Kohti määrittämätöntä : Maahanmuuttajien vertaisryhmiin osallistuneiden naisten toimijuus

In this research, I examine the agency of women who has taken part in peer groups for immigrants organized by Finnish refugee council. My thesis is connected with post-colonial feminist research where difference and power have been studied especially from the view of those inferior positions. Agency is the main tool that I use in this thesis. I examine how peer groups are significant in the speech of women and how women s agency shows in their lives. My goal was to examine how women build their lives in a new environment. I also want to show an alternative view in the discussion about integration by telling about the lives of the women. My data is from single and group interviews, from one peer group meeting that I observed and conversations with the peer mentors. Altogether I interviewed 29 women from the age of 18 to elderly people. Women had emigrated from eight different countries. I also used educational material made for peer group mentors as my data. According to my study, the peer groups were significant for women especially because of the social relations made in the groups and the knowledge achieved about Finnish society. Also the language skills achieved in the peer groups were important. In the peer groups women realized to fill the competences acquired to make their space of agency wider. Women s agency was sometimes quiet and it aimed to maintain. This kind of agency made the foundation to everyday life in Finland. It was also used to create relation to the country of emigration. Agency occurred also as toleration. Especially when confronting racism or when women had to give up customs that were important to them. The sense of agency grew in peer groups. This and through perceiving their competences women pondered the paths in their future. Women spoke of themselves as foreigners and made distinction with the majority of population. In the educational material and in the speech of the mentors, the image of Finnishness was unlimited. Women did not find space for them in the concept of Finnish. The intercommunication between women and the majority of population was narrow and those were formed mainly in context of the work of the majority of population. In my research, I noticed that women have enough knowledge, skills and competences for agency, only the space for it is narrow. When speaking about integration, immigrants are seen as objects to be activated. I suggest that from this way of speaking focus should be changed from activation to deconstruction of the positions shown to women.

Miten esiopetusmateriaaleissa esitetään sukupuolta

Earlier school text book studies (eg Tainio and Teräs 2010, Blumberg 2007; Ohlander 2010) have shown that women are underrepresented in school books, both in illustrations and texts, and the genders are represented stereotyped. The study will examine how gender in seen on pre-school education materials. The aim of this study is to determine what kind of representations, discourses and the subject positions of the gender are presented in pre-school materials. This study utilizes a feminist research method. The theoretical starting points are the social constructivist, poststructuralist theory and gender studies. The concept of gender as a social construct. The research used content analysis as well as discource analysis and deconstructive reading. The material was used four different publishers, WSOY, Tammi, Otava and Lasten Keskus preschool integrated material packages, which contain the child's exercise book or booklet, and teacher's guide. The analysis examined the quantity of gender-specific images and gendered words and phrases, and representations of gender, subject position, and discourses, and what linguistic means had been used for representation of masculinity and femininity. Based on the results there were on average more masculine characters and words as feminine in the illustrations and stories of pre-school materials. Feminine and masculine characters representations emphasized traditional gender stereotypes, especially in external characteristics and clothing. Genders had the highest available, with the subject position of stereotypes with reduced mobility, but also other kinds of subject position was observed. The data found in the following gender discources: difference discource, diversity discource and similarity discource. The highest number occurred in the difference and diversity discources. However, there were differences between the different materials. In some materials there were more diverse gender representations and other materials highlighted the differences between genders. Overall, the genders were represented stereotypically in the pre-school materials.

