Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The aim of the article is to argue against a few problem aspects in narrative therapy practice from the perspective of Patristic anthropology. The author focuses on several parallel issues in the practical implementation of the method, which gives an opportunity to discuss the methodology to solve essentially important conceptual issues. The assumption that merely replacing the dominant narrative with the more promising alternative can solve a client’s crisis issue is put into doubt. The thesis common in classic narrative therapy that ‘the problem is the problem [of the narrative], but the client is not the problem’ (Differentiating the Client, 2024) is revisited. A simple replacement of the narrative may be a temporary solution, since it affects only the surface of the narrative, only the shell composed of a sequence of external events, but narrative therapy in its classic form as a long-term solution to the identity crisis fails.

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.

The paper deals with the issue of land-ownership formation in the early 16th – late 17th centuries by the newly-arrived noblemen elite in Samogitia, given the local communication network and the directions of the commercial market areas. The principal Samogitian land and water routes are overviewed that could have made an impact on the potential of the formed holdings. The land holding formation of four families of Evangelical noblemen and church funders, i.e. those of Skaševskis, Radziminskis, Stabrovskis, and Gruževskis, is analysed. As proved by the research findings, the newly arrived nobility formed their holdings not only on the previously recorded Samogitian axis of the southwest-the centre-the northwest. The families worked consistently and intentionally, arranging their holdings in accordance with the communications with commercial markets and the formed land and water routes.

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.