Browsing by Subject "subjectivity"

This research is focused on the schooling experiences of non-binary transgender people. The aim of the study is to produce information on how gender variation has been taken into consideration while the 1994 and 2004 reforms of the Finnish national core curriculums for basic education were in effect. Based on these data, the aim is to speculate how gender variation is considered in schools today. The analysis was focused on how interviewees created subjectivity in their narratives and how (gender normative forms of) the hidden curriculum appears in these narratives. The results can be used to help develop the school institution into a more sensitive direction, and to be aware of different genders and the dynamics between them. The theoretical base examines the concepts of non-binary transgender and gender variation. Secondly it provides an overview of the power of gender norms. Thirdly the theoretical base introduces some of the relevant topics of the Finnish national core curriculums for basic education established in the years 1994 and 2004. It then offers some information on the invisible power of the hidden curriculum. The final section of the theoreti-cal base addresses discourses, discursive practices and subjectivities, which are essential in the analysis of gender norms, the hidden curriculum and the interviews. The research was conducted by interviewing seven non-binary transgender adults. They had attended basic education while the 1994 and/or 2004 Finnish national core curriculums were in effect. The interviews were conducted using an adaptation of the autobiographical narrative interview method. The data were analyzed with a data-based discourse analysis. The results were construed using a critical feminist perspective. The analysis produced three hegemonic discourses: outsider, gender normative school, and non-normative gender. Based on these discourses, the results showed six strong subjectivity positions: an outsider and different, an illegitimate woman or a man, nonexistent, agender or feminine-masculine, an agonist against norms, and a victim. The presence of the (gender normative) hidden curriculum occurred especially when the interviewees spoke about the support and safety of school, school control and teaching/learning situations, students’ responsibilities, and school environmental issues. The findings of this research indicate that non-binary transgender people must form a self-image mostly with-out any existing discourses. They become positioned as oppressed or as agonists against oppression. The control of the hidden curriculum was proved strong and very gender normative. Based on that, there is a major paradox between actual school policies and the national core curriculums. The findings would imply that the situation may not be any better nowadays despite the core curriculum reforms. The knowledge of gender variations and gender sensitivity must increase in the future. It is also necessary to offer teachers support and information on how they should meet and treat students of any gender.

The objective of my study is to examine therapeutic ethos in public presentations of project-based activities that are directed at young people. Youth is examined in societal level in late-modern time where transitions to adulthood are becoming more risky and complex in the markets of work and education. The young people that are outside of institutions, create societal concern which is answered by creating therapeutic project-based support. These projects are also subject to markets and competition. In this study, I ask the question how the therapeutic ethos is present in the projects public presentations and how therapeutic ethos in projects as discursive practices creates images of youth and possible subjectivities that are offered to them. The perspective of this study is based to post-structural theories. The data in this study consists six different project-based support systems public documents from public web pages. The data includes reports, project depictions, brochures and marketing material. The data has been analyzed with a discursive approach which uses the nomadic research method. The analysis was based on the idea that discourses are seen as societal and cultural practices that create ways of being and speaking in the right way. These discourses can also be opposed. According to this study, therapeutic ethos in projects discursive practices appears as culturally influential discourses and understanding of feelings and inner state of mind where it also turns societal interests and project-based actions to the language and view which emphasizes representations of inner state of mind. This leads to a situation, where the problems that young adults face are translated as young adults’ inner psychological deficits where the societal view point becomes marginalized. At the same time therapeutic ethos, as a part of discursive practices, expands the general awareness of vulnerability and importance of therapeutic knowledge. The possible subjectivities created were self-knowing ideal-subjectivity and its counterpart lost-subjectivities.

