Browsing by Subject "narrative"
Now showing items 1-4 of 4
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(2024)Finnish national identity in defense policy is a concept that is often less emphasized in academic research. By utilizing the historical research method to evaluate 8 Finnish security policy documents from 2001-2022, this thesis seeks to uncover how the idea of national identity is used within the documents. There is an extensive historical background which covers wars and foreign relations of Finland to note the formation of a national identity and its variations over time. Constructivism as an approach to international relations and history in a narrative format is used as a theoretical background to investigate these issues. National identity is found to have some influence upon action taken in Finnish defence policy and can prescribe a range of options for maneuver.
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(2017)This thesis joins the eternal process of reaching for the unreachable, mysterious space of non-existence. Instead of defining anything or offering any answers, it makes portraits of a particular phenomenon: the question of remembrance and death in a context of today. What kind of scenarios have been offered for our digital afterlife? How do we want to be remembered after death as our lives become more difficult to grasp physically? We will meet a man who travels around the world with an uncanny robot, and listen to an artist in the process of inventing an interactive form for expressing grief through metaphysical dialogue. We will explore ideas of an entrepreneur who offers you a chance to live (symbolically) forever as an avatar, and we will focus on a hybrid eternity project, transforming rituals of memorising into forms that may speak more accurately to the mortals of the digital world. We will imagine a never-ending conversation between two lovers. Behind this curiosity towards the immortal enigma, there lies a wider question of whether our ’less physical’ lives could make us re-imagine, and possibly even notice changes in our beliefs and thoughts about death and remembering. The methodology of this work trusts in the power of human conversation. Through semi-structured, qualitative interviews with a limited amount of people, the thesis searches for scenarios of alternative futures for the culturally shifting rites of passage. Inspired by narrative approach to research and life, stories are valued as ever-changing material through which we construct our realities – and ourselves. What kind of narratives do the present-day technologies encourage us to create? How might our increasingly digital lives be changing the way we memorise and mourn? This work offers a speculative theoretical meditation to a few alternative futures of remembering: apocalyptic self-narratives that make the border between fiction and fact seem obscure.
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(2008)The purpose of this study was to find out, in retrospect, how the polytechnic students chose their study place and how their conception of the reputation of an educational institute affected their choices during the application process. The study was based on the narrative interviews of 17 first year students from three degree programs of one polytechnic. The analysis of the interviews proceeded in two successive stages. The first stage consisted of a narrative analysis in accordance with the classification of Donald Polkinghorne (1995). In the second stage, the analysis was complemented by A. J. Greimas’ three-level semiotic approach, comprising the discursive, narrative (actantial model) and deep levels. The conclusions were based on both analyses, i.e. on methological triangulation. The narrative analysis prepared the way for the construction of three meta-narratives in accordance with the applicants’ aims. The three aims that guided the applicants’ choices were (i) the up-dating of one’s professional skills, (ii) the choice of a profession and (iii) the taking of a degree in a polytechnic. The semiotic analysis showed two dimensions along which the choices were made. Firstly, the applicants aimed to have a study place in which they could combine both practical skills and theoretical knowledge (pragmatic-professional dimension). Secondly, the analysis also showed that emotions and values affected the choices they made (dimension of social values). The reputation of a polytechnic was considered an important factor of the application process. The applicants’ conception of reputation turned out pragmatic, since the stories they had heard about the daily routines of a polytechnic were regarded as essential for its reputation. The stories about a high number of drop-outs and graduation without employment prospects were considered negative for reputation. The applicants highly valued the information they received directly from the polytechnic students. Grapevine proved to be an effective means of communication, but the applicants also resorted to general information guides and the institutes’ Internet pages, whereas the media’s role turned out less important during the application process. The most important communicational channel was face-to-face communication. E-mail, mobile phone and various platforms in the Internet also provided forums or networks for meeting peers and spreading stories about the polytechnics.
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(2020)Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyz society got entangled in discussions about what it means to be Kyrgyz. Even though Kyrgyzstan has experienced a surge in nationalism over the last decades, it is only since recently that non-heteronormative sexualities are increasingly constructed as a threat to the continued existence of the Kyrgyz nation. Based on five in-depth interviews with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) individuals, I explore how they rationalise the increasing homophobia in Kyrgyz society and what kind of behavioural strategies they adopt to cope with the hostile environment. In particular, I assess whether the discursive exclusion of LGBT individuals from the Kyrgyz nation alters their relationship with the nation and the state. The research participants demonstrate an awareness for the connection between increasing nationalism and worsening attitudes against LGBT people and report corresponding adjustments in their behaviour, ranging from adaptation and hiding strategies to activism and emigration. While all respondents have a negative relationship with the Kyrgyz state, most report a decreasing sense of belonging to the Kyrgyz nation amid growing homophobia as well. These results suggest that the increased emphasis on the purportedly heteronormative nature of the Kyrgyz nation succeeds in redefining individual belonging to the nation and shifting the imagined boundaries of the nation.
Now showing items 1-4 of 4