<p>During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. </p><p>The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical.</p><p>All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. </p><p>Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.</p>

Throughout the history of archaeology, the Sámi (the indigenous people in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in the Russian Federation) have been conceptualized as the “Others” in relation to the national identity and (pre)history of the modern states. It is only in the last decades that a field of Sámi archaeology that studies Sámi (pre)history in its own right has emerged, parallel with an ethnic and cultural revival among Sámi groups. This dissertation investigates the notions of Sámi prehistory and archaeology, partly from a research historical perspective and partly from a more contemporary political perspective. It explores how the Sámi and ideas about the Sámi past have been represented in archaeological narratives from the early 19th century until today, as well as the development of an academic field of Sámi archaeology. The study consists of four main parts: 1) A critical examination of the conceptualization of ethnicity, nationalism and indigeneity in archaeological research. 2) A historical analysis of the representations and debates on Sámi prehistory, primarily in Sweden but also to some extent in Norway and Finland, focusing on four main themes: the origin of the Sámi people, South Sámi prehistory as a contested field of study, the development of reindeer herding, and Sámi pre-Christian religion. 3) An analysis of the study of the Sámi past in Russia, and a discussion on archaeological research and constructions of ethnicity and indigeneity in the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union. 4) An examination of the claims for greater Sámi self-determination concerning cultural heritage management and the debates on repatriation and reburial in the Nordic countries. In the dissertation, it is argued that there is a great need for discussions on the ethics and politics of archaeological research. A relational network approach is suggested as a way of opening up some of the black boxes and bounded, static entities in the representations of people in the past in the North.

This work attempts to seek new insights in understanding the archeological phenomena traditionally labelled as the western Bronze Age and the coastal Pre-Roman cultures of Finland (1500 BC-AD 1), by studying the phenomena from a socioeconomic interaction and practice oriented community perspective. The basic line of thought is that it was the everyday life of the local agents and their interactions that constituted the local communities. Communities are seen as built from the bottom up by the interaction of various local agents. The organised agents, their practices and their mutual interaction on various scales of social organisation are regarded as the central factors that created and shaped the history of the communities. Problems that are addressed concern the interrelationship between the subsistence practices, habitation practices and the social organisation of the coastal communities. Houses and local polities are regarded as two basic social institutions that were essential for the structuration of the coastal communities and for their relation to external networks. I also address the issue of the various spatial and temporal scales that can be considered as essential for the structuration of the coastal communities, and furthermore how the coastal communities managed change over time. The geographical scope of this thesis is limited to the former province of Vaasa (Vaasan lääni/Vasa län) in western Finland, with a special emphasis on the coastal southern part of Ostrobothnia.  A suggested high-rank House from the Late Bronze Age is studied in Laihia. Methodologically a broad perspective with a comparative, diachronic and a multi-proxy approach is conducted in the study of the structuration of communities. The constitution of the communities is largely approached through themes that are related to landscape and settlement archaeology. Contextual analyses of the combinations of various subsistence and habitation practices form the basis for the identification of different community constituting subgroups of agents.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the ideological development of the former communist parties and the contemporary left-wing socialist parties of the Nordic countries. It is aimed at the two decades that have passed since the collaps of the Berlin wall and the parties at hand are; the Norwegian Sosialistisk Venstre, the Danish Socialistisk Folkeparti, the Swedish Vänsterpartiet and the Finnish Vasemmistoliitto. Since the 1960´s these parties have undergone major ideological changes with reference to a widening of their political agenda to an inclusion of democratic ideals as well as the new ideologies of feminism and ecologism. Thus reforming them into modern left-wing socialist parties at different times. The main hypothesis is formulated from the idea that there must be a connection between the startingpoint of reformation and the degree of modernism/traditionalism they show today. Furthermore, the study intends to determine how much they have changed and if there are any common features in the development. The method used consists of a quantitative approach with a minor qualitative streak and the material includes the four parties principalprograms from 1990 until today. In the quantative part I chose to count an amount of value-related words with connection to the four categories of socialism, feminism, ecologism and the democratic ideal. With the ideological refinement of Ball and Dagger as a frame of reference i chose a big amount of words, in which case the qualitative approach constituted as a failsafe in order to determine every words accuracy. The research shows that my original hypothesis is only partly correct. The degree of modernization seems to be depending on whereas the party was founded before or after the collapse of the Berlin wall. The fact that the three Scandinavian parties all show a positive modernization in comparison to their Finnish counterpart supports that. The study also reveals that the Finnish party, without consideration of modernism/traditionalism, changes the most during the period and the Danish party changes the least. The main feature of the Scandinavian parties is the decline of socialistic ideas in comparison to their Finnish equivalent.