Vision based indoor positioning in a retail environment

Modern smart phones often come with a significant amount of computational power and an integrated digital camera making them an ideal platform for intelligents assistants. This work is restricted to retail environments, where users could be provided with for example navigational in- structions to desired products or information about special offers within their close proximity. This kind of applications usually require information about the user's current location in the domain environment, which in our case corresponds to a retail store. We propose a vision based positioning approach that recognizes products the user's mobile phone's camera is currently pointing at. The products are related to locations within the store, which enables us to locate the user by pointing the mobile phone's camera to a group of products. The first step of our method is to extract meaningful features from digital images. We use the Scale- Invariant Feature Transform SIFT algorithm, which extracts features that are highly distinctive in the sense that they can be correctly matched against a large database of features from many images. We collect a comprehensive set of images from all meaningful locations within our domain and extract the SIFT features from each of these images. As the SIFT features are of high dimensionality and thus comparing individual features is infeasible, we apply the Bags of Keypoints method which creates a generic representation, visual category, from all features extracted from images taken from a specific location. A category for an unseen image can be deduced by extracting the corresponding SIFT features and by choosing the category that best fits the extracted features. We have applied the proposed method within a Finnish supermarket. We consider grocery shelves as categories which is a sufficient level of accuracy to help users navigate or to provide useful information about nearby products. We achieve a 40% accuracy which is quite low for commercial applications while significantly outperforming the random guess baseline. Our results suggest that the accuracy of the classification could be increased with a deeper analysis on the domain and by combining existing positioning methods with ours.

REHTORIT PORTINVARTIJOINA : sekä miten rehtoreiden kertomuksista muodostuu pääkaupunkiseudun Tehostetun ja erityisen tuen kehittämisverkoston tarina

Research objectives. The Special Education Strategy, the legislative change based on it, and the change in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary and Basic Education build the background for this study. An improvement initiative called KELPO was founded in 2008 to implement a new three-level support system in municipalities. To support this initiative, the Network of Intensified and Special Support in the Metropolitan Area was founded in 2010. The Network consists of 22 pilot schools from four metropolitan municipalities and the Centre for Educational Assessment at the University of Helsinki that carries out the developmental assessment of the initiative. The objective of my study was to form an overall view of the functioning of the Network. The data included interviews of 20 principals of the schools belonging to the Network. The interviews were conducted by the Centre for Educational Assessment in the autumn of 2010. The research question is: What do principals speak about the networking done inside and between the municipalities? Methods. I received the data as already transcribed for my use. I researched it using a narrative research approach. As a method I used both thematic reading and classifying narratives by the holistic-content. These methods belong under the analyze of narratives. I collected the narratives from the principals under themes that arose from the data delimited by my research question. The narrative analysis materialized by writing the research story, as a new story was built by the principals stories theme by theme. The classification of the narratives by the holistic-content method was realized according to what kind of a gatekeeper s role each principal had. With a gatekeeper I here mean the intermediary role of a principal between the school and outside world. In addition, I used the analysis of interactive production of the narrative when applicable. Results and conclusions. Explicit features in the story of the Network were the principals at least partial uncertainty of the purpose of the networking, lack of time and resources, changing of initiatives, and lack of continuity. Positive narratives about ownership and empowerment could also be found. Nonetheless, many of the preconditions for success described by the school reform and school networking theories were not fulfilled. According to the collective story, there was no shared goal or purpose, and nor were the needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness fulfilled. Three different kinds of gatekeepers were found in the data: The Exemplary ones, The Survivors and The Losers. The distinguishing factor turned out to be sharing of information at school. Based on the narratives, the schools with principals taking care of sharing information were the most active in partaking in networking.

Internet- karttapalveluiden arviointi ja kehitys strategisessa maankäytön suunnittelussa, tapaustutkimuksena Esikaupunkien renessanssi -hanke

