Utbrändhet som arbetsskada och motståndsberättelse

Burnout as occupational injury and narrative of resistance During the last years of the 1990s and the first years of the 2000s, burnout was a common diagnosis for sick listing in Sweden. That burnout is directly related to working life was acknowledged by medical experts as well as in the public debate. The number of applications for occupational compensation due to social and organizational factors in work rose from a very modest degree to nearly a forth of the claims among occupational diseases. In this article 48 individual claims for compensation in cases of burnout as occupational disease are analyzed as narratives of resistance. In this respect they are seen as alternative accounts of risk in working life, but also as narratives about resistance. The concept, narratives of resistance, is used to understand the claimants’ argumentation for rights to compensation, as well as how the claimants draw upon public narratives of societal transformation to understand how they themselves have become ill from occupations that normally are not thought to be hazardous. One conclusion from the analysis is that the claimants regard their illness as the resistance of the body against changes in society and working life. 

Exploring 'Samoaness' in the Samoan language film The Orator (O Le Tulafale)

The Pacific nation of the Independent Samoa (formerly Western Samoa)  is not known for having a developed film industry.   In 2011, a Samoan languge film called The Orator (O le Tulafale) placed the spotlight on Samoa, its people, and the Samoan culture when it became the country’s first ever film to be accepted into major international film festivals such as the 68th Venice Film Festival.  Samoans the world over have embraced the film for its richness, compassion, and authenticity. Yet at times, the film portrays the Samoan culture as harsh and cruel.   Samoans are usually quick to criticise negative portrayals of their culture but the thousands of comments on the film’s official Facebook page show otherwise.  From April 2011 to March 2012, there were only 11 comments criticising the film on Facebook, and these criticisms were denounced as ‘un-Samoan’. This raised the question as to why Samoans did not react to the unflattering portrayals of their culture, but instead react against legitimate criticisms of the film.  By using Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and the Samoan narrative structure of fāgogo, a heterotopia space and a utopia space are created in which past memories confirming Samoan cultural identity and bonds to the culture are evoked and are (re)experienced by Samoans while viewing the film.  Thus the film’s ability to encourage this is what Samoans praise rather than the actual film.  

The Secret Aria on Shame : An Analysis of Narrative Structure and Theme in Coetzee's "Diary of a Bad Year"

Coetzee’s last novel Diary of a Bad Year (2007) has an intriguing triple-voiced narrative structure and deals with the grey area of shame. The narrative is divided between a writer, his written contribution to a book called “Strong Opinions”, and his secretary’s thoughts about both the opinions in the manuscript and her employer’s circumstances. This essay explores the relation between form and theme in Diary of a Bad Year; to see in what way these two fundamental elements of the novel intervene and support each other. By doing so the narrative structure is read through Freud’s structural model of personality, whereby each narrator’s voice is related to the notions of the super-ego, the ego and the id. In other words, this essay argues that the specific threefold narrative structure in Diary of a Bad Year, by reflecting the interrelated parts of human identity, helps in creating and developing the theme of shame, which only exists connected to the human psyche. This connection in turn gives special meaning to the entire narratology of the novel.

An analysis of Samoan reaction to The Orator (O Le Tulafale)’s Fāgogo defining Samoan identity

The Orator (O Le Tulafale) was promoted as the first Samoan language film shot in Samoa with a Samoan cast and crew. Written and directed by Samoan filmmaker Tusi Tamasese, the film succeeded at several of the movie industry’s prestigious festivals. The Orator (O Le Tulafale) is about an outcast family of a dwarf (Saili), his wife and her teenage daughter. As the main protagonist, Saili battles to overcome his fears to become a chief to save his family and land. The film’s themes are courage, love, honour , as well as hypocrisy, violence, and discrimination. A backlash by Samoans was predicted ; however, the opposite occurred. This raised the following questions: first, what is it about the film causing this reaction? It is a 106 -minute film shot in Samoa about Samoans and the Samoan culture . D espite promotional claims about the film , there have been Samoan -produced films in Samoa . Secondly, to what are Samoans really responding? Is it 1) just to the film because it is about Samoa, or 2) are they responding to themselves , and how they reacted during the act of watching the film? This implies levels of reactions in the act of watching, and examining the dominant level of response is important. To explore this, t he Samoan story telling technique of Fāgogo was used to analyse the film’s narration and narrative techniques. R. Allen’s (1993, 1997) concept of projected illusion was employed to discuss the relationship between Samoans and the film developed during the act of watching. An examination of the term Samoan and a description of the framework of Fa’a Samoa (Samoan culture) were provided. Also included were discussions of memory and its impact on Samoan cultural identity. The analysis indicated that The Orator (O Le Tulafale) acted as a memory prompt through which Samoans recalled memories confirming and defining cultural bonds. These memories constituted the essence of being Samoan. These memories were awakened, and shared as oral histories as fāgogo. The receivers appeared to interpret the shared memories to create their own memories and stories to suit their contexts, according to Facebook postings. An interpretation is that the organic sharing of memories as fā gogo created a global definition of Samoan that Samoans internationally claimed.

Vernacular meaning making : Examples of narrative impact in fiction film questioning the 'banal' notion in mediatization of religion theory

The outcome of an audience study supports theories stating that stories are a primary means by which we make sense of our experiences over time. Empirical examples of narrative impact are presented in which specific fiction film scenes condense spectators' lives, identities and beliefs. One conclusion is that spectators test the emotional realism of the narative for greater significance, connecting diegetic fiction experiences with their extra-diegetic world in their quest for meaning, self and identity. The 'banal' notion of the mediatization of religion theory is questioned as unsatisfactory in the theoretical context of individualized meaning-making processes. As a semantically negatively charged concept, it is problematic when analyzing empirical examples of spectators' use of fictional narratives, especially when trying to characterize the idiosyncratic and complex interplay between spectators' fiction emotions and their testing of mediated narratives in an exercise to find moral significance in extra-filmic life. Instead vernacular meaning-making is proposed.