Bodies in Everyday and Virtual Worlds: An Analysis of “Peace-VR” and Everyday Embodied Peace
Doyle, Kieran (2024)
2024
Master's Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-06-10
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202405256283
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202405256283
Tiivistelmä
In recent years, Virtual Reality has been increasingly integrated into scientific research across countless fields. Notably, the technology is presently being used to study peace-related topics, such as marginalization, intergroup hatred and discrimination, and conflict-affected societies. However, this research does not typically involve voices from peace studies concerned with these same topics.
The aim of this thesis is to put peace-related research involving Virtual Reality, which I refer to as Peace-VR, and peace studies into conversation with one another. Specifically, I examine how these literatures conceptualize and operationalize embodiment. Within the diversity of peace studies, I specifically examine everyday peace literature, as it places an emphasis not just on mundanity, but also corporeality, providing a rich theoretical basis for comparison. Through comparative qualitative/thematic conceptual analysis, I use different analytical tools to understand how the corpora approach the theme of embodiment. Within everyday peace literature, I performed a thematic analysis of cornerstone texts which deeply explore embodiment. I refer to this subsection of texts as Everyday Embodied Peace. For Peace-VR, I performed a conceptual analysis, selecting a broad swathe of Peace-VR literature. This approach was chosen since few scholars within Peace-VR explore embodiment from a theoretical perspective, focusing instead on its applications in experimentation.
After identifying themes of embodiment using these curated analytical approaches, I used these themes to explore how the corpora understand embodiment differently. I found that Peace-VR tends to understand embodiment as a mechanistic psychological process, which is malleable enough to redirect one’s feeling of “owning” one’s body, creating embodiment illusions. Everyday Embodied Peace literature, meanwhile, understands embodiment, intertwined with the everyday, in a phenomenological way as a fundamental aspect of the human experience, and a site for resilience and resistance.
The research concludes that Peace-VR and Embodied Everyday Peace literatures understand embodiment in markedly different ways. However, these understandings are not necessarily contradictory, and it is possible to imagine research that integrates both corpora’s understandings of embodiment to different degrees. Because work in this space seems like to continue expanding, I conclude this thesis by hypothesizing how future research might integrate these two fields.
The aim of this thesis is to put peace-related research involving Virtual Reality, which I refer to as Peace-VR, and peace studies into conversation with one another. Specifically, I examine how these literatures conceptualize and operationalize embodiment. Within the diversity of peace studies, I specifically examine everyday peace literature, as it places an emphasis not just on mundanity, but also corporeality, providing a rich theoretical basis for comparison. Through comparative qualitative/thematic conceptual analysis, I use different analytical tools to understand how the corpora approach the theme of embodiment. Within everyday peace literature, I performed a thematic analysis of cornerstone texts which deeply explore embodiment. I refer to this subsection of texts as Everyday Embodied Peace. For Peace-VR, I performed a conceptual analysis, selecting a broad swathe of Peace-VR literature. This approach was chosen since few scholars within Peace-VR explore embodiment from a theoretical perspective, focusing instead on its applications in experimentation.
After identifying themes of embodiment using these curated analytical approaches, I used these themes to explore how the corpora understand embodiment differently. I found that Peace-VR tends to understand embodiment as a mechanistic psychological process, which is malleable enough to redirect one’s feeling of “owning” one’s body, creating embodiment illusions. Everyday Embodied Peace literature, meanwhile, understands embodiment, intertwined with the everyday, in a phenomenological way as a fundamental aspect of the human experience, and a site for resilience and resistance.
The research concludes that Peace-VR and Embodied Everyday Peace literatures understand embodiment in markedly different ways. However, these understandings are not necessarily contradictory, and it is possible to imagine research that integrates both corpora’s understandings of embodiment to different degrees. Because work in this space seems like to continue expanding, I conclude this thesis by hypothesizing how future research might integrate these two fields.