What my article attempts to articulate is the role of literature in constructing, ́inventinga national identities that are the base for the claims of a nationís existence. To achieve this, I first provide a short definition of the concepts of nation-building and na- tional identity. I argue that literature is an important tool in the process of building a nation and creating a national identity. I further focus on the writings of Chinua Achebe, a 20th Century Nigerian author, in an (...) attempt to exemplify the theory of literature as tool in nation building. I argue that, through the use of legends, mythic histories, and folklore, literature suc- ceeds in creating patterns of meaning and in contextualizing the issues of national identity. These patterns and contexts enable and undergird the cultural values that enable the reconstruction of national identity. Achebeís writings are part of a large sphere of practices meant to recover and reconstruct a Nigerian national identity and through this, build a nation. (shrink)

In secularized modern Western societies, moral opposition to the liberalization of abortion, gay adoption, euthanasia, and suicide often relies on justifications based on other-oriented motives. Moreover, some argue that the truly open-minded people may be those who, against the stream, oppose the established dominant liberal values in modern societies. We investigated whether moral and religious opposition to, vs. the acceptance of, the above four issues, as well as the endorsement of respective con vs. pro arguments reflect “compassionate openness”, “compassionate conservatism”, (...) or “self-centered moral rigorism”. The results, to some extent, confirmed the third pattern. Thus, compassionate openness does not seem to underline modern moral opposition, possibly in contrast to some rhetoric of the latter. (shrink)

During the criminal procedure, the process of verification includes the reconstruction of past events for the sake of establishing the statement of facts. When it comes to exploring the events in the past, great significance can be attributed to personal evidence. In order to prevent the influencing of the interrogated person, many provisions of guarantee had been established in the criminal procedure. In such an interrogatory situation, the most difficult practical problem is how to word the question so that the (...) interrogation would aim at the exploration of the mind of the witness or accused, and at the helping of the recalling of the memories. During the criminal procedure however, interrogation with the assistance of an interpreter could also result in the communication of the statements of the accused or the witness about their perceptions and original knowledge with modified contents. Another significant factor at interpreter-assisted interrogations is to avoid the will of either the interrogator or the interpreter being projected on the interrogated person, as that would threaten with the witness, the accused, or the interrogated person giving a confession that is different form their original content of consciousness. (shrink)

This article examines European memory and memory politics. Taking as my starting point the deepening divisions between the “old” and “new” members of the European Union since the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, I investigate whether differences in official memory concerning World War II on the one hand and communism on the other should be regarded as permanent. Using examples from the development of West-European postwar memory-regimes and comparing them to the current state in postcommunist Europe I suggest that with respect (...) to historical memory the two parts of Europe underwent similar developments, crises and debates, thus making eventual convergence and consensus possible. However, there are various factors that complicate progress in this area: postcommunist countries have to contend not only with their wartime history but also with the experience of communism, which latter colours the assessment of the former. (shrink)

Editorial for issue 30 of Nordisk judaistik – Scandinavian Jewish Studies, 'Boundaries of Jewish Identities in Contemporary Finland'.

The captivating painting of Helene Schjerfbeck, _Fête juive / Lehtimajanjuhla_ (1883), is considered to this day an exceptional piece of art with significant cultural value. It already carries great value, aside from its artistic quality and how it showcases the Jewish feast of Sukkot. What is not evident from simply looking at the artwork, however, is the intriguing background story to the fate of its models – more specifically, that of its female model, Chava Slavatitsky, and the ‘scandal’ connected with (...) her story. Her name became known all over Finland, as it gained significant attention from the local press, perhaps mainly as it occurred during the turbulent times of the late nineteenth century when the question of Jewish emancipation in Finland was frequently discussed in society. This article aims to briefly introduce the reader to Schjerfbeck’s motivation in creating the painting and to its representation of the Sukkot 140 years ago, as well as aiming to tell the extraordinary story of its relatively unknown young sitter, including her abduction and conversion to Christianity. Hence, this contribution aims to provide an addendum to the Jewish history of the country in the late 1800s and to briefly reflect on the nature of Jewish–Christian relations of the era. (shrink)