Background: The role of the placenta in fetal programming has been recognized as a highly significant, yet often neglected area of study. We investigated placental size in relation to psychopathology, in particular attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, in children at 8 years of age, and later as adolescents at 16 years. Methodology/Principal Findings: Prospective data were obtained from The Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC) 1986. Placental weight, surface area and birth weight were measured according to standard procedures, within 30 minutes after birth. ADHD symptoms, probable psychiatric disturbance, antisocial disorder and neurotic disorder were assessed at 8 years (n = 8101), and ADHD symptoms were assessed again at 16 years (n = 6607), by teachers and parents respectively. We used logistic regression analyses to investigate the association between placental size and mental health outcomes, and controlled for gestational age, birth weight, socio-demographic factors and medical factors, during gestation. There were significant positive associations between placental size (weight, surface area and placental-to-birth-weight ratio) and mental health problems in boys at 8 and 16 years of age. Increased placental weight was linked with overall probable psychiatric disturbance (at 8y, OR = 1.14 [95% CI = 1.04-1.25]), antisocial behavior (at 8 y, OR = 1.14 [95% CI = 1.03-1.27]) and ADHD symptoms (inattention-hyperactivity at 16y, OR = 1.19 [95% CI = 1.02-1.38]). No significant associations were detected among girls. Conclusions/Significance: Compensatory placental growth may occur in response to prenatal insults. Such overgrowth may affect fetal development, including brain development, and ultimately contribute to psychopathology.

No description available.

The Swedish People’s Party have for over one hundred years functioned as a political tool for the liberals and center-right of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland. As a party the SPP stands out in comparison to most other European minority parties as not working for regional self-governance or independence, but instead wanting to uphold constitutional language and service rights. The SPP was a part of every coalition government in Finland from 1979 to 2015 and has held multiple ministerial posts despite only having approximately 5% of the votes. The aim of this essay has been to examine the variance in the value based political issues in the SPP to see if there is a divergence on a liberal/conservative divide within the party. With a theoretical framework based on the GAL-TAN political scale, a socially based dimension of measuring party positions, I have operationalized a liberal and conservative stance to Weberian ideal types, and by first e-mail interviewing party representatives to build a frame of issues to investigate, I have then performed an idea based content analysis by examining motions from 2009 to 2017. The results show that, even though there are a divergence between some of the proposals themselves, and in some cases, between the official party line as described in the party program, the differences are too insignificant to draw conclusions from. The conflict between the motions speaking for and against nuclear power stands out as being very even, while the motions concerning Finland joining NATO stands out as being fully for.

No description available.

