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In this article I explore the use of the term vulnerability in the work of two leading feminist theorists, Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler. Approaching their work with the 'politics of philosophy' method I show how Cavarero's and Butler's usage of the term vulnerability in relation to other terms in their texts testifies for differences in their relation to the academic tradition of philosophy. I argue that Cavarero's usage of the term shows that she engages with the basic questions of the phenomenological-existential tradition of Husserl and Heidegger through the notion of the human, while arguing for the view of singular human existent as vulnerable and relational. In contrast, Butler's usage of the term vulnerability expresses distancing from the basic questions of the same tradition of the abstracted and transcendentalized human. Instead, Butler's systematic connecting of vulnerability to social norms and infrastructures which are contingent and historically changing points towards the antifoundational challenge that she presents in relation to this particular tradition of philosophy.

In this article, I shall examine the European part of the Russian Empire, Russian culture and Russians in eighteenth century handbooks of geography when "the Newtonian turn" took place in that discipline. Thanks to travel literature and history writing, we are used to thinking of the Russians as representing "otherness" in Europe. Still, in handbooks of geography, Russia was the gate between Asia and Europe. This article will explicate the stereotype(s) of the British characterisations of the Russian national character and the European part of the Russian Empire (excluding ethnic minorities in Russia), in order to reconstruct the idea of Russia in the British (and Irish) geography books.

The article analyses Judith Butler's Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), arguing that the volume can be read as presenting Butler's politics of philosophy with respect to Hannah Arendt and Adriana Cavarero, and the existentialist philosophy of the human that they represent. The first part of the article introduces the approach of the "politics of philosophy," and the rest of the article scrutinizes Butler's use of two concepts, "appearing" and "plurality," in the book, presenting how they shift into different meanings in Butler's text in comparison to their charged philosophical meaning in Arendt and Cavarero. The article argues that Butler engages in "discharging" of these concepts of their existentialist philosophical charge, and that this gives evidence of her different philosophical choice. Instead of asking the existential philosophical question "what is a human being" in the omnitemporal philosophical tradition, Butler's different philosophical starting point is in changing sociality, and she engages the tradition of philosophy in interventions in the here and now, asking "who counts as the human".

Tämä gradu tutkii miten 2014 Ebola epidemiaa Länsi-Afrikassa kuvailtiin länsimaisessa mediassa, sekä sitä miten nämä kuvaukset liittyvät vallitsevaan pelon kulttuuriin. Pelon kulttuuri viittaa viime vuosikymmeninä länsimaissa kasvaneeseen ilmiöön, jossa pelosta on tullut vallitseva osa jokapäiväistä elämää jonka kautta maailmaa ymmärretään. Sosiologien Frank Furedi (2002), Barry Glassner (1999) and David Altheide (2006) tutkimukset pelon kulttuurista muodostavat teoreettisen viitekehyksen tälle tutkimukselle. Aineistoni koostuu englantilaisten The Guardian and Daily Mail lehtien Ebolaa käsittelevistä artikkeleista. Tutkimusmetodina on käytetty kvalitatiivista sisällönanalyysiä, sekä joitain aspekteja narratiivisista ja kvantitatiivisista tutkimusmetodeista. Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset ja sisällönanalyysi viittaa siihen, että Ebolaa käsiteltiin laajalti länsimaisen pelon näkökulmasta. Iso osa artikkeleista spekuloi Ebolan leviämisen mahdollisuutta Euroopassa, siitä huolimatta että epidemian todellinen uhka oli hyvin pieni. Lehtien välillä on tosin suuria eroja: Daily Mailin artikkelit usein lietsoivat pelkoa, mutta The Guardianin artikkelit painottivat että uhka Euroopassa on hyvin pieni. Artikkelien sisältö viittaa siihen, että Ebolan pelko liittyy laajempiin länsimaissa koettuihin pelkoihin, kuten sairauksien ja 'muukalaisten' pelkoon, sekä yleiseen turvattomuuden tunteeseen. Tämä tutkimus tuo myös postkoloniaalin näkökulman mukaan sosiologiseen keskusteluun pelon kulttuurista. Artikkelien toiseksi yleisin aihe oli terveydenhuollon ammattilaisten kokemukset ja tarinat Länsi-Afrikan Ebola alueella. Länsimaiset lääkärit ja hoitajat kuvattiin usein 'sankareina' jotka auttoivat 'uhreja', mikä heijastelee kolonialistisia epätasa-arvoisia suhteita. Kaiken kaikkiaan tämä tutkimus osoittaa, että pelolla oli vaikutusta siihen miten Ebola epidemiaan reagoitiin kansainvälisesti. Tämä viittaa siihen, että pelko ei ainoastaan vaikuta jokapäiväiseen elämään, mutta sillä saattaa olla myös kauaskantoisia vaikutuksia jopa kansainväliseen politiikkaan ja lakeihin. Avainsanat: Ebola, pelko, riski, Daily Mail, The Guardian ; The purpose of this study is to examine how 2014 Ebola outbreak was presented in Western media, and how it relates to the ways in which risks and dangers are constructed in Western societies. Sociological studies on culture of fear by Frank Furedi (2002), Barry Glassner (1999) and David Altheide (2006) provide a theoretical context for this thesis. Culture of fear refers to atmosphere of vulnerability in Western societies, which has increased over the past decades and fear has become an overarching perspective for viewing life. This study uses Ebola outbreak as a case study to analyse phenomenon of culture of fear. Empirical data consists of articles collected from two major British newspapers and their websites: The Guardian and Daily Mail. This thesis uses qualitative content analysis as a research method, accompanied with some aspects of both narrative and quantitative research. Data analysis reveals that the most prevalent themes in the newspapers were the possibility of the Ebola spreading to Europe and healthcare professionals' stories from the field. Results indicate that the Ebola outbreak was largely framed in terms of Western fear, although the two newspapers have significant differences between them. This thesis also brings postcolonial aspect into sociological discussion on culture of fear by analysing the ways in which media's representations of Ebola's 'victims' and 'heroes' reflect colonial relationships. The fear of Ebola is connected to broader cultural anxieties in the West, such as fear of other and fear of illness and to general sense of unsafety. From the results can be concluded that fear shaped the international response to the outbreak, which indicates that fear in general may not only impact people's everyday life but also influence international politics and law. Key words: Ebola, fear, risk, Daily Mail, The Guardian

