Art for integration: political rationalities and technologies of governmentalisation in the city of Malmö

Cities increasingly use artistic and cultural activities to promote active citizenship and social cohesion. We suggest that city-sponsored cultural and artistic practices in Sweden are finding a new discursive context in migration. In this article, we look at two artistic and cultural institutions in Malmö, Sweden: Arena 305 and Drömmarnas hus. We develop a typology of governmentalisation based on the work of Nicholas Rose and Peter Miller, which allows us to describe the governing activity of Arena 305 and Drömmarnas hus. What becomes visible is the discrepancy between the moral form of the political rationalities and the technologies of government: even though institutions may harbour ideals and principles of inclusion, they are perfectly capable of sustaining activities that brighten the very boundaries they set out to challenge.     

Aging male bodies,health and the reproduction of age relations

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.     

Moody habitus: Bourdieu with existential feelings

This paper proposes a way of integrating the concepts of habitus and mood. The purpose of this conceptual move is to enrich Pierre Bourdieu's treatment of habitus with a better recognition of its affective aspects. The paper draws on phenomenological studies of psychic disorders and applies the concept of existential feeling to specify what moods are and do. The framing proposed distinguishes between dispositions that function in the foreground and in the background of habitus. Thereby it is possible to regard moods as background dispositions of habitus. This paper also discusses what this idea of moody habitus can do for research in habitus and human practice.     

Acting age in the context of health: Middle-aged working-class men talking about bodies and aging

This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the aging and situational identity work of middle-aged working-class men. Empirically the article is based on interview data (4 focus groups and 9 personal interviews with 40+ men) in which Finnish paper-mill workers are interviewed about health. Based on the theoretical implications of intersectionality, the article provides an empirical analysis of how age-based cultural hierarchies and distinctions are used flexibly in the process of self-identification and how categorizations of age and conceptualizations of aging are tightly interwoven with gender and class. The analyses show that the middle-aged interviewees base their interpretations of the aging self on negotiating their position between the age categories of the ‘young’ and ‘old’. Both these groups are labeled with rather negative characteristics regarding the irresponsibility for health among the young and impaired functional ability of the old, which conflicts with the working-class expectations regarding masculine identity. The findings suggest that studying how people ‘do age’ requires consideration of the respects in which aging is an age-specific and gendered process shaped by class-based values, ideals and practices.     

The role of social transfers in mitigating families with children from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

In this study, we investigated the household income of families with children. Our specific interest was the earned income losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how social transfers have mitigated those losses. We assessed the monthly income levels by comparing the information on the year prior to pandemic to income levels during COVID-19 pandemic. We found that the pandemic affected all studied subgroups of families with children, with the most negative economic influence in May 2020. In addition, our results indicate that in Finland the social transfers protected fairly well against the negative economic impacts of the pandemic among families with children, especially among vulnerable families (those with lowest income level prior COVID-19, with low parental education, single-parent families and families with non-Finnish-born parents). The information gained from this analysis can be useful in economic recovery during and after COVID-19 pandemic, and when preparing for future challenges.     

SHARING EXPERIENCES:

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a world-wide fellowship for mutual help for persons suffering from addictions and alcohol problems. This article addresses a pragmatic aspect of the therapeutic process taking place in the weekly AA meetings. At meetings, AA members 'share' their personal experiences, but they also recurrently refer to previous turns of talk in order to make their own experiences recognizable, understandable and 'shareable'. This study is about these 'co-contributor references', and about the work AA members do to create mutual, 'therapeutic' relevance for their 'monological' turns with these references. This article is a conversation analytical study of tape-recordings of actual AA meetings in Finland. Mutual references are a technique through which members can both manage topic shifts and accomplish solidarity between members in mutual help group, and constitute greatly variable relations between speakers as individuals. As a whole, the article explicates members' methods for sharing and co-constructing experiences whereby mutual help is achieved as a practical accomplishment.     

Unemployment and economic security for young adults in Finland,Norway and Sweden: From unemployment protection to poverty relief

In this study, we investigated if there has been a displacement in the type and coverage of welfare services available for young unemployed adults in Finland, Norway and Sweden over the last two decades. This question is important because a number of studies have argued that the generous unemployment benefits and extensive labour market intervention found in the Nordic welfare states shield young people from the most severe consequences of economic inactivity. In this article, we instead show that during this period, less generous means‐tested unemployment and social assistance benefits have become the most important form of income protection for young people. In evidence, earnings‐related unemployment benefits now cover only 10 per cent of unemployed Swedes and Finns and 45 per cent of unemployed Norwegians aged 24 years or younger. This development marks a significant change in our understanding of unemployment protection for young people in Nordic countries.