x, 197 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation investigates the cultural importance of the "monstrous Other" in postmodern literature, including novels from Sweden, Finland, and the United States. While the theoretical concept of "the Other" is in wide circulation in the humanities and social sciences, the concept has only recently been modified with the adjective "monstrous" to highlight a special case of the Other that plays an important role in the formation of human subjectivity. In order to better understand the representational legacy of the monstrous Other, I explore some of the principal venues in which it has appeared in western literature, philosophy, folklore, and politics. Using a Foucauldian archaeological approach in my literature survey allows me to trace the tradition of the monstrous Other in such sources as medieval bestiaries, the wild man motif in folklore and popular culture, and the medicalization of intersexual embodiment. In all cases, the monstrous Other is a complex phenomenon with broad implications for the politics of subjectivity and the future of social and political justice. Moreover, the monstrous Other poses significant challenges for the ongoing tenability of normative notions of the human, including such primary human traits as sexuality and a gendered, "natural" embodiment. Given the complexities of the monstrous Other and the ways in which it both upholds and intervenes in normative human identities, no single theoretical approach is adequate to the task of examining its functioning. Instead, the project calls for an approach that blends the methodologies of (post)psychoanalytic and queer theory while retaining a critical awareness of both the representational nature of subjectivity and its material effects. By employing both strains of theory, I am able to "read" the monstrous Other as both a necessary condition of subjectivity and a model of intersubjectivity that could provide an alternative to the positivism and binarism of normative subjectivity. The texts that I examine here reveal the ways in which postmodern reconfigurations of the monstrous Other challenge the (hetero)normativity of human subjectivity and its hierarchical forms of differentiation. My reading of these texts locates the possibilities for a hybridized, cyborgian existence beyond the outermost limits of positivistic, western subjectivity. / Committee in charge: Ellen Rees, Chairperson, German and Scandinavian; Daniel Wojcik, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Member, Comparative Literature; Aletta Biersack, Outside Member, Anthropology

