Restructuring of Finnish Trade Unions – the Growing Importance of Women

The membership profile of Finnish trade unions has changed from male-dominated industrial workers to female-dominated service and public sector workers who are more highly educated. The Finnish labour market is strongly divided into female and male occupations and sectors, and these intersectional differences play an important part in the differentiation of developmental paths. The erosion of membership is mainly due to the rapid growth of the independent unemployment fund (YTK) competing with unemployment funds associated with trade unions. YTK has been much more successful in recruiting private sector male workers than women. Men’s decisions not to join the union are related to the shift in the motivation to unionise from social custom to instrumental reasons. Along with the gender majority shift, union identification has changed, and unions need to carry out ‘identity work’ to attain members. The shift in gender proportions has also had consequences for the collective bargaining system.

The Problem of Aristippus at Cicero, De officiis 1.148

The manuscripts of De officiis all record something strange at 1.148: Cicero says that the philosophers Socrates and Aristippus had exceptional licence to flout social custom and convention owing to their ‘great and divine good qualities’ (magna et divina bona). There are no worries about Socrates, but the example of Aristippus seems preposterous. This paper makes the following argument: (1) elsewhere Cicero defines divina bona in such a way to exclude hedonists; this should rule out crediting Aristippus with magna et divina bona alongside Socrates; (2) all scholarly efforts to account for the presence of Aristippus at 1.148 fail to convince; (3) the name Aristippus at 1.148 should, therefore, be remedied; (4) there are excellent philosophical reasons to think that Antisthenes, a follower of Socrates who is credited with setting in motion the Cynic philosophical tradition, is the name that Cicero wrote or should have written in the original.

From symposion to goṣṭhī: The Adaptation of a Greek Social Custom in Ancient India

The symposion, a male social gathering that began in ancient Greece, was a social institution by and for men, hence a type of men’s society as we might understand it in modern parlance. Its manifestation on the Indian subcontinent has to date not been fully explored. In its original form, the symposion consisted of three main elements: alcohol, sex, and intellectual pursuits in the form of literature and philosophy, commonly understood by the popular phrase “wine, women, and song”. These sympotic elements find their equivalents in a wide range of Sanskrit litera­ture, which include medicine (Āyurveda), eroticism (Kāmaśāstra), polity (Arthaśāstra), epics, and rhetoric (Alaṃkāraśāstra), as expressed in the Carakasaṃhitā, the Kāmasūtra, the Arthaśāstra, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, and the Kāvyamīmāṃsā. The literary evidence indicates that the three sympotic elements came to full blossom in urban Indian men’s social gatherings or goṣṭhīs dating to a few centuries before the Common Era. The paper combines this literary evidence with archaeological sources to show how a foreign social custom contributed to an indigenous institution of men’s society in ancient India by a process of adaptation. It would appear that as the institution moved into different parts of the Indian subcontinent, it increasingly came under Brahmanic influence, which led to an important ideological change that stressed literary and intel­lectual pursuits over alcohol and sex. Under royal patronage, the goṣṭhī finally became a means for the development of Sanskrit and Indian literature and drama.

Norma językowa jako fakt społeczny fundowany na uzusie. Uwagi w kontekście Słownika właściwych użyć języka

The prescriptive approach has been prevalent in discussions about the linguistic norm for many decades. Many linguists question the primacy of social custom and make many arbitrary changes to establish the subjective form of the norm. In connection with the planned The Dictionary of Proper Uses of Languagethe author of the article presents the best structuralist traditions and calls for research on the linguistic norm which is based on descriptive methods. It is necessary to completely break away from all manifestations of arbitrariness and subjectivity in contemporary prescriptive linguistics. The fundamental premise that the linguistic norm is a fact based on usus must be reflected in relevant procedures aimed at analyzing corpora consisting of millions of words. Such an approach will make it possible to establish a model that comprises more than just individual language uses. As far as dictionary definitions are concerned, the most frequent, widespread and thus typical linguistic units should be primarily considered to be normative. Typicality, determined by frequency, as well as textual, social and territorial conditions, is the most important category.

