Pekka Sulkunen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 267399 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Pekka Sulkunen |
| NOMBRES | Pekka |
| APELLIDO | Sulkunen |
| FIRMA | SULKUNEN P |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3260-9147 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1978 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Tiedepolitiikka ja tutkijan vastuu
The Kurdish Question
Introduction The Kurdish Question is one of those continuities of violence, protest, and repression that persist in history even though everything speaks in favor of a simple solution: to put down the arms and begin living together. All would have little to lose and much to gain. The Kurdish Question is one of those unresolved problems of national integration inherited from the state-building era of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe,…
Society on its own’
Several prominent sociologists believe that the concept of society has become inapplicable because of its Enlightenment roots in belief in progress and rationality. This article assesses this claim. The Enlightenment critique of Hobbes's account of order showed that social order in modern societies is possible without an external sovereign state. The legitimacy of the political order is derived from the social, not vice versa. Drawing on Kosellec…
The proto-sociology of Mandeville and Hume
While sociologists have largely turned their back on the foundations of their discipline as a science of society, historians have recently focused on the first classical period of modern social science in the eighteenth century from this perspective. Mikko Tolonen has recently revised established interpretations of David Hume's and Bernard Mandeville's work. Mandeville has usually been considered to continue the Hobbesian tradition of the ‘selfis…
Is Mass Society a Threat to Representative Democracy? Revisiting David Riesman’s “Other-Directed Character”
Representative democracy has been based on the idea that interest groups form parliaments through competitive elections, and legislate in favour of their supporters. Declining electoral participation, rise of populist right-wing parties, contingent coalitions, personalized electoral success and scandal-driven politics indicate a crisis in representative democracy. Mass society theories after the Second World War predicted a decline of democracy o…
Social Research and Social Practice in Post-Positivist Society
Is pathological gambling just a big problem or also an addiction
There is no research-based consensus on whether pathological gambling is also an addiction and not just a problem, and how it could be related to cultural factors. We present a critical review of dominant theories of addiction and propose our own theory based on the concept of images and the theory of agency. We show, using material from a Finnish internet discussion forum comprising 42 discussions with 487 messages, that the criteria proposed fo…
Autonomy against Intimacy
I. External and Internal Risks Since Ulrich Beck's book Risk Society appeared in 1986, social scientists have been deeply aware of the sociological importance of the new threats that await us around the corner: nuclear accidents, global warming, environmental issues in general, famines, lack of water, natural catastrophes, and many other calamities. These are no longer threats from nature against which human societies can and should protect thems…
Agency and power
Many forms of governance today stress the contractual form. This article asks if this phenomenon is real or just an illusion. The contract is analysed in light of Steven Lukes’ power theory. The contractual form avoids everything that the Lukesian or Foucauldian ‘third dimension’ of power seeks to establish. Contracts aim to make power visible, transparent, accountable and based on conscious, informed consent. The article argues, on the basis of …
The Saturated Society
Detailed and thought-provoking discussion of lifestyle regulation and how preventive lifestyle policies need to be shaped with the 'saturated society' - a society of self-controlled, fully autonomous individuals - in mind
Sociolgy of consumption about alcohol
Robin Room et al. (2009) start their article from the unexpected observation that lowering alcohol price by 25% in Denmark in 2003 led to no increase in consumption in the region. They go on to dis
Images of addiction
The dominant sociological image of addiction as lack of will or loss of control is connected with the expectations of individual self-control in modern societies. This article suggests a richer typology of images of addiction on the basis of the semiotic theory of modalities, focalisation and the “secret”. It centres around four modal groups: willing, competence, ability and obligation. A film clip archive on smoking, drinking, drug use and gambl…
Re-inventing the Social Contract
The sociological concept of 'society' has been questioned in multiple ways in recent decades. However, one central aspect of the notion has been taken so much for granted that no one has challenged it: society is not a plan and cannot be based on an agreement. Yet contemporary societies increasingly rely on voluntary contracts between individuals, groups, organizations, enterprises, states and their organs or officials. In this article, I argue t…
The ethics of not taking a stand
The Communitarian Preventive Paradox
This article analyses an attempt to prevent social problems through community action in support of self-responsibility. To support their members, communities need shared ideals of a good life, but, in contemporary pluralistic societies, consensus on such ideals is difficult to attain. Our case study is a community-orientated drug and alcohol prevention programme in Helsinki, Finland. It operates within the public sector while attempting to circum…
Between Culture and Nature
