Browsing by Subject "experience"
Now showing items 1-9 of 9
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(2011)The thesis focuses on football from the perspective of experience consumption. Experience consumption is used in this context to describe events and moments when one experiences unusual and memorable emotions. As a counterweight to everyday rationality, consumption of experiences has become ever more popular. The subject is dealt with experience society, sense of community and consumer tribe concepts. Special attention is given to cultural events, spectator sports as a social phenomenon as well as various football-related consumption patterns. The study is a phenomenological-ethnographic descriptive research. The methods used were participant observation and interviews. In the research tradition, understanding and describing of phenomenon as well as writing are essential. Observational data was collected in three different events by monitoring the behavior of spectators and the factors creating the atmosphere. The interviewees have been selected discretionary. Interviews were open by nature. Fascination of sports as a pastime is based on creating strong emotions; therefore spectator sports is experience consumption at its purest form. Sports is an excellent experience product because of its large number of patterns of consumption and because sports events build up an endless continuum. Also my own data indicates that a common history creates a bond with community, and future events help to keep up the enthusiasm. Even the moments of disappointment are essential, because every experience enhances the feelings for the “own” sport and community. In the sports events the experience itself is always subjective, but the existence of the community is necessary. Spectators have ambiguous desire to belong to a group and at the same time to be an outsider. They can choose to observe the game quietly themselves in the middle of the crowd or cheer with other spectators. Evidence suggests that a football fan's enthusiasm can gush from two sources: from the sense of community and from the interest in the game. Sense of community arises from the feeling of belonging to the global football community, to your own team and to a circle of friends. The interest in the game includes football as a sport, regular events watched actively and supporting your own team. Neo-tribe theories are not very relevant in this context, because football supporters are very loyal to the game and to their own club. It is more important to create tight bonds with a small collective, with whom they share a common history and they can share experiences through discussions and by memorizing.
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(2001)The objective of the study was to understand individuality in Muslim women's dress. The research problems were, how individuality forms and appears in their dress. To answer these questions interviews were made with nine Muslim women who live in Finland. The interviews were analysed with the phenomenologically oriented content analysis method. The research report proceeds in a dialogue between theory and the analysis. In this study individuality in dress was studied as a process. Factors affecting to this process were considered: the individual, the set of identities, personality, self, religion, culture and social relationships. An essential part of the process was searching for a positive experience of self. The experience meant intuitive self-identification and satisfaction with the mirror reflection for the women. Individuality was the result of searching for the positive experience of self-identification, because for each woman different kinds of dress gave a feeling of suitability for the self. For example, for some Muslim women head covering is a way to express the self. They experience this as the right way for the good Muslim woman. For others head covering can mean the loss of positive self experience. Individuality in dress appeared in various ways. Some women cover their whole body including their head in public. Some women do not cover their head and some dress even in tight and revealing clothes. There are also Muslim women who cover their faces, they are not included in this study. Individuality appears also within groups that dress similarly. Individuality appeared with different kind of clothes, hairstyles, make-up, choices, details and colour. However, individuality is not only the noticeable differences in dress, but how each Muslim woman belongs to this reality and expresses herself within dress. This means that in this study individuality in dress is seen in a way that many Finns would not consider as individuality.