The Nature of Interpretation in Architectural criticism

The expressive systems in architecture consists of two components: the system of forms and the system of meanings, these systems are linked together by unwritten rules, which are a matrix of correlations / implications that determine any meanings associated with any forms. The designer remains unsure of the possible interpretations of his design, because of the variation in the nature of meaning, discovered by the recipient, and this stems from the variation of reliance on the theory of interpretation in this regard. Many studies of architectural semiology indicate some of these theories; Classical theory believes in the natural meaning, which influenced by form's geometry, Pragmatic theory believes in the common meaning, which stems from the use of form within different contexts and according to social custom. The research attempts to explore the aspects of interpretation adopted by two critics, in order to determine the theory adopted by them, so the designer will be aware to the nature and type of meaning comprehended by viewers. The results showed the adoption of common and inclusive meanings, also showed the variation in the role of architectural Expressions in confirming or multiplying the meaning, influenced by contexts and signal types. The conclusion emphasized the importance of historical references, stylistic trend, and spatial contexts in form interpretation.

Beyond the Tipping Point: The Role of Status in Organizations’ Public Narratives to Mobilize Support for Change

What status mechanisms underlie actors’ public narratives to mobilize change? This study examines the public narratives of a set of United States restaurant actors (2005–2016) that tried to eliminate tipping, a change which challenged a deeply ingrained social custom, took some power away from customers, and could potentially reduce servers’ income. Through a qualitative analysis of the narratives using a status lens, I reveal actors’ complex discursive status work to frame the elimination of tipping as a change that promotes compensation fairness, the professionalization of service work, cultural authenticity, and equality. This study delineates the recursive relationship between narrative and status: actors’ narratives are enabled by a rich repertoire of status hierarchies; narratives may also drive status in the sense that by organizing loose elements into coherent stories about status distinction or status problematization, narratives provide motivations for a change that may reinforce or challenge existing status hierarchies. I conclude by discussing this study’s implications for the literature on status, narrative, change, and legitimation.

A Socio-cosmological Approach to Anti-Christian Violence

This chapter describes the distinctive nature of the constructivist approach to the analysis of Hindu–Christian conflict that is relative to the well-developed literature on ethnic and religious conflict. It explains how the constructivist approach differs from both the instrumentalist and essentialist approach to interreligious conflict. It also elaborates the conflict between Christian and Hindu groups in the instrumentalist view that occurs as a result of competition over material resources and political power. The chapter describes the conflict between groups in the essentialist view that occurs because of long-standing differences between Christians and Hindus in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, social custom, culture, and political governance. It explores the constructivist position that accepts the insight that human behavior is primarily driven by material and political interest.

Causes and Effects of Child Marriage in Bangladesh: A Case Study at Halishahar, Chattogram, Bangladesh

Child marriage is one of the social diseases in Bangladesh which is an obstacle to overall progress of the country. It is still remaining a strong social custom in Bangladesh which causes high population growth rate of the country. It is a social phenomenon in Bangladesh that might be defined in many ways such as a legal problem, social problem, health problem, population problem and gender discrimination problem. Child marriage is the violation of child rights and an apparatus of discrimination against women. A considerable portion of the population of the country is children and in order to convert them into productive human resources of the country the problem of child marriage has to be addressed properly and steps should be taken immediately. This paper attempts to highlight the socio-economic causes and consequences of child marriage in Bangladesh. This paper also suggests some procedure to eliminate child marriage in Bangladesh. This research is conducted on the basis of primary and secondary data. For primary data a survey is conducted from September, 2018 to December, 2018 among 150 women aged 25 to 45 who got married before 18 years and live in slum at Santibag Area, Halishahar, Chattogram, Bangladesh. Secondary data are collected from various journals, books, reports and news paper writings.