Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap

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Offentlighetens gränser: Fem kultursociologiska studier av kontroverser kring litterära självframställningar i Sverige, 1976-2008
(2012-02-16) Malmqvist, Karl
This dissertation deals with normative boundaries in the Swedish literary public sphere between 1976 and 2008. One aim of the study is to map changes and continuities in the boundary between public and private as defined, defended, and contested by literary critics, editors, publishers, writers, journalists, and various other participants in public discussions of literature. A further aim is to suggest a sociological explanation of the normative changes that are discerned in the course of analysis. Thus, the dissertation not only focuses on normative boundaries between “civilized” and “uncivilized” literary self-expression, but also on the contextual boundaries of participation in literary debates. On the contextual level, the literary public sphere is conceptualized as an establishment or “good society”, held together and separated from outsiders by common norms of civilized literary expression but subject to varying degrees of pressure from below. Increased contacts between established critics and new media participants – enabled by tendencies of media convergence, a feminization of the journalism and literary criticism professions, and a “demotic” turn in media culture – are hypothesized to contribute to an increased pressure from below, leading in turn to dissociations from the established civility norms and contestations of these norms from the standpoint of a radical ideal of authenticity. Such a normative shift, it is argued, might be conceptualized as informalization. The dissertation’s empirical focus is upon debates over controversial autobiographical literary works in Swedish metropolitan newspapers from 1976 to 2008. Five cases of debates are identified and analyzed in chronological order. The analyses of the debates are built on a qualitative computer aided text analysis of 169 explicitly evaluative articles published in the culture sections of Swedish metropolitan newspapers. Though the results of the study by no means indicate dissolution of the normative boundary between public and private in the literary public sphere, the analyses suggest certain tendencies of change on the normative level. On the one hand, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the normative boundaries of civilized literary self-expression were mainly drawn in aesthetic terms; in order to be seen as civilized, literary autobiographies had to conceal the inappropriate bodily needs, desires, and emotions of the author by means of aesthetic form. In the studied cases from the 1990s and early 2000s, however, these aesthetic demands seemed to face increasing competition from a moral concern with the integrity of others depicted in the autobiographical works, a concern increasingly expressed by literary critics and lawyers calling for stricter moral boundaries in literature. This moralization tendency is interpreted as a move from aesthetic “rules of precedence”, exempting literature from general moral norms, to moral “rules for all”, making no distinction between literary and other kinds of publicness. On the other hand, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, authentic openness about emotional experiences in literary self-expression had been acceptable only if it was held to be of common concern (for instance if it provided opportunities for positive political identification). In the cases from the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, the ideal of authenticity in literary self-expression was radicalized; direct authentic self-expression was seen increasingly as an anti-elitist action, a popular disclosure and confrontation of the duplicity of the cultural establishment dominating the official literary public sphere. This ideal of anti-elitist authenticity was most clearly expressed by actors who were closer to the margins of the literary public sphere, for instance blog writers, editorial writers recruited from the blogosphere, or popular media figures. All this indicates a demotic informalizing pressure from below, enabled by a general tendency towards convergence between literature and other media.
Studier i tidsmässig välfärd - med fokus på tidsstrategier och tidspolitik för småbarnsfamiljer
(2012-02-29) Larsson, Jörgen
The experience of time pressure is widespread in Swedish society. The aim of this dissertation is to develop knowledge about the possibilities of increasing temporal welfare among families with small children. The dissertation consists of an introduction, with an analysis of time-related con-cepts and three different papers that pose different research questions using different data and thus illuminating the topic from various perspectives. During the last half-century, a large number of different words have emerged which pertain to the experience of a shortage of time. The meaning of these is, however, often unclear. There is also a lack of structurally relevant time-related concepts. The introduction of the dissertation de-velops and discusses the concepts of temporal welfare, time pressure, temporal satisfaction, time strategies and time politics. Paper I is a qualitative categorisation of advice on avoiding time pressure provided in six dif-ferent self-help books. Some advice can be related to different time management categories, like streamlining activities and buying services. Other identified categories focus on life management strategies, such as setting limits to time-consuming aspirations e.g. regarding career success. Questioning personal aspirations in areas such as work and consumption appears to be an ade-quate way of avoiding time pressure, but this is a challenging task since these areas are important for one’s identity and for social acceptance. Paper II is a quantitative analysis of time pressure, based on time use data from Statistics Swe-den covering 3400 respondents. Results show that 47 percent of all individuals, with children liv-ing at home, often experience difficulties managing everything that has to be done – the corre-sponding number is 31 percent for individuals without children. Based on an interpretation of the statistical analysis, it can be expected that the following changes would reduce time pressure: re-duced over-time work, use of a Swedish parent’s legal right to work part-time, moving from a detached house to an apartment, buying services and a strict time-based division between the par-ents over child responsibility. Paper III analyses part-time work among fathers. Quantitative analysis of data for 20 000 par-ents, with children of an age between 2-7 years, shows that 28 percent of mothers and 2 percent of fathers have chosen to work 30-36 hours per week because they have children. Thus gender im-balance is more severe for parental part-time work than for parental leave. The analysis also in-cludes 14 in-depth interviews with fathers working part-time. A father’s use of part-time rights within the Swedish welfare system can be understood as a way to reconcile identifications as a professional and as a present father. However, in order for fathers to choose to work part-time, they need to have sufficient prerequisites regarding e.g. income, individual reflexivity, partner support and acceptance in the workplace. The main finding in this dissertation is that paternal part-time work is often a powerful way to increase temporal welfare for families with small children. It also has the potential to be a gender progressive strategy. Today, paternal part-time work is mainly practised by well-educated profes-sionals and time politics is needed if this social innovation is to become more widespread in Swedish society.
