Polish Florian Znanieck, with William Thomas, (1918-1920) has become famous from his study of Polish immigrants who immigrated to America. He has pronounced that in life term research it is not important to address the geographical or economical approach. Instead you should be able to concentrate on individuals and to their subjective stories. These kind of subjective stories are full of feelings, ideas and lifestyles of a person you ought to know more about when conducting research about history. In his study of Polish Peasant he used biog-raphies and diaries of the immigrants. He found out how signifi cant it is to study the subjective side through their stories. (Znanieck &
Thomas, 1918; Antikainen, 1987) Through the narratives, you can fi nd out how people are growing. Arendt (1987) calls this kind of study a life term research. It can show you the history of a person’s life time. You can see the growth from childhood to elderly years of life. In such a research it is possible to study ones life from the side of signifi cant happenings; such as birth, marriage, motherhood, father-hood and retirement. Even more than that could be schooling, getting a job, moving to other place and so on. In all of these signifi cant changes in life-course, it is possible to see the infl uence of the history and the infl uence of social relations as well as environmental replacement.
Life term study has become to be more and more a biographical study of one’s life. Hence, it used to be famous among persons of some signifi cance, but nowadays it is common among anyone who wants to write one’s own biography. (see Korhonen, 2003, p. 1 &
Vilkko, 2000, pp. 74-85) Many people are attracted by biographies and narratives. It has become a useful method to use them also in therapy and in tutoring. It is used as a methodology for research which needs new challenges. (Saarenheimo, 2001) Lalive D´Epinay (1995, p. 49) describes biographies as an evidence of the life term story. He adds that there is always a part in narratives which is imagined but that doesn’t make them unproved. Roos (1987, p. 31) describes the writers of the biographies as very sensitive story tellers. This is not only because the stories are from their own life, but also because it has had a great impact on their lives and to their way of thinking. Roos has found out that the most what people are telling about consist of their poorness, sufferings and humiliations, not to forget the time when they have been treated with contempt.
Furlong (1951, p. 31) is concerned about memory. He found out in his study that memory is copying the past very well as if everything that happened was yesterday. It is also possible to remember happenings in your life even if it happened far in your past. Memorizing and telling the stories can also be easy. Actually, those diffi cult experiences in life stay stable in ones memory better than those memories which have been neutral. Narratives are one type of making sense of life. By narrating their lives, people want to arrange their thoughts and make sense of everything. It is a way of understanding what has happened and what the logic in everything in their life is. (See: Tonkin, 1992 &
Thompson, 1988) It is possible to say that in spite of the told stories, all the written culture is outlined by narratives. All of our lives are full of different stories and every one of us is carrying a story.
Acculturati on
“Acculturation is said to be the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous fi rsthand contact. It is also said to be a process in which member of one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviours of an other group.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Acculturation#History_of_acculturation) Acculturation theory has been fi rst used among anthropologists in America. Already in 1888, anthropologist Franz Boas has argued that all the people can acculturate and not only those who are `savages´ or belong to a minority.
Usually acculturation occurs the direction of a minority group adopting habits or language patterns of the dominant ones; it can also be the other way, so that the dominant group adopts typical patterns of the minority. One can see the changes in language preference or in adoption of common attitudes and values. It can be also seen by membership in social groups and loss of ethnic identifi cation. (Redfi eld, Linton & Herskovits, 1936) Despite all research, the theory has con-tinued to focus on changes experienced by the immigrants, aboriginals or other minorities.
Redfi eld, Linton &Herskovits (1936) were the fi rst ones who mentioned the acculturative stress. That kind of stress can cause psychological, somatic and social diffi culties in the acculturation process. Redfi eld etc. called it `physic confl ict´, which arises from being in confl ict with the cultural norms. Ausbelt (1961) was the fi rst one who measured the acculturative stress. After him there have been many who have claimed that acculturative stress causes the major problems for minority people. (e.g. Berry, Kim, Minde & Mok, 1983;
Hovey, 2000)
In my study I used this acculturation theory as frame to the nar-ratives and biographies. I wanted to know how the Karelians adjusted themselves to other parts of Finland especially to the West part of Finland and how people there were assimilating with them. Child (1943) and Levin (1943) began to keep acculturation as a strategic
reaction of the minority to continuous contact with a dominant group of people. There are some options that the minority can choose in this process, each of them with its own consequences. These options are assimilation to the major culture, a defensive assertion of the minor-ity culture or bicultural blending of those two cultures and fi nally; a bicultural alternation. If we want to follow Berry’s (1980, 2003; see also Korhonen in this volume) terminology, he has pronounced four major strategies which are commonly named: Assimilation, separa-tion, integration and marginalization.
Integration has said to be the best way for the migrates to adjust themselves to the major culture, as in that case the migrant can have a good relation to his own ethnic culture and to the major culture.
Assimilation happens when a person wants to forget completely his ethnic culture and his cultural identity and assimilates entirely to the major culture. In this case, a person abandons his own culture and adopts the dominative culture. Berry (ibid.) states that this is the worst situation in the acculturation process, especially among the youth.
In separation a person wants to keep his ethnic culture and tries to avoid social contacts with the people from the major culture. And in the last option, which is marginalization, a person becomes alienated from his own ethnic culture and also cannot adopt the major culture.
In this situation you can say that a person has “dropped out” between two cultures and that he feels rejected.
According to Berry (1988, pp. 30-31) acculturation can be understood as an individual’s acculturation or as an acculturation of a whole group of people. In this sense you can be able to call it person’s psychological acculturation. In this sense the study should concentrate on inside or outside confl icts or bigger crises in an individual’s life. For every immigrant there is a reason and in research we try to fi nd out these reasons. Adding to that, it is good to study how people adapt to new cultures. For that reason the target in research is the life in the new place which has another culture and habits. When studying the acculturation processes it is better to study the ordinary lives of
migrates than anything else. Actually acculturation process gets more of a sociological or psychological approach in research concerning the migrants. Liebkind (2000) adds, that in a larger approach acculturation means the adjustment of a specifi c ethnic group to the new society.
One of the main themes in this study is the adaptation of the Karelians. Even though they belong to Finland and are Finnish by their roots, they belong to an ethnic group of people who have got their own traditions, language, religion and most of all, their own culture. That was also the reason why I took acculturation as a frame for my study.