Browsing by Subject "narrative identity"
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(2016)Narrative view of person, suggested by MacIntyre and Ricoeur, represents a holistic and teleological perspective on moral personhood. It recognizes the historicity of human being that appears in the narratives that an individual tells about his or her life, and the ethical character connected to this historicity. Consciousness of staying the same in the past, in the present, and in the future implies that person can take moral responsibility of his or her actions in relation to the others. On the other hand, understanding human being as historical affects the ethical judgment: actions can never be judged separated from the motives of the agent and the prevailing circumstances. Balancing between teleology and deontology, contextuality and universality, the narrative perspective encourages to embrace the perspective of practical wisdom to ethical judgment. Both MacIntyre and Ricoeur content that moral rules are necessary to create a framework for what is right or wrong. However, in addition to rules, evaluation relates to the overall vision of good. Alasdair MacIntyre and Paul Ricoeur have different motivations to embrace the narrative approach on human being. MacIntyre thinks that the moral disorder reflected in emotivist tendency of the contemporary moral discussions results from rejecting the teleological view of ethics. Believing in the superiority of Aristotelian virtue ethics to provide a better basis for morality than the rational options presented by the Enlightenment authors, he builds his theory of narrative unity on concepts deriving from Aristotle: virtues, practices, traditions, and telos that expresses the aim of good life. Also Ricoeur’s view is teleological, appearing in his ethical aim of ”good life with and for others in just institutions,” despite that his starting point is different. On the one hand, based on his own analysis in Time and Narrative, Ricoeur thinks that narrative helps an individual understand himself both on historical and ethical level: in addition to collecting the separate events as a discordant concordance, narrative provides a place for ethical deliberation. On the other hand Ricoeur is aware of the ability of narratives to transform one’s character: encountering of narratives of religions, similarly as encountering narratives of others, affects person’s identity. From the perspective of theology, understanding human being as a narrative self encourages both to connect to one’s own tradition, and to take the others into account in their singularity. Connecting to one’s religious tradition, becoming conscious of one’s roots by encounter with the narratives of one’s religious tradition or others representing the same tradition may result in a positive, ethical transformation that makes one open up towards the others and to function for the sake of the others: either in one’s personal life or on the level of institution. To take the others into account in their singularity from theological point of view could mean acknowledging the varying life-situations of individuals, their motives and social circumstances, instead of judging persons by their actions based on predefined religious principles. Also, taking into account that the other does not necessarily share the same religious conviction, for example by undressing one’s speech from religious symbols and arguments while discussing common affairs, can be one way to respect the other as narrative self.
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(2010)The purpose of this thesis was to understand the experiences of the multiethnic people in Finland. This study explored the different aspects of the ethnic identity development process. Thesis was done in two phases. First phase studied the question of how is the ethnic identity developed in Finnish context and what aspects had affected their ethnic identity process. The second phase explored questions as what kind of ethnic identity form the multiethnic people have in Finland and do they have developed cosmopolitan global identities. The aim of this qualitative study was not to empirically measure or define the multiethnic identity, but to open new perspectives of the life and experiences through narrative research. Intention of this thesis was to give voice to 'small' stories of the minority people that are so often shadowed by the 'big' stories of the male of the majority. The first phase of this study included narratives from four multiethnic women. The narratives answered to questions who am I and where do I come from. The second phase data collection was made with narrative forms to 12 self-identified multiethnic persons. The multiethnic people were from three backgrounds: ones with parents from different ethnic backgrounds, Finnish who had lived long time abroad and people from non-Finnish background who had lived in Finland for a long time. The analyzing was made by analyzing the narratives with content analysis that based on the theory of the multiethnic people and by narrative analyzing where short narratives were created of each person. In conclusion the multiethnic identity was found to be a continuous process that lasted through lifetime. Different aspects affected the identification process, including family dynamics, social mirroring and belonging. The variety of different ethnic options in multiethnic person identity process, lacking family support for the both ethnic identities and the feeling of otherness experienced by the multiethnic people in Finland cause additional challenges to the ethnic identity process and results in some cases cultural homelessness. On the other hand the variety of cultural contexts brings flexibility to negotiate between different cultures and languages resulting to positive hybrid identity for some of the multiethnic people. Hybrid identity was sub grouped to cosmopolitan identity and multicultural identity.
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