Criminal Records in Sweden. Regulation of Access to Criminal Records and the use of Criminal Background Checks by Employers.
(2012-03-05) Backman, Christel
This thesis examines the regulation of access to criminal records in Sweden and the actual and potential use of criminal background checks by employers in hiring processes. In recent years, more and more Swedish employers have been required by law to check their job applicants’ criminal records. In a parallel process, also the number of enforced subject access requests has increased considerably in that same period. The aim of this thesis is to analyse and explain these two trends and consider their implications for future use of criminal records in Sweden and elsewhere. The analysis draws upon government documents, newspaper articles, interviews with employers using enforced subject access, and interviews with union and employer organization representatives, with the aim of capturing the vocabularies of motive that were evoked and put to use in attempts to justify and legitimize either access restrictions or the extended use of criminal records data in hiring decisions. In Paper I, I examine how subject access, indirect employer access, and the notion of privacy have been understood and defined throughout the history of the Swedish Criminal Records Registry, and how practices and policies in the area have evolved over time. In Paper II, I investigate how employers who use individuals’ right to subject access as a means for obtaining copies of their criminal record account for their practice, and how unions and employer associations have responded to the adoption of it. In Paper III, I challenge the ‘governmentality’ tradition in criminology and the way the use of criminal record checks is interpreted within it. As an alternative way of formulating and understanding the issue, I propose that it be looked at from a symbolic perspective. In Paper IV, my analysis utilizes the perspective of the sociology of scandals to help develop a better understanding of function creep in the area of data protection. This I do through an examination of the process leading, first, to the introduction of mandatory vetting of childcare workers and teachers in Sweden in 2001, and, then, to the inclusion later on of also other employer categories in the scope of the relevant legislation. Based on these analyses, I argue that the changes in the access to individuals’ criminal records reflect the state’s way of governing the interpretation of the criminal records database. Whether actors are denied or allowed access to information contained in the criminal history record database depends on the prevailing cultural representations regarding notions such as ‘privacy’, ‘data protection’, ‘databases’, ‘sensitive information’, and ‘power’. Moreover, I argue that the function creep in the use of criminal history data in Sweden can be initially explained by the occurrence and publicity of scandals that highlight the vulnerability of a group of dependents, making it defensible to resort to privacy-intrusive methods such as criminal record checks, with the continuing function creep then being made possible by a changing moral landscape that, following the initial amendment, renders the method morally more defensible among the policy makers and the public at large.
Unleashing Science Popularisation: Studies on Science as Popular Culture
(2012-03-30) Gunnarsson, Andreas
This thesis aims to broaden the concept of science popularisation. It argues that the conventional view of popularisation as the public communication of appropriately simplified versions of established facts to lay audiences fails to capture the multifaceted nature of popularisation practices through which science and popular culture are recombined. Drawing on perspectives from Science and Technology Studies and from Cultural Studies a number of case studies are presented in order to explore anew what can be analytically treated as science popularisation and where popularisation begins and ends. The thesis commences by critically interrogating the conventional view of popularisation as a way to enhance public understanding and appreciation of science in society. This thesis argues that science popularisation needs to be thought of as a meaning making process that is far more diverse and complex than the conventional view acknowledges. It is a field where much more than the understanding or misunderstanding of established scientific fact is at stake. To extend the conventional view of popularisation, both science and popular culture are discussed in relation to constructivist theories and perspectives. For science, this means an emphasis on contingency in knowledge production where scientific practices are deprived of their ‘specialness’ and are considered more similar than different to other forms of ordinary human action. Thus, the strength and durability of particular scientific facts becomes worthy of empirical investigation dedicated to mapping the specific, local causes of credibility. Similarly, popular culture has been highlighted in Cultural Studies in opposition to conservative views offering cultural status to only a small selection of works deemed more valuable than others. Instead Cultural Studies scholars have argued for an anthropological concept of culture emphasising meaning making processes and the very distinction between fine arts and ordinary culture as objects of study. From these two traditions the thesis borrows a set of theoretical and methodological tools to examine the meaning of science in popular culture. Four studies have been carried out promoting an expanded concept of science popularisation. In ”The First Swede in Space” the character and orientation of the conventional view of popularisation is explored in relation to the attention given to Sweden’s first astronaut launched into space in 2006. The article is especially concerned with discussing how the astronaut achieves his elevated position as an ideal populariser and spokesperson for science. In “Food Fight!” the strict division between knowledge production and dissemination implicit in the conventional view of science popularisation is problematised. It is argued that while this division is designed to buttress the authority of science in society, it also leaves popularisation to ‘capture’ by skilled communicators. To illustrate this point the relative success of the proponents of a low-carb diet revolution in Sweden at bringing into question the authority of national recommendations on nutrition is analysed. In “The Advanced Liberal Logic of Nicotine Replacement”, the idea that science popularisation is just as likely to come before as after the establishment of scientific fact is explored further with reference to changing understandings of, and approaches to dealing with, the health consequences of smoking. The study details how a number of Swedish and British researchers launched nicotine replacement as a popular and credible way to ‘treat’ smoking authoritatively reimagined and reconstructed as a problem of nicotine addiction. “Genetik i fiktion”, finally, was written as a licentiate thesis and published in Swedish in 2006. It explores how genetics and gene technology are used as a narrative tool in a number of fictitious narratives. In relation to pedagogical worries about the corrupting influence of fiction on scientific understandings, genetics as a narrative theme is explored as a theme worthy of reflection in its own right. Genetics emerge from the analysis as something of a narrative utility tool suitable for discussing science as well as enhancing the credibility of the fantastical.
