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Younger generations in Estonia are involved into global cultural trends that exert increasing influence on their lives and identity formation. Even though youth cultural trends are nowadays global, they are also closely related to the local culture and historical background of their different societies. Subcultural trends adopted in Estonia have been altered in the process of their diffusion and their internal structure and relationship to society at large are influenced by the smallness of the country, its Soviet background and its lack of social classes. This paper focuses on the diffusion of global youth cultural trends -- club culture and hip-hop culture -- in Estonia and the construction of (sub)cultural identity from a micro-sociological perspective. The diffusion of trends is divided into four periods: esoteric, underground, mainstream and WEB2, and cultural identity is analysed in these periods with respect to changes in society as well as the underground scene. The starting point for our analysis is that identity is relational, fluid and comparative. The empirical part of the paper relies on participant observation and open-ended interviews with young people who participate in club culture (collected in 1998-2002 and 2010) and hip-hop culture (collected in 2007-2008). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote Internet voting places the control and secrecy of the immediate voting environment on the shoulder of the individual voter but it also turns voting into yet another on-line activity thus endangering the well-known social nature of voting and possibly reducing the crucial sense of civic duty that is important for a healthy democracy. There is however a complete lack of evidence to what degree this actually materializes once electronic voting is introduced. This paper uses individual level log data on Internet voting in Estonian elections between 2013–2015 to inspect if Internet voting retains the social nature of the voting act. We do so by examining if Internet voting in groups takes place and what implications it has for voting speed. We find strong evidence of e-voting in pairs. Same aged male-female pairs seem to be voting in close proximity to each other, consistent with spouses or partners voting together. Also, female-female and female-male pairs with large age differences seem to be voting together, consistent with a parent voting with an adult aged offspring. With regards to voting speed we see the second vote in a vote pair being considerably faster than the first vote, again indicating a shared voting act. We end with a discussion of how the onset of electronic voting does not make elections less social, but does make vote secrecy more a choice rather than a requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the re-establishment of independent Estonian statehood in 1991, Russian lost its privileges as the dominant and official language in Estonia, and Estonian continued as the only official language. This paper attempts to map the position of a Russian-speaking teacher within the sociological categories of power and language, based on the analysis of legislative acts and strategic documents within the domain of language policy and language legitimization practices in historical retrospective. The main focus of the study stresses an attempt to elaborate on to what extent the low self-efficacy of Russian-speaking teachers as the agents of legitimization of the Estonian language in Russian-speaking schools, and their low position in power relations within the Estonian education system, can be explained in the categories of power and language, as conceptualized on the basis of the social theory of Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Governance Review / Revue Gouvernance is the property of University of Ottawa, Center on Governance and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Estimating the size of key risk populations is essential for determining the resources needed to implement effective public health intervention programs. Several standard methods for population size estimation exist, but the statistical and practical assumptions required for their use may not be met when applied to HIV risk groups. We apply three approaches to estimate the number of people who inject drugs (PWID) in the Kohtla-Järve region of Estonia using data from a respondent-driven sampling (RDS) study: the standard “multiplier” estimate gives 654 people (95% CI 509–804), the “successive sampling” method gives estimates between 600 and 2500 people, and a network-based estimate that uses the RDS recruitment chain gives between 700 and 2800 people. We critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of these statistical approaches for estimating the size of hidden or hard-to-reach HIV risk groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Layder's domain theory (1997) as an analytical framework, this article shows how the information society can be measured through various levels of society. Layder's notions of psychobiography, situated activity, social setting, and contextual resources help identify cultural and social indicators for understanding changes in the information society. With the help of empirical indicators for each domain, this article uses the case of Estonia to show that there is often more to the information society than what is captured by traditional measures. This article calls for a context-sensitive approach, which takes into consideration social and cultural indicators. Measurements from all four domains are necessary for understanding the complexity of information-society-related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores relationships between representations (maps) and the represented (landscape), focusing on the role of maps in creating places and as devices in the generation and manipulation of knowledge. The production and use of maps is seen as part of power relations in society, referred to in Foucault's term as ‘games of strategy’, including dominance and control of the natural environment and the social system, but also resistance to and negotiation of power positions in society. The main objective is to examine the meanings given to one limited area in Estonia, Paldiski – covering the Pakri peninsula – by presenting its contemporary content and considering different angles for interpretation. The real and assumed ties between the physical environment and past and present representations are conveyed in the descriptive form of a map of a walk. The article also includes a brief presentation of the history of mapping in Estonia in the confines of the modern state – the Swedish kingdom, Russian empire, military Germany, the Soviet Union, and Estonia. The role of individuals in creating landscapes in physical and representational form is a central issue in the case of Paldiski, based on which the more general concerns of ‘laying down the law’ and justice in landscape and society may be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)