governance perspective. The focus is on the rhetorical tools actors deploy in accounting for SES and the problems in it. We argue that the slow progress made in realising SES is not simply due to conflicting national interests. Member states are not uniform actors with a single, easily defined will or interest but rather, se…
Authority as epistemic capital
The article proposes that authority denotes an actor's appeals or other references to objects or facts that she expects others to respect or fear. The paper identifies four types of authority: capacity-based, ontological, moral, and charismatic. That is, authority can be built on the assumption that an actor is capable of accomplishing things; on expertise or respected accounts of reality; on deference to principles; and on extraordinary awe atta…
Looking at others in national policy-making
Why is it that when debating the economic crisis, actors in the Portuguese parliament invoke more frequently countries affected by the crisis, whereas actors in the Spanish parliament invoke economically well-off countries more often? This article explores this mystery by studying how and why certain countries are evoked in the decision-making process. The analysis reveals that the actors mention different countries to contextualize the nation. W…
The Rise of the Idea of Model in Policymaking
The paper addresses the question whether national decision-making has become increasingly interdependent in recent decades, and what role "world models" play in any such trend. These questions are scrutinised by utilising the "Historic Hansard" corpus, which contains all records of the UK Parliament from 1803 to 2005, complemented by other corpora. The results show that references to other countries were most frequent in parliamentary debates ver…
Owning worldwide principles
This article addresses the observation that, among 13 national legislatures compared, the proportion of floor debates containing a reference to the international community is lowest in the USA. Does the spirit of American exceptionalism make politicians particularly wary of being accused of cultural treason, so that they avoid references to exogenous models and international treaties or recommendations? Our analysis shows that, rather than alludi…
Co-construction of the tourist experience in social networking sites
Although social networking sites have become an important outlet for tourists to share their experiences - typically through mobile phones during their trips, communication of tourist experience in the context of social networking sites has been overlooked so far. In this article, we particularly focus on the ways sightseeing oriented tourist experience is communicated in social networking sites. By looking at the naturally occurring data generat…
Imageries of the social world in epistemic governance
To explain why neoinstitutionalist theories have been so successful in explaining global isomorphism and to discuss how they can be extended to describe otherwise inexplicable similarities in the world, the article approaches policy-making from an epistemic governance perspective. Utilizing a constructionist view on language, the article argues that popular and political rhetoric are inextricably bound to social scientific conceptions of reality …
Organisations as Epistemic Capital
The Discursive Side of New Institutionalism
This article introduces various strands of neoinstitutionalism, with the focus on sociological institutionalism, particularly 'Stanford School' sociological institutionalism and discursive institutionalism. The article points out that in opposing individualist rational choice theory, sociological institutionalism takes a strong structuralist stance in which actors are depicted as agents constituted by the scripts of rationalist world culture, min…
Epistemic Governance
The domestication of foreign news
The article studies the domestication of foreign news by identifying the different ways in which the Egyptian revolt was reported and discussed in Britain, Finland and Pakistan. The data comprise the press coverage of the 2011 events in three newspapers: The Times in Britain, Helsingin Sanomat ( HS) in Finland, and the Daily Times in Pakistan. We argue that, in addition to journalists, there are other agents who contribute to domesticating foreig…
Epistemic governance
The aim of this paper is to make a meta-theoretical contribution to conceptions of how power and governance operate in contemporary policy-making. Most approaches to governance generally brush aside the actual mechanics of how influence is wielded and social change effected. To fill this gap we argue that society is managed increasingly through epistemic governance, which works on actors' perceptions of the world and its current challenges. Our p…
Theorizing in Qualitative Research
This article discusses the interplay between empirical research and theory in constructionist or cultural studies qualitative research. In cultural studies, theories are seen as different frameworks, not as universal theories about social mechanisms. That is why instead of generalizing understandings, cultural studies and other constructionist approaches aim to particularize understandings of the social. The latter implicates the local, while the…
Authority as epistemic capital
The article proposes that authority denotes an actor's appeals or other references to objects or facts that she expects others to respect or fear. The paper identifies four types of authority: capacity-based, ontological, moral, and charismatic. That is, authority can be built on the assumption that an actor is capable of accomplishing things; on expertise or respected accounts of reality; on deference to principles; and on extraordinary awe atta…
Taming terror