Inhyrningens logik - konsekvenser för individ och organisation
(2012-05-23) Kantelius, Hannes
The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the consequences of the use of temporary agency work from an individual- and organisational perspective. The thesis is built upon a multidisciplinary theoretical framework including flexibility strategies, the organisation of work, psychosocial working environment, work-based learning, employability and flexicurity. The empirical data comes from qualitative case studies from both work agencies and user firms, encompassing some 65 interviews, and a survey study of white-collar agency workers’ perception of security (n=533). Based upon the empirical findings, some contributions are made. Firstly, the logic of using temporary agency workers has been identified. This logic may have profound consequences for both individuals and organisations. For agency workers it may lead to a lack of competence and skill development in their work. This will most likely result in a low perceived employability for agency workers. For user firm employees, a high turnover of agency worker may lead to increased levels of strain at work, if the turnover results in continuous training of newcomers. On an organisational level, the logic of using temporary agency workers has an impact on what potential for flexibility a certain staffing strategy entails. Secondly, the organisational mechanisms identified explain the risk displacement between the user firm and the work agency, and what actual forms of flexibility a certain staffing strategy entails. The risk displacement is in itself also dependent on whether the user firm is aware of the logic of using temporary agency workers. If not taken into consideration, this logic may instead lead to unforeseen and unwanted states of inflexibility and/or instability. However, when taken into consideration, the logic may be-come an incentive to the development of the staffing strategy and to organisational learning. Thirdly, the thesis has shown that the long-term strategic use of agency workers may lead to a user firm achieving a so-called double flexibility, including both numerical and functional flexibility. This strategy and its work organisational outcome may lead to the blurring of the border between core and peripheral workers. Thus, this thesis has also shown that Atkinson’s (1984) work still may be useful in understanding the consequences of agency work on both an individual and an organisational level. Fourthly, the thesis has shown how both temporary work agencies and user firms have a dual responsibility, and likely also dual gains, in providing agency workers with the security dimensions associated with flexicurity. However, employment security, or employability, seems to be the most important aspect of security in today’s labour market. Lastly, the thesis has shown the great impact user firms have on the temporary staffing industry market. The staffing strategies chosen by user firms has a major impact on the working conditions of the agency workers, with the risk of an increased segmentation either between agency workers and other forms of employment, or within the group of temporary agency workers.
Meddelanden från enskildheten En sociologisk studie av ensamhet och avskildhet. 2012
(2012-10-24) niklas, westberg
This study explores how loneliness and solitude are constructed as problems and how they are explained by ”society” in different forms of texts and by people who themselves define their situations as characterized by loneliness or solitude. The latter forms a special focus and my ambition is to understand how they answer to a social situation that in different ways problematize them as persons and construct their life situation as an anomaly. Even if the situation is characterized by loneliness or a search for social distance the task of explaining the situation is not taking place in a social or cultural vacuum; as the situation is viewed as an anomaly society creates it’s own interpretations and discourses which influences individuals and groups understanding. Therefore two different kinds of empirical material have been used. First, texts from research and science concerning loneliness and solitude as well as representations from other textual genres. Second, texts written by self defined lonely people and persons who expressly seek solitude and these are collected from two ”places” on Internet. From a dating service specialised in lonely people and a community of people who strives towards solitude as a way of life. The main unit of analysis consits of the language in these texts and are interpretated by an textual analysis influenced by discource analysis. A major problem regarding loneliness and solitude is ”the social”. Even if solitude are about social inattention, discourses are often occupied by social life in different manifestations; mostly in form of a social dissatisfaction that motivates freedom from society and community. In loneliness discourses lack of social connection, naturally, represents a central theme. Because solitude is understood as motivated by the individual and loneliness as caused by forces that the individual usually doesn’t control, the individual in discourses of solitude appears as one of pride and agency while the individual in loneliness discourses appears as a shameful victim. Solitude and loneliness are deviances which are managed with help of explanatory ”accounts”: 1) Excuses in form of ”scapegoats” where other peoples deficiencies is singled out as cause or motive to both loneliness and solitude. 2) Excuses with reference to illness and psychological problems, which to a large extent explains loneliness. 3) Justifications of solitude with reference to freedom to self-realization and communion. Based on my analysis a composed situation appears wherein lonely people and people seeking a private space seems to have a lot in common: social dissatisfaction and alienation, designation of scapegoats, a longing for authenticity etc. It is even possible that they, to a degree, share a life-situation characterized by alienation and despair but ”choses” different vocabularies or discourses for rendering the situation as intelligible, which makes a shared situation into different ones.
What Is the Problem of Gender? Mainstreaming Gender in Migration and Development Policies in the European Union
(2013-01-10) Calvo, Dolores
This dissertation deals with the analysis of representations and discourses of gender (in)equality contained in policy texts at the EU level. The period under examination is 2005–2010. Following the academic debate, I show that there is certainly agreement on the fact that gender mainstreaming at the EU level has not fulfilled its promise of being a transformative strategy. In this context, my main aim is to contribute to an understanding of why a gender perspective has failed to be introduced into mainstream policy by showing how gender is constructed in policy discourse. I examine how the ‘problem’ of gender (in)equality is represented in policy documents and interviews in the context of the strategy of gender mainstreaming at the EU level in general and within the policy areas of development cooperation and migration in particular. The representation of the ‘problem’ of gender (in)equality as a problem of women’s lack of participation (in the labour market, in political life, and in education) includes two arguments: the usefulness of women as resources for the economy and the right of women to participation. In this representation, the argument of gender equality as an instrument is important, but at the same time, the argument of gender equality as a value or human right is also central. In the same vein, the argument of gender inequality as both a problem for the economy and a moral problem also has an important role to play. Thus, tensions between efficiency or utilitarian arguments and human rights arguments can be identified across all policy texts. By looking at arguments, understandings, and representations of the ‘problem’ of gender inequality, I identify discourses of gender equality at the EU level: efficiency, economic independence–labour market, human rights, and feminist discourses of gender equality. In policy texts at the EU general level as well as at the level of development cooperation and migration policy areas, gender is understood as a fixed category, in terms of the binary male/female. This understanding contributes in part to undermining the conceptualisation and practice of gender mainstreaming itself. To understand gender as an essential characteristic or a fixed trait is unproductive, rather, in terms of any transformation of the gender structure. The process of (re)producing gender hierarchies and understandings entails relations of power and conflict, and its result is never final in that gender as a process is never ending; in policy texts, all of this dynamic is replaced by a dichotomy.
