Feeling Of Affinity Research Articles

Nordic authoritarianism: Child‐rearing values and political behavior in a multiparty context

AbstractThis article explores how authoritarianism as a factor in child‐rearing values (CRV) is associated with political orientation, party support, and policy preferences among voters and societal elites in the Nordic context, which is characterized by social trust and solidarity, feelings of affinity, and a modest degree of ideological polarization. Based on a representative citizen survey conducted in 2018 (n = 4,076) and an elite survey conducted in 2020 (n = 948) among Finnish political, administrative, advocacy, business, and influence elites, our findings suggest that authoritarianism in Finland mostly relates to culturally conservative, and less to economically conservative, political orientations. While authoritarianism is connected to policy preferences and political orientations on both cultural and economic dimensions, it has more relevance for preferences regarding cultural issues than economic ones. Our findings support the notion that authoritarianism plays a role in political orientation mainly in the cultural realm. Overall, our study indicates that authoritarianism as captured by the CRV scale might be a politically important underpinning among both citizens and societal elites also outside the U.S.

Too Close to Eat? Solidarity with Animals, Animal Welfare and Antibiotic Use

ABSTRACT Meat consumption is influenced by a variety of factors including feelings of affinity towards farm animals. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between solidarity with animals, attitudes towards the treatment of animals and antibiotics use in livestock, and pork consumption. Data were drawn from a sample of 265 respondents in the US. Correlation and mediation analyses were performed. The results indicate a moderate but positive correlation between solidarity with animals and proecological beliefs. The association between attitudes towards the treatment of farm animals, aspects of the attitudes towards antibiotic use and solidarity with animals was also positive. We also find that proecological beliefs and concerns about the treatment of farm animals negatively influenced consumption. The effect of attitudes towards antibiotic use and solidarity with animals on consumption were however fully mediated by proecological beliefs. The results suggest that social identification with animals can play a significant role in food choice. However, its effect is part of a broader connection to nature. Holistic approaches are therefore required to address livestock production practices that may be considered unnatural.

What Makes People Feel Close to Online Groups? The Roles of Group Attributes and Group Types

Most research assumes that the determinants of members’ feelings of connection to groups are constant across types of groups. The current paper challenges this assumption by assessing members' feelings of affinity toward a large, diverse sample of online groups. 10,567 members of 6,458 Facebook groups reported on their feelings of connection to these groups. Objectively measured group characteristics and features of members' relationship to the groups explained over 16% of the variance in members’ affinity. Being an administrator and being in groups with fewer members, more even communication, and more close friends were the strongest predictors. Half of the independent variables significantly interacted with group type in predicting affinity (e.g., large group size was negatively associated with affinity in task groups and positively associated with affinity in topical groups).

Cultural studies and actually existing culture

The cultural studies tradition is a big tent that is defined by academic realpolitik and feelings of affinity or disaffinity as much as anything else. This article recounts my own introduction to and professionalization within the field of cultural studies and, more particularly, how my relationship to empirical research methods changed over time. I ultimately want to argue for the importance of staying grounded in the analysis of real people’s real experiences of culture.

Past master: Czeslaw Milosz and his impact on the poetry of Seamus Heaney

The essay examines the influence of Czeslaw Milosz on Seamus Heaney's writing, focusing primarily on the early 1980s, which was a period of major transition in Heaney's literary and academic career, following the success of Field Work (1979) in the USA and his appointment as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard. It establishes the political and biographical contexts for Heaney's reception of Milosz's prose and poetry, and discusses the importance of Milosz's Nobel Lecture and his memoir, Native Realm, in fostering Heaney's feelings of affinity and sense of difference. Composed in the wake of Solidarity's challenge to the post-war status quo, Milosz's reflections in the Nobel Lecture on history, art, and the artist's responsibilities had a profound resonance for his fellow exile, uncertain as he was how to address the Hunger Strikes in the collection he was working on, Station Island. The essay thus explores the range of factors which resulted in Milosz becoming ‘The Master’ to Heaney, and ends offering an analysis of his poem of that title. It draws on a range of literary and historical sources, including the Heaney archives at Emory, Atlanta. Since it is the centenary of Milosz's birth, it offers a timely reminder of his importance in world literature. (Since it may not be familiar to many readers, I have included an outline of Milosz's biography at the start of the essay.)