While media studies have focused on journalist roles in framing foreign news events for local readers to render them suitable for national audiences, there has been less attention to similar roles played by other social actors in bringing 'home' new models about existing realities. Therefore, this paper addresses the question of how a global catchphrase, 'war on terror,' acquired a national paradigm status by virtue of its use by multiple actors …
Organisations as Epistemic Capital
The Discursive Side of New Institutionalism
This article introduces various strands of neoinstitutionalism, with the focus on sociological institutionalism, particularly 'Stanford School' sociological institutionalism and discursive institutionalism. The article points out that in opposing individualist rational choice theory, sociological institutionalism takes a strong structuralist stance in which actors are depicted as agents constituted by the scripts of rationalist world culture, min…
The global spread of the concept of cultural policy
The article studies UNESCO's program that, from the late 1960s onward, aimed at spreading globally the concept of cultural policy. An essential part of the program, UNESCO invited member states from different regions of the world to prepare reports on national cultural policy. That was successful in spreading cultural policy as a concept and as a governmental structure. Except for only Australia, Canada and the United States, in which cultural po…
The rise and relevance of qualitative research
The article discusses the development of social research in advanced economies and relates the rise of qualitative research to social changes. The paper suggests that partly, qualitative research emerged because some of the articles formerly classified as ‘non‐empirical’ or ‘theoretical’ gave way to an increasing share of articles classified as qualitative. In addition, the rise of qualitative inquiry meant that the everyday reality which produce…
The uses of the national Pisa results by Finnish officials in central government
In this article we attempt to analyse how OECD knowledge production is integrated with the process in which Finnish education policy takes shape. This is done by analysing the uses of the OECD PISA Study by Finnish central government officials. The main question posed is: How do these officials interpret the PISA results so as to justify the decisions made in Finnish education policy in the past or to point out new areas of development concerning…
Imageries of the social world in epistemic governance
To explain why neoinstitutionalist theories have been so successful in explaining global isomorphism and to discuss how they can be extended to describe otherwise inexplicable similarities in the world, the article approaches policy-making from an epistemic governance perspective. Utilizing a constructionist view on language, the article argues that popular and political rhetoric are inextricably bound to social scientific conceptions of reality …
Spreading global models and enhancing banal localism
This paper addresses the question of how cosmopolitan consciousness coexists with persistent banal nationalism or localism. The argument put forward is that these two phenomena are reinvigorated by a single process, here called the domestication of transnational models. The newspaper media coverage of an R&D project aimed at developing local government cultural activities in Finnish towns and cities is the object of a case analysis. The results s…
Co-construction of the tourist experience in social networking sites
Although social networking sites have become an important outlet for tourists to share their experiences - typically through mobile phones during their trips, communication of tourist experience in the context of social networking sites has been overlooked so far. In this article, we particularly focus on the ways sightseeing oriented tourist experience is communicated in social networking sites. By looking at the naturally occurring data generat…
Looking at others in national policy-making
Why is it that when debating the economic crisis, actors in the Portuguese parliament invoke more frequently countries affected by the crisis, whereas actors in the Spanish parliament invoke economically well-off countries more often? This article explores this mystery by studying how and why certain countries are evoked in the decision-making process. The analysis reveals that the actors mention different countries to contextualize the nation. W…
I'm ashamed to admit it but I have watched Dallas
Globalisation of education policies
The paper examines the role of PISA in the globalisation of education policies. It approaches the question by assessing the effects of PISA on the ways in which new legislation was debated in national contexts in the period 1994–2013. The study asks: Has there been an increase in the number of references to the international community in debates on education policy due to PISA, and, if so, is this change confined to debates on education policy? O…
Conforming to global policy trends
The global proliferation of national bioethics committees has been explained by arguing that they are legitimation devices used to reconcile ethical contradictions brought about by the development of biotechnology. However, such functional explanations do not suit all cases, like that of Finland, where the founding of a national bioethics committee was not preceded by remarkable conflicts or public controversies around biotechnology. The case can…
The nominalist turn in theorizing power
[Tập san nghien cứu van hoa Châu Âu] đa phat biểu rằng Tập san sẽ ‘tham gia vao cac thảo luận co tinh phe binh về cac tương quan quyền lực lien quan tới phạm vi giớitinh, giai cấp, tinh dục, tộc người va cac điểm vi mo va vĩ mo của xung đột chinh trị’. Tuy nhien, quyền lực la gi? Thật kho ma định nghĩa được; no cũng chủ yếu giống như khai niệm la danh cho nghien cứu van hoa va cac nganh khoa học xa hội noi chung. Cho nen trong nhiều tinh huống no…
Use of the OECD in justifying policy reforms