Från miljonprogram till högskoleprogram - plats, agentskap och villkorad valfrihet.
(2013-05-16) Widigson, Mats
This is a dissertation about young people’s experiences of their journeys from a socially marginalized suburb to higher education. Many students from these areas do not continue to higher education, but some do. There is little empirical knowledge about what makes this achievable. The aim of the study is to address the question of how agency is possible and how the hindering structuring conditions associated with place can be understood and overcome. The relevancy of the study stems from a segregating urban development that puts a school system striving for social inclusion in a new situation, where the significance of place becomes of growing importance. There is, if you will, a geography of opportunity. An interview study with nineteen informants was conducted. These informants had a variety of family and ethnic backgrounds. Criteria for the selection were that they had upbringing and schooling in a marginalized suburb and sufficient qualifications to enter higher educational studies. As it turned out, in most cases they appeared to be well on their way to successful completion of studies at university level. The foremost result of the study is confirmation that young people have to deal with how their background from the marginalized suburb is perceived. For them, this is an identity-sensitive question that requires emotional work. This finding helps to understand agency and freedom of choice as structurally conditioned by class, otherization and place. In searching for mechanisms, the study contributes to specify the conditions that made agency possible. In order to address social inclusion, it is important to pay attention to what supported agency: A polycultural experience was seen by the informants as a strengthening specific form of cultural capital. Informants were active in generating groups positive to education within their schools, and these groups in turn had a positive effect on keeping up their high standards of achievement. Those informants without higher education had valued their parents’ taking an interest in learning and providing an encouraging family atmosphere, rather than demanding performance and results. The parents had also been role models due to traits such as endurance and high work ethics. The informants’ goals were not particularly cued to outside motivation and specific ends. Rather, they were characterized by self-worth, social security and perceived future freedom of choice. It was not unusual that goals were of a social character, to some extent fuelled by experiences of social class. It is evident that teacher’s commitment to their students and to learning had a formative significance for students’ concerns. This study has implications for school policy in that a segregated city calls for action to accomplish equity in quality and expectations. A greater awareness of the impact of contextual differences and the importance of place and of identity work are starting points in addressing issues of social inclusion.
Educational choices of the future. A sociological inquiry into micro-politics in education
(2013-05-24) Puaca, Goran
This thesis investigates how students’ practical considerations for future choices in education and occupations correspond to policy objectives of socially productive educational choices. This is conveyed through the primary aim of analyzing the correspondence between on the one hand educational policy intentions and on the other hand students’ educational choices and the social and cultural conditions that structure them. These concerns are addressed with specific aims in four different articles. However, the following research questions have been of central guidance for framing the main issue: (1) How are economic, political and social processes brought together on a policy level for motivating and regulating individuals’ educational choices (Article I)? (2) How do students’ educational choices correspond with policy intentions and the assumptions of rational choice that the latter are founded on (Article I-II)? (3) How are students’ educational choices shaped by wants and identities (Article II-IV)? (4) What is the relationship between students’ want formation and relevant social and cultural conditions (Article II-IV)? The empirical material consisted of interviews and semi-structured questionnaires with young people in secondary education and higher education, and interviews with school staff in secondary education. Empirical inquiries were also conveyed via a semiotic content analysis on recent policy: specifically the Swedish Long-Term Surveys from 2008 and 2011. In comprehensive terms, the rationality of choices from both how choice is practiced and what is desired has been of primary interest. These concerns are addressed by the following emphases in the different investigations. In Article I the form of government that aims to shape actors’ wants and decisions in relation to productive educational choices in the Long-Term Surveys is investigated. The forms of rationality in general, and the suggested implementation of rational choices in particular, are here analyzed through a critical semiotic analysis. The result of the study lifts forward critical distinctions of ontological and epistemological assumptions in how to delineate social and economic claims for the righteousness, reasonableness and necessity of choices. Article II focuses on how students’ wants and choices are formed in a vocational (vehicle maintenance program) and a theoretical (social science program) upper secondary education. By examining students’ want-lists complemented by interviews with students and school staff the study argues that it is important to view wants in an organic totality based on individual and collective experiences. The results show a pragmatic rationality in students’ decision-making, which challenges instrumental rationality in educational choices. This is importantly about how structural support guides students’ decisions over the future under conditions of the radical uncertainty that marks decisions in open social systems. In article III the analysis of vocational and theoretical upper secondary students’ want formations are further developed in relation to their educational environment. Through analysis of interviews with students, teachers, principals and student counselors the article pays particular attention to institutional school effects and school habitus. The results showed that different forms of school habitus in the investigated programs could be empirically attributed to how students form their wants. Article IV investigates identity work via a semi-structured questionnaire and group interviews with students from a Swedish Human Resource program in higher education. What in particular was investigated was how symbolic signification of education and occupations occurred within education. The actual meaning students attributed to education rested importantly on collective sense-making. Indicated in the results is that the meaning of being a student incorporates an awareness of social status and an ability to form relatively autonomous personal projects related to social forces. The result of the thesis points to a lack of correspondence between, on the one hand, political notions of how rational and utility maximizing choices should be made based on effective matching of education and working life and, on the other hand, how young people form their paths into the future in practice through education choices. Students often make their educational choices due to a lack of better alternatives and are often uncertain about where their choices will take them in life. These results show that there is a need for concrete support in schools in order to turn students’ insecurity about the future into useful strategies for educational and occupational paths.