ENCOUNTERING TOUCH: A PATH TO AFFINITY IN PSYCHIATRIC CARE

The idea of physical contact and touching in psychiatric care has, in many instances, been considered inappropriate. Psychiatry is often perceived as a verbal process and it has been generally believed that touching can provoke both aggressiveness and destructive manifestations of sexuality. However, recent research has suggested that touching can play an important role in psychiatric treatment once a caring relationship has been established. The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of physical contact for patients who have been treated for psychosis. Through four in-depth interviews and a life-world analysis the results show that touching means to be in need, to yearn, and to belong. Furthermore, touching also communicates feelings between bodies and, as such, it can be a path through which one feels acknowledged as a human being. The results indicate that a feeling of affinity can originate through physical contact, which can be regarded as a driving force in the search to feel a sense of belonging to the community.

Att vara anhorig till nagon som just drabbast av stroke

This phenomenological study describes the experiences of family members to elderly stroke victims cared for in rehabilitation wards. Five women, four spouses and one daughter, were interviewed and asked to describe what it means to be next of kin to a person with a recent stroke. The interviews were conducted and analysed within a phenomenological approach. The essence of the phenomenon of being next of kin to an elderly person with a recent stroke is identified as experiencing a profoundly altered way of life. Existential doubts and anxiety concerning both one's own as well as the sick person's current situation characterises daily life, although signs of recovery on the sick person's behalf might give some hope for the future. The relative experiences a certain feeling of being left out, which is seen as threatening the family members' feelings of affinity towards each other. This can also bring about a, from time to time, painful feeling of loneliness, which is not always relieved by social contact.

Judiska nordbor eller nordiska judar?

The Jews in Scandinavia have always been a small minority, where the own identity and the collective belonging have been important. During this century the Scandinavian Jews have become both secularized and assimilated, and the extreme individualism of the surrounding society has influenced them also. This essay deals with how the tension between being a member of a small Jewish minority and at the same time a loyal citizen of a secularized Christian country is reflected in two autobiographies by Scandinavian Jews: Boris Grünstein’s Jude i Finland (Jew in Finland) and Jo Benkow’s Fra synagogen til løvebakken (From the synagogue to the parliament). Both authors are non-religious Jews who have a strong Jewish identity, strengthened by their experiences during World War Two and their affection to Israel At the same time they are well integrated in society and feel at home in their countries. Their feeling of affinity with the Jewish community seems to have grown after a period of distance in younger years.

Natural history and social history

Natural history is unorthodox territory for the historian of science. It is an area of study in which elaborate theories and intricate experiments play comparatively little part: the science we are concerned with is not on the whole a matter of cumulative hypothesising and culminating breakthroughs. He who would regard these as the sole topics deserving of his craft had best leave our subject well alone. For he will only deceive himself, and irritate us, if in unravelling its intellectual twists and turns he concludes that by so doing he has adequately encompassed its past and accounted for all that is significant among its activities and accomplishments. Natural history is different. It is, for a start, primarily observational and descriptive; experiment and theory underpin it, but are not the mainspring of its existence. It is concerned first and foremost with nature's surface — with charting its distinguishing features in all their subtlety and minuteness and with comprehending the patterns of their grouping and spatial occurrence. As such it is a field of exceptional appeal to the layman and at the same time, despite increasing sophistication in techniques and the growing impingement of incomparably more esoteric areas of knowledge, still quite exceptional in its accessibility. The fact that it is so accessible has a profound effect on its make-up. Because of the very vastness of the lay following that has built up through the years and because in general this has lacked, and continues to lack, any thorough grounding in scientific concepts and methods, it is not the values and concerns of the wider world of science that tend to predominate. Unusually for a scholarly pursuit — but like that other great layman's field, archaeology — it is not among the professionals that the centre of gravity is located. There are two subsidiary influences at work among the professionals themselves that serve to reinforce this. First, most of them who choose this field have been drawn to it through an amateur interest in natural history initially, and as often as not this leaves behind a tacit feeling of affinity which inhibits the development of an isolating professionalism. Secondly, thanks to the accident that for a full hundred years now biological work that is field-oriented has never been in the disciplinary mainstream, indeed in the eyes of the scientific world as a whole has seldom been more than peripheral, taxonomists and field scientists generally have tended to compensate for this neglect by relishing the esteem of non-professionals. As a result, compared with almost all other studies, in natural history the intellectual -cum-social segregation between the professional and the amateur has had little chance of developing. Undiscouraged from comparing themselves with professionals, numerous amateurs have continued to find it worthwhile to aim at exacting standards; and professionals, finding the contributions of amateurs acceptable, have in turn been more than willing to share their knowledge and speak and write to them as equals.