Browsing by Subject "modernity"

Tutkielmassa perehdytään englantilaisen kirjailijan Neil Gaimanin romaaneihin American Gods (2001) ja Anansi Boys (2005) sekä erityisesti niissä esiintyvän kujeilijan (trickster) arkkityypin vaikutuksiin teosten kuvaamassa yhteiskunnassa. Teoksissa useat hahmot edustavat eri tavoin kujeilijan arkkityyppiä sekä tähän usein liittyvää kulttuurisankarin (culture hero) arkkityyppiä. Molempia on alkuperäiskansojen tarustoissa käytetty mm. opettamaan yhteisön tapoja, välittämään tärkeitä perinteitä sukupolvelta toiselle sekä ylläpitämään yhteisön yhtenäisyyttä. Kirjailijan moderni lähestymistapa kujeilijaan tarjoaa kiinnostavan lähtökohdan analyysille arkkityyppien vaikutuksista länsimaiseen, erityisesti anglo-amerikkalaiseen yhteiskuntaan, joka on saanut vaikutteita lukemattomista muista kulttuureista. Väitän, että teokset tarjoavat kattavan esimerkin kujeilijan rooleista ja funktioista tasapainottavana sekä parantavana tekijänä kirjojen kuvaamassa modernissa yhteiskunnassa sekä yhteiskunnan ja yksilön vuorovaikutuksessa. Kujeilijoita tavataan teoksissa sekä sankarin että roiston rooleissa, ja molemmista eritellään ja analysoidaan kujeilijan joko yhteiskunnallisesti tai yksilöllisesti positiiviset funktiot tai positiivisia reaktioita aikaansaavat negatiiviset funktiot. Tutkielman johdantokappaleessa esitellään kujeilijan funktioita alkuperäiskulttuureissa, Gaimanin eri kulttuureja yhdistelevä toteutus sekä hypoteesi kujeilijan funktioista teosten kuvaamassa yhteiskunnassa. Toisessa luvussa vertaillaan American Gods ¬ teoksessa esiintyviä kujeilijoita näiden esikuvina toimiviin alkuperäisiin kujeilijoihin ja etsitään kujeilijahahmojen yhteyksiä teoksessa esiintyviin yhteiskunnallisiin ongelmiin. Kolmannessa luvussa eritellään neljä tieteellistä artikkelia, jotka käsittelevät kujeilijoihin liittyviä yhteiskunnallisia sekä yksilöllisiä ongelmia teoksissa. Neljännessä luvussa vertaillaan Anansi Boys teoksessa esiintyviä kujeilijoita toisessa luvussa käytetyin metodein, mutta sillä poikkeuksella, että teos antaa selvästi edeltävää teosta enemmän viitteitä kujeilijan asemasta yksilön ja yhteiskunnan vuorovaikutuksessa. Viidennessä luvussa pyritään herättelemään analyysiin perustuvaa keskustelua kujeilijan mahdollisesta merkityksestä nykyaikaisissa kertomuksissa sekä kujeilijan vaikeasti määriteltävästä syvemmästä olemuksesta.

This Master’s thesis examines how societal power is exercised and negotiated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the media in contemporary Finnish society. Conducting a critical discourse analysis of Helsingin Sanomat coverage on the Church and Finland’s asylum seekers between August 2015 and September 2017, the three levels of mediatization of religion as presented by Hjarvard (2008) are offered as a potential theoretical framework to capture essential aspects of the media’s ubiquitous impact on institutional religion. The first chapters introduce the research topic and provide contextual understanding of the Church’s position in contemporary Finnish society and media. This is followed by a literature review and the theoretical and methodological frameworks guiding the analysis. The analysis answers to the research question through the three levels of mediatization of religion. The findings demonstrated the usefulness of critical discourse analysis coupled with the mediatization of religion theory, as the research method highlighted the aspects of prevalence and dominance of mediatization. Although the mediatization of religion theory was not found to provide an exhaustive account on the dynamics between Helsingin Sanomat and the Church, the presence of all three levels of mediatization together with the dominance of media discourses and the Church’s subordination to media logic could be discerned. This thesis provides insight into the renegotiation process of the Church’s place and role in Finnish society, a topic that until today has remained understudied. Further, it sheds light on the power of both the media and the Church to steer and maintain discourses. From the perspective of the Religion, Conflict and Dialogue Master’s Degree program, analyzing the theme within the context of the asylum seeker situation can be deemed supportive for purposes of further research on institutional religion’s role in dialogue promotion and bringing about social cohesion.