In this article on Elizabeth Grosz's philosophy and its implications for discussions about feminist theory, I first suggest that Charles Darwin plays a particular role in Grosz's recent ontological thought. This role is to provide help in joining together two incompatible sources in her work: Gilles Deleuze's monistic ontology of a constant flow of new differentiations, on the one hand, and Luce Irigaray's thought of sexual difference as the primary ontological difference, on the other. I argue that Grosz's intellectual project has developed into a grand general theory of change in which both Darwin and Irigaray are turned into ontologists in a Deleuzian vein. I then point out that Grosz's ontology also includes a political aspect, which manifests in the fact that Grosz redescribes Darwin through interpreting him primarily as a theorist of "event" and the unexpected. However, through an analysis of the discussion on Grosz between Luciana Parisi and Jami Weinstein, I speculate whether Grosz's ambition to provide a total and complete explanation of change encourages the tone of feminist discussion toward one of explanation rather than intervention.

This essay concerns the contingent and pluralized history of feminist institutions in academia, arguing against two commonly misconstrued oppositions: first, that between the feminist movement and feminist academic institutions; and second, that between the feminist focus on gender (and women) and on sexuality (and minorities). Feminist institutions, the essay contends, are inseparably both academic and activist. Referring to Jean-François Lyotard's notion of the différend, the essay posits that these institutions primarily intervene by finding expressions for wrongs that are hard to express in dominant language. Gender equality and sexuality/gender minority issues belong together institutionally because they are strongly implicated in one another: gender hierarchies are ultimately achieved by asserting and enforcing the necessity of gender and through what is here called "the terror of gendering": when the threat to life replaces the plurality of compulsions of various gendered norms.

This paper is a description of a report that the author prepared in the winter of 2015 at the request of the Minister of Education in the previous government of Finland. The purpose of the report was to collect information based on research and effective practices on the impacts on student well-being of a flexible school day and to make development proposals concerning an appropriate structure for a school day that would encompass lessons, club activities, and morning and afternoon activities. The report found indications of strong pressures to modify the school day. Research results concerning the significance to student well-being of activities organized at school outside the actual lessons were unreservedly positive from the perspective of academic success, the students' personal development and the community. The report was completed before the election of the present Parliament in the spring of 2015; it proposed an action plan for the new government. The key proposal was that one hour of freely selected and voluntary club activities should be included in the school day of each student. The present Minister of Education is aiming to include more cultural activities and physical exercise into the school day. ; peerReviewed

The term Integrated School Day (ISD) refers to a school day in which extracurricular activities and children's care are organized at the school before and after lessons, and sometimes between lessons. In a three year project, the extracurricular activities consisted of two types of activities for each child as selected by the parents and child: 1) adult-supervised, mostly self-organized recreation and indoor and outdoor activities in the morning before school hours and/or in the afternoon after school hours, and 2) hobby clubs available for children to attend a few times per week to enrich the activities offered in the morning and afternoon. Seven schools with students in grades 1 - 9 (from age 7 to 15) participated in the 3 year ISD project. Activities organized at school significantly reduced the amount of unsupervised time spent by children. They also increased students' satisfaction with school as estimated by 89% of teachers. In lower grades (from 1 to 4, ages 7 to 10), children who participated in the ISD programme for three years showed lower incidence of internalizing problem behaviours such as anxiety than children in schools where this programme was not available. In middle grades (from 4 to 6, ages 10 to 12), participation in arts and crafts and music was related to children's higher prosocial behaviour, academic achievement, and working skills such as concentration and persistence. The chapter also describes the process which resulted in the school research project, and a collaboration of a researcher with politicians. The process affected Finnish school legislation. From the autumn of 2004, the law mandated that supervision of children's activities in the mornings and afternoons should be available for all first- and second-grade children and should be financially supported by the government. ; nonPeerReviewed