The article examines the Finnish branch of Chabad Lubavitch as a fundamentalist and charismatic movement that differs from other branches of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in its approaches to outreach to non-observant Jews. Whilst introducing the history of Chabad Lubavitch in Finland and drawing on historical and archival sources, the authors locate the movement in a contemporary context and draw on 101 semi-structured qualitative interviews of members of the Finnish Jewish communities, who either directly or indirectly have been in contact with representatives (...) of Chabad Finland. The material is examined through the theoretical concept of ‘vicarious religion’. As the results of the article show, whilst Chabad very much adheres to certain fundamentalist approaches in Jewish religious practice, in Finland they follow a somewhat different approach. They strongly rely on people’s sense of Jewish identification and Jewish identity. Individuals in the community ‘consume’ Chabad’s activities vicariously, ‘belong without believing’ or ‘believe in belonging’ but do not feel the need to apply stricter religious observance. Whilst many of them are critical of Chabad and their activities, they do acknowledge that Chabad fills the ‘gaps’ in and outside the Jewish Community of Helsinki, predominantly by creating new activities for some of its members. (shrink)

Shortly after the Civil Marriage Act took effect in 1917 and the constitutional right to freedom of religion was implemented by the Freedom of Religion Act in 1922, the number of intermarriages started to rise in the Finnish Jewish congregations, affecting both their customs, and the structure of their membership. Initially, intermarried members and their spouses faced rejection in their congregations; however, during the second half of the twenty-first century, the attitudes towards intermarriages and intermarried congregants have changed significantly. Today, (...) a high number of intermarriages is one of the key defining characteristics of Finnish Jewish communities. This article will concentrate on the vernacular practices of intermarried women in the Jewish Community of Helsinki and Turku. The core material of this article consists of semi-structured ethnographic interviews conducted in 2019 and 2020 with members of the two Finnish Jewish communities. The women presented in this study often combine models from different traditions. Instead of abandoning Judaism altogether, they ‘do Judaism in their own way’ by creating and -inventing traditions they find meaningful for themselves and for their families. (shrink)

The identities, customs and habits of religious congregations are tightly connected to the history of these congregations and to the specific religious tradition or denomination they consider themselves to be a part of. They are also shaped by the legislative and bureaucratic regulations and processes of the secular society that is surrounding them. The aim of this study is to further our knowledge of some of these aspects of Jewish life as they relate to the Jewish Community of Helsinki in (...) the period 1930–70 by showcasing two examples that emerged as a result of the rising number of intermarriages in the congregation. (shrink)

Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) as a sub-discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) emerged from the availability of social semiotic frameworks describing multimodal meaning making. However, weaknesses of these frameworks have raised concerns and prompted recent methodological reflections in MCDA. Inspired by these reflections, this paper critically assesses MCDA research on advertising persuasion and identifies a lack of attention in studies to account for the social and ideological impact of advertising. This shortcoming is argued to be attributable to the weak (...) empirical grounding of social semiotic frameworks which in turn is rooted in a ‘discursive gap’ (Bateman, Citation2019, p. 300) in multimodality as a discipline. The authors then propose methodological solutions involving eye tracking experiments and higher order data analytics which can strengthen the empirical basis of theoretical assumptions made in MCDA research on advertising. Drawing on methodological guidance for empirical multimodal research, the authors discuss specific issues in realizing this proposal, focusing on a strategy addressing operationalization challenges in experimental design and the affordance of a data cluster algorithm that calculates the common viewing path of a group of viewers. (shrink)

