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This Master’s thesis is about sense of self and sense of belonging in the context of breakdancing women in the City of New York. It examines breakdancing women who have been through difficult situations in their lives. The study tries to understand how these women use breakdance as an empowering tool to create stronger sense of self while participating in a 10-week long breakdance workshop series. This thesis is based on a three month long fieldwork conducted in the City of New York during summer and autumn 2015. The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted by following the workshop series held by a dance company that organizes breakdance workshops for women facing struggles in their lives. The main research methods are participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and informal conversations. In total, 10 people were interviewed. The participant observation included following of the dance workshops and taking part in conversational cyphers after each class, participating in different breakdance events, and watching performances. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on different theories of self. Firstly the concept of self is examined on a general level and the anthropological discussion of self is introduced. Secondly the theories of self are examined in relation to society and body. The analysis is twofold. First analysis chapter examines how the research participants create sense of self by mastering new skills and taking control over their bodies. Then it goes deeper to the concept of self to explore how sense of self is produced in relation to others and how it turns to agency. At this point analysis takes the sense of belonging into account and the data is viewed from more social perspective. The key findings in this thesis are that sense of self and sense of belonging are tightly connected to one another and together they can create agency. In the context of this thesis sense of self is created by redefining the self through bodily practices and narratives. By identifying with a group people gain both stronger sense of self and create sense of belonging. Sense of belonging then can be seen as a product of strong sense of self. According to this study both senses of self and belonging are used to create agency.

Tämä pro-gradu tutkielma tarkastelee internetin käytön (poliittisen tiedonlähteenä) yhteyttä euroskeptisiin asenteisiin Brexitin jälkeisessä Iso-Britanniassa. Median rooli euroskeptisiä asenteita ja kansalaismielipidettä selittävänä tekijänä on alkanut kiinnosta EU-asenteiden tutkijoita yhä enemmän. Perinteisellä medialla on aikaisemman tutkimuksen perusteella todettu olevan yhteys kansalaisten euroskeptisiin asenteisiin, mutta internetin ja sosiaalisen median yhteyttä euroskeptisismiin on tutkittu verrattain vähän. Teoreettisen viitekehyksen tutkimukselle muodostaa euroskeptisismiä selittävät teoriat sekä internetin ja demokratian suhdetta käsittelevät tutkimukset. Tutkielman tavoitteena on tarkastella euroskeptisismin ja kaikukammioteorian välistä suhdetta Brexitin viitekehyksessä. Tutkimusaineistona toimii British Election Study:n (BES) keräämä kyselyaineisto, jonka pohjalta muodostettiin tilastollisessa analyysissa käytetyt muuttujat. Tilastollinen analyysi suoritettiin logistista regressioanalyysia käyttäen. Euroskeptisismin ja internetin käytön yhteyttä tarkasteltiin tilastollisessa analyysissa neljän eri ulottuvuuden kautta, jotka muodostettiin euroskeptisismiä selittävien teorioiden pohjalta. Nämä neljä ulottuvuutta ovat EU-kansanäänestys, Brexit-identiteetti, maahanmuutto ja suvereniteetti. Tutkielman tuloksista voidaan päätellä, että aktiivisella internetin käytöllä on yhteys euroskeptisiin asenteisiin. Ainoastaan suvereniteetti ulottuvuudella ja internetin käytöllä ei havaittu olevan yhteyttä. Internetin käytön yhteys euroskeptisismiin oli kuitenkin suhteellisen pieni verrattuna muihin selittäviin muuttujiin.

