Sense Of Liminality Research Articles

Terapiniai tradicinio muzikavimo aspektai nėštumo, gimdymo ir pogimdyminiu laikotarpiu

The purpose of this study is to reveal the benefits of traditional music for women’s psychosocial wellbeing and its applicability in music therapy during the birth-transition, i. e. during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. Some Lithuanian women use traditional music for self-help during their own birth-transition or working with pregnant women and mothers. On the other hand, we still lack interdisciplinary research on the therapeutic value of traditional music. This article analyzes a previously unexplored phenomenon of employing traditional music to improve the psychosocial wellbeing of pregnant women and mothers. The study presents experiences, insights and testimonies of the young mothers and doulas who assisted them regarding the value of traditional music while expecting the baby, giving birth, and raising the child. For this study, we deliberately selected educated women who are members of the folk singing groups and practice folklore in their everyday life.
 In the article, pregnancy, childbirth and the first weeks after it are regarded as a transition period between different stages of a woman’s life. It is characterized by the sense of liminality, identity transformation, and the related emotional peak. The research has shown that the interviewed women practiced folk singing, listened to the traditional music or music performed on the traditional instrument kanklės, danced to traditional dance music during pregnancy in order to creatively release tension, improve emotional state, reduce anxiety, prepare for the childbirth, or simply make everything easier. Meanwhile, singing folksongs and lullabies to the baby during pregnancy and the postpartum period was a natural way to establish a relationship, to express motherly love, to convey values and a certain worldview.

Gender identity, embodiment and liminality in women΄s experience of mastectomy

In addition to a potentially life-threatening illness, women with breast cancer also face several challenges related to the effects of medical treatment on their bodies and their embodied identity. Mastectomy, as a highly invasive treatment, has significant impact on women's lives. This study aims to investigate the experience of mastectomy and the subjective meanings that it holds for women, in relation to their identity and relationships. The research questions were explored through a phenomenological approach in order to better understand the role of the body in this experience, and a gender perspective was adopted in order to critically examine the socio-cultural background that shapes women’s experience. Seventeen women, aged between 26-57, who had undergone mastectomy following a breast cancer diagnosis, participated in the study. The research material was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using phenomenological analysis. The analysis also drew upon a gender perspective, given a focus of the study on the gendered dimension of embodied identity. Findings indicate that a core element of the experience of mastectomy concerns the alteration of embodied identity and a sense of liminality, an unresolved state of being in between the previous normal life and life post-diagnosis. The analysis highlighted the need to expand the concept of liminality in psycho-oncology, to include the ambiguity associated with women’s self-identification as ‘normal women’, in relation to embodied experience and the socio-cultural constructions of the female breast. Interestingly, liminality in relation to gender identity characterizes many women’s experience, despite the use of silicone pads and/or plastic reconstructive surgery to manage the altered body. The findings enrich our theoretical understanding of the experience of mastectomy, broaden the concept of liminality, highlight the gendered dimensions of identity and the role of the socio-cultural context in shaping the experience of mastectomy. Moreover, they point to useful directions for the design and delivery of individualized support to women who have undergone mastectomy.

Illuminating the liminality of the doctoral journey: precarity, agency and COVID-19

ABSTRACT There is an academic acceptance that doctoral studies are a complex, multifaceted endeavour bound with the differing, emerging and contrasting identities of the students who undertake them. This article explores such journeys in the context of one of the most disruptive events to hit the higher educational sector worldwide: COVID-19. The study utilises data collected via an online forum established to collectively explore the challenges, the opportunities and the tensions in the lives of 12 students enrolled in a doctoral degree in an Australian higher education institution. Results indicate that the journey of such students pre-COVID-19 was characterised by a sense of liminality, agency and journey. COVID-19 exacerbated such feelings. The conclusion points to a need to enhance spaces of agency in the graduate research experience to reflect the multidimensionality of students’ lives.

Being Othered, Embracing Others

Abstract This essay spotlights the experiences of otherness and marginalization of ethnic roots migrants in today’s South Korean society. It argues that their sense of liminality and rejection by both societies (diasporic and ethnic home), when examined through the concept of mestizaje, reflects their unique capacity to be bridge builders between the dominant majority and the excluded minority, including themselves. Also, using intercultural theology as a frame of theological reference to interpret the presence of roots migrants as both insiders and outsiders, the essay unmasks the overall fear of otherness and pride in homogeneity in Korean society that seldom problematizes the alienation of those labelled as the “others.” Finally, it discusses the importance of a genuine theological interpretation concerning the issue, so that it can construct spaces for an alternative understanding of identity and otherness that does not lead to exclusion but to embrace.

