This study explores whether generating more options influences how satisfied people feel about their decisions, whether they are choosing for themselves or someone else. This is relevant because it...Show moreThis study explores whether generating more options influences how satisfied people feel about their decisions, whether they are choosing for themselves or someone else. This is relevant because it provides insights into the complexity of consumer behavior, where factors such as the variability in the number of alternatives influence this decision-making process and the satisfaction of consumers. Participants were asked to respond to open-ended questions about various real-life situations where a choice had to be made. Subsequently, they selected their preferred option and rated their satisfaction with it. Surprisingly, the results showed no significant differences in satisfaction, regardless of having more or fewer options to choose from. Additionally, the placement of the chosen option in the list of all generated options made also no difference in satisfaction level. Furthermore, participants generated more options for someone else compared to for themselves. However, again in this condition, their satisfaction remained the same.Show less
Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)
open access
This research sees the act of "going abroad for work" from two perspectives. One is leaving home and then conducting a cross-cultural life. The other is the expansion or adjustment of a career...Show moreThis research sees the act of "going abroad for work" from two perspectives. One is leaving home and then conducting a cross-cultural life. The other is the expansion or adjustment of a career trajectory. This research examines how recent Chinese migrant workers cope with their overseas life when working in the catering industry in the Netherlands. By doing so, I have tried to understand what is the “social world” of my participants and how they interact with it. During 3 months of fieldwork, I talked with 8 participants and closely yet remotely studied social media content from this group. Our online conversations were based on getting along even virtually. The outcome comprises a written text and a film. The text discusses how these migrant workers engaged with labor and explores how the self was lost and rebuilt. As a trajectory pursuing success, and through daily practices in break times, I gradually gained insight in these migrant workers’ migration journey and witnessed their awareness and sacrifice of self. Sacrificing leisure life and prioritizing work, men I engaged with, can hardly think of their own feelings and needs or reflect on who they are. Yet their practice and narration indicated s certain expectation on self-presentation. The film portrays narratives of “labor migration” from several perspectives as a polyphonous testimony. Overall, the key findings are that for recent Chinese migrant workers who come to the Netherlands and work in the catering industry, the act of migration and adjusting to cross-cultural life are reported to be experienced as a "normal" process: It is experienced as natural that one needs to adjust to different coworkers and to the new work environment. As it is for money that they came overseas, they perceive it as normal to bear difficulties. Rather than entering in a process of trans-national transition and adjustment as I imagined, their journeys can be seen as a continued precarious yet independent career trajectory that illustrates how they, as labor migrants, do not relate more than necessary with their new environment. At the same time, these labor migrants seek and create breathing space for themselves in their daily break-times, and single free weekday, to maintain a sense of self. Also, bearing the uncomfortable, their tendency is to normalize it, and tend to talk about the self in a positive and independent way, together composing a sense of self.Show less
This thesis attempts to trace the Arab sense of national belonging to the Ottoman state in the immediate prelude to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It analyzes Arab popular sentiment...Show moreThis thesis attempts to trace the Arab sense of national belonging to the Ottoman state in the immediate prelude to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It analyzes Arab popular sentiment toward the Ottoman state, specifically toward the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, CUP or Unionists) during the period between 1909 and 1914. In doing so, it seeks to deconstruct the post-Ottoman, Arab, nationalist, meta-historical narrative that commonly links the development of Arab proto-nationalism during the CUP period (1908–1918) with the creation of Arab nation states in the post-Ottoman period, in which the Arab (Sharifian) revolt of 1916 is often presented as the main event that gave way to that transition.Show less
The concept of destiny is most regularly invoked in everyday life at the moments when events are so “coincidental” that it gives one at least the impression that they were pre-ordained by some...Show moreThe concept of destiny is most regularly invoked in everyday life at the moments when events are so “coincidental” that it gives one at least the impression that they were pre-ordained by some mysterious, transcendent force or principle. Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung proposes the synchronicity principle to explain such phenomena. This thesis asks: what are the implications of C.G. Jung’s depth psychology, and his synchronicity principle in particular, for the personal significance and attainment of destiny? Destiny can be said to be the knowing awareness of the realization of the course of one’s life which is always to some extent meaningful to the experiencing subject. The causality principle cannot account for the meaningful connections required for destiny, that is, it cannot explain why destiny is important to the individual. To understand the experience of destiny, Carl Jung’s principle of synchronicity might be more useful. Synchronistic phenomena require explanation from the perspective of a worldview that allows for the interconnectedness of all that exists. For the synchronicity principle to be effective as principle of explanation, then, it needs to stand in a necessary relationship to totality, which Jung understands as the archetypes in the collective unconscious, which form patterns. The conscious awareness and interpretation of the unfoldment of such archetypal patterns in life is what we might call destiny. Destiny, as knowledge about one’s life course is never concrete in showing what one might expect to happen but gives one a subtle glance at the larger pattern of reality to find oneself in the meaningful order of totality. One can come to know what role one is to play within the whole of reality on the basis of the interpretative framework that is offered by the archetypal expressions in synchronistic experiences. Destiny, in conclusion, is foremost about getting to know oneself: self-knowledge forms a hermeneutical framework from which one interprets (the events of) one’s life course. Synchronistic phenomena contribute to self-knowledge in a uniquely compelling and valuable way by offering unconscious guidance through meaningful co-incidences, but, finally, the responsibility rests with the individual whether to use this guidance to their advantage in obtaining destiny.Show less
