Browsing by Author "Lähetkangas, Outi"

The purpose of the thesis is to interpret the range of discussion concerning consumerism and the significance of possessions, that is present in the media. The method used is interpretive structuralism, which is a form of discourse analysis. My research questions have emerged from the data and the analysing prosess has restructured and refined them during the prosess. The data consists of 26 Finnish articles and columns in which Marie Kondo’s The life-chaning magic of tidying up, other organizing books or voluntary simplifying are discussed. The articles have been published in 2014–2017. The context of the study is in the Finnish consumer society, the forming of which I will reflect in relation to the development of the western consumer society, massconsumption, throwaway society and the rapid transformation of the Finnish social structure among other things. The standard of living has been dependent on aquiring wealth and on the amount of posessions, but in a mature consumer culture the consumer can also enjoy the act of not consuming. In consumer cultures, consuming is the practice through which individuals take part in social life and bond with each other. The results of the analysis suggest that there are six discourses present in the data: The life-changing power of tidying up, Posessions as burdens, Ecology and restraining consumption, Womens status in the household, Consuming as entertainment and Historical effect ”the burden of scarcity”. A discourse includes various aspects and opinions, positive and negative, which rise from the range of discussion present in the data. These discourses are not clear-cut, they overlap and same topics might be discussed in many of them.