Voting turnout has decreased in most Western democracies since the post-war period. In Finland, low turnout at elections affects significantly more certain groups, such as the youth and immigrants enfranchised to vote in local elections. At the occasion of the 2017 Finnish municipal elections, a series of 21 debates between local candidates and with a thematic focus on issues related to the increasing diversity of the Finnish society was organised by the Network of Multicultural Associations Moniheli under the name Kaikkien Vaalit (Our Election). One of the goals of the debates was to increase the interest in and participation to elections of immigrant-background residents. Considering the gap in participation between native Finnish citizens and immigrants, does attending a thematic debate affect attendees differently depending on their migrant background? The objective of this study is to build a frame of reference based on existing get-out-the-vote (GOTV) literature to determine what effects can be expected, analyse the reported effects of the panels on migrant background categories derived from practice in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and evaluate the relevance of the categories for events designed for corresponding target groups in the NGO field. The data used in this quantitative analysis are feedback questionnaires (n = 225) collected at the end of 18 Kaikkien Vaalit events for project reporting, as well as a complementary post-election phone survey. The three outcome variables derived from the survey results are whether the respondent reported an increase in voting interest, found the predefined issues discussed during the panel personally relevant, and obtained information useful to a choice between candidates or parties. The independent variable is a six-group migrant background variable based on the respondents’ provided information about mother tongue and migration to Finland, adjusted for citizenship and time spent in Finland. Socio-economic and participation indicators are used as secondary variables to refine observations. The study uses crosstabulation to examine the distribution of answers between groups, and Kruskal-Wallis H tests and Mann-Whitney U tests to evaluate the relevance and suitability of migrant background categories. The debates are found to reach an audience in line with both GOTV research and with the objectives of the Kaikkien Vaalit project. A statistically significantly different distribution of answers is found between migrant background groups for the interest and information variable, but not for the importance variable. Further tests show that the effect on interest differs between groups both by migration experience and by foreign mother tongue, and only by foreign mother tongue for the information variable, while categories were not relevant for the differentiated distribution of the scores for the importance of issues. Findings suggest that the direct effect on turnout is structurally limited due to the attendees’ high voting propensity, but indicate the possibility for corollary positive effects. The complementary nature of debates as GOTV efforts is confirmed, and the function of debates as informative events is put into question.

The ecological crisis is ravaging the planet. Governments and businesses have set carbon neutrality targets as part of a necessary green transformation. One promising negative emission technology is based on biochar, which has created excitement in the voluntary carbon markets. However, the voluntary carbon markets and carbon sequestration with biochar both stand at a crossroads. There is currently no regulation that would govern the markets. Only voluntary standardizations and the sellers and buyers’ conscience provide directions for the quality of offsets and real carbon cuts achieved. In addition, the production of high-quality biochar remains at a low level. This thesis contributes to the research on green transformations by examining critically the expectations and promises related to biochar and voluntary carbon markets. The focus of this study is on the framings and discourses related to the role of biochar and the voluntary carbon markets in low-carbon pathways. The main research question is: What are the different narratives and perspectives on the role of biochar and voluntary carbon markets in sustainable low-carbon pathways? To answer this, I have identified and interviewed the main actors and stakeholders in the supply chain of biochar-based offsets as well as analyzed key policy and research documents that take part in the biochar offset related discourses. The research approach draws from two theoretical frameworks: the sustainable pathways approach developed by Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones, and Andy Stirling and Maarten Hajer’s critical discourse analysis on environmental policy. These frameworks are used to analyze the informant interviews and policy and research documents. It is found out that there are five discursive patterns shaping the discourses related to biochar and the voluntary carbon markets: biochar as a magic bullet, market-led low-carbon pathway, techno-managerialism, traces of more transformative greening, and climate-centrism. Techno-managerialism is the most distinctive feature of the biochar and voluntary carbon market discourse. Together, the five patterns shape the way in which biochar and the voluntary carbon markets are perceived, how policy problems related to them are defined and framed, and finally, what type of policy solutions are formulated.

This thesis examines the role of markets in speeches made by Ministers of Finance Iiro Viinanen and Jyrki Katainen in the plenary sessions of the Finnish parliament in 1991-1994 and 2007-2010. The aim of this study is to analyse political discourses in speeches made about state budget proposals during two economic crises, the depression of the 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis. The thesis employs Bob Jessop’s Cultural Political Economy approach to view crises as moments of contestation for hegemonic discourses and ideologies, and an opportunity to examine political and social change in the age of neoliberalism through speech. Both crises were also characterised by the contestation of the relationship between Finland and the EU, first centred around accession to the EU and in particular the role of EMU convergence criteria in designing economic policy, and in the second crisis on the nature of centre-periphery relations amid the Eurozone crisis. The purpose of this research has been to uncover the way in which ministerial speeches reflect the neoliberalisation of Finland through a specific national context, which is characterised in particular by the relationship between the state and individual, the moral nature of economic decision-making, the increasing influence and power of the civil service on decision-making through the Ministry of Finance, and the gradual replacement of defence policy by economic policy as the defining factor of Finland’s independence and sovereignty. The thesis explores these concepts through the use of Theo van Leeuwen’s conceptualisation of discourse as the recontextualisation of social practices, analysing the speeches using a comparative and thematic perspective. The analysis finds that while the Ministers of Finance did not draw on discourses of legitimation by authority with regards to the Ministry of Finance, the consistent themes during both periods drew heavily on themes of absolute necessity, responsible decision-making, moralistic attitudes towards the Finnish citizen, and constructions of unity of the Finnish people. Both Ministers also referred to market forces, investor confidence, and trust as existential questions for the sovereignty of the nation and emphasised the need for permanent changes in Finland towards the direction of a neoliberalised market economy. Similarly, the Ministers appeared to draw on paternalist understandings of the state as a shepherd of its people, a guardian of a small nation against predatory international forces, and yet a reasoned disciplinarian of an irresponsible child. The study concludes that in particular the discourses on which the Ministers draw that rely on moralistic and paternalistic articulations of the relationship between the state and the individual can be seen as indicative of the national context of neoliberalisation in Finland. Furthermore, the extent to which the crises are framed as learning opportunities varies, though both Ministers consistently refer to the permanence of the changes (structural in particular) to be made to the Finnish economy, and in differing ways envision a new age in Finland, nonetheless one of credibility, responsibility, and a stable market economy. The study also offers new avenues for research, particularly for the wider debate in parliament and crisis construals therein, in addition to using the theory and the methods of this thesis to analyse other crises, perhaps non-economic in nature, such as the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, the thesis also suggests that further research could be conducted on the paternalistic and moralistic aspects of ministerial politics in particular.

