Suchergebnisse

Kirja-arvio: Dani Rodrik: Economics rules. Rights and wrongs of the dismal science. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 253 sivua. 2015.

This article presents a new way of understanding local land-use conflicts, also called NIMBY, developing from justification theory and literature from the sociology of engagements. The article builds on the multiple systems of valuation used by people to perceive local land-use cases as conflicts, following the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot. The conflicts are shown to be not only about conflicting interests of the residents, but also about broader conflicting systems of valuation. Empirically, land-use cases in Helsinki, Finland are analysed to show the variety of argumentation used by residents opposing land-use. Over 500 dispute letters are analysed, the vast majority of which base their argumentation on common good. About 40% also use argumentation based on individual interest. Argumentation based on close familiar affinities is rare but existing, which might be because of the type of data used in the article. The framework used allows for the non-moralizing use of the concept NIMBY when describing the conflicts.

AbstractIn this article we introduce a pragmatist interpretation of agonistic pluralism and develop this into an analytical framework that is applied to the analysis of urban conflicts. In the article, we take stock of contemporary critical and radical urban scholarship, our aim being twofold. First, we substantiate Chantal Mouffe's notion of agonistic pluralism with tools from French pragmatic sociology. We suggest that, in a democracy, plurality emerges both as a plurality of conflict manifested in the variety of possible ways to identify injustices, and formulate and justify claims in public struggles, and a plurality of commonality, manifested in different logics by which a 'we' can be formed and action coordinated so as to solve issues without resorting to physical violence. Secondly, by applying the developed conceptualization of plurality to an ongoing urban conflict concerning an airport, we showcase the value of the approach for identifying and analyzing different forms and phases of actually existing political conflicts, and for recognizing their meaning for democracy.

Participation in organizational democracy is viewed in widely different ways: both positively, as schools of democracy, and more negatively, as elite pools of democracy. However, most of the research on this topic has focused on participation in voluntary associations. This paper looks beyond the classic understanding of association democracy to explore the democratic governance in a church, a consumer cooperative, and in student organizations, and examines their links to Helsinki region city councils and parliamentary politics. Using public access data, we created a database of 4141 people to map how these democratic organizations connect with institutional democracy through a social network of democratically elected representatives. Drawing on social network analysis and the literature on voluntary associations, our study revealed a tightly interlocked interorganizational network and an interpersonal network of democratic elites in Finnish society.

We argue that 'topics' of topic models can be used as a useful proxy for frames if (1) frames are operationalized as connections between concepts; (2) theme-specific data are used; and (3) topics are validated in terms of frame analysis. Demonstrating this, we analyse 12 climate change frames used by NGOs, governments and experts in Indian and US media, gathered by topic modeling. We contribute methodologically to topic modeling in the social sciences and frame analysis of public debates, and empirically to research on climate change media debates. ; Peer reviewed