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(2013)Goals: The purpose of the study was to describe and analyse the content of online discussions and shared experiences among parents of children who suffer from epilepsy as well as parents' experiences with online peer support and its development. The goal was to deepen understanding of online peer support and the experiences of parents, and to develop the online activities of the Finnish Epilepsy Foundation based on the information gained. Previous studies about peer support have included group manifestations, personal experiences and peer support in community discussions. More and more peer support is available online, which has been seen in peer support studies from 2000 2009. Online peer support has been reported as both supporting and hindering empowering experiences. Previous studies have highlighted the significance of personal experiences. In this study, the concept of "experience" is defined from the standpoint of Dewey. Peer support is approached in the framework of empowerment. The study addresses four research questions. 1) What do parents of children with epilepsy write in online discussions? 2) What kind of experiences do they share in it? 3) What kind of experiences have parents had with online peer support, and which experiences further parents' empowerment? 4) How should online discussions be developed among parents? Methods: Study data was drawn from online discussions written by parents of children with epilepsy (the first message posted and the following message chain) and interviews with six (N = 6) parents who agreed to theme interviews. Web materials were written 15 June 13 December 2012. Data from theme interviews were gathered in February 2013 by interviewing parents by phone or in person. Web postings and interview content were handled using abductive content analysis, such that high rankings in the analysis utilised concepts of Siitonen's empowerment model (1999). Results and conclusions: The Internet offered parents of ill children an opportunity to share their experiences with other parents in similar life situations. In online discussions, parents shared their experiences about their children becoming ill, epilepsy treatments, support they had experienced as well as their emotions and mental images of the future. The significance of experiential data was highlighted in what parents wrote. Parents experienced the discussion environment as friendly, open, matter-of-fact and empathetic. From the standpoint of empowerment, it was significant that parents had the strength to support one another even in very difficult everyday life situations. The significance of experiences was affected by the environment of the online discussion, its content, parents' pre-conceived expectations as well as sharing emotional experiences and mental images of the future. Factors in the development of online discussions were related to briefing of the service, improved availability as well as active facilitation.
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(2021)Urban greenery is vital to the people in our increasingly urbanizing societies. It is diverse in nature and provides numerous life improving qualities. Traditionally urban greenery has been assessed with a top-down view through the sensors of aerial vehicles and satellites. This does not equate on what is experienced down at the human level. An alternative viewpoint has emerged, with the introduction of a more human-scale viewpoint. To quantify this human-scale greenery, novel and disparate approaches have been developed. However, there is little knowledge on how these modelling methods and indices manage to capture the greenery we truly experience on the ground level. This thesis is an undertaking to better understand what the greenery experienced by people on the ground level, termed humanscale greenery (HSG), means. The goal was to grasp how the various modelling methods, indices and datasets can be best used to capture this phenomenon. Simultaneously, the study tries to better comprehend how different people experience greenery. To achieve this, human-scale greenery values were collected via interviews at randomly selected study sites across Helsinki. These values were then compared to modelled values at the same sites. The methods and indices tested include modern approaches developed specifically for HSG and traditional greenery assessment methods. Along the greenery values, sociodemographic variables were collected in the interviews and compared to each other in relation to HSG values. The modelled values were on average smaller than HSG values. All methods indicated very strong or strong linear relationships with human-scale greenery. NDVI and semantic segmentation Green View Index (GVI) had the strongest relationships and least deviation. Land use (LU) and color based GVI had the highest error deviations from HSG. The sociodemographic assessment showed hints that age might affect the amount of experienced greenery, but this is uncertain. With a random sampling of interviewees, 25–34-year-olds and less nature visiting people were more common at sites with low HSG. Based on the results obtained here, many different types of novel methods are suitable for modelling HSG with strong linear relationships. However, also traditional greenery assessment methods performed well. It is difficult to curtail the experience of greenery into a single approach. A solution could possibly be obtained via the combination of methods. The results also advocate the usage of machine learning methods for greenery image segmentation. These cannot be applied everywhere due to data coverage problems, but alternative methods can also be used to fill in gaps. The significance of age on the experience of greenery needs further research. Because urban greenery’s benefits are known, attention should also be given onto how different kinds of people are able to experience it. In the future we should also discuss the meaningfulness of assessing absolute greenery in comparison to the types and parts of greenery.
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(2012)Objectives. Children's food behavior trends in Finland are threaten by snacking, especially increased sweet snack consumption, fewer family meals and alienation from the food source. Encouraging children to health-promoting eating habits is important, as childhood diet has been found to often continue into adulthood. New methods are welcome in addition to traditional Nutrition data sharing, that take into account the child characteristic way to explore food. The topic was based on the question whether the focus on food experiences can be a factor when building the children's interest in food. The aim of this study was to describe and interpret the food experiences received by children. The study focused on the interaction between children and food culture. This study was conducted in cooperation with Centre for Food Culture Ruukku in the project Tiedosta taidoksi. New methods, such as taste classes, were used to involve children in the word of food. Methodology. The research participant group was consisted of fourth grade students (n = 44). The data contained text, observation and visual materials. The methods used were observation, questionnaire, essay writing and photography. The data was collected during the period from October to December in 2011. The analysis had two stages. At the first stage, the data was examined with Experience Triangle model. The goal of the second stage was to build a deeper understanding of children's food experience. Results and conclusions. The results show that the children's food experience requires the use of senses, the child's own participation, joy and interactivity with other people. Children have a natural interest in food, as long as made possible. Children need a stimulating and supportive atmosphere, where they can learn about the world of food. When they get the child-oriented tools, they can develop their skills, which can influence their own well-being.
