Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p16830"

In this study I consider how the personnel of a professional organization narratively construct their identities in the context of the “new work”. A specific focus of the study is how the personnel discursively produce and negotiate their identities in their narratives. I approach identity through the concept of narrative identity, which is understood to consist of discursive, dynamic and constantly changing self-concepts that are rooted in cultural discourses and shared and produced in various identity narratives. The study is rooted in social constructionism, in which the reality is seen to be constructed linguistically in social practices. The theoretical framework consists of organization study, and theories relating to the change of work-life in the postmodern society. The key concepts of the study are identity work, narrative identity, social identity, social constructionism and the socalled new work. Identities have been studied in various academic fields such as educational sciences, psychology, sociology and economic sciences. Over the past decades, the narrative approach has become popular in organization studies, and it has been applied especially in the studies of identities. The majority of identity studies in knowledge-intensive companies have focused on manager identities and identification, while assistants’ identities remain a quite unexplored topic of research. The study is a narrative study in a professional organization specializing in demanding expert services. Seven assistants participated in the narrative-episodic interviews in the summer of 2018. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were analysed mainly using discourse analysis influenced by membership categorization analysis as well as position analysis. According to the study, the major narrative resource is the social identity of assistants, produced mainly by making distinctions between assistants and other parties, mainly experts. The social identity of assistants is defined by low status. The narrators position themselves on the lowest level in organizational hierarchy. The social identity seems to carry stigmatized characters such as limited agency and sense of insecurity. Positive identities are contrcuted by positioning oneself as a member of an elite organization, by broadening the job description to include other duties than traditional assistant work, or through other means of individual differentiation. Identification with teams or experts as working partners may also produce positive identities. The organizational reality produced in the narratives reflects typical discourses in the context of the new work. The major discourse identified in the study is the discourse of constant individual development, which seems to be institutionalized in the recent bonus scheme reformation. The discourse involves contradictions that shape identity constructions in multiple ways.

The thesis looks at definitions, meanings and values of living traditions as cultural heritage through examining the local views of Vodun cults as cultural heritage in Benin, West Africa. The research is based on participant observation, informal discussions and interviews carried out in Ouidah, Benin, during December 2015 – February 2016. The thesis examines the phenomenon by using theories of cultural heritage, secrecy and postcolonialism, and comparing Vodun with other West African examples of traditions performed as cultural heritage. Previous research has focused on how traditional religion called Vodun has been promoted as cultural heritage by political, cultural and religious dignitaries in the purpose of increasing cultural tourism, building a modern image of Benin and forging a national identity. By shedding light more specifically on how common people experience, interpret and value the heritagization of a previously misrecognized and diabolized local spiritual practice, the thesis contributes to the anthropological body of knowledge on cultural heritage, West Africa and Vodun. The thesis examines the relations between spirituality and culture, secrecy and universal cultural heritage, and empowerment, alienation and commodification. The analysis points out that, although Vodun related events are also used as entertainment by the locals and foreign tourists, the core of the cultural heritage is perceived to be its esoteric spiritual content. Cultural festivals can be used to raise local youth’s interest also in the spiritual aspects of Vodun. Besides entertainment, Vodun spectacles are performances of power of the spirits, and they intend to show that there are secrets that the audience has no access to. Although the secrets belong to certain persons, Vodun as cultural heritage is felt to belong to all Beninese or indeed all Africans. Vodun is defined as original African spirituality which is perceived to have a special bond with Africans and essentially define Africans and Africanness in opposition to the West. The thesis concludes that, although commodification and folklorization are experienced as threats, Vodun as cultural heritage is perceived and experienced as empowering. Giving recognition and valuing a practice which has been extremely denigrated, misrepresented and oppressed for centuries by colonial and other oppressive Western practices is allowing the locals to reclaim agency, redefine Africanness, and defy Eurocentric norms and definitions. Consciousness of the past, present, and future racial inequality is seen important in the production and performance of Vodun as cultural heritage. Appropriating, indigenizing and reworking the discourse of heritage in locally meaningful ways can also be seen as fitting with the logics of Vodun which are characterized by appropriating, accumulating, and reusing powers and foreign influences.