Theoretical attempts to formulate cultural theories of drinking and drug use have traditionally stemmed from norm theory or functionalism. These tend to reduce drinking and drug practices to intoxication alone or to neglect intoxication altogether. The semiotic turn in the 1980s brought “meaning” to the focus of cultural studies. This article proposes, following Bruno Latour, that cultural practices and discourses should be seen as translations o…
The Inflammable Alcohol Issue
In Finland, Norway and Sweden the alcohol policy positions of political parties have been related to party ideologies in complex ways. Until the 1950s, Nordic parties had brought up temperance argumentation. The consensus was enhanced by the radicalism of the 1960s. Improved alcohol availability was argued for across the political map; the dividing factor was generation. Regional, cultural and religious differences, but not political ideology, we…
Reforming the self and the other
This article looks at temperance history to understand how modern preventive alcohol-control systems were created and to understand why their ideological basis has now weakened. Temperance movements made a core contribution to the development of alcohol-control systems, but their argumentation contained an interesting paradox. While they demanded availability restrictions on alcohol they also stressed individual self-determination in alcohol cons…
The moral foundations of welfare states
Constructing the New Consumer Society
Public drinking, problems and prevention measures in twelve countries
Until recently, drinking in public venues has been a relatively neglected area of alcohol research despite the epidemiological significance of problems arising from drinking in licensed establishments and other public venues. In the WHO Project on Public Drinking, expert informants in 12 countries provided detailed information on alcohol consumption, drinking in public settings, the nature and magnitude of problems associated with public drinking…
Constructing speaker images
Tout discours construit inevitablement une image de la personne qui le prononce et une image des personnes auxquelles il est destine. Ces images sont plus ou moins fictives et souvent cachees ou laissees dans l'ombre du message. Les As. tentent ici d'identifier les mecanismes par lesquels les images du locuteurs sont construites et tentent de relever certaines regularites dans cette operation. Deux procedes sont d'une importance particuliere pour…
The production of values
Pour comprendre comment la realite sociale est produite dans le discours, il faut examiner la maniere dont les constellations de pouvoir et les systemes de valeur s'articulent dans ses structures. Les As. montrent que le concept semiotique de modalite est un outil precieux pour ce type de reflexion. Apres une presentation de ce concept en logique formelle, en linguistique et en semiotique, ils examinent le probleme de l'organisation theorique des…
Drinking on the screen. An analysis of a mythical male fantasy in Finnish films
A Welfare Policy Patchwork
Society Made Visible - on the Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
In this article the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most eminent contemporary French sociologists, is reviewed and discussed. Orig inally a structuralist anthropologist, Bourdieu has developed a critical soci ology of cultural forms. His methodological point of view is at one and the same time anti-functionalist, anti-empiricist and anti-subjectivist. The cul tural forms of the practices of everyday life cannot be reduced to nee…
Between Culture and Nature
Theoretical attempts to formulate cultural theories of drinking and drug use have traditionally stemmed from norm theory or functionalism. These tend to reduce drinking and drug practices to intoxication alone or to neglect intoxication altogether. The semiotic turn in the 1980s brought “meaning” to the focus of cultural studies. This article proposes, following Bruno Latour, that cultural practices and discourses should be seen as translations o…
Re-inventing the Social Contract
The sociological concept of 'society' has been questioned in multiple ways in recent decades. However, one central aspect of the notion has been taken so much for granted that no one has challenged it: society is not a plan and cannot be based on an agreement. Yet contemporary societies increasingly rely on voluntary contracts between individuals, groups, organizations, enterprises, states and their organs or officials. In this article, I argue t…
The production of values
Pour comprendre comment la realite sociale est produite dans le discours, il faut examiner la maniere dont les constellations de pouvoir et les systemes de valeur s'articulent dans ses structures. Les As. montrent que le concept semiotique de modalite est un outil precieux pour ce type de reflexion. Apres une presentation de ce concept en logique formelle, en linguistique et en semiotique, ils examinent le probleme de l'organisation theorique des…
Drinking on the screen. An analysis of a mythical male fantasy in Finnish films
Agency and power
Many forms of governance today stress the contractual form. This article asks if this phenomenon is real or just an illusion. The contract is analysed in light of Steven Lukes’ power theory. The contractual form avoids everything that the Lukesian or Foucauldian ‘third dimension’ of power seeks to establish. Contracts aim to make power visible, transparent, accountable and based on conscious, informed consent. The article argues, on the basis of …
The proto-sociology of Mandeville and Hume
While sociologists have largely turned their back on the foundations of their discipline as a science of society, historians have recently focused on the first classical period of modern social science in the eighteenth century from this perspective. Mikko Tolonen has recently revised established interpretations of David Hume's and Bernard Mandeville's work. Mandeville has usually been considered to continue the Hobbesian tradition of the ‘selfis…
