Search results for "ethnography."
showing 10 items of 312 documents
Making experts-by-experience : governmental ethnography of participatory initiatives in Finnish social welfare organisations
2018
This dissertation analyses expertise-by-experience in Finnish social welfare organisations as part of the participatory practices presented as new democracy. It employs a governmental ethnographic method to investigate how a person with difficult experiences is made into ‘an expert of one’s own life’ and how the subjectivity thus created is connected to different possibilities and rationales of participation. It asks: 1. What characterises the subjectivities created in the initiatives? 2. How (through which practices) are the participants constructed as experts? In this summary article the democratic quality of expert-making practices is interpreted through a critical democratic lens by inq…
Gay athlete's experiences in sport and exercise domains in Finland
2013
Sport is perceived to be one of the last fortresses of heteronormative and homonegative attitudes that cause psychological and social issues for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) athletes, especially in their self-confidence and self-concept. Furthermore, these negative mindsets challenge LGBT individuals' participation in organized sport and physical activity. To offer effective consulting services, it is vital for sport psychologists to be aware of the issues that LGBT athletes might struggle with throughout their sport careers. Adopting 'queer theory' as a theoretical framework, this study strives to understand a gay male athlete's experiences in sport and physical activity …
Values as a hobby: the transformation and survival of cultural ritual values in the process of desecration
2023
The paper examines how values lose their sacred or protected significance and turn into values as a hobby. Using an excerpt from Arundhati Roy's novel “The God of Small Things”, a trend of transformation of values is outlined, which raises questions about the importance of different values, both sacred and secular, for the representatives of these values. In short, the question is one of the value of values: is their practice (affirmation) meaningful in the basic sense of these values, or is this practice mere imitation as a hobby? The article gives several examples that show the versatility of this topic. The case of Qutb’s Islamism highlights the importance of the distinction between priv…
Towards a sociology of the mobile phone
2005
Use of the mobile phone is an immensely significant social and cultural phenomenon. However, market hype and utopian dreams greatly exaggerate its importance. The fundamental issue for sociology is the process of change. Bound up with contemporary issues of change, the mobile phone is a prime object for sociological attention both at the macro and micro levels of analysis. This article considers the strengths and weaknesses of four methods for studying the sociality of the mobile phone (social demography; political economy; conversation, discourse and text analysis; and ethnography), the different kinds of knowledge they produce, and the interests they represent. Recent ethnographic researc…
Do concepts and methods have ethics?
2020
Towards an understanding of the caring phenomenon - why is it so topical? : a search for its role and its attributes in holistic education
2016
Traditional liberal education has provided one-size-fits-all schooling, followed by neoliberal policies in the past 30 years, resulting in losing the purpose of education to build well-rounded personalities and to ensure quality education for all. Instead, the ideal today is the homo economicus able to further personal goals on self-interest, and the global divide between the haves and have-nots has increased. The research problem rises from the alternative view to the purpose of education, to fostering the learner’s full human growth, and focuses on holistic education as expressed in the ethics of care theory of Nel Noddings and my life experiences in four diverse learning cultures. Meta-a…
Etnografian reittejä kylien ajallisuuteen ja aineellisuuteen
2020
In my dissertation I have traced novel routes to village research by examining the transformation of the villages through the concepts of temporality and materiality. My research questions are: What kind of temporal trajectories have formed the villages? What kind of things, events, processes or connections have in the course of time been part of the village? I examine the transformations having taken place along various trajectories and focus on how the past and the future are related in the present in certain moments. With material culture I refer especially to the built environment, including the element of landscape. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Ahvenselkä village…
Kuurojen turvapaikanhakijoiden kielikäsityksien muokkautuminen turvapaikkaprosessin aikana
2021
Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan kahden kuuron turvapaikanhakijan, Monan ja Omarin, kielikäsityksiä haastatteluaineiston pohjalta. Artikkelin tavoitteena on lisätä ymmärrystä siitä, miten turvapaikkaprosessin aikaiset kokemukset kielistä ovat muokanneet haastateltavien käsityksiä kielistä ja kielikäytänteistä. Tutkimus perustuu lingvistiseen etnografiaan teoreettisena ja metodologisena lähestymistapana. Aineisto koostuu kolmesta etnografisesta haastattelusta, jotka tehtiin vuosina 2015–2017 vastaanottokeskuksissa ja haastateltavien uudessa kodissa. Aineisto on analysoitu sisällönanalyysin avulla. Tutkimuksesta selviää, että haastateltavien kielikäsitykset ovat muokkautuneet tilassa, ajassa …
The power of language policy : the legal recognition of sign languages and the aspirations of deaf communities
2016
This thesis explores Sign Language Peoples’ aspirations for the legal recognition of sign languages, with specific focus on Finland and Scotland. It highlights the timely need to strengthen (in practice) and scrutinize (academically) the legal measures that have been achieved as well as their implementation – and to measure all this against the challenges of endangerment and sustaining vitality. The theoretical framework for this study is centred in language policy and planning and political theory. The research methodology draws on principles of the ethnography of language policy and uses two traditional qualitative research methods, that is, interviews and participant observation, plus de…