FINNISH AMERICAN IDENTITY AND STRATEGIES FOR ITS DETERMINATION IN FINNISH AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

The article focuses on one of the pressing problems of modern humanitarian knowledge - the problem of self-identification of hybrid cultures, in particular, the culture of the Finnish Americans. The ethnic diversity of the United States leads to a constant intersection of various cultures, giving rise to the uniqueness of contemporary American literary life. National, cultural, personal identity associated with the revision of the traditions that were assimilated in their diaspora acts as the main problem of multiculturalism - the ideology of plurality and diversity. Self-identification strategies may include the definition of one's religious, ethnic, gender determination. Very often, the community's collective trauma and collective memory of the historical past can act as a strategy. The main strategies of ethnic and cultural self-identification of Finnish American literature are represented by the collective memory, collective trauma, “Finnishness”, and the national Finnish epic “Kalevala”, which is used as a source of archetypal images and poetic imagination. Basing on a number of works by Finnish American writers of the second half of the 20 and 21 centuries in different genres (science fiction, historical novel, short stories), the article examines the creative application of the Finnish epic “Kalevala”, integrated into the experience of American existence as one of the main strategies for self-identification of its own culture, which is built on the dialogical interaction of the Anglo-Saxon and Finnish cultures. The article actualizes the problems of the interrelations of the two cultures, the transformation of archetypal images, the reflection of collective memory in the works of contemporary Finnish American writers.

Anthropology of the Working-class: Documentary Literature of 1930s Britain

<p>Bookmarked neatly by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the 1930s are often characterised as the decade in which writers felt compelled to engage in politics. According to one predominant critical narrative, modernist subjectivity and notions of aesthetic autonomy were eschewed in favour of a more direct involvement with the social and political realities of the time. This thesis explores, and follows in part, this interpretation of the decade’s literary direction by examining British documentary literature and its engagement with the social distress of the Depression. Driven by an intense fascination with the domestic working-classes (from which each of my professional “authors” remained outsiders), documentary writers journeyed to Britain’s industrial centres to experience working conditions directly. Writers of documentary literature took 1930s realist preoccupations to their most extreme by assuming the role, intentionally or not, of the anthropologist. Paradoxically, this move towards the empirical functioned as a means of crossing what C. P. Snow would later describe as the divide between the “two cultures” of science and arts. I apply Snow’s notion analogously, with documentary literature representing a bridging (depending on each text) of the divides between social science and literature, realism and modernism, political commitment and aesthetic autonomy, North and South, and between the working and middle-classes. My first chapter discusses Priestley’s English Journey (1934), which while crossing class and geographical divisions, stylistically remains the most conservative of my chosen texts and offers the most moderate example of a generic cultural crossing. The second chapter explores Grey Children (1937) by James Hanley, whose journalistic arrangement of verbatim working-class voices develops a modernist aesthetic. I then move to Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which unusually for a text by a “literary” author includes extensive figures and statistics, but is more successful in documenting the gritty realities of working life through literary means. The final chapter centres on Mass-Observation’s The Pub and the People (1943) whose obsessive recording of even the most minute details of pub life develops into a bizarre, almost surrealist work of literature. The order of my four chosen texts does not imply a sense of literary value but rather traces a trajectory from the least to the most radical experiments in documentary literature.</p>

Anthropology of the Working-class: Documentary Literature of 1930s Britain

<p>Bookmarked neatly by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the 1930s are often characterised as the decade in which writers felt compelled to engage in politics. According to one predominant critical narrative, modernist subjectivity and notions of aesthetic autonomy were eschewed in favour of a more direct involvement with the social and political realities of the time. This thesis explores, and follows in part, this interpretation of the decade’s literary direction by examining British documentary literature and its engagement with the social distress of the Depression. Driven by an intense fascination with the domestic working-classes (from which each of my professional “authors” remained outsiders), documentary writers journeyed to Britain’s industrial centres to experience working conditions directly. Writers of documentary literature took 1930s realist preoccupations to their most extreme by assuming the role, intentionally or not, of the anthropologist. Paradoxically, this move towards the empirical functioned as a means of crossing what C. P. Snow would later describe as the divide between the “two cultures” of science and arts. I apply Snow’s notion analogously, with documentary literature representing a bridging (depending on each text) of the divides between social science and literature, realism and modernism, political commitment and aesthetic autonomy, North and South, and between the working and middle-classes. My first chapter discusses Priestley’s English Journey (1934), which while crossing class and geographical divisions, stylistically remains the most conservative of my chosen texts and offers the most moderate example of a generic cultural crossing. The second chapter explores Grey Children (1937) by James Hanley, whose journalistic arrangement of verbatim working-class voices develops a modernist aesthetic. I then move to Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which unusually for a text by a “literary” author includes extensive figures and statistics, but is more successful in documenting the gritty realities of working life through literary means. The final chapter centres on Mass-Observation’s The Pub and the People (1943) whose obsessive recording of even the most minute details of pub life develops into a bizarre, almost surrealist work of literature. The order of my four chosen texts does not imply a sense of literary value but rather traces a trajectory from the least to the most radical experiments in documentary literature.</p>