It is widely believed that inconsistency is one of the greatest sins a scholar can commit. This issue is especially relevant in linguistics due to the rich diversity of data types, exceptions to the rules, counterexamples to the hypotheses, and background assumptions which constantly come into conflict with methodological principles. Bringing together ideas from linguistics and philosophy of science, this groundbreaking book seeks to answer the following questions: which kinds of inconsistency arise in linguistic theorising? Under which conditions can inconsistencies (...) be tolerated? And how can inconsistencies be resolved? It is the first study to develop a novel metatheoretical framework that accounts for the emergence and the resolution of inconsistency in linguistic theorising, and to reveal the strategies of inconsistency resolution in theoretical linguistics. Supported by detailed case studies, the findings of this metatheoretical analysis can be applied to improve the effectiveness of the working linguist's problem-solving activity. (shrink)

The impact of incidental emotions on decision making is well established. Incidental emotions can be differentiated on several appraisal dimensions, including certainty-uncertainty. The present research investigates the effect of certainty-uncertainty of incidental emotions on hedonic forecasting. The results of four experimental studies indicate that uncertainty associated incidental emotions, such as fear and hope, compared with certainty emotions, such as anger and happiness, amplify predicted utility. This amplification effect is confirmed for opposite utility types; uncertainty associated emotions, when compared with their (...) certainty counterparts, lead to an overprediction of positive utilities and to an underprediction of negative utilities. In line with the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Lerner and Keltner, 2000; 2001), this effect is mediated by the prediction task uncertainty, providing evidence for a carryover process of the incidental emotion. The effect of task uncertainty on predicted utility is, in turn, partly mediated by attention to the task, suggesting that an affective adaptation process (AREA model; Wilson & Gilbert, 2008) lies behind the amplification of forecasts. Taken together, these findings extend the impact of certainty-uncertainty to the context of hedonic forecasting and further corroborate the impact of incidental emotions in judgement and decision making. (shrink)

While the analytical philosophy of science regards inconsistent theories as disastrous, Chomsky allows for the temporary tolerance of inconsistency between the hypotheses and the data. However, in linguistics there seem to be several types of inconsistency. The present paper aims at the development of a novel metatheoretical framework which provides tools for the representation and evaluation of inconsistencies in linguistic theories. The metatheoretical model relies on a system of paraconsistent logic and distinguishes between strong and weak inconsistency. Strong inconsistency is (...) destructive in that it leads to logical chaos. In contrast, weak inconsistency may be constructive, because it is capable of accounting for the simultaneous presence of seemingly incompatible structures. However, paraconsistent logic cannot grasp the dynamism of the emergence and resolution of weak inconsistencies. Therefore, the metatheoretical approach is extended to plausible argumentation. The workability of this metatheoretical model is tested with the help of a detailed case study on an analysis of discontinuous constituents in Government-Binding Theory. (shrink)

Review of Mercédesz Czimbalmos's Intermarriage, Conversion and Jewish Identity in Contemporary Finland. A Study of Vernacular Religion in the Finnish Jewish Communities.

Filozófiai és művészeti gyűjtemények számára egyaránt érdekes lehet Széplaky Gerda filozófus, esztéta, kritikus legújabb kötete, melynek írásai izgalmasan társítják az esztétikát a fenomenológiával. A szerző esszéi a testiség, a nézőben végbemenő fiziológiai folyamatok felől értelmezik a befogadás aktusát. Az első írás általánosságban szól a radikális kritikáról, majd a figyelemfelkeltő kötetcímmel megegyező című esszé (Kant hátán a szőr) a megrázkódtatásról, mint esztétikai fenoménról szól. Olyan további általánosabb témákról ejt még szót a szerző, mint az esztétikai hatásban megnyilvánuló erőszak vagy az építészeti (...) reprezentáció problémái. A kötet második felében konkrét alkotók művészetével kapcsolatos írások kaptak helyet, olyan témákban, mint Bukta Imre művészetének változásai, Szirtes János videoperformanszai, a játék esztétikai szerepe Bondor Csilla műveiben, vagy az Élet menete című holokauszt-emlékmű és kontextusai. "www.kello.hu © minden jog fenntartva". (shrink)