Participation is located in a living and complex environment. Traditional means of participation are only partially able to meet the new environmental requirements. In need are forms of participation which take into account the new opportunities of the environment and residents expertise. Internet map applications are an important channel of participation which potential is in many respects as unexplored and unutilized. They are commonly in inventory the perspectives, bringing out the concerns of the area, and only little for discussing about solutions. Interpretation is usually made by designer. This study focuses on evaluation and development of Internet map applications in strategic land use planning. Subject matter is dealt from designer and the inhabitants point of view. City Planning Department of Helsinki s Esikau-punkien Renessanssi -project and the associated SoftGIS survey acts as the case study. In the beginning of the study I tried to recognize the new environment in which the Internet map applications are placed. The research question is, what kind of challenges and opportunities the e-participation confronts in information society, and what kind of requirements the environmental creates for development of an application. In chapter three I evaluate how successfully these requirements are met in Esikau-punkien Renessanssi -project. I m trying to examine how the application would look like if the environment and the characteristics of the project are met better. The approach is experimental and I try to find new ways to take advantage of Internet maps. I try not to be too limited to current projects and studies. For example, I try to examine how social media and Web 2.0 opportunities can be utilized, and how the learning and shaping nature of planning may be reached in Internet map environment. In chapter four I have developed a new concept for the Esikaupunkien Renessanssi map application, and made images to visualize its operation in practice. I collect all the data in the research and gather it into a new service. The aim is to create a better application for Esikaupunkien Renessanssi -project, which takes into account the living and complex environment of participation and responds to threats and opportunities arising from it. The presented outcome is in many respects different from the current query. In the new service the role of residents is to interact and learn. The traditional standing of the Internet maps and the position of resident as one-sided information donor are questioned. In the concept, the residents innovate and make interpretations too. Influences are taken from a number of modern applications and for example services that make use of social media. The user experience is intended to be interactive, fast and easy. The idea is that the service keeps you up to date with planning matters, not the other way around. Service guides inhabitants, striving to achieve a deeper knowledge of the project's objectives as well as the dynamics and realities that different individuals experience.

Kiinnostusta vai ahdistusta? : Opettajaksi opiskelevien akateemiset tunteet, motivaatio ja opiskelun ongelmat suhteessa hyvinvointiin ja menestykseen aktivoivalla luentokurssilla

Previous studies indicate that positive learning experiences are related to academic achievement as well as to well-being. On the other hand, emotional and motivational problems in studying may pose a risk for both academic achievement and well-being. Thus, emotions and motivation have an increasing role in explaining university students learning and studying. The relations between emotions, motivation, study success and well-being have been less frequently studied. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of academic emotions, motivational factors and problems in studying students experienced five days before an exam of an activating lecture course, and the relations among these factors as well as their relation to self-study time and study success. Furthermore, the effect of all these factors on well-being, flow experience and academic achievement was examined. The term academic emotion was defined as emotion experienced in academic settings and related to studying. In the present study the theoretical background to motivational factors was based on thinking strategies and attributions, flow experience and task value. Problems in studying were measured in terms of exhaustion, anxiety, stress, lack of interest, lack of self-regulation and procrastination. The data were collected in December 2009 in an activating educational psychology lecture course by using a questionnaire. The participants (n=107) were class and kindergarten teacher students from the University of Helsinki. Most of them were first year students. The course grades were also gathered. Correlations and stepwise regression analysis were carried out to find out the factors that were related to or explained study success. The clusters that presented students´ problems in studying as well as thinking strategies and attributions, were found through hierarchical cluster analysis. K-means cluster analysis was used to form the final groups. One-way analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis test and crosstabs were conducted to see whether the students in different clusters varied in terms of study success, academic emotions, task value, flow, and background variables. The results indicated that academic emotions measured five days before the exam explained about 30 % of the variance of the course grade; exhaustion and interest positively, and anxiety negatively. In addition, interest as well as the self-study time best explained study success on the course. The participants were classified into three clusters according to their problems in studying as well as their thinking strategies and attributions: 1) ill-being, 2) carefree, and 3) committed and optimistic students. Ill-being students reported most negative emotions, achieved the worst grades, experienced anxiety rather than flow and were also the youngest. Carefree students, on the other hand, expressed the least negative emotions and spent the least time on self-studying, and like committed students, experienced flow. In addition, committed students reported positive emotions the most often and achieved the best grades on the course. In the future, more in-depth understanding how and why especially young first year students experience their studying hard is needed, because early state of the studies is shown to predict later study success.