Autonomy against Intimacy
I. External and Internal Risks Since Ulrich Beck's book Risk Society appeared in 1986, social scientists have been deeply aware of the sociological importance of the new threats that await us around the corner: nuclear accidents, global warming, environmental issues in general, famines, lack of water, natural catastrophes, and many other calamities. These are no longer threats from nature against which human societies can and should protect thems…
The Communitarian Preventive Paradox
This article analyses an attempt to prevent social problems through community action in support of self-responsibility. To support their members, communities need shared ideals of a good life, but, in contemporary pluralistic societies, consensus on such ideals is difficult to attain. Our case study is a community-orientated drug and alcohol prevention programme in Helsinki, Finland. It operates within the public sector while attempting to circum…
The Inflammable Alcohol Issue
In Finland, Norway and Sweden the alcohol policy positions of political parties have been related to party ideologies in complex ways. Until the 1950s, Nordic parties had brought up temperance argumentation. The consensus was enhanced by the radicalism of the 1960s. Improved alcohol availability was argued for across the political map; the dividing factor was generation. Regional, cultural and religious differences, but not political ideology, we…
Individual Consumption in Capitalism. An Exercise in the Logic of Capital
This is a systematic analysis of the apparent contradictions of private consumption - growing discrepancy between productive potential and actual needs, the degenerating quality of consumption and so on - within the frame of Marx's critique of political economy. Similar analyses of other material and social areas of everyday life such as ideology, technolo gy, forms of consciousness, etc. are referred to as a 'subsumptive ap proach'. By this is m…
Individual Consumption in Capitalism. An Exercise in the Logic of Capital
This is a systematic analysis of the apparent contradictions of private consumption - growing discrepancy between productive potential and actual needs, the degenerating quality of consumption and so on - within the frame of Marx's critique of political economy. Similar analyses of other material and social areas of everyday life such as ideology, technolo gy, forms of consciousness, etc. are referred to as a 'subsumptive ap proach'. By this is m…
Society Made Visible - on the Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
In this article the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most eminent contemporary French sociologists, is reviewed and discussed. Orig inally a structuralist anthropologist, Bourdieu has developed a critical soci ology of cultural forms. His methodological point of view is at one and the same time anti-functionalist, anti-empiricist and anti-subjectivist. The cul tural forms of the practices of everyday life cannot be reduced to nee…
Drinking on the screen. An analysis of a mythical male fantasy in Finnish films
Constructing the New Consumer Society
Public drinking, problems and prevention measures in twelve countries
Until recently, drinking in public venues has been a relatively neglected area of alcohol research despite the epidemiological significance of problems arising from drinking in licensed establishments and other public venues. In the WHO Project on Public Drinking, expert informants in 12 countries provided detailed information on alcohol consumption, drinking in public settings, the nature and magnitude of problems associated with public drinking…
Constructing speaker images
Tout discours construit inevitablement une image de la personne qui le prononce et une image des personnes auxquelles il est destine. Ces images sont plus ou moins fictives et souvent cachees ou laissees dans l'ombre du message. Les As. tentent ici d'identifier les mecanismes par lesquels les images du locuteurs sont construites et tentent de relever certaines regularites dans cette operation. Deux procedes sont d'une importance particuliere pour…
The production of values
Pour comprendre comment la realite sociale est produite dans le discours, il faut examiner la maniere dont les constellations de pouvoir et les systemes de valeur s'articulent dans ses structures. Les As. montrent que le concept semiotique de modalite est un outil precieux pour ce type de reflexion. Apres une presentation de ce concept en logique formelle, en linguistique et en semiotique, ils examinent le probleme de l'organisation theorique des…
The moral foundations of welfare states
Reforming the self and the other
This article looks at temperance history to understand how modern preventive alcohol-control systems were created and to understand why their ideological basis has now weakened. Temperance movements made a core contribution to the development of alcohol-control systems, but their argumentation contained an interesting paradox. While they demanded availability restrictions on alcohol they also stressed individual self-determination in alcohol cons…
The Inflammable Alcohol Issue
In Finland, Norway and Sweden the alcohol policy positions of political parties have been related to party ideologies in complex ways. Until the 1950s, Nordic parties had brought up temperance argumentation. The consensus was enhanced by the radicalism of the 1960s. Improved alcohol availability was argued for across the political map; the dividing factor was generation. Regional, cultural and religious differences, but not political ideology, we…
Between Culture and Nature