Contextualizing managerial work in local government organizations
(2013-11-21) Björk, Lisa
This thesis is about managerial work in local government organizations. The purpose is to explain important aspects of managerial work with the help of a contextual perspective. The focus is on managers at the operational level of education, health and social care services, and technical services. Two research questions are raised. The first question considers the relationship between context and managerial work: how does organizational context influence managerial work, and how does managerial work influence organizational context? The second question is about contextual variations within the municipal sector: does the organizational context for lower-level managerial work vary between differently gendered municipal services, and, if so, how can this variation be explained? In order to answer these questions, I have used a cross-level and comparative research design. The design is cross-level in the sense that I consider how factors at different analytical levels interact. The design is comparative in the sense that the services have been strategically selected to represent differently gendered municipal contexts. The theoretical framework evolved mainly from management, organization, and gender theory. With the help of Gary Johns’ (2006) framework of organizational context, I outlined a model of how to understand the relationship between context at different levels and managerial work practice. Other central concepts in the thesis are Yvonne Hirdman’s (1988) idea of an omnipresent gender system and Joan Acker’s (1990) notion of gendered organizations. The empirical work of the thesis consists of three quantitative studies (Study I, II and IV) that are based on a two-wave survey of over 400 operations managers in five different types of services, and one qualitative study (Study III) based on eight interviews with managers, politicians and controllers in two different organizations. In the first study, the impact of organizational traits on the unnecessary and unreasonable tasks in managerial work is investigated, using multilevel regression analysis. The aim of the second study was to provide a measure that can be used in order to evaluate and compare organizational conditions for managers in different types of services. The third study is an investigation into how the generic traits of the New Public Management have been implemented in differently gendered local government organizations. Lastly, the fourth study explores variations in organizational conditions in differently gendered services. The first overall conclusion of the thesis is that the relationship between managerial work and context is recursive. Organizations are arenas of conflict in which different stakeholders try to turn their ideas into governing formalities. Managerial work practice is to a large extent governed by the formalities that constitute the organizational context, which would in turn cease to exist if not for the daily work practices of managers and other organizational actors. The second conclusion is that there are systematic differences in organizational conditions between differently gendered services, and therefore a structural approach to gender is an important complement to more individualistic views on differences in male and female managerial behaviour.
Caring (in) Diaspora: Aging and Caring Experiences of Older Turkish Migrants in a Swedish Context
(2013-11-25) Naldemirci, Öncel
This thesis investigates Turkish migrants’ aging experiences and their understandings about care by concentrating on the accounts of a group of first-generation Turkish immigrants who settled in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The aim is to explore how older immigrants’ lives have been marked by the experience of migration and re-establishment in another country, how the impact of having once lost caring relations affected their decisions and desires about care in old age. This study examines some common patterns about aging in a host country, ideals of care in old age, encounters with medical institutions, interpretations of formal care facilities, and identity and community construction processes. Rather than generalizing and categorizing cultural, ethnic, or even religious expectations in the case of elderly care, it seeks to grasp the complexity of the migrants’ ideals of care and caring relations by focusing on the positions they take in diaspora space. This study is based on ethnographic research which extended over two years (2011–2013). The empirical material consisted of observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 older Turkish people, 10 women and 10 men, who live in Sweden. By focusing on medical care stories, the study highlights the importance of looking at previous experiences of being cared about and cared for in the deliberation of future care needs and expectations. By elucidating how older Turkish people understand formal care facilities such as home-help services and elderly care homes, the study underlines ambivalent attitudes towards these options. This ambivalence is anchored in ways of perceiving “the Swedish” as modern but uncaring as well as in their understandings of family members as caring others. The study also shows how the Turkish family is imagined and done through three emotions: merhamet (compassion/pity), vefa (loyalty/ faithfulness), and şefkat (concern/affection). Emotionalization of the family is not about reinforcing, but, rather, about negotiating the filial duty towards older parents. Of note is also that these emotions circulate inside and outside the family and that a caring diasporic community is imagined. By exploring older Turkish migrants’ experiences and understandings, this study contributes to the growing research field of care for people with a migration background. It critically assesses older Turkish immigrants’ aging experiences, and their understandings about care options, not through cultural differences that are supposed to be unchanging and homogeneous, but based on the positions that they take in diaspora space. This study contributes by showing that, in order to understand the possible expectations of older migrants when it comes to decisions about and needs for care, it is crucial to consider their experience of having lived and aged in diaspora space. Designing, deliberating on, and deconstructing particular ideals of care become possible only if we take these experiential, mnemonic, and relational meaning-making processes into account.