Social psychologists have long assumed that imitation produces rapport and interpersonal trust in the perceiver, but more recent research into the imitation-trust relationship has produced mixed results. In studies utilizing human confederates and longer interaction periods, imitation has produced trust and better negotiation outcomes but when using more controlled settings and short encounters with virtual human characters, such an association has not been found. With this in mind, I sought to investigate whether a prolonged period of interaction with an imitating virtual agent would facilitate the link between imitation and trust. As some research on imitation induced self-other overlap (or ‘feature shifting’) would indicate, I also wanted to identify whether being imitated by someone trustworthy would produce trustworthy behaviour and whether imitation by someone untrustworthy would produce less trustworthy behaviour in participants. To investigate the proposed effects, participants were instructed to play an iterative trust game with 8 different virtual agents, encountering each agent in five subsequent trials. In each trial of the game, one player (investor) was asked to make an investment (i.e. an index of trust) in the other player (receiver) and that was then tripled. The receiver then decided how much of the tripled amount to return (i.e. an index of trustworthiness). In half of the investment trials, participants’ head movements were imitated by the agent, whereafter participants proceeded to make the investment. I found evidence in the first investment trial that imitation promotes trust, with higher amounts invested in the imitators than in the non-imitators. However, after repeated investment trials, the effect of imitation diminished and agents' previous pay back behavior (i.e. trustworthiness) guided investments: participants increased their investments with trustworthy agents but reduced their investments with untrustworthy agents. In receiver trials, more money was paid back after interacting with a trustworthy than with an untrustworthy agent. However, no evidence was found that imitation played a role in this and similarly no evidence for the role of feature shifting was found either. In conclusion, it appears that imitation promotes trust in an initial encounter but over time behavioral reliability plays a greater role than imitation in affecting trust.

The Finnish productivity growth has been sluggish in the period after the great financial crisis. According to Schumpeterian growth theory, produc- tivity growth depends on innovation and competition between firms. In the United States, the productivity slowdown that has occurred during recent decades has been linked to the simultaneous decline in business dynamism. Therefore, this thesis investigates the Finnish competition and business dy- namism in the period between 2004 and 2018, using dynamic and static competition indicators. The main data sources of this work are two micro-aggregated databases developed by the OECD. Due to their high level of harmonization, a compar- ison between Finland and a benchmark group of countries is possible. The work presents descriptive results and then investigates the relationship be- tween the different indicators with fixed effects regression models. The work finds that, when measured with dynamic indicators (entry rates, up or out dy- namics, and job reallocation rates), the level industry dynamism in Finland is as high, or even higher than in the benchmark. Regarding the static indica- tors of competition, industry concentration appears to be higher than in the benchmark, and has increased in the recent years. However, concentration is not linked to increases in mark-ups or entry rate decline. Instead, it can be linked to the reallocation of resources to more productive firms. Nevertheless, allocative efficiency, as measured with Olley and Pakes covariance, is weaker than in the benchmark group of countries. However, low productivity disper- sion between firms may partly explain this. The results are mostly robust to earlier evidence on Finnish business dynamism. The study concludes that the state of competition and business dynamism in the Finnish private sector is good and thus does not seem to be the scape- goat for the productivity slowdown in Finland. However, the low levels of allocative efficiency and the factors behind it call for further investigation. Regarding markups, the results contract some results acquired earlier, and it would be interesting to compare different markup estimates, and study the relationship between the different estimates and innovation, concentration and productivity growth.