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(2016)The aim of this study was to understand the experiences of children outside a day-care center. Children photographed moments when they felt that they had exceeded themselves. The photographs were viewed in the day-care center during common morning gatherings. In this study it was examined how visual tools and narration support the mediation of child's experience. In addition it was also examined what kind of experiences were photographs mediating. In this study the experience is defined by the interaction between individual and environment (Vygotksky 1978 & 1998b). When examining experiences different environments are taken into account by using Bronfenbrenner's (1979) theory. The theoretical framework is based on socio-cultural theory. Research material was collected in peer group whose activity was guided by the principles of the positive pedagogy. Positive pedagogy highlights child's active role and participation in different environments. Aim of this orientation is to support children's well-being in everyday life. Children's meaningful experiences and positive feelings are in the center in positive pedagogy. These feelings were tried to be reached by visual methods. The study is qualitative case study that examines the experiences of one group of children. It is based upon 'children as co-researchers' methodology. The study involved 20 three to five year old children from a one peer group. Research material consists of photographs that children have taken at home, captions of the photographs, narration of children and notes of the kindergarten teacher. The material was analyzed by using method of content analysis. The results of the study indicate that visual tools encouraged child to narration. Children photographed themselves and their close relatives at home and in the neighborhood. During the common morning gatherings the child was the expert of the situation because he knew what the photograph was about. The project which was directed by the positive pedagogy also helped parents and the staff of the day-care center to better co-operate. The study indicates that visual tools and narration are valuable methods in the pursuit of child's experience.
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(2017)This thesis is not an analysis of trekking as an activity; rather it is about a specific form of tourism as a type of relationship in the world, which can affect modes being in the world. That is ethnic tourism in Pai village Mae Hong Son province Thailand. By examining so called “Hill Tribe” trekking tours as a point of inquiry into forms of touristic interaction I hope to expand on the notion that the ability to enact and manipulate various social roles opens up new channels for being in the world. The overall focus on guides who lead such tours is intended to help elaborate on the fluid nature of social roles and relations. Being at once local actors and conduits to the outside world, through their interaction with tourists, guides fill a unique role in the specialized network of relations that is modern tourism. The approach this study has towards tourism as a specialized type of encounter offers us the potential to better understand why people actively seek out encounters with other cultures, in other places This thesis attempts to develop the argument that through interaction with tourists trekking guides operating out of Pai village in Thailand sell experiences of place and people where in guides themselves come to be symbolic representations of place for their clients. As a type of commodity these experiences are the manifestations of idealized states of being which become subjectively real through interaction; when actors create one another. Through the mediation of experience and encounters trekking guides develop and enact their social role; during the physical act of guiding they come to embody a local setting as they guide tourists through space and interactions to create a local picture of reality under a foreign gaze. Tourism is approached here as a behavior or activity about forging relations between discreet groups of actors as they encounter one another in places for tourism. It is in this line of thought that I try to move away from such an analytical sphere wherein all social acts are ultimately acts of destruction, to one where we instead view human action as being about the social production of other human beings in relation to the self. The physical activity of “Hill Tribe” trekking tourism from the perspective of the tourists is seen here as a specialized type of behavior which actively produces persons through movement in space and time, and interaction with and relation to idealized others. More than anything tourism must be what it results in, a type of relationship defined by new encounters. What the tourist seeks to gain from any given encounter is an essential building block in the relational process of being which we call tourism. People acting in relation to other people with the goal of effecting particular outcomes creates shared realities, in which persons come to understand the self through its relation to others. Therefore the experiences gained through entering into the relational state of being we call tourism hold higher potentials for the active social production of relations rather than a destructive potential for social consumption when tourists and local actors become engaged in the mutual act of inter-personal creation of the other.