Geographies of eHealth: Studies of Healthcare at a Distance
(2014-05-16) Petersson, Jesper
This thesis examines the proliferation of healthcare services using information and communication technology to overcome spatial and temporal obstacles. These services are given such names as telemedicine and telecare, which are sometimes grouped together as telehealthcare under the umbrella term eHealth. My main argument is that a prevalent and overoptimistic rhetoric of how the possibilities of digitalization are expected to produce a homogenous and ubiquitous healthcare space conceals many of the spatiotemporal complexities involved in introducing telehealthcare and in the overall organizing of healthcare. To counteract such simplifications, I contend that we need a relational understanding of the technical and the geographical as always nested in the social and vice versa. With such an approach, it is arguably possible to begin to tease apart the many spatiotemporal entanglements of these innovations and to trace their political ramifications. This position is developed by integrating perspectives from science and technology studies with insights from human geography. The four constituent papers of this thesis pursue this argument in qualitatively grounded case studies of telehealthcare and its geographies. Paper I looks at various initiatives for fetal tele-ultrasonography, demonstrating that this practice cannot be reduced to a mere transparent relay for the speedy transmission of digital information across space and time. The paper investigates how its introduction could affect medical knowledge production, power hierarchies, and subject positions, for example, the status attributed to the fetal figure. Paper II traces Swedish transformations of telehealthcare. The use of telemedicine to reach those outside medicine’s range has arguably been accompanied by efforts to achieve intra-organizational streamlining via telemedicine. This process has continued with the emergence of telecare for personal use directed toward the overlapping groups of the elderly people and patients with chronic conditions. I contend that this shift can be understood through a geographical lens as attempts to save space and time by keeping as many patients as possible out of costly hospitalization and preventing them from engaging scarce specialist resources. Paper III compares four telemedicine projects in Sweden. In detailing how the purpose of practicing telemedicine differed between these projects in relation to, for example, the specifics of distance, care availability, and treated medical conditions, the paper demonstrates the existence of many versions of telemedicine. Whereas this fluidity could further the spread of telemedicine, it could also cause problems. To various actors wanting to use telemedicine in a homogenous and fixed way for national streamlining purposes, this diversity has generated confusion when they wished to align telemedicine in a preferred direction. The paper concludes that technology travels best when it can contain both fluid and fixed relationships. Paper IV argues that, whatever is claimed about creating a space- and time-independent healthcare by means of telehealthcare, the use of telecare to connect the standardized spaces of healthcare with the fluid everyday lives of elderly people and patients with chronic conditions actually works by unfolding new spaces of visibilities and establishing new temporalities as well. By investigating these spatiotemporalities, I demonstrate how these applications draw together discourses on individual freedom with medically derived algorithms and concerns about how to make best use of scarce healthcare resources.
De mest lämpade – en studie av doktoranders habituering på det vetenskapliga fältet
(2014-05-22) Peixoto, Anna
This thesis is about the university as a workplace. Essentially, it addresses postgraduate studies, doctoral students’ work conditions, and how these students are schooled to become researchers. The overarching purpose of the thesis is, based on Sweden’s 1998 reform of research education, to study the parameters of PhD students’ working lives, their schooling as budding researchers in various subject areas, and their ways of handling the formal rules and tacit expectations of academia in relation to their own resources and assets. The theoretical framework for the thesis is Bourdieu’s theory of capital and fields. The primary empirical basis is 15 interviews with PhD students in three subject areas, humanities, natural sciences and educational sciences, at the University of Gothenburg. The analysis shows that the parameters of PhD students’ work are characterised both by subject-specific doxa and by the formal rules associated with research education and the doctoral students’ form of employment. The subject areas have diverging outlooks and basic assumptions regarding the aims and purpose of research education. The thesis also shows that politically initiated reforms are being interpreted and reshaped in relation to the values sustained by the scientific field itself. This generates a tension between different logics that are not always mutually compatible. The good intentions of the reform, to clarify research education, have thus rather created further grey areas between official edicts and informal demands. The doctoral students who can navigate among them successfully and, at the same time, stage their researcher role in the desired way, are the ones who are invited into the scientific field. It is they who are seen as the fittest.
Europafacklig samverkan. Problem och möjligheter
(2014-05-26) Lovén Seldén, Kristina
The overarching aim of this thesis is to examine the conditions for cooperation among trade unions in Europe, and to identify factors making it easier or more difficult. The dissertation centers on two crucial areas: wage determination and working- time regulation. The theoretical framework combines theories of industrial relations regimes with ideas on meta-organizations, and an approach focusing on the power resources of trade unions. The empirical data was collected through a web survey sent by e-mail to all member organizations of the ETUC, all the ETUFs and trade unions just below the central level in 14 European countries. I also carried out interviews, made observations at trade union meetings and collected all kinds of documents. Trade unions in different countries and institutional settings were strategically selected for the interviews and the survey. In study I, I examine the revision of the EU Working Time Directive and how European trade unions and employer organizations have responded to this revision. Study II explores trade union attitudes towards issues of future wage setting on national and European level, and in particular, their attitudes towards statutory minimum wages. In study III I address the conditions for transnational trade union cooperation in the wake of the Laval case, and examine whether the case is perceived to have affected European trade union relations. Study IV, finally, focuses on trade union attitudes towards a European regulation of working time and whether these attitudes are related to what industrial regime the trade unions belong to. The article also compares the trade union approach to a European working time regulation with the approach to a European regulation of minimum wage. The analyses showed that comparative regime theory has quite large explanatory power as to various union attitudes towards certain regulations, strategies and cooperation in Europe. Whereas today there is increasing support among trade unions in Europe towards statutory minimum wages on European level, there is rejection of this solution among the Nordic unions who insist on keeping their system with negotiated wage-setting. The results can be understood with reference to differences in the domestic labour market and to the strength of the trade unions or, in other words, their membership and bargaining power. Trade unions in countries with high union density and strong collective bargaining power are inclined to preserve their current wage systems, whereas trade unions in countries with weak bargaining power are more likely to seek new ways to defend wages. However, as I argue based on the analyses, trade union attitudes towards transnational cooperation may also be issue-specific, which the case of a European working-time regulation illustrates. Although institutional differences between countries are important obstacles they cannot alone explain union cooperation or the lack of union cooperation in Europe.