Analysis of the Characters in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf is a masterpiece of Russian postmodernism literature, which is filled with magic features, oriental and occidental religions, as well as cultural symbols. The author depicts a series of expressive characters in almost acerbic descriptions. Especially when the oriental elements in foxes from China encounter the occidental elements in wolves from the West; the collision of the two cultures is obvious, which portrays all living creatures during the end of the Soviet Union and Contemporary Russia.

Challenges for Science

The book ends by calling for a new kind of science of the social, one that recognizes the immense challenges posed by the sheer complexity of sociocultural phenomena and the fact that our evolved psychology is not well designed to grasp, let alone address, those challenges. Nevetheless, we live in a time when the potential rewards of transdisciplinary collaboration are richer than they have ever been before. This chapter describes some of the main hurdles to achieving that potential and discusses how these might be overcome. The very enterprise of social science is inherently unnatural, given our uniquely human evolved psychology, and this may explain why the study of the social has proven harder to get off the ground, in comparison with many other life sciences. The resulting lack of consensus on basic matters of epistemology and method has contributed to the creation of theoretical and methodological divisions in the social sciences in the alternate guises of the ‘two cultures problem’ and the ‘silo effect’. The solutions proposed here advocate new forms of problem-centred transdisciplinary research based on the kinds of cross-cultural collaborative programmes described in detail throughout the book.

Clinical Characteristics of Bacterial Spectrum and Antimicrobial Resistance in Urine and Stone Cultures From Patients With Kidney Stone Disease

Background It is important to understand the clinical characteristics of bacterial spectrum and antibiotic resistance of urine and stone pathogens for the prevention and treatment of urolithiasis and perioperative infection. Methods Consecutive patients with kidney stones treated by percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) from September 2016 to September 2018 were included. The bacterial species and antibiotic sensitivity test of the germs cultured from clean middle-stream urine and from stones intraoperatively were evaluated. Results In 1055 patients, the rate of positive bacterial test was higher in stones than in urine (337, 31.0% vs. 221, 20.9%, p=0.016). 167(15.8%) patients had both positive urine culture (UC) and stone culture (SC), of which 137 (82.0%) had identical bacteria in both cultures. In infection stone patients, the positive rate of bacteria was 34.7% (91/262) in urine and 52.3% (137/262) in stone, and in non-infection stone patients, was 16.4% (130/793) and 25.2% (200/793). The positive rate of SC in patients with different types of stones were higher than that of UC. E. coli was the most common organism not only in both UC (54.3% ,120/221) and SC (43.9%,148/337) but also in urine and stones from patients with infection stones (44.0%,32.8%) or non-infection stones (61.5%,51.8%). Furthermore, the pathogens isolated from urine and stones showed high resistance to fluoroquinolones, ceftriaxone, cefazolin, cefuroxime, β-lactamases and sulfonamides (all resistance>20%). Conclusions The bacterial spectra demonstrated in stones and urine samples were significantly different. Positive SC was more commonly encountered than positive UC. Compared with non-infection stones, infection stones were accompanied by higher rates of positive tests in both cultures. The antibiotic resistance was comparable between bacteria in the two cultures. A combination of antibiotic sensitivity results in urine and stones might be a useful guide for selection of effective and appropriate treatment aiming at reduced problems with bacterial antibiotic resistance.

Perception of group membership from spontaneous and volitional laughter

Laughter is a ubiquitous social signal. Recent work has highlighted distinctions between spontaneous and volitional laughter, which differ in terms of both production mechanisms and perceptual features. Here, we test listeners' ability to infer group identity from volitional and spontaneous laughter, as well as the perceived positivity of these laughs across cultures. Dutch ( n = 273) and Japanese ( n = 131) participants listened to decontextualized laughter clips and judged (i) whether the laughing person was from their cultural in-group or an out-group; and (ii) whether they thought the laughter was produced spontaneously or volitionally. They also rated the positivity of each laughter clip. Using frequentist and Bayesian analyses, we show that listeners were able to infer group membership from both spontaneous and volitional laughter, and that performance was equivalent for both types of laughter. Spontaneous laughter was rated as more positive than volitional laughter across the two cultures, and in-group laughs were perceived as more positive than out-group laughs by Dutch but not Japanese listeners. Our results demonstrate that both spontaneous and volitional laughter can be used by listeners to infer laughers’ cultural group identity. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)’.

