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Sekalaista

Nautinnon ja addiktioiden historiallinen suhde

Studia Generalia, 11.2.2020

Lähde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bql0Iuctio4&t=476s

Luennon käsikirjoitus ja powerpoint-kuvat löytyy tästä: Nautinnon ja addiktioiden historiallinen suhde

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Sekalaista

Three theoretical concepts

There are three concepts that I find especially important for discerning meaning and values in societal stuctures and systems. These pertain to welfare state accountability; ethically sustainable policies and agency as a structuring principle.

The concept of Welfare state accountability

In the end of 2018 we gathered collaborators to apply for a large-scale Strategic funding project from the Academy of Finland. While we were not lucky enough to be picked for funding, it is important that we proceed with the project idea as it can greatly further knowledge on how the welfare state works as a collective contract framework in contemporary societies. The objective of the project is to answer to the pressing societal need of an ‘evidence-based’ solid proceeding when developing, assisting and evaluating mixed-sectorial services (MSS) in the social and health field. The toughest test is set up for trialing the societal costs and benefits of new MSS by the inquiry into their reach and validity for the most vulnerable populations with complex problems. In this, we have integrated the concept of welfare state accountability (WSA).

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Sekalaista

Visit at Harvard autumn 2018

I am affiliated as a visiting scholar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health 2018-2019. In this post I write about the reason for this and the work I have conducted during my visiting scholar stay here in Cambridge, MA.

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Sekalaista

Who’s invisible in the welfare state?

”Am I invisible?”, asks the man on the side pavement of the t-train entrance.

He is new to me. At least twice a day I pass the woman who begs for money for her children’s food (she greets politely “morning” and “afternoon”), and the man in the wheelchair whose card board sign says he is a veteran (he sometimes smokes grass and the cat beside his feet seems almost unconscious in its sleep).

But this character is new. He sits beside the plastic cube of the escalator entrance in slippers and brown checked shorts. He voices despair: “Please, could you give me some money for food? I have no food, and I am really hungry”

After a considerable amount of people have passed without taking notice, he articulates the question as a sigh right out in the air in front of him:

“Am I invisible?”

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Sekalaista

Ambivalence in lifestyle governance

What images do we have in our minds when we envision societal change? What kind of states do we fantasize about when we adjust routines in order to improve ourselves and advance our circumstances of life? Whatever the state of the arts envisioned, these images of future change are not irrelevant. They are important driving forces and motives for human existence — they are fuel for action and accomplishments by individuals and collectives.

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Sekalaista

Promoting Vices

The book “Promoting Vices: An introduction to research on the advertising of coercive products”, with examples from research on alcohol, tobacco, sugary foods, and gambling, can be downloaded here: Promoting Vices (Hellman 2017)

The book provides an introduction to the study of advertising products that jurisdictions typically regulate due to their potential harmfulness to health and well-being. Examples come from studies on the advertising of alcohol, tobacco, sugary foods, and gambling.

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Sekalaista

För hundra år sedan: Alice Rosenblad

Som ung studerande vistades jag i början av 1990-talet en sommar hos mina morföräldrar i Saltvik på Åland. En dag då vi druckit eftermiddagskaffe i bersån satt jag med min morfar Paul i trädgårdsgungan. Där sjöng han en sång för mig som han hade lärt sig av sin folkskolelärare, Alice Rosenblad.
– Det var en märklig historia, sade han där vi satt i gungan. Hon tvingades avgå från sin tjänst på grund av sina vänstersympatier.
Det var år 1918 som Alice tvingades avgå och min morfar var då femton år gammal.

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Sekalaista

When I was lost for words..yes, it can happen!

The seven months from June 2016 to December 2016 will go to history as the most stressful period in our nuclear family history. This may sound like quite an outrageous claim in view of previous generations’ struggles – such as my grandmother queuing for five hours to get half a liter of milk for her brother who suffered from tuberculosis. Or the delivery of my father in Ekenäs due to the bombing of Helsinki in February 1944.

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Sekalaista

A new-old journal

The complete archive of Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (NAD) 1984-2017 is now available at the journal’s web page. The first issue of the scientific journal Alkoholpolitik – Tidskrift för nordisk alkoholforskning (Alcohol Policy – Journal for Nordic Alcohol Research) appeared in 1984. It was a rather bold initiative by the Finnish alcohol monopoly ALKO to cooperate with the Nordic Council for Alcohol and Drug Research on a journal with an explicitly Nordic agenda. However, ALKO had already an established orientation towards Nordic cooperation, and the new journal could be seen as a natural continuation of the Swedish-language version of ALKO’s Finnish journal Alkoholipolitiikka(Alcohol Policy). Consequently, editor-in-chief Kerstin Stenius chose to caption her first editorial “A new-old journal” (“En nygammal tidskrift”) (Stenius, 1984).

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Sekalaista

Destiny and odds in life: the illusion of control

In a recent chronicle (HS 1.11.2016) professor of communication Anu Kantola refers to the ”deep life narratives” of some Trump-supporters who feel that society has let them down. Many feel that they have kept their share of the societal contract their whole life; they have been good patriots, served their country, paid their taxes, obeyed the law; they have worked hard and been good neighbours. According to their own calculations, a fulfillment of the American dream should be a plausible road ahead. Still, people who neither act nor look like them — migrants, slick youngsters, persons of color — are now passing them on the avenue to the main gains of a good life. These ‘new’ people were not part of the scenery within which the white middle classs had originally envisioned their own life path.