Governing the unaccompanied child – media, policy and practice
(2014-08-12) Stretmo, Live
Through three different case studies, this thesis analyzes how unaccompanied minors are constructed and governed as a specific group of refugees in Norway and Sweden. The first study investigates the Norwegian and Swedish media debate from 2000-2008 by examining how incidences of so-called “missing unaccompanied children” were highlighted on the media agenda. Part of this has also been to analyze the specific official actions taken by Norwegian and Swedish authorities. The second study analyzes how unaccompanied minors were framed in a more broad selection of Norwegian and Swedish official policy between 2000-2010 by looking at how unaccompanied children and youngsters were singled out as subjects of knowledge, and the actions and practices that legitimized these constructions. These two case studies demonstrate that unaccompanied minors have been similarly problematized in Norway and Sweden, hence making similar changes in mode of conduct legitimate. They were sometimes singled out as vulnerable children or child victims, but concurrently also as possible strate-gic migrants (adults trying to pass as children, problematic youngsters, etc.). This poses different types of threats to the asylum system, thus justifying care-oriented amid control-oriented strategies in their regard. The third case study analyzes how a selection of caregivers (i.e., officials and support staff) talk about their work with unaccompanied youngsters and children, and describes how 10 youngsters give meaning to their experiences of being categorized as unaccompanied. The caregivers held a repertoire of various constructions that clearly connect to many of the official or public narrations. Sometimes unaccompanied minors are framed as respectable exceptions to other problem categories, and at other times as problematic youngsters in need of compensatory pedagogics in order to overcome specific shortcomings. These caregivers, plus the media and national policy, further frame unaccompanied minors as specific rights holders due to their position-ing as “any other child”, therefore legitimizing softer and more care-oriented strategies. The interviews with the 10 youngsters illustrate how they try to re-position themselves as positive exceptions to the official images of strategic or problematic youngsters highlighted in the media, policy and practice. This study identifies a discourse where a lot of consensus and agreement on problematizations coexist in Norwegian and Swedish policy, public narratives, and in how people in the micro context talk and make sense of unaccompanied minors.
Bortom scenen - en sociologisk studie av frilansande skådespelares villkor
(2014-09-23) Miscevic, Danka
Distributed Leadership in Local School Organisations. Working for School Improvement?
(2015-08-27) Liljenberg, Mette
This thesis takes its point of departure from the recent increased interest in leadership, and especially distributed leadership. Educational research states that if schools are to meet future demands, leadership must rest on trust within the organisation and distributed leadership must be understood, in the frame of professional collaboration and social learning. However, distributed leadership has also been presented as a normative prescription and an officially sanctioned model for how to arrange school leadership in order to meet the increased demand for school leaders. The aim of the thesis is to generate knowledge about the construction of distributed leadership in local schools within the Swedish context and thereby contribute to the wider discussion of leadership within the educational field. The study draws on data from a qualitative case study of three schools conducted during the years 2011 and 2012, with follow-up in 2014. In the three schools observations of formal meetings and semi-structured interviews with school leaders and teachers were conducted and further analysed. The theoretical framework is based on institutional perspectives on organisations and distributed perspectives on leadership. Furthermore, capacity building in school organisations is used as a framework for identifying different areas of relevance for school improvement. Paper I, Distributing leadership to establish developing and learning school organisations in the Swedish context, examines the influence of distributed leadership and the structural and cultural prerequisites when creating a developing and learning school organisation. Paper II, Teacher leadership modes and practices in a Swedish context – A case study, elaborates on the significance of how leadership is framed in the organisation and the contribution it makes to school improvement. Paper III, Att skapa mening i lärares samarbete och gemensamma lärande. Tre skolors försök, examines how principals’ and teachers’ sensemaking about improvement initiatives influence the outcome of these initiatives and the possibility of developing teacher collaboration and common learning in the schools. Paper IV, School leaders as coupling agents – Mediating between external demands and internal values, explores how school leaders in their role as coupling agents respond to pressure from the institutional environment and how this relates to the direction of improvement in the local schools. The main findings of the thesis show that the organisation of distributed leadership at local school level is embedded in the institutional context and in the local history of each school. Of particular importance are locally embedded norms and values that set the conditions for which structures are made possible, for how leadership is understood and for how teachers and school leaders make sense of and shape their roles in distributed leadership practices. The findings also show that the relation between distributed leadership and capacity building is based on the conditions at local level. This means that it is the conditions at local level that provide the basis for the quality of the distributed leadership. Looking at the construction of distributed leadership in the three schools in relation to the transformation of the Swedish educational system, it becomes clear that the construction of distributed leadership at local level is strongly connected to a democratic vision of leadership and trust in the competence of professionals. At local school level few connections between the ideas of distributed leadership and the neoliberal policy movements were detected. Finally the findings show that formal school leaders have an important role in the construction of distributed leadership at local level if capacity building and school improvement are to take place. School leaders contribute to this by creating favourable structural conditions but most of all by influencing locally embedded norms and values so that a democratic and reflective understanding of leadership that implies ‘power-with’ rather than ‘power-over’ (Møller, 2002), as well as a high degree of openness to collaboration, shared sensemaking and trust between different actors can be created.
