Browsing by Subject "discursive practices"

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.