Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The object of this publication is the social network Facebook groups identity. After research, it has been observed that the symbolic groups identity fragmentation represents political and ideological aspects. Socialism and its restoration became the ideological political basis uniting analysed groups members. The group’s members estimate the current Lithuanian political governance system considering the Soviet period ideology, but in the other hand identifying themselves as Lithuanians. It seems that analysed Facebook groups members has experienced identity stagnation and has not changed orientation together with new accepted country’s political ideology. The analysis showed that two “others” categories has emerged: Lithuanian governance, the political elite and compatriots that is not resists Lithuanian policy. In order to highlight the “others” the ruling elite of Lithuania is equated with Jews to split them from the entire nation and anti-resist Lithuanians is equated with lower mental level people. The current liberal democracy and the struggle against it become a grouping factor of analysed group members. A strong group identity maintained in virtual space is not supported in real space. The lack of physical contact between groups members makes it possible to assume that virtual community identity is maintained only in the virtual space.

This article is the analysis of Jurgis Šaulys’s letters to Morta Zauniūtė which are held in the Vilnius University library. These letters represent a lot of new details on all of their lives, personalities and creations. This article discusses the impact J. Šaulys had on all of their lives by analysing their correspondence. This article shows initial stages of J. Šaulys life as a cultural figure who will eventually be viewed as one of the most influential organisators of the literary life of the beginning of the 20th century.

Women’s alcohol dependence is a serious concern for the whole of society, negatively affecting not only various important areas of the lives of women themselves, but essentially the mental health of future generations. Researchers have attempted to address the main problems associated with women’s drinking; nevertheless, their findings are still incomplete. Moreover, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to exploring idiosyncratic alcohol-dependent women identity development processes. This study aims to fill the existing gap in the literature, by conducting an empirical study that would help elucidate the main psycho-social aspects contributing significantly to the identity development of alcohol-dependent women. Ten self-identified alcohol-dependent women participated in the study. Data was collected through life stories and in-depth interviews. The constructivist grounded theory approach (K. Charmaz) was used as a methodological strategy to explore how alcohol-dependent women develop and express their identities in their life stories. In this study, we present internal and external identity development processes, revealing the dilemma of internal detachment by alcohol-dependent women developing an illusory identity. The main aspects of this theoretical structure include compensatory adaptation, power seeking, and avoiding helplessness, which create a vicious triangle, with the need for acceptance and the fear of rejection at its core, all contributing to the development of an illusory identity. Moreover, based on traditional theoretical frameworks, the study builds on the premise that such internal detachment is linked to self-integrity problems, which is further associated with participants’ pursuit of a search for self-meaning in important others. The findings provide new insights about alcohol-dependent identity development processes, discuss the limitations and strengths of the current study, suggest directions for future studies, and highlight the need to see alcohol-dependent women’s problems from the perspective of identity, which is different from traditional psycho-pathological views.

In this article I look at popular forms of self-representation in Lithuania, which are born out of a period of time where EUrope, EUropeanization and modernization are getting increasingly important. I argue that such discourses tend to exclude certain parts of the population and thus show a limited part of a complex picture. As I argue with an example from rural Lithuania, all Lithuanian citizens still respond to the many changes which came about with the EU and incorporate new features in their everyday life. They are, sadly enough, not the ones who get to formulate what it means to be Lithuanian in present day society.

The human beings use to ascribe themselves and others to certain groups and dividing world for ‘them’ and ‘us’. We should rethink the role played by ethnicity concept in social sciences, common sense knowledge and practice in contemporary world. But the turn from ethnic or national identities to other ones is just the first step in my opinion. The second step in the same direction is to try to answer the question: does it really make sense for sociologists and anthropologists to investigate identities or we rather have to investigate people’s action and their behaviour? Moreover, if only we agree on these points we have to re-think the role that scholars play in the process of interpretation of the world by modern people, because the interpretations that we produce as ‘experts’ do not exist only in an ‘academic world’. They are in use by ordinary people as well as by politicians, and that is why those interpretations have visible practical consequences. Hereby I would like to discuss possible alternatives to ethnically based understandings of the issues of the ‘ethnicity’, ‘identity’ and ‘multiculturalism’. I’ll start with the description of the research experience that made me concerned about the issues pointed out.