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(2019)The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how a poetic metaphor challenges our common sense notions about the world (the estrangement effect) and enables unorthodox ways of thinking and acting (creative imagination). In the study, I will compare and evaluate theories that investigate the role that metaphor has in lived human experience. All the theories discussed share the view that metaphor is epistemologically important for humans. Two different characterisations of this epistemic importance can be identified: 1) the cognitive view, which emphasises the role of metaphor in unconscious, prelinguistic and embodied thought; 2) the pragmatic and phenomenological view of metaphor as a creative activity, a re-imagining of experience and a communicative phenomenon. Defending the latter position, I argue that metaphor has epistemic value, but not because metaphor serves as a cognitive foundation for shared human knowledge, but because it is a creative human pursuit of imagining new possibilities and ways of being. I will criticise the cognitive metaphor theory (CMT), as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, which holds that metaphors are the foundation of human thought and reasoning. This position advocates ideas about global and fixed ways of interpreting metaphor. As such, it fails to explain novel poetic or scientific metaphors, but fairs better with common everyday metaphors, which already have fixed meanings. I will argue that the existence of universal cognitive metaphors is highly doubtful. As an alternative to the problematic framework of the cognitive metaphor theory, I propose pragmatic and phenomenological theories. The pragmatic view of metaphor, proposed by Davidson and Rorty, succeeds better at describing the experience which a novel metaphor incites in the reader. This position suggests that metaphor has an effect, which cannot be explained by extension of a word’s meaning. Metaphor is a linguistic stimulus, which forces the reader to do some creative guesswork about its intention and meaning. Metaphor has pragmatic potential, because it motivates human innovation and discovery. The phenomenological position, espoused by Ricoeur, describes the sense of wonder and excitement that living metaphor evokes in us. This view suggests that metaphorical estrangement is closely aligned with the phenomenological method of epoché, suspension of everyday judgment. Ricoeur suggests that poetic metaphor, similar to the epoché, can help us distance ourselves from the natural attitude and reveal novel ontological possibilities for humans. Despite their differences, both the pragmatist and the phenomenological position characterise metaphor as a creative use of language and arrive at similar conclusions. Committing metaphoric acts has positive consequences because metaphors motivate critical thought, prompt self-reflection and re-evaluation of our previous thought, and enable creative problem solving, speculation and invention.
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(2022)The purpose of this study is to obtain information from a case to shed light on the potential contribution of theatre and Outdoor Education to Sustainability education. Making the transition towards a sustainable world has been labelled as urgent for many decades now. The role of education in this process has been written out multiple times, in various ways. Despite these intentions of transitioning to a more sustainable way of living, literature shows that a satisfactory result has not been obtained yet. The sustainability crisis is a complex problem, and no easy solutions are at hand. Theatre and outdoor education have both different ways of contributing to learning. In this study, experts from both fields, with teachers as education experts, share their ideas and views on what sustainability education is, and how theatre and outdoor education can help to reach the goals it aims at. Experts from theatre, outdoor education, and primary education, are brought together in this study. They all share the experience of an outdoor theatre project aimed at children called ‘Spöket på Lillklobb / Lillklobbin kummitus’. The experts participating in this research were either part of creating this project or participating in it with a group of children under their responsibility. By organising a focus group discussion, the views and ideas of the experts related to the research questions are gathered. This data has then been subject to a thematic analysis. This thematic analysis resulted in the developing of a model for sustainability education: The Laptop model. This model represents the three main themes of sustainability education: the cognitive aspect, the social- and emotional aspect, and the aspect of actions. There are several ways in which theatre and outdoor education can contribute to sustainability education, as presented by the Laptop model. Most importantly, both theatre and outdoor education should be seen as an experience. It is the fact that the children have ‘an experience’ that makes it most valuable. Outdoor theatre is found to contribute holistically to the Laptop model, and make the different parts of the model to interrelate.
Now showing items 1-9 of 9