Kestävästi vaihtuva muoti : Kestävän muodin mahdollisuudet ja haasteet vaatesuunnittelijan näkökulmasta

The concept of sustainable fashion covers not only the ecological and ethical matters in fashion and textile industries but also the cultural and social affairs, which are equally intertwined in this complex network. Sustainable fashion does not have one explicit or well-established definition; however, many researchers have discussed it from different perspectives. This study provides an overview of the principals, practices, possibilities, and challenges concerning sustainable fashion. It focuses particularly on the practical questions a designer faces. The aim of this study was to answer the following questions: What kind of outlooks and practices are included in sustainable fashion? How could the principles of sustainable fashion be integrated into designing and making clothes? The qualitative study was carried out by using the Grounded Theory method. Data consisted mainly of academic literature and communication with designers who practice sustainable fashion. In addition to these, several websites and journalistic articles were used. The data was analyzed by identifying and categorizing relevant concepts using the constant comparative method, i.e. examining the internal consistency of each category. The study established a core category, around which all other categories are integrated. The emerged concepts were organized into a model that pieces together different ideas about sustainable fashion, namely, when the principles of sustainable development are applied to fashion practices. The category named Considered Take and Return is the core of the model. It consists of various design philosophies that form the basis of design practice, and thus it relates to all other categories. It is framed by the category of Attachment and Appreciation, which reflects the importance of sentiment in design practice, for example the significance of aesthetics. The categories especially linked to fashion are Materials, Treatments of Fabrics and Production Methods. The categories closely connected with sustainable development are Saving Resources, Societal Implications, and Information Transparency. While the model depicts separate categories, the different segments are in close interaction. The objective of sustainable fashion is holistic and requires all of its sections to be taken into account.

"Musiikki merkitsee minulle paljon" : Asennetutkimus musiikin opiskelun merkityksellisyydestä peruskoulun 9. luokkalaisille

The main purpose of the Master Thesis was to find out what kind of attitudes the pupils in the 9th grade of Finnish comprehensive school have towards music as a school subject and compare it to the attitudes of the principals at a school level. The theoretical context of the research is based on the former studies of the significance of music education in the comprehensive school, the connection between learning and attitudes and the motivational factors towards the study motivation of music. In addition to this, I have analysed the role of the evaluation and the assessment from the point of view of developing the educational system and what is the role of management and leadership in relation to the pupils` behaviour and attitudes. The data of the research is the Finnish National Board of Education`s collected data of the assessment of the learning outcomes of arts education and it is nationally representative (N=5056 I phase and n=1570 II phase), both the Finnish-language and the Swedish-language pupil data. I have especially concentrated on the items of measuring the attitudes, the certain background variables and the questionnaire of the principals. The numerical data was analyzed using the multivariate statistical methods. The results of the research prove that in general the pupils and the principals think that music is quite significant as a school subject. The girls valued music on average more than the boys when comparing all the dimensions. The differences were systematic but the effect sizes were under 10 %. There were not statistically significant differences between the Finnish-language and the Swedish-language pupils. Comparing the grades of music in the 7th grade, the differences were growing linearly and the effect size was 15.7 %. There was a positive statistically significant correlation between the Significance of music and music as a hobby (Active interest in music, Informal interest in music, Taking part of music activities in the school) during free time. The strongest correlation were with the Active interest in music variable (r= 0.53, p= .000). Also the principals thought that music is important as a school subject considering the development of the pupil and the function of the school. The answers of the pupils were not clustering at a school level and there were no strong correlations between the attitudes of the pupils and the principals. A statistically nearly significant and a slight correlation (r= 0.21, p= .011) was found between the principals valuing the Significance of the music for school function and the pupils valuing the Benefits and hobbyism. The role of a well-motivated and active music teacher can be important from this point of view. The most important conclusion of the research was that the significance of music is a very personal individual level phenomenon. The results highlight also that in the pupils` opinion the most important thing about music lessons is to musical activity and learning as an experience.