This thesis studies the ways the managers of a multinational technology company talk about diversity and diversity management in the workplace. The focus of the study was to examine how socially constructed categories of gender and ethnicity were constructed in diversity rhetoric in an organisational context, and what possible implications this might have to the social realities experienced by the employees. The research data was collected by interviewing 12 managers of a multinational technology company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The research data was analysed with Foucauldian discourse analysis that was used to analyse the various constructions related to diversity and diversity management, as well as hierarchies of power in the text. The results of the study can be divided into three main discourses that were present in the data: 1) ’Differentiation’, where the constructions about gender and ethnicity were made by comparing and contrasting characteristics and behaviour 2) ’Rationalisation’, in which macro-level reasons and public and private level explanations were used to legitimise the gendered and ethnicised divisions in organisations and 3) ’Neutralisation’, where the gender and ethnicity was diminished in the work context by creating an abstract worker. The gendered and ethnicised work practices were also studied in the light of various subject positions avail-able in the text. In the multinational technology company context, masculinity was positioned as active and in the centre of the business environment, where as femininity was positioned as a passive outsider. However, the interviewees used intersections of gender and ethnicity to create different subject positions within the new market conditions. These subject positions created new opportunities for European women and ethnic minority men in the developing multinational business environment. To summarise, in the multinational technology company’s diversity rhetoric, the most visible social categories were gender and ethnicity. These were constructed using different discourses to highlight the organisational practices and power hierarchy, which was dominated by masculinity and Europeanness.

This thesis examines the politics of language and d/Disability enacted by the participants in Kivimedia, a media workshop where d/Disabled persons are aided by media professionals in producing media content. Through an ethnographic analysis of Kivimedia radio broadcasts, the thesis develops a theoretical framework that weaves together linguistic anthropology with critical disability studies. My aim is to understand how ableist ideologies are both reproduced and challenged through linguistic practice. The thesis thus explores Kivimedia as a linguistic and discursive space where d/Disabled and a/Able-bodied interlocutors cooperate, interact and frame one another’s speech, thereby indexing the broader discursive field of d/Disability politics. Ultimately, the thesis contends that Kivimedia participants produce a d/Disability counterpublic through their radio broadcasting, that functions against the backdrop of an ableist public sphere. By establishing a public platform premised on the validity and value of d/Disabled experiences, Kivimedia allows d/Disabled speakers to “Crip” culture, that is, make evident, and possibly transform, the material positionalities of d/Disabled identities within an ableist structure and to interrogate their d/Disabled experiences outside ableist regimentation. In doing so, d/Disability becomes reconfigured as a valued, agentive interactional positionality, manifested relationally and dialogically with a/Able-bodied allies. Through this analysis, the thesis theorizes the interconnection between d/Disability and ableism as something emergent both in and across interaction, as both relational and dialogical. When perceived as interactional achievement, one can understand and scrutinize the dialectical relationship between the abstract institutions that perpetuate ableism and discourses on d/Disability and the interactional practices that comprise everyday life. Within such an interactional understanding, we can analyze and critique ableism and its everyday violence and recognize how both individuals and groups work to expose, challenge and transform ableist structures.

In recent years, European societies have been affected by processes of increased diversity and migration. This master’s thesis explores the involvement in the local civil society of migrants. It takes place within the context of organisations of multiethnic composition working for migrants’ conditions and/or rights in the capital cities of Helsinki in Finland and Athens in Greece, two European metropolitan areas with stark differences in their migration, integration, and civil society panorama. The main aim of the study is to investigate how individuals of migrant origin construct and present themselves as agents for civil society organisations. The theoretical framework for the research is informed by previous studies on social movements and the civil society, in particular the social psychological model by Klandermans and the corpus of research stemming from Goffman’s framing theory. Another central theoretical reference is Goffman’s impression management theory, not previously applied to this research area. Adopting a micro-social constructionist perspective, the theoretical concepts listed above are operationalized with the tools offered critical discursive psychology and positioning theory. The data consists of transcripts of semi-structured interviews with five participants in each city, active in different organisations and from different countries of origins. The analysis led to the individuation of three main self-presentation styles across the participants, varying on different dimensions including the fit between them and the organisation, their position towards the organisation’s team and towards its target – migrant communities. The three styles are: Team Player, Enterprising Leader, and Expert Critic. In light of the results, it can be argued that the participants all attempted to present themselves in a positive light as agents for the organisations. Plus, participants’ self-presentations were impacted on one side from their origin and the stereotypes attached to it, on the other from the dominant migration regime and its consequences for migrants and their integration at the local level. Over all, the analysis yields interesting insights on how societal, organisational, and personal characteristics impact the participation and position in the civil society for migrant actors.