Non-Linear Modes of Narrative in the Disruption of Time and Genre in Ambelin Kwaymullina’s <em>The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf</em>

Non-Linear Modes of Narrative in the Disruption of Time and Genre in Ambelin Kwaymullina’s <em>The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf</em>

"The Walking Dead Family is a real thing, not just a hashtag": Experiencing Fan Tourism and Transmediality in Woodbury, Atlanta

The 2016 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference took place in Atlanta. Historically important for the Civil Rights movement, the city is home to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, but as an emerging hub for film and television production Atlanta is also home to various studios, location tours, and other sites for fan tourism. I attended SCMS 2016 because of the scholarship, but visiting Atlanta meant I was able to spend a day on the Atlanta Movie Tours’ ‘Big Zombie’ tours. The tours feature locations from The Walking Dead in and around Atlanta, and are led by actors from the show. The tours thus provide fans access to behind-the-scenes stories and information, as well as exclusive access to locations, and opportunities to ‘re-enact’ key scenes. In this paper I document my experience of the tours as both fan and academic. I began the tour from a purely fannish perspective, excited to see locations and hear stories, but during the tour I found it difficult to halt academic analysis of this particular form of transmedia tourism. The actors leading the tour spoke of the ‘AMC family’ while noting how they were instructed not to speak to primary cast members, and clips from the show played inside the tour bus before we disembarked to view them in their ‘real’ (rather than fictional) Atlanta context. I thus experienced a sense of dissonance from, rather than immersion in, the world of The Walking Dead, and suggest that this sense of liminality is currently underexplored in analyses of transmedia tourism, where transmediality is assumed to bring the tourist deeper into the storyworld, rather than highlighting their divergence from it.

Living in a maze: Health, well-being and coping in young non-western men in Scandinavia experiencing substance abuse and suicidal behaviour

The aim of the study was to illuminate and interpret the lived experiences of emigration, substance abuse and suicidal behaviour in young non-western men in Scandinavia. The research questions were formulated as: (1) How is meaning constructed in the narratives? (2) What impact do these experiences have on health, well-being and coping? Data were collected using open-ended in-depth interviews. A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, inspired by the philosophy of Ricoeur, was used to analyse the data. The na?¨ve reading involved awareness of the participants' perceived sense of insecurity in life. The structural analysis identified three themes: (1) the meaning of getting in a tight spot, (2) the meaning of being in a fog and (3) the meaning of the burning bed. A comprehensive understanding of the data was formulated as "living in a maze". Ill health involved having a sense of liminality, which impaired one's possibilities to define and re-define goals. Substance abuse and suicidal behaviour were explicit expressions of not being well, when living in a maze that was perceived as closed. Both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping were used by the participants. These provided the motivation for substance abuse and suicidal behaviour. Key words: Public health, emigration, substance abuse, suicidal behaviour, hermeneutics, men

Living in a maze: Health, well-being and coping in young non-western men in Scandinavia experiencing substance abuse and suicidal behaviour

The aim of the study was to illuminate and interpret the lived experiences of emigration, substance abuse and suicidal behaviour in young non-western men in Scandinavia. The research questions were formulated as: (1) How is meaning constructed in the narratives? (2) What impact do these experiences have on health, well-being and coping? Data were collected using open-ended in-depth interviews. A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, inspired by the philosophy of Ricoeur, was used to analyse the data. The naïve reading involved awareness of the participants’ perceived sense of insecurity in life. The structural analysis identified three themes: (1) the meaning of getting in a tight spot, (2) the meaning of being in a fog and (3) the meaning of the burning bed. A comprehensive understanding of the data was formulated as “living in a maze”. Ill health involved having a sense of liminality, which impaired one's possibilities to define and re-define goals. Substance abuse and suicidal behaviour were explicit expressions of not being well, when living in a maze that was perceived as closed. Both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping were used by the participants. These provided the motivation for substance abuse and suicidal behaviour.

Editor's Introduction

Being a man has become a more complex issue in Ireland today. To quote Harry Ferguson, ‘while men were and are everywhere in Irish society, little attention was given to them as men, as gendered subjects' (2003: 1). Their emergence from (gender) invisibility is taking place in the midst of unprecedented social and economic change in Ireland. It has been suggested that present socio-cultural conditions adversely affect young people in giving rise to a sense of liminality, of living between cultures and identities (Keohane and Chambers, 2003: 48). Yet generalised explanations of change outcomes, and the crisis discourse which surrounds young men in particular, need careful examination. These accounts frequently make assumptions of causal links between change indictors and ‘negative’ outcome where none exist and rarely highlight socio-economic, age and within-gender variations. We live in a more individualistic and globally defined society than heretofore, but while the ‘moral certainties of being’ (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill, 2003) are gone, strong belief and value systems are still in evidence (Fahey, Hayes and Sinnott, 2005: 219; Cleary, 2005). Furthermore, change has had much positive impact, as reflected in high levels of satisfaction amongst Irish people (Fahey and Smyth, 2004). With so little evidence of a negative effect on people generally how has societal change become a crisis for men?