Theoretical attempts to formulate cultural theories of drinking and drug use have traditionally stemmed from norm theory or functionalism. These tend to reduce drinking and drug practices to intoxication alone or to neglect intoxication altogether. The semiotic turn in the 1980s brought “meaning” to the focus of cultural studies. This article proposes, following Bruno Latour, that cultural practices and discourses should be seen as translations o…
The Communitarian Preventive Paradox
This article analyses an attempt to prevent social problems through community action in support of self-responsibility. To support their members, communities need shared ideals of a good life, but, in contemporary pluralistic societies, consensus on such ideals is difficult to attain. Our case study is a community-orientated drug and alcohol prevention programme in Helsinki, Finland. It operates within the public sector while attempting to circum…
The ethics of not taking a stand
Images of addiction
The dominant sociological image of addiction as lack of will or loss of control is connected with the expectations of individual self-control in modern societies. This article suggests a richer typology of images of addiction on the basis of the semiotic theory of modalities, focalisation and the “secret”. It centres around four modal groups: willing, competence, ability and obligation. A film clip archive on smoking, drinking, drug use and gambl…
Re-inventing the Social Contract
The sociological concept of 'society' has been questioned in multiple ways in recent decades. However, one central aspect of the notion has been taken so much for granted that no one has challenged it: society is not a plan and cannot be based on an agreement. Yet contemporary societies increasingly rely on voluntary contracts between individuals, groups, organizations, enterprises, states and their organs or officials. In this article, I argue t…
The Saturated Society
Detailed and thought-provoking discussion of lifestyle regulation and how preventive lifestyle policies need to be shaped with the 'saturated society' - a society of self-controlled, fully autonomous individuals - in mind
Sociolgy of consumption about alcohol
Robin Room et al. (2009) start their article from the unexpected observation that lowering alcohol price by 25% in Denmark in 2003 led to no increase in consumption in the region. They go on to dis
Agency and power
Many forms of governance today stress the contractual form. This article asks if this phenomenon is real or just an illusion. The contract is analysed in light of Steven Lukes’ power theory. The contractual form avoids everything that the Lukesian or Foucauldian ‘third dimension’ of power seeks to establish. Contracts aim to make power visible, transparent, accountable and based on conscious, informed consent. The article argues, on the basis of …
Is pathological gambling just a big problem or also an addiction
There is no research-based consensus on whether pathological gambling is also an addiction and not just a problem, and how it could be related to cultural factors. We present a critical review of dominant theories of addiction and propose our own theory based on the concept of images and the theory of agency. We show, using material from a Finnish internet discussion forum comprising 42 discussions with 487 messages, that the criteria proposed fo…
Autonomy against Intimacy
I. External and Internal Risks Since Ulrich Beck's book Risk Society appeared in 1986, social scientists have been deeply aware of the sociological importance of the new threats that await us around the corner: nuclear accidents, global warming, environmental issues in general, famines, lack of water, natural catastrophes, and many other calamities. These are no longer threats from nature against which human societies can and should protect thems…
Is Mass Society a Threat to Representative Democracy? Revisiting David Riesman’s “Other-Directed Character”
Representative democracy has been based on the idea that interest groups form parliaments through competitive elections, and legislate in favour of their supporters. Declining electoral participation, rise of populist right-wing parties, contingent coalitions, personalized electoral success and scandal-driven politics indicate a crisis in representative democracy. Mass society theories after the Second World War predicted a decline of democracy o…
Social Research and Social Practice in Post-Positivist Society
Society on its own’
Several prominent sociologists believe that the concept of society has become inapplicable because of its Enlightenment roots in belief in progress and rationality. This article assesses this claim. The Enlightenment critique of Hobbes's account of order showed that social order in modern societies is possible without an external sovereign state. The legitimacy of the political order is derived from the social, not vice versa. Drawing on Kosellec…
The proto-sociology of Mandeville and Hume
While sociologists have largely turned their back on the foundations of their discipline as a science of society, historians have recently focused on the first classical period of modern social science in the eighteenth century from this perspective. Mikko Tolonen has recently revised established interpretations of David Hume's and Bernard Mandeville's work. Mandeville has usually been considered to continue the Hobbesian tradition of the ‘selfis…
The Kurdish Question
Introduction The Kurdish Question is one of those continuities of violence, protest, and repression that persist in history even though everything speaks in favor of a simple solution: to put down the arms and begin living together. All would have little to lose and much to gain. The Kurdish Question is one of those unresolved problems of national integration inherited from the state-building era of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe,…
Sociology (21 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Social science (10 obras) · Epistemology (9 obras) · Economics (7 obras) · Political economy (6 obras)