The paper addresses the question, how nation‐states as sovereign actors adopt and implement worldwide policy models, thus creating isomorphic developmental trends, by analyzing the ways in which international governmental organizations are used to promote and legitimize policy reforms at the national level. The use of the OECD knowledge production in governmental documents in Finland is used as a case example. The results show that by appealing t…
Russia in world society
This article explores how international references in parliaments build a synchronized world polity, even in countries that are often portrayed as being at odds with the rest of the world. The article asks whether and how Russian parliamentarians refer to the international community, and how such references compare with parliamentary debates in other countries. The 'mesophenomenological' argument developed here connects World Society Theory, whic…
Following the Example of Other Countries? Policy Analysis of New Legislation in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States
Since previous research has shown that nation-states take the acts of other states in consideration when making decisions about their policies, this article focuses on analyzing national decision-making in actual practice by studying the justifications used in debating new legislation. The data comprises second readings of bills from Canada and the UK and House debates of US bills from 2001 to 2011. The total amount of bills analyzed is 208. The …
Globalization and the Nation-State
L'A. envisage le concept de mondialisation dans une perspective de sociologie de la connaissance. Comment ce concept construit-il une vision des tendances actuelles de la societe mondiale et quelles en sont les consequences pour les sciences sociales ? Pourquoi les sciences sociales ont-elles besoin de slogans tels que celui de mondialisation alors que ce concept ne recouvre pas tous les aspects du changement social mondial ? Une explication en t…
Navigating in the global discourse
This article examines Sweden's COVID-19 strategy from the perspective of the global epistemic field. We propose that the policy choices of national governments are conditioned by the global epistemic field that constitutes the problem, the range of potential techniques to handle it, and relevant viewpoints used in assessing their advantages and risks. New, innovative techniques can emerge, and choices can vary, but they are debated and justified …
Intergovernmental organizations in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic
When Covid-19 broke out, many interpreted it as a crisis that would lead to fundamental changes in different areas of life. The article aims to assess whether this also applies to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). By analysing the websites of a sample of intergovernmental organizations, we ask: How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the behaviour of intergovernmental organizations? How can one explain this behaviour of intergovernmental organ…
The domestication of early childhood education plans in Finland
The article analyses how the implementation of early childhood education plans in Finland is linked with international trends and what happens in the process through which such worldwide ideals are domesticated to the local conditions. Through a detailed analysis of different stages of the process, the article sheds light on the question of how, to what extent and at which levels the national path of change is converged with those in other countr…
The Male Suburban Pub-goer and the Meaning Structure of Drinking
This article is based on the data of the Suburban Pub Research Project, collected through participant observation, interviews and tape-recorded group discussions. Suburban pubs were regarded as an appropriate focus of study, because many developments in the post-war history of Finland are crystallized in the emergence of suburbs and changes in drinking practices. The most important factor in these developments has been the profound change in the …
Individualism, self-control, and the Finnish temperance movement
This article analyzes the role of self-control, moral and ethical doctrines in the rise of individualist world-view in Finland. In the Finnish case, the formation of the modern individual was closely linked with the temperance movement, the ideology of which is therefore used as an illustrative example. The guiding line in the article is not to treat self-control as a theoretical concept used in analyzing individual behavior, but as a legitimatio…
I'm ashamed to admit it but I have watched Dallas
Desire and Craving
Researching Culture
Theorizing in Qualitative Research
This article discusses the interplay between empirical research and theory in constructionist or cultural studies qualitative research. In cultural studies, theories are seen as different frameworks, not as universal theories about social mechanisms. That is why instead of generalizing understandings, cultural studies and other constructionist approaches aim to particularize understandings of the social. The latter implicates the local, while the…
Introduction
Cultural Images of the Media
Cultural studies as a construct
This article discusses cultural studies as a social construct, and especially how it emerged in Finland. The 'discovery' of cultural studies in Finland in the early 1980s was made in a situation within Finnish sociology where some scholars began to adopt an orientation which resembled the Birmmgham orientation, but the influences to it stemmed from several sources. It was only then that the Birmingham School was founded, and certain people identi…
Globalization and the Nation-State
L'A. envisage le concept de mondialisation dans une perspective de sociologie de la connaissance. Comment ce concept construit-il une vision des tendances actuelles de la societe mondiale et quelles en sont les consequences pour les sciences sociales ? Pourquoi les sciences sociales ont-elles besoin de slogans tels que celui de mondialisation alors que ce concept ne recouvre pas tous les aspects du changement social mondial ? Une explication en t…
