Search

The first part of the article describes men's experiences from the perspective of women and the second part presents an interpretation of the sport experience from a male's perspective. The relationship between the two parts, which are critical of masculinity yet simultaneously sympathetic to men, are complementary rather than contradictory. As such, the paper represents a contribution to the emergence of a new conception of women's and men's studies. The article's methodological framework is drawn from the field of women's studies and centres on the recollection and interpretation of one's own life history. The first part of the article is about how masculinity in boys is constructed with the help of sport. It presents selected recollections by male university students about how the cultural processes which reproduce masculinity in men is realized in the case of sport. The methodological basis for the second part of the paper is drawn from the tradition of textual analysis which has become increasingly influential in Finland in the areas of sociology, literature and politics. The article's second part deals with the deconstruction of masculinity in relation to the sportsman. It is a story of a man who has himself unfolded the power relations of sport in the context of his life history, his society and a theoretical frame of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the separate and joint roles played by intellectual styles, paradigmatic changes and national exemplars in the modernisation of a scientific discipline on the periphery. The post-war development of sociology in Finland is analysed as an example of social science on the periphery. The development of Finnish sociology is characterised by changes largely attributable to exogenous influences. Three distinct phases of development can be discerned, which correspond to shifts from one to two-centre and eventually to multiple-centre influences in terms of intellectual styles and paradigms. The three identified phases of development are related to the differential societal utilisation potentials of sociology. The change from one to ultimately several centre influences had beneficial effects on the internal development of the field in terms of diversification of research practices and orienting concerns towards 'high technology' strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]