Conflicting discourses — Social constructions of corruption in Finland

The Nordic countries are generally regarded as beacons of anti-corruption. This perception also applies to Finland, where corruption is said to be conspicuous by its absence. The article at hand, however, conveys a more nuanced picture of corruption in Finland. It delves into opinions submitted during the formulation of the Finnish anti-corruption strategy, identifying two conflicting corruption-related discourses. The analysis shows that corruption is a contested concept and that views on corruption prevalence and the need for anti-corruption measures vary greatly within the national context. The article illustrates the struggle between national corruption discourses, arguing that such discourses and their overall context should be analysed thoroughly if corruption efforts are to be grounded in their setting and successful. This is the case regardless of context and thus applicable also to countries perceived as “clean and honest”.

Adopting Diffractive Reading to Advance HCI Research: A Case Study on Technology for Aging

Researchers in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) have long developed technologies for older adults. Recently, researchers are engaging in critical reflections of these approaches. IoT for aging in place is one area around which these conflicting discourses have converged, likely in part driven by government and industry interest. This article introduces diffractive analysis as an approach that examines difference to yield new empirical understandings about our methods and the topics we study. We constructed three analyses of a dataset collected at an IoT design workshop and then conducted a diffractive analysis. We present themes from this analysis regarding the ways that participants are inscribed in our research, considerations related to transferability and novelty between work centered on older adults and other work, and insights about methodologies. Our discussion contributes implications for researchers to form teams and account for their roles in research, as well as recommendations how diffractive analysis can support other research agendas.

Within and Against Racial Segregation

The pandemic brought migrant farm workers into the limelight once again, as has happened repeatedly in the last three decades, in Italy as in many other parts of the world. Here I examine how intersecting and sometimes conflicting discourses and interventions, that have this biopolitically conceived population as their object, decide upon these subjects’ worthiness of attention, care, and sympathy through criminalizing, victimizing, and humanitarian registers. I reflect on some of the affective dynamics that sustain both the governmental operations through which these populations were (sought to be) managed and reactions against them from a situated perspective, as an accomplice to many of the forms of struggle in which migrant farm workers have engaged in the last decade in Italy. The stage for many such occurrences is what I have elsewhere defined as the “encampment archipelago” that many such workers, and particularly those who migrate from across West Africa, inhabit—labor or asylum-seeker camps, but also slums or isolated, derelict buildings, and various hybrid, in-between spaces among which people circulate.

‘To the benefit of Africa, the world, and ourselves’: The American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA) Mission to Nigeria, 1966–1968

Far from having only marginal significance and generating a ‘subdued’ response among African Americans, as some historians have argued, the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) collided at full velocity with the conflicting discourses and ideas by which Black Americans sought to understand their place in the United States and the world in the late 1960s. One of the most significant aspects of African American engagement with the civil war was the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa peace mission that sought to bring the Federal Military Government of Nigeria and the secessionist leadership of the Republic of Biafra together through the mediation of some of the leading Black civil rights leaders in the United States. Through the use of untapped primary sources, this article will reveal that while the mission was primarily focused on finding a just solution to the internecine struggle, it also intersected with broader domestic and international crosscurrents.

Teacher professionality at a time of mobility:

This study aims to investigate how the educational and linguistic backgrounds of teachers affect how they are positioned and how they position themselves in relation to their profession in a language introduction programme at upper secondary school in Sweden. Material from two years of study at one school was used to conduct a nexus analysis. The material comprised policy documents at the national and local levels; interviews with principals and teachers; and classroom and school environment observations. Conflicting discourses appear in the analysis in terms of teacher competence and teacher roles. Those teachers who had the relevant professional competence, as according to national documents, felt that their knowledge was not acknowledged and that they were not listened to. Official documents state that principals are responsible for fulfilling stipulated demands; however, they do not always have the necessary knowledge as this is not a requirement for their position. Thus, an ambiguous picture appears where teachers who are positioned as competent at the national level are positioned only to teach their own subject and are not given voice on issues relating to general teacher competence and organisation of education at the local level. This article highlights the importance of knowledge and understanding relating to L2 student learning at the management level.

Exploring the gendered dimensions of meaningful non-profit work under marketised conditions

Neoliberal marketisation is altering the nature of non-profit work, leaving workers to navigate a ‘double bind’ of mission- and market-based values. Some feminist scholars suggest these dynamics are particularly challenging for female workers. Drawing on a larger study of meaningful non-profit work and neoliberal marketisation as well as on contemporary critical and feminist scholarship, this exploratory study examines how neoliberalism’s entrepreneurial subject manifests along gender lines among non-profit managers. Data from interviews with 28 non-profit managers demonstrate that while both men and women evoke elements of neoliberalism’s entrepreneurial subject, female managers wrestle more with conflicting discourses of market and mission values and rhetoric as well as sociocultural expectations around gender, resulting in a ‘triple bind’. This article suggests that neoliberal market discourses are impactful in the manner suggested by feminist scholarship but not necessarily totalising nor deterministic.