Constructing Fair Tourism in Ecuador: The Case of Asoguabo

Tämän pro gradu-tutkielman tarkoitus on tutkia, miten reilun kaupan banaania tuottavan El Guabon pienten banaaninviljelijöiden järjestön Asoguabon reilun turismin projekti on rakennettu. Projektin muotoutumista tutkitaan tässä työssä kahdesta eri näkökulmasta: siitä, miksi ja miten Asoguabo on monipuolistanut viljelystä turismiin, sekä siitä, millainen kuva projektista on rakennettu markkinoinnin kautta ja miten reilun kaupan mainonnasta tuttuja ilmiöitä on hyödynnetty reilun turismin rakentamisessa. Tutkielman teoreettisena taustana on maaseudun muutoksia tarkasteleva uuden ruraliteetin käsite. Turismi on viime vuosikymmenten aikana muuttunut, ja matkailijat etsivät yhä enemmän aitoja ja autenttisia matkailukokemuksia. Samanaikaisesti turismia on tuotteistettu korostamalla sen tiettyjä, kestävän kehityksen mukaisia piirteitä, ja erityisesti kehittyvissä maissa turismia markkinoidaan usein vaihtoehtoisena, yhteisöpohjaisena tai ekoturismina. Reilu turismi on uutena käsitteenä tullut mukaan tähän laajaan kirjoon, ja tämä tutkielma käsitteleekin Asoguabon projektia nimenomaan reilun turismin näkökulmasta. Tämä tutkielma on tapaustutkimus Asoguabon turismiprojektista, ja pohjautuu kuukauden pituiseen kenttätyöhön Ecuadorissa tammikussa 2010 sekä kirjoittajan aiempiin kokemuksiin Asoguabosta. Aineisto koostuu 21 puoli-strukturoidusta laadullisesta haastattelusta kuudentoista informantin kanssa, joista suurin osa oli hyvin läheisesti tekemisissä projektin kanssa. Tämän lisäksi aineistonkeruussa on käytetty havainnointia sekä projektin markkinointimateriaalien sisällönanalyysia. Tutkielma osoittaa reilun turismin projektin sisältävän monia haasteita ennen kuin se voi saavuttaa tavoitteensa tuottaa lisätuloja Asoguabon toimintaan. Tutkimushetkellä projekti hyödytti suoraan pääasiassa muutamia järjestön viljelijöitä, lähinnä niitä, jotka toimivat projektissa oppaina. Nämä oppaat hyötyvät projektista saamalla pieniä lisätuloja, kasvattamalla sosiaalista pääomaansa, sekä saamalla mahdollisuuden oppia muun muassa osallistumalla kursseille. Tutkimuksen keskeiset tulokset osoittavat myös, kuinka vuorovaikutus-ongelmat projektin eri toimijoiden välillä vaikeuttavat tiedonkulkua ja täten reilun turismin toimintaa. Nämä ongelmat myös lisäävät epätietoisuutta Asoguabon muiden viljelijöiden parissa. Lisäksi tutkimus osoittaa, kuinka reilun turismin projektin mainonnassa käytetään osittain samoja keinoja kuin reilun kaupan tuotteiden mainonnassa, joskin tuottajia on kuvattu mainosmateriaaleissa yllättävän vähän ja pääosassa ovat usein eurooppalaiset turistit.

Valistus suomalaisessa kirjakulttuurissa 1700-luvulla

The dissertation discusses the history of the book and the Enlightenment in Finland by studying the reception and diffusion of eighteenth-century books and by approaching the discourse on the Enlightenment in Finnish source material. The methods used relate to historian Robert Darnton s studies on eighteenth-century print culture and his analyses of the relations between print culture and society. The study is based on diverse eighteenth-century sources: books, pamphlets and dissertations, bibliographies, book auction protocols, parliamentary documents, estate inventory deeds, newspapers, letters, lectures, memoirs and commonplace books. By the end of the eighteenth century, book production had increased and secular literature had begun to challenge the dominance of religious literature. The books of the Enlightenment belonged to the new literature that found its way into Finnish book collections previously dominated by religious literature. Enlightenment literature is not a set selection of books but rather diverse works from different genres. Thus the study introduces a variety of printed material, from philosophical tracts and textbooks to novels and pornography. In the case of books of the Enlightenment, the works of French Voltaire and German Christian Wolff were among the most widely read and circulated books in Finland. First and foremost, the Enlightenment was an era of intellectual debate. These debates carried strong criticism of the prevailing systems of thought. Enlightenment ideas challenged the Lutheran society of Sweden and especially its sense of conformity. Contemporaries saw many of the books of the Enlightenment as vessels of new ideas and criticism. Furthermore, this kind of print material was interpreted as being dangerous for uneducated readers. Belonging to a certain estate and social class had a major impact on individuals reading habits and their acquisition of books. One specific social group stands out in the Finnish source material: the officers at the Sveaborg naval fortress possessed and distributed Enlightenment books more than the members of any other social class. Other essential social groups were scholars, the nobility and the clergy, who took part in debates concerning the ideas and benefits of the Enlightenment. In the Finnish debates at the time, the concept of Enlightenment involved three primary notions. Firstly, it referred to the French philosophers, les philosophes, and to their works as well as to the social changes that took place during the French revolution. It also carried the idea of philosophical light or the light of reason, in a sense similar to Immanuel Kant s writings. Most importantly, it referred to a belief in progress and to a trust in true knowledge that would supercede ignorance and fanaticism. Hence, it is impossible to speak about the Enlightenment era in the Swedish realm without such concepts as reason, benefit or progress. These concepts likewise marked the books of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Finland.