This master's thesis examines extra-European international students as an important part of the migrant labour force in Finland. Student migration is one of the fastest growing forms of migration today. Student migrants have principally been discussed in relation to education policy, human capital and the unwanted brain drain has been underlined. Aspects outside of the education-related have been studied less and for example wage work done by non-European students with a student visa in Finland has been ignored to a large extent. This thesis builds over the gap between the administrative migration-categories student-migrant and migrant-worker. Accordingly, the main subjects in this thesis are named student-migrant-workers. Emphasis is also put on the racist structures these migrants are confronted with at work and in everyday life as well as on their social and legal position in Finland. The analysed material consists of seven semi-structured theme interviews with migrants from five different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa who came to Finland in order to study. The analysis departs from a critical perspective on borders that underline how borders, and extensions of these, function as control mechanisms within the migration administration. Today borders no longer constitute a clear dividing line between nation-states, but are instead flexible and located at the centre of the migrants lives. The extensions of borders the analysis emanates from, is the temporary residence permit the migrants have obtained and how it influences their possibilities of forming their life in a way they would want to. Since the residence permit implies certain requirements for the migrants and restricts their social and political rights, this scope is remarkably limited. The thesis illustrates how borders, in the form of the student s residence permits, produce a precarious labour force that is easy to exploit. As will be seen, most of those holding a student s residence permit have no other choice than wage working in order to avoid deportation. Because of the strict limitations, these migrants are produced as flexible workers that quickly can react to the demand on the labour market. The analysis also shows that boundaries are created on the basis of race , ethnicity and language and also influence the position on the labour market as well as the experiences of everyday life. The analysis is situated in a context of migration in contemporary capitalism and shows that borders produce new subjectivities that are possible to utilize in the current economic system. The temporariness the characterises the lives of the student-migrant-workers renders inclusion in society more difficult and questions in this way integration as analytical tool in contemporary migration research.

This thesis looks at the post-war reintegration of and war trauma in the former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel force abductees in the Acholi subregion of northern Uganda. The work’s focus is on how the former LRA abductees make meaning of their subjective experience of trauma according to the Acholi world view and how these experiences guide their search for healing. These questions are examined in the context of three healing practices from which the formerly abducted research participants have sought help for their war-related psychological symptoms: public healthcare and non-governmental psychosocial trauma counselling, local ajwaka spirit mediums, and Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches. The research for this thesis is based on three-month-long ethnographic fieldwork consisting of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussions, and other informal interactions in the Acholi districts of Gulu and Nwoya between October and December 2017. The core research participants are 20 formerly abducted LRA combatants (ten males and ten females aged between 24–55 years) who have returned back to civilian life before the northern Uganda conflict ended in 2006. Furthermore, medical professionals, trauma counsellors, ajwaka spirit mediums, Charismatic Christian pastor, and relatives of the core research participants were interviewed for this study. This thesis is built around medical anthropological theories of trauma and anthropological theories of subjectivity, where the former LRA abductees’ symptoms are approached through a three-dimensional theoretical framework of inner subjectivity, structural subjugation, and intersubjective relations. This thesis proposes that the war-related symptoms find their meaning through inner and bodily experiences, personal convictions, and subjective world views of their sufferers, which steer the former LRA abductees towards their preferred healing practices. However, these experiences are shaped by external constraints related to economic and sociopolitical subjugation under state rule, hierarchical social structure as well as intimate intersubjective power relations and cultural norms that can either enable or challenge the former abductees’ access to healing. The findings of this thesis suggest that even though the three healing practices approach war-related symptoms from ontologically different angles, they all offer meaningful tools to repair broken social relationships and retether the former abductees back to their social worlds in ways that can reduce trauma symptoms and foster healing. However, for various reasons the administered treatments sometimes fail, which forces symptom-sufferers to move beyond their preferred healing practices to find relief from their war-related symptoms. This thesis argues that the search for healing is full of uncertainty about the cosmological origin of symptoms, social tensions, and opaque motives of helpers. Thus, the healing process is dependent on intersubjective entanglements with kin, treatment providers, illness agents, and healing powers alike, which suggests that different forms of relationality lie at the centre of healing from war trauma. In conclusion, this thesis proposes that the gap between the former LRA abductees and the wider Acholi community has narrowed over the years since the conflict ended, but for some research participants the ongoing experiencing of war-related psychological symptoms still prevent them from fully participating in the Acholi society, which continues to hinder their reintegration. Until recently, the study of trauma in northern Uganda has revolved around the study of local spirits and Acholi rituals. The present study contributes to the broadening of the scope of the study of trauma among the Acholi towards other healing practices and provides a critical and multifaceted review of how the formerly abducted Lord’s Resistance Army combatants conceptualise their experience of war-related psychological symptoms from their socio-cultural perspective in post-war northern Uganda.