On the mechanisms of social inequality Studies of young people's educational outcomes, social participation and well-being
(2015-10-15) Nordlander, Erica
The present thesis seeks to explore the bases of social inequality, particularly how it is reproduced and can potentially be counteracted. The aim is to describe and explain how structural factors – first and foremost class and young people’s various practices – give rise to a process of creation, distribution and acquisition of resources of importance to different outcomes in young people’s lives. In the thesis it is argued that by studying young people’s different practices and by relating them to the characteristics of the family of origin, we can obtain a more comprehensive picture of how resources that are related to the varying outcomes among young people of different social origins are acquired, distributed and created. The aim of the thesis is investigated through four empirical studies. Study 1, investigates the relationship between class origin, educational attainment, and two features of social participation: agency and voice. In Study 2, adolescents’ subjective well-being is in focus and investigated in relation to school performance, gender and class origin. Study 3 explores whether, and to what degree, young people’s activities are important links between class origin and school grades in upper secondary school. The final study builds on Study 3 and focuses on the importance of young people’s class origin, school grades and activities for entering higher education. The aim of the thesis calls for extensive information on the life of young people. With a unique combination of survey data, both from the young themselves and from their parents together with registry data, this thesis can answer to these high demands on data. Study 1 uses data from the Survey of Living Conditions (ULF) collected by Statistics Sweden. The remaining studies (2-4) make use of a several data sources, but are mainly focused on ULF and the annual child supplement of the Survey of Living Conditions (Child-ULF) conducted between 2001 and 2005. In addition to ULF and Child-ULF, the data in Study 2-4 have been complemented with registry data comprising grades and entry to higher education. The data as a whole, also allow a longitudinal focus, as the survey data were collected between 2001 and 2005 and the registry data contain information up to 2009. The conclusions of the thesis can be summarized in one important point: If we are to understand the mechanisms underlying different life outcomes among young people, it is of great importance that we take into consideration young people’s different conditions and practices. It has been made clear that young people’s different practices and life outcomes are closely related to their class origin. Yet it should be noted that this does not always have to be the case. The present thesis has shown that young people, through different actions, can break the pattern of social reproduction. In order to support this, and to counteract social inequality, it is therefore important to increase opportunities for young people to take part in resource-generating practices.
Organising for School Improvement at the Middle Tier. Studies in Temporary Organisation
(2015-10-27) Nordholm, Daniel
The Microfundations of Flexicurity
(2016-01-21) Vulkan, Patrik
This thesis examines the microfoundations of flexicurity, an arrangement of policies that proponents claim can deliver a ‘win-win’ situation in the labour market. These policies include lax employment protection legislation (EPL) to provide employers the flexibility to hire and fire with ease, and others supposed to provide employees with a high level of ‘employment security’ (high ability to find new quality jobs if they lose their current job) and ‘income security’ (low likelihood of suffering economically during periods of transition between jobs). More specifically, this thesis analyses how flexicurity may affect employees’ well-being and to what extent they favour flexicurity policy proposals in Sweden and (to lesser degrees) other Nordic countries, using data obtained from responses to a questionnaire concerning security in the labour market distributed to employees, with additional data from the Labour Force Survey. The theoretical framework applied relates flexicurity theory to the two central concepts of flexibility and security, and the need for institutional arrangements that compensate for losses of job security (caused by weakening of EPL) in the labour market. Furthermore, it includes a multidimensional understanding of security and its relation to well-being, as well as ways in which class and insider-outsider divisions may structure employees’ attitudes to labour market policy and the main components of the flexicurity arrangement Empirically, the thesis is based on four studies, designated Studies I-IV. Study I examines to what extent increases in employment and income security could compensate for losses of job security among employees, as envisioned in the flexicurity arrangement. Study II elaborates on this theme by examining the relation between job insecurity and poor well-being, and the degree to which losses of well-being can be countered by increases in employment and income security, using a multidimensional measure of employees’ security in Sweden, Finland and Norway. Study III examines employee attitudes to deregulating EPL, a central component of flexicurity, in the Nordic welfare states and whether labour market outsiders are more in favour than insiders of deregulation. Study IV explores employees’ support for the policy measures comprising the main flexicurity components, and to what extent class and insider/outsider divisions in Sweden affect this support. The main findings are that job insecurity exacerbates employees’ worries about job losses, and that the worries are related to both employment and income security. High employment security is associated with low levels of worries about job losses, indicating that improvements in possibilities of finding a new job can compensate for increases in job insecurity. However, the level of job insecurity affects these worries most strongly (of the tested variables), thus improving job security could be considered the most effective measure for improving employees’ mental well-being. A labour market that prioritizes provision of employment and income security could, under favourable conditions, be better for employees than an arrangement that primarily prioritizes job security. However, the success of the flexicurity arrangement seems highly susceptible to economic down-turns, since the effectiveness of the active labour market programmes it requires is heavily reliant on market forces. The likely loss of employment security during a recession would be clearly detrimental to employees’ well-being. Relatively high proportions of employees favour deregulation of EPL in Sweden to allow employers more flexibility. However, the support decreases when the deregulation is associated with lower job security for employees. There is little support for the notion that outsiders would be more in favour of deregulation. In fact, there are indications of the opposite tendency, that outsiders are more in favour of strict EPL than insiders, contrary to a central tenet of insider/outsider theory. Concerning attitudes to all three main flexicurity components, there is little coherent support for policy changes in line with flexicurity. Employee preferences are rather oriented towards either interventionist or neoliberal measures in the labour market, which to a large part can be explained by class position, since interventionist and neoliberal policy preferences are readily structured along class divisions. These results are problematic with regard to implementation of flexicurity, since wide support for the arrangement is considered important for its success. Insider/outsider divisions seem to have fairly small, or theoretically contradictory, effects on policy preferences.

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