Whakaohonga nā Kahungatanga: Awakening from Addiction

<p>Alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, abuse and addiction are destructive to Māori and are an urgent problem; wairuatanga, cultural identity and tino rangatiratanga (self determination) are key to successful recovery ffom AODs for Maori. Kaupapa Māori AOD services have better success rates because they provide what is essential for Māori such as tikanga, core beliefs, values and practices of Maori re health, illness, wairua, tapu, noa and life. There are strategies for addressing the problem of AOD addiction for Māori such as positive stories of recovery. This thesis explores the shared experiential journeys of four Pūkōrero (participants) who successfully completed detoxification and recovery programmes from AOD addiction. Three questions were used to guide the research process to enable the Pūkōrero to identify positive aspects of their individual detoxification and recovery programmes, surface any barriers and issues they experienced, and clarify the support they received throughout the process. Kaupapa Maori and Narrative Inquiry was adapted to undertake this study to capture the essence of Maori thinking and reality regarding AOD. Through the use of thematic analysis the data findings of the study reflect the views from each Pūkōrero of Wairua, Whakapapa and Whānau as key to their successful recovery. This supports the notion that a pathway of detoxification, recovery and hope exists to enable Maori and others to take the journey to reclaim their own health and well-being, and the health and well-being of Whānau, Hapū, Iwi, and Māori community. In honour of these Pūkōrero, Kāumatua, Tipuna, Whānau, Hapū, Iwi, Māori katoa, and to celebrate Kaupapa Maori and Narrative Inquiry [as the preferred methodological approach], the use of our tino ataahua reo integrated with English throughout the thesis demonstrates the interwoven connections between the two cultures enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi that comprise the nation of Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu of New Zealand.</p>

Whakaohonga nā Kahungatanga: Awakening from Addiction

<p>Alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, abuse and addiction are destructive to Māori and are an urgent problem; wairuatanga, cultural identity and tino rangatiratanga (self determination) are key to successful recovery ffom AODs for Maori. Kaupapa Māori AOD services have better success rates because they provide what is essential for Māori such as tikanga, core beliefs, values and practices of Maori re health, illness, wairua, tapu, noa and life. There are strategies for addressing the problem of AOD addiction for Māori such as positive stories of recovery. This thesis explores the shared experiential journeys of four Pūkōrero (participants) who successfully completed detoxification and recovery programmes from AOD addiction. Three questions were used to guide the research process to enable the Pūkōrero to identify positive aspects of their individual detoxification and recovery programmes, surface any barriers and issues they experienced, and clarify the support they received throughout the process. Kaupapa Maori and Narrative Inquiry was adapted to undertake this study to capture the essence of Maori thinking and reality regarding AOD. Through the use of thematic analysis the data findings of the study reflect the views from each Pūkōrero of Wairua, Whakapapa and Whānau as key to their successful recovery. This supports the notion that a pathway of detoxification, recovery and hope exists to enable Maori and others to take the journey to reclaim their own health and well-being, and the health and well-being of Whānau, Hapū, Iwi, and Māori community. In honour of these Pūkōrero, Kāumatua, Tipuna, Whānau, Hapū, Iwi, Māori katoa, and to celebrate Kaupapa Maori and Narrative Inquiry [as the preferred methodological approach], the use of our tino ataahua reo integrated with English throughout the thesis demonstrates the interwoven connections between the two cultures enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi that comprise the nation of Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu of New Zealand.</p>

Measures against prejudice at the Hungarian Police – theoretical research on police culture and cop culture

The author would like to present the measures taken by the Hungarian Police against prejudice in the context of this article. For the analysis, she has chosen the police and cop culture approach. Her aim is to present the organisational framework and the human being itself separately. In the author’s opinion, training and education fall between the two cultures. The author proposes further research and education on cop culture, and suggests the introduction of intercultural education to prevent prejudicial behaviour and improve cooperation. The author considers that, by teaching both subjects, police officers will have a better understanding of both prejudices and the dangers of the police profession.