Prison Experiences and Socialist Sculptures

I will discuss five sites of Soviet period dark heritage: three occupation museums in the capital cities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a Soviet sculpture park in Lithuanian countryside and a cultural park in a former prison in Tallinn, Estonia. All but the last one have an important role in the local tourist scene. My purpose is to find out how the traumatic Soviet past is presented at the sites and what kind of different modes of display are used. I will also discuss the ways the sites have been interpreted by the visitors.

"Pitää kuitenkin lähentyä sitä vangin roolia, vaikka ite ois toista mieltä" : Diskurssianalyyttinen tutkimus toiseuden rakentumisesta vankilaopetuksessa

The focus of this discourse analytical study was to review the meanings which prison education and its participants are given in the formal educational policy and to find out whether these meanings are agreed by the prison students. The intrestes of this thesis were to examine what kind of social and individual promises are related to the prison education and what kind of subject positions are possible to the prison students. The thesis was also interested in the meanings of education in different contexts. The aim of this study was to examine prison education especially for women. This thesis was based on Michel Foucault s ideas of power and the view of this study was directly critical. The prison education was seen as normalizing governance which tends to prepare its subjects to the normal. In this process of differentiating the normal and the abnormal the subjects of prison education are reconstructed as the others . The three research questions of this thesis were: how and what kind of prison education is reconstructed firstly in the strategy of prison education and secondly in the interviews. Thirdly it was questioned how and what kind of meanings gender receive in the discourse of prison education. The main data was consisted by the Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency s document The Strategy of the Prison education for years 2008 2012 and the three interviews of women who participated to prison education. The interviews were made for this thesis in Autumn 2010. Two other Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency s documents Prisoners in education (2007) and Visible women (2008) - the report of the working group on female prisoners were also used as subtext materials. The methods of critical and realistic discourse analysis and rhetorical analysis were applied in the analysis. The results of the thesis support the outlook of prison education as a form of normalizing governance which reconstruct the others position for the prison students. Prison education was seen supportive for personal life control and for integrating to the society. The participants of prison education repeated the official discourses in their accounts which is a signal of internalized governance. The interviewees also used different types of anti-discourses when forming implications of prison education.

Yhteiskuntaluokka ja maku

Thee thesis, which consists of four original articles and a summarizing chapter, discusses homology between social class and cultural taste. Cultural taste is defined as the choices made in different areas of culture (television, cinema, reading, music, visual arts, sports, dining out, and leisure pursuits). Taste choices manifest themselves as likes and dislikes but also in what a person does. Social class is observed through occupational status, level of education, income and subjective views on class. The central research question concerns the relationship between social class and consumption of culture. The study aims to clarify what kind of class related differences can be found in cultural consumption, but also how these differences are connected to other factors stratifying the society such as gender, age and mother tongue. The data that is being analyzed consists of the data gathered by the project Cultural Capital and Social Differentiation in Contemporary Finland: An International Comparison. Class identification and the relation of cultural divisions to the socioeconomic ones are being analyzed using a nationally represent-ative survey data (N = 1388). Individual interviews (N = 25) and twenty focus group interviews (N = 20) on cultural consumption are also being analyzed. The theoretical framework is built around Pierre Buourdieu s theory of distinction and its critique but also recent research that expands on bourdieusian theory. In the theory of distinction lifestyle is thought to be defined through the quantity and quality of different capitals (economic, cultural and social). Cultural tastes are therefore linked to class status through different capitals. The study shows that the majority of Finns can place themselves in the class scene. Moreover, class-related differences can be found in cultural consumption in empirical analyses. The main differences between classes can be seen in how different classes relate to cultural products but also in the number of leisure pursuits. Being well-off economically is connected to being well-off culturally. High status manifests as omnivorous cultural consumption. The central differences are built upon occupational class so that the working class is more passive than other class groups. Same difference can be found in relation to education and income level. Other im-portant divisive variable is age. Age group defines what is being consumed: the younger respondents are inclined to choose popular culture whereas the older age groups choices represent more traditional taste choices.