This is an explorative case study on the transformations of the hegemonic self and the subaltern other in the spaces of Israel’s globalising economy. Inspired by the works of Saskia Sassen, the thesis is based on a premise that the modern binary categories of difference may transform in the spaces of global, destabilising the hegemonic state. To study this possibility, thesis collects individual imaginaries of difference from Israel where the state has started to integrate the Palestinians of Israel into the centre of Israel’s start-up economy and the key operations of global capital. The thesis deploys an innovative research design that approaches difference as imaginary, made in the living interaction of materialities, myths and creative sense-making. The data of the study consists of individual narrations of difference, collected from Israeli-Palestinian entrepreneurs and Jewish public officials who work together at the entrepreneurial spaces in Israel. The findings of the thesis demonstrate that the Palestinians of Israel who are included into the entrepreneurial space, seek to reject their Palestinian identity and past in order to escape from the national hegemonic conditions. Through analysing the sense-making of Israeli Palestinians, the thesis demonstrates that the entrepreneurial space systematically expels knowledges of otherness that do not fit into the binary logic of modernity. The thesis concludes that in essence, the entrepreneurial intervention is a tool for reproducing the modern emancipatory image of self through the inclusion of the other. At the entrepreneurial site, it is not fear but the hope of emancipation that motivates Palestinians of Israel to detach from Palestinian narratives and spaces. Zionism, it seems, is able to re-institute its binary categories of difference from within the hope that the global brings. The results of the thesis help to understand the hegemonic dynamics through which Zionism and global capital expand together into subaltern consciousness and spaces of political As imaginaries of entrepreneurial knowledge economy are expanding not just in Israel but throughout the globe, the findings of the thesis may open up analytical possibilities also elsewhere.

Due to the great need of improving sustainable urban transport and mobility in emerging cities in Latin America, development assistance in the form of Sustainable Urban Mobility planning is currently carried out by national European development agencies and partnerships. This type of assistance is commonly based on successful European experiences and approaches in the field, aiming to decrease both greenhouse gas emissions, poverty and inequality and in the same time to improve accessibility, quality of life and sustainability for the urban citizens. Whilst the model being successful for these purposes in Europe, the emerging nature and different mobility culture of cities in Latin America have experienced different outcomes of Sustainable Urban Mobility planning. The theoretical discussion of this thesis is based on a critical assessment of Modernisation theory and its manifestations in the urban transport sector. The theory would describe the European model of Sustainable Urban Mobility as the “modern”, whereas the mobility paradigm of emerging cities is “yet to be modernised”. This thesis argues that instead of applying the European mobility paradigm on emerging cities, the concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility and its planning models and guidelines need to be contextualised in order to reach the desired outcomes. Through qualitative content analysis of original data from interviews with grassroot level activists, representatives of civil society and non-governmental organisations in the cities of Bogotá and Lima, this thesis shows that the urban structures and mobility culture in the cities differ significantly from the ones in Europe, that lead to different outcomes when applying the European approaches of Sustainable Urban Mobility planning in the cities. The most critical finding is that due to different socioeconomic urban structures, a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and increase of accessibility cannot be reached simultaneously in a short-term timeframe, as the poor people in the outskirts currently cannot afford other transport modes than non-motorised “sustainable” transport. Challenges such as urbanisation and corruption are often considered the main problems for the implementation of sustainable transport measures in emerging cities. This thesis shows that instead of solely focussing on these challenges, one should criticise the non-contextualised methods in use for encountering them and suggests a preventive approach for urban development. The conclusion follows: It is not only the guidance documents in use for development assistance in the field of Sustainable Urban Mobility that needs to be contextualised, but the whole concept.