Social Theory and Human Reality
Introduction Introduction Norms and Rules Language Conversations Rituals Personality The Case of Modernity Identity The Modernization Story as a Reflexive Frame The Enigma of Human Reality
Atlantic Crossings
New Europe, new cultural studies
International audience
The relevance of qualitative research
Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv
Audiences
The audience is a central concept in media research. Typically, the audience refers to a large, loosely connected mass on the receiving end of the media, and in most cases it is used in association with electronic media, such as radio or television. The concept's centrality in media research stems from the fact that as a notion it provides a link between academic theory, industry practice, and media policy. In public service broadcasting politics…
The rise and relevance of qualitative research
The article discusses the development of social research in advanced economies and relates the rise of qualitative research to social changes. The paper suggests that partly, qualitative research emerged because some of the articles formerly classified as ‘non‐empirical’ or ‘theoretical’ gave way to an increasing share of articles classified as qualitative. In addition, the rise of qualitative inquiry meant that the everyday reality which produce…
The uses of the national Pisa results by Finnish officials in central government
In this article we attempt to analyse how OECD knowledge production is integrated with the process in which Finnish education policy takes shape. This is done by analysing the uses of the OECD PISA Study by Finnish central government officials. The main question posed is: How do these officials interpret the PISA results so as to justify the decisions made in Finnish education policy in the past or to point out new areas of development concerning…
Use of the OECD in justifying policy reforms
The paper addresses the question, how nation‐states as sovereign actors adopt and implement worldwide policy models, thus creating isomorphic developmental trends, by analyzing the ways in which international governmental organizations are used to promote and legitimize policy reforms at the national level. The use of the OECD knowledge production in governmental documents in Finland is used as a case example. The results show that by appealing t…
Narration and Ritual Formation of Diasporic Identity
The article is based on a case study of second generation Karelian migrants, whose parents had to move to other parts of Finland from the region of Karelia that was ceded to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The article poses the question, how long-lived diasporic identities are, and what are the conditions that affect assimilation or maintenance of a diasporic identity. In the Karelian migrants' case, already the first generation was …
The Domestication of Worldwide Policy Models
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The nominalist turn in theorizing power
[Tập san nghien cứu van hoa Châu Âu] đa phat biểu rằng Tập san sẽ ‘tham gia vao cac thảo luận co tinh phe binh về cac tương quan quyền lực lien quan tới phạm vi giớitinh, giai cấp, tinh dục, tộc người va cac điểm vi mo va vĩ mo của xung đột chinh trị’. Tuy nhien, quyền lực la gi? Thật kho ma định nghĩa được; no cũng chủ yếu giống như khai niệm la danh cho nghien cứu van hoa va cac nganh khoa học xa hội noi chung. Cho nen trong nhiều tinh huống no…
Modernization as a tacit concept used in governance
The article discusses the tacit concept of modernization in its various guises as a transnational framework and as part of world culture. The historical formation of the idea of modernization is traced back to the Enlightenment philosophers. The article further discusses how the idea is embedded in contemporary discussions of society and social change. In discussing how modernization discourse is utilized in spreading and domesticating worldwide …
Spreading global models and enhancing banal localism
This paper addresses the question of how cosmopolitan consciousness coexists with persistent banal nationalism or localism. The argument put forward is that these two phenomena are reinvigorated by a single process, here called the domestication of transnational models. The newspaper media coverage of an R&D project aimed at developing local government cultural activities in Finnish towns and cities is the object of a case analysis. The results s…
Hobbies and Vices, Book Lovers and Nerds
By drawing on eighty-nine qualitative interviews in which people account for their use of information and communication technology, this article analyzes how people negotiate their choices and principles in relation to prevalent discourses about proper and questionable conduct and content and whether old discourses are changing in the new media environment. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the cultural category of hobby is used as…
The domestication of early childhood education plans in Finland
The article analyses how the implementation of early childhood education plans in Finland is linked with international trends and what happens in the process through which such worldwide ideals are domesticated to the local conditions. Through a detailed analysis of different stages of the process, the article sheds light on the question of how, to what extent and at which levels the national path of change is converged with those in other countr…
Sociology (46 obras) · Political science (42 obras) · Law (29 obras) · Law (25 obras) · Politics (23 obras) · Social science (20 obras) · Epistemology (19 obras) · Economics (15 obras) · Philosophy (14 obras) · European Union Policy and Governance (11 obras)