Elämää suuremmat sankarittaret : Suomalaisen teatterin elämäkerralliset taiteilijahahmot vuosina 2000 - 2010

In the first decade of the 21st century, national notables were a significant theme in the Finnish theatre. The lives of artists, in particular, inspired the performances that combined historical and fictional elements. In this study, I focus on the characters of female artists in 18 Finnish plays or performances from the first decade of the 21st century. The study pertains to the field of performance analysis. I approach the characters from three points of view. Firstly, I examine them through the action of performances at the thematic level. Secondly, I concentrate on the forms of relationships between the audience and the half-historical character. Thirdly, I examine the representations of characters and their relationships to the audience using myth as a tool. I approach characters from the frame of feminist phenomenological theatre study but also combine the points of view of other traditions. As a model, I adapt the approach of the theatre researcher Bert O. States, which concentrates on the relation between a play s text and an actor, and between an actor and the public. Furthermore, I use the analysing tools of performance art in an examination of performances counted among the contemporary performance genre. The biographical plays about these artists are concentrated in the domestic sphere and take part in the conversation about the position of women in both the community and private life. They represent the heroines work, love, temptations and hardships. The artists do not carry out heroic acts, being more like everyday heroines whose lives and art were shared with the audience in an aphoristic atmosphere. In the examined performances, criticism of the heterosexual matrix was mainly conservative and the myths of female and male artists differed from each other: the woman artist was presented as a super heroine whose strength often meant sacrifices; the male artist was a weaker figure primarily pursuing his individualistic objectives. The performances proved to be a kind of documentary theatre, a hybrid of truth and fiction. Nonetheless, the constructions of subject and identity mainly represented the characters of the mythical stories and only secondarily gave a faithful rendition of the artists lives. Although these performances were addressed to the general and heterogeneous public, their audience proved to be a strictly predefined group, for which the national myths and the experience of a collective identity emerged as an important theme. The heroine characters offered the audience "safe" idols who ensured the solidity of the community. These performances contained common, shared values and gave the audience an opportunity to feel empathy and to be charmed by the confessions of well-known national characters.

Ideaalin ja todellisuuden välimaastossa - katoavatko perheateriat?

Aims: The recent conversations about disappearing family meals, mental problems of the youngsters and family meals´ protective effect on youngsters problems have been the base of this study. The main aim of this study is to find out, what kind of position family meals do have in the youngsters´lives. Study questions are: 1. What kind of conceptions youngsters have of family meals? 2. What kind of hands-on experience youngsters have about family meals? 3. How youngsters feel family meals on a emotional level? a. Are meals positive moments with the family or do they just limit timetables? b. Do the youngsters need family meals if they do not have those in their families? Why? Why not? Methods: The data was collected using stimulated recall -interviews and basic themed interviews. The data was collected from thirteen 8th graders from Pirkanmaa and Kanta-Häme. The interviews were analyzed with the qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusion: The youngsters´ consepts of the meals and the family meals were quite traditional, assuming that those are warm, varied and eaten with company. The situation of the family meals was good and those were eaten nearly every day in the most of the families. The youngsters thought that the family meals were important social moments with the family and they were able to talk about important things with the family during the meals. They also felt that the daily eating rythm was good and they did not felt that the meals would have been somehow restrictive. Even so that the pupils felt the family meals were important, the pupil whose family did not eat family meals did not long those meals. He felt that he was able to share his thoughts and experiences also in other ways. It is important that youngsters have this channel of communication.