The subject of my thesis is the issue of nihilism and critique of modernity in the thought of Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990), a representative member of the Kyoto School. In seeking an answer to the question of what the problem of nihilism means in his philosophical thought, I trace the philosophical development of the idea of nihilism in relation to Nishitani’s thought and explore how he arrived to his solution for overcoming nihilism, what are its roots and what the solution entails. I investigate how Nishitani approaches the problem of nihilism through a critique of modernity and consider the critique’s controversiality in relation to his views on Japan’s role in World War II, with the aim of placing Nishitani’s work in its historical and socio-political context as well as analyzing how he sees the issues of nihilism and modernity as intertwined with each other. Sources I have used focus on Nishitani’s own writings, secondary literature on the Kyoto School, and the works of Western philosophers that most influenced Nishitani, especially Nietzsche and Heidegger. The analysis of the concept and problem of nihilism in relation to Nishitani’s thought and his criticism of modernity is divided in three chapters in this study. I first define the terms in a general manner, but with particular attention to how my reading qualifies and develops the terminology, before going further into detail on the history of nihilism in Western philosophy in the rest of the chapter. The second analytical chapter looks more closely to Nishitani’s view of nihilism as a concept and how he connects it to his solution to overcoming it—namely, to his view of Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā). The third analytical chapter brings these considerations to the social world in the form of the problem of modernity and modern Western nihilism, as well as its associated issues, and considers Nishitani’s approaches to understanding and resolving the issue of nihilism in the society. The main attention is on the problem of modernity that Nishitani saw as a social extension of the existential problem of nihilism. Through my discussion of the various aspects of Nishitani’s critique of modernity, I seek to identify the main themes in his approach to the issue and the problems inherent in that approach. Pulling together the various strands that interweave through Nishitani’s treatment of modernity, nihilism and his views for overcoming them, I find that his themes of Heideggerian critique of technology and Nietzschean redemption of tradition combine with the Kyoto School’s overall reverse-Hegelian search for an originary ground that is grasped via existential realization revealed through religious praxis. I also explore what kind of problems are involved in Nishitani’s critique of modernity, arguing that while he does a great deal to detail his solutions for overcoming nihilism on the individual, existential level, his approach on the scale of the wider society suffers from clear oversights, limited conceptualization of the problem of modernity and problematic politics that undermine his efforts.

In my MA thesis I explore the Finnish people’s relationship to technology and especially to information communication technology by discussing technological imaginaries. Imaginaries guide attention toward collective sense making while they convey shared social values, norms and identities that are performed in different speech acts. Everyday algorithms are the starting point of my thesis. I framed the topic of algorithms and the technological imaginaries they produce with the theoretical discussion of datafication and dataveillance. As the influence of technology is only growing in our Western society, I am interested in observing its potential sociopolitical impact. My research question is how technological imaginaries affect the society. I am interested in questions how a technology-related future narrative exists and how these narratives are constructed—and what they tell about the Finnish society. My goal is to create holistic understanding of living with quantified data and to analyze what values technological imaginaries might reveal. The research approach is anthropology of technology. The ethnographic focus is in Helsinki, Finland and the ethnographic material consists of 39 semi-structured interviews, which are divided between two reference groups, which I named as ‘everyday algorithms’ and ‘digital marketers.’ The interviews were conducted in 2017 and 2018 and the ethnographic material was systematically analyzed with content analysis. The interviewees’ affective and analytical responses depended on the topic at hand and from the different perspectives the interviewees saw them through. Technological determinism and dataism, which represent faith in technology as the source of progress and faith in data as objective, rational and good, were themes that emerged in the interviews. What became apparent is that technology is viewed to mediate social utopias, such as social equality, even when actual technology mediated practices might not support those desires.