 |
|
Connected As: <Anonymous> Contact: srcosmos@aegean.gr |
|
|
|
Connected As: <Anonymous> Contact: srcosmos@aegean.gr |
Article summary:
| Keywords | |
| Abstract | According to P. Sztompka (1999), a moral society consists of three elements. The first is a culture of trust. It implies that others take us as moral beings and relate to us accordingly, in other words, in a civilised manner. The second element of a moral society is loyalty. This concept refers to our obligation not to betray trust that has been shown to us. The third element is solidarity. It means that the interests of others are taken into consideration and accepted in practice, although it might not be in harmony with our own immediate interests. There are, however, many kinds of FAs. They diverge from each other according to how the above-named three moral elements are emphasised. All associations do not fit very well into the description that Sztompka paints about moral societies. All of them are not apriori “schools of democracy”, either. We have even in Finland many examples of associations that are stamped by a non-democratic way of governance (see Ilmonen 1986). FAs are also different from each other in respect of how well they support democratic institutions in society. Some are probably indifferent, some are even dysfunctional, and some are very effective from the point of view of social support. Moreover, associations are also diverse in how much they tend to generalise trust in outsiders and in people that are not their members. If we figure that support to democratic institutions forms one dimension, in one end we can see political movements, such as the neo-nazis that are very much against them, and sects that are not willing to help strangers, which is against Christian principles. In the other end are, for instance, many charity associations (Uslaner 2001). The former way to act has been described as bonding trust. It is by nature a specific kind of trust that covers only insiders or members of some association. The latter way has been named a bridging trust (Putnam 2000; Uslaner 2001). It is a more general kind of trust that will transcend cultural and social borders. However, we do not know much about which FAs, and in what kinds of concrete situations, produce bridging trust. We also do not know much about how the members of different associations trust central, local and nationwide institutions and how they strengthen their legitimacy. We have only sporadic international information (e.g. USA, Norway, Holland) about which kinds of associations are prone to create bridging trust in societal institutions and unfamiliar people and which, on the contrary, produce bonding trust, but we do not have any systematic information of this topic in general, and none regarding Finland. This will be one of the main issues in this paper. It is a highly actual question because the whole field of associations in Finland and elsewhere in Europe has experienced a dramatic change since the deep recession at the turn of the 1990s. Political and ideological associations have lost their footing since the 1990s, while the number of leisure and lifestyle associations has grown very rapidly. Health care and social welfare associations have also increased in numbers, as have home district associations and village committees (Siisiainen 2002). The reasons for these changes are many, and it is not possible to go into details here, but it is apparent that in Finland they are related to narrowing political opportunity structures, a relatively high (real, not only statistical) unemployment rate and some cuts in our social security system, as well as the increasing movement of population to so-called economic and geographical growth centres (Ilmonen 2003). Be it as it may, the new structure of Finnish associational life makes the above-presented issue very exciting. It could now be stated more precisely, in the form of a question: How do members in new types of associations relate to societal institutions and unfamiliar people when compared to members in old (e.g. political-ideological) associations? Which associations are indifferent to unfamiliar people and the institutional point of view, which of them have bonding rather than bridging effects, and on the contrary, which of them are bridging rather than bonding in their relationship to the institutional level and unfamiliar people? In what follows, I will firstly focus on the concept of FA and how it differs from social movements (SMs) and social networks (SNs). Then I’m going to give a short description of the changes in the 1990s in Finnish associational life and analyse the relation of trust in unfamiliar people and different types of associations. After this, I will focus on the relationship between confidence in some of the most important Finnish institutions and these associations. Lastly, I will round out my paper by summarising my main results and pondering the role of labour market associations in this change. |
| Full text | Full Text in PDF (184 KB) |
| Source link | |
| Included Refrences | 0 References (List...) |
| Cited by other Articles | 0 Citations (List...) |
| Name | Affiliation | Home page | Total pubs | |
| Ilmonen K | 1 |
References included in article:
