Browsing by Subject "phenomenology"

This thesis focuses on the understandings of the body among contemporary dancers in the western post-modern scene. In doing so, it aims to describe the ways contemporary dancers experience thinking, mind language and agency in their bodies. Further, the aim of this thesis is to understand how this affects experiences of self and being. Examining ethnographical examples and the discussions on the body-mind relations, this thesis endeavours to further the understanding of experienced relationships between body, mind and thinking in the West. Additionally it looks at the ways through which embodied knowledge is produced, shared, and evaluated among contemporary dancers. As such, it takes a critical stance towards dualistic notions of mind and body; rational and sensed; culture and nature. In this thesis, contemporary dancers are approached as a professional category. The ethnographic data was gathered during a two and a half month fieldwork period in Berlin in the summer 2021. The fieldwork comprised of participant observation in rehearsals, festivals, workshops and weekly professional dance classes, supplemented by seven semi-structured interviews with contemporary dance artists. The field notes and interviews were accompanied by auto-ethnographic description. Further, importance for the authotrs own bodily experience and understanding was granted in building analytical understanding The theoretical framework of this thesis draws from phenomenology, discussions of body and mind, and theories of personhood. Phenomenological discussions and theories of bodily practice and sensorial anthropology are used to examine how information is embodied in dance practices, and how the idea of embodied knowledge is constructed and shared. The ethnographical evidence suggests that contemporary dancers use strategies of embodiment to articulate, transmit, and integrate meaning and language. In the second part of the analysis, the focus lies on the experiences and conceptualizations of body, mind, thinking and their relations. The experiential concept of “observing while doing” is described and discussed. Finally, this thesis considers what kinds of notions of self, personhood and agency are attained in the experience of dancing. Here, theories on dividual subjects are used to examine ethnographical findings. The analysis and ethnographical evidence in this thesis suggest that the experience of a dancing body is multiple and can be altered using strategies of embodiment. The multiplicity of the body, as well as the multiplicities of thinking and mind, are sensed through somatic modes of attention. Further, the expansion of experiential understandings of the body has led to conceptual multiplicity of the body and mind. Finally, this thesis argues that the dancing subjects are dividual in the way that their experiences and expressions are constituted by distinct embodied knowledges from their training, education, dance work, and other environments. The findings of this thesis call for reflection of the body-mind relation and notions of thinking in the West, utilizing knowledge produced by contemporary dancers attending specific perceptual awareness and notions of bodily knowledge and thinking in their work.

This thesis deals with how meaningful landscapes are created through experiences in everyday life. As European governments seek to implement the European Landscape Convention into policy, landscapes and their relationships with its inhabitants must be understood on a more fundamental level. In addition to understanding how meaningful landscapes are created, this thesis also sheds light on the relationships between landscapes and social and societal change. Landscape here is then more than a simple scenery or representation; it is temporal and dynamic and the context of our dwelling. Two related but different landscapes in the Southwest Finland archipelago are studied through the application of the phenomenological approach. The first centres around the former ironworks town of Dalsbruk, including the surrounding region of Dragsfjärd. The second centres around Hitis village in the Hitis archipelago. Special attention is also given to the Purunpää nature conservation area in Dragsfjärd as it relates to changing attitudes regarding the landscape. Material collected during two months of fieldwork includes interviews with 11 people, informal discussions, first-person observations, and archival materials in the form of historical photographs and factory magazines from Dalsbruk provided by the town’s ironworks museum. By combining the dwelling perspective at the core of the phenomenological approach to landscapes with a historical, political and environmental context in the form of an environmental history of the region, the process of the landscape’s becoming is revealed and the various meanings that it holds for people are illuminated. Not only has the landscape had an enormous effect on where settlements have been founded, it has also shaped the livelihoods of its inhabitants. At the same time generation after another has left their mark on the landscape, shaping the way people today relate to it. This study covers how the physical landscape embodies the social hierarchies of previous generations as a materialisation of their dwelling. It deals with how stories and place names make landscapes and places meaningful for the local population by evoking a shared history and identity of a place. Additionally, subjective memories and experiences affect how people perceive the landscape and how different people find it to be meaningful. This has an impact on how both the past and future of a place or landscape is imagined, leading to the conclusion that they are always contested. Landscapes in the Archipelago Sea region are revealed to be filled with values and meanings far beyond the aesthetic.

The purpose of this research is to deepen the understanding of the culture of the veil among Somali women in Finland. The research deals with ethnicity, identity, easing the immigrant's readjustment with the help of one's own culture, and the connection between the religion of Islam and the veil. The veil will be studied from both the historical and religious point of view. The research will also familiarize the reader with the dress code for women in the Koran. The empirical part of the research is carried out as a qualitative study with the help of content analysis, with emphasis in phenomenology. The aim of the phenomenological research method is to reach a person's experience world, and to search for common contents from individual experiences. The material for this study has been collected by interviewing ten Somali women. Some of the women wear veils, some do not. It can be said, on the ground of this research, that the decision about taking on the veil is made by the women themselves. The main cause for wearing the veil is to indicate religiousness. As other motives we can see a search for security, enhancing of solidarity, individual interpretation of the instructions of the religion, covering the ethnic dress while outside, protecting men from the beauty of women, and wearing the veil in the mosque or while praying. As a latent motive we can point out the resisting of Western culture. Not wearing the veil can be justified by the women's need for independence, the veil being unpractical, the want of modernity, the alternation of different ways of dressing, the adaptation of the new culture, abandoning one's own culture, and abandoning the external emphasizing of the religion. Also the veil is not part of the Somali culture; it is a habit adapted from elsewhere.

Objectives. The purpose of this thesis was to study the experiences of former lower secondary school pupils related to their school attendance problems (SAPs). The research seeks to provide information related to the phenomenon and the role of school-related factors in the Finnish context. Previous research has shown that teachers and other school personnel highlight the role of individual and family factors when explaining the reasons for school attendance problems and the pupils emphasize the importance of school-related factors. As such, the research questions are 1. How did school-related factors influence the pupils’ SAPs? 2. What kind of support was offered to the pupils when they were having SAPs? 3. What kind of support the pupils would have wished to get from the school personnel when having SAPs? Methods. Five former lower-secondary school pupils were interviewed during October and November 2021. The youth were 15-17 years old and had completed their basic education in a middle-sized southern city in Finland in 2020 or 2021. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using the phenomenological interview method and analyzed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results and conclusions. All the pupils had lower academic achievement because of being absent from school. The participants considered their pupil-teacher relationships important. They highlighted the importance of being supported and seen as an individual. Some thought that their teachers did not believe them and their explanations for SAPs. Peer relationships were important for all the youth but there was also bullying and discrimination from peers. Some pupils were absent together with their peers, while for some the support gotten from the peers was important. The pupils would have wanted

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how a poetic metaphor challenges our common sense notions about the world (the estrangement effect) and enables unorthodox ways of thinking and acting (creative imagination). In the study, I will compare and evaluate theories that investigate the role that metaphor has in lived human experience. All the theories discussed share the view that metaphor is epistemologically important for humans. Two different characterisations of this epistemic importance can be identified: 1) the cognitive view, which emphasises the role of metaphor in unconscious, prelinguistic and embodied thought; 2) the pragmatic and phenomenological view of metaphor as a creative activity, a re-imagining of experience and a communicative phenomenon. Defending the latter position, I argue that metaphor has epistemic value, but not because metaphor serves as a cognitive foundation for shared human knowledge, but because it is a creative human pursuit of imagining new possibilities and ways of being. I will criticise the cognitive metaphor theory (CMT), as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, which holds that metaphors are the foundation of human thought and reasoning. This position advocates ideas about global and fixed ways of interpreting metaphor. As such, it fails to explain novel poetic or scientific metaphors, but fairs better with common everyday metaphors, which already have fixed meanings. I will argue that the existence of universal cognitive metaphors is highly doubtful. As an alternative to the problematic framework of the cognitive metaphor theory, I propose pragmatic and phenomenological theories. The pragmatic view of metaphor, proposed by Davidson and Rorty, succeeds better at describing the experience which a novel metaphor incites in the reader. This position suggests that metaphor has an effect, which cannot be explained by extension of a word’s meaning. Metaphor is a linguistic stimulus, which forces the reader to do some creative guesswork about its intention and meaning. Metaphor has pragmatic potential, because it motivates human innovation and discovery. The phenomenological position, espoused by Ricoeur, describes the sense of wonder and excitement that living metaphor evokes in us. This view suggests that metaphorical estrangement is closely aligned with the phenomenological method of epoché, suspension of everyday judgment. Ricoeur suggests that poetic metaphor, similar to the epoché, can help us distance ourselves from the natural attitude and reveal novel ontological possibilities for humans. Despite their differences, both the pragmatist and the phenomenological position characterise metaphor as a creative use of language and arrive at similar conclusions. Committing metaphoric acts has positive consequences because metaphors motivate critical thought, prompt self-reflection and re-evaluation of our previous thought, and enable creative problem solving, speculation and invention.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Adjustment to a traumatic brain injury is a major life event involving new self-experiences. Drawing upon a phenomenological perspective, this thesis explores one woman’s understanding of herself and her life with a moderate traumatic brain injury. Adjustment is portrayed broadly, involving new experiences of one’s body, oneself, and society. Interpretative phenomenological analysis serves as the method for this thesis. In contrast to previous findings, the results show that the experience of change in social identities does not always lead to an experience of a temporal division or loss of the self. The results provide an understanding of the self as existing on two levels; an interplay with transient social identities and a more profound sense of being. The results highlight the idea of social identities as connected to hegemonic understandings of the able body and an unconscious dependency on a high-functioning body and mind. Regarding clinical implications, the results imply that verbal sense-making of the trauma can enhance the patient’s understanding of neurological deficit: the injury is experienced as more real as it is verbally placed in a socially shared reality. Moreover, during the initial state of the injury, the person’s understanding of their condition can be multiple, inaccurate and contradictory. Hence, this thesis strengthens the importance of improving the patient’s early access to a diagnosis and healthcare. A person’s experience of the healthcare process can have a major impact on how they experience their illness. Shortcomings in the patient information system and a lack of information during the rehabilitation re-evaluations can cause the patient to experience uncertainty over their health, eliciting emotions of loneliness and mistrust towards the healthcare, hampering the adjustment process. Motivation to adjust can manifest as an interaction between having a positive outlook on life, the experience of having a limited choice, and an embodied understanding of being alone with the illness. Lastly, the results point out that the realization of a traumatic brain injury is a recurrent process of thought. The process is crucial in terms of adjustment since it enables the person to create a meaningful presence in times of adversity.