Abstract Historical novels are widely published and read in Finland. During the last few decades both Finnish and Finland-Swedish writers alike have addressed such incendiary topics as the Finnish Civil War and the events of the Second World War. The object of the present study is Lars Sund’s Siklax trilogy: Colorado Avenue (1991), Lanthandlerskans son (1997, ’Son of a Country Shopkeeper’) and Eriks bok (2003, ’Erik’s Book’). These novels can be defined as postmodern historical novels, relatively rare as a genre in Finland and even less studied. The impact of historical novels on readers’ attitudes may be strong, and as a result it is necessary to contemplate the ways in which history is reproduced and interpreted. The present study analyses the ways Sund’s novels represent the past, their relation to historiography and the historical novel as a genre, as well as their conception of history. The aim of the study is to demonstrate what kind of connection exists between narrative techniques and representations of the past. This study utilizes narratological, intertextual and contextual approaches. Cultural narratology integrates features from both classical and postclassical narratology, in consequence the novel’s narrative structures are examined as active forces that both reflect and influence the cultural discourses of a given period. During the research process, the narrative structure of Sund’s novels has been analysed as well as intertextual allusions to other texts and to other cultural and social discourses. The narrative structure of Sund’s historical novels suffices to raise epistemological questions about the achievability and reliability of historical knowledge. The occurrences of other media on the story and discourse level, such as descriptions of paintings and photographs and filmic narration, as well as numerous intertextual allusions, accentuate the polyphony of history and the subjectivity of historical conclusions. The present study connects Lars Sund’s historical novels with the international, Nordic and domestic tradition. Additionally, the analysis of the visual features of the novels connects the study with the abounding discussion on the relationship between word and image. / Tiivistelmä Historiallisia romaaneja julkaistaan Suomessa runsaasti, ja laji on yhä lukijoiden suosiossa. Sekä suomen- että ruotsinkieliset kirjailijat ovat viime vuosikymmeninä käsitelleet maamme historian kipupisteitä, kuten kansalaissotaa ja toisen maailmansodan tapahtumia. Tutkimuksen kohteena on Lars Sundin Siklax-trilogia, jonka muodostavat romaanit Colorado Avenue 1991 (suom. Colorado Avenue 1992), Lanthandlerskans son 1997 (suom. Puodinpitäjän poika 1998) ja Eriks bok 2003 (suom. Erikin kirja 2004). Nämä teokset edustavat postmodernia historiallista romaania, jota Suomessa on kirjoitettu suhteellisen vähän ja tutkittu vielä vähemmän. Historiallisten romaanien vaikutus lukijan asenteisiin voi olla suuri, ja siksi on tarpeen pohtia myös niitä keinoja, joilla historiaa tuotetaan ja tulkitaan. Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan Sundin romaanien tapoja representoida mennyttä, historiankäsitystä sekä suhdetta historiankirjoitukseen ja historiallisen romaanin lajiin. Tavoitteena on selvittää, millainen yhteys kerrontatekniikoiden ja menneisyyden representaatioiden välillä on. Tutkimuksessa yhdistyvät narratologinen, intertekstuaalinen ja kontekstuaalinen tarkastelutapa. Analyysin kohteena ovat teosten kerrontarakenteet sekä viittaussuhteet toisiin teksteihin ja muihin kulttuurisiin ja yhteiskunnallisiin diskursseihin. Lähestymistapaa kuvaa parhaiten klassisen ja postklassisen narratologian piirteitä yhdistävä kulttuurisen narratologian käsite, jossa teoksen kerronnallisia rakenteita tutkitaan sekä aikakautensa kulttuurisia diskursseja heijastavana että niihin vaikuttavana aktiivisena voimana. Sundin historialliset romaanit nostavat jo rakenteellaan esiin epistemologisia kysymyksiä tiedon saavutettavuudesta ja luotettavuudesta. Muiden medioiden, kuten elokuva-, maalaus- ja valokuvataiteen, esiintyminen niin tarinan kuin kerronnan tasolla sekä lukuisat intertekstuaaliset viittaukset korostavat historian moniäänisyyttä ja tulkintojen subjektiivisuutta. Tutkimus osallistuu kuvan ja sanan vuorovaikutuksesta käytyyn vilkkaaseen keskusteluun ja kytkee Lars Sundin historialliset romaanit osaksi niin kansainvälistä, pohjoismaista kuin kotimaista traditiota. / Abstrakt Historiska romaner publiceras det rikligt av i Finland och genren är fortfarande populär bland läsarna. Under de senaste decennierna har både finländska och finlandssvenska författare behandlat sådana nationella smärtpunkter som inbördeskriget, vinterkriget och fortsättningskriget. I denna avhandling forskas Lars Sunds Siklax-trilogi: Colorado Avenue (1991), Lanthandlerskans son (1997) och Eriks bok (2003). Dessa romaner representerar den postmoderna historiska romanen, som det till dags dato skrivits relativt litet om i Finland och ännu mindre forskats i. Historiska romaner konstruerar nationell identitet och deltar i den kulturella och politiska dialogen om det förflutna och nutiden. Deras inverkan på läsarens inställningar kan vara stark, och därför är det nödvändigt att reflektera på de medel med vilka historien produceras och uttolkas. I avhandlingen analyseras på vilket sätt det förflutna representeras i Sunds romaner; historieuppfattningen samt relationen till historieskrivningen och till den historiska romanen som genre. Syftet är att redogöra för hurdant förhållande det finns mellan berättarmetoder och representationer av det förgångna. I undersökningen förenas ett narratologiskt, intertextuellt och kontextuellt betraktelsesätt. Det gäller att analysera romanernas berättarstrukturer samt intertextuella referenser till andra texter och till andra kulturella och sociala diskurser. Betraktelsesättet skildras bäst med begreppet kulturell narratologi (cultural narratology), som förenar drag av den klassiska och postklassiska narratologin. Detta betyder att romanens narrativa strukturer granskas som en aktiv kraft, vilken både reflekterar tidens kulturella diskurser och påverkar dem. Själva konstruktionen av Sunds historiska romaner framför epistemologiska frågor om den historiska kunskapens åtkomlighet och pålitlighet. Andra mediers närvarande på historiens och på diskursens nivåer, så som beskrivningar av fotografier och målningar eller filmiskt berättande, och åtskilliga intertextuella hänvisningar, betonar historiens polyfoni och tolkningars subjektivitet. Undersökningen kopplar Lars Sunds historiska romaner till internationell, nordisk och finländsk tradition. Dessutom anknyter analysen av Sunds visuella material undersökningen till den livliga diskussionen om samspel mellan ord och bild.