Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Sociologiska institutionen (-2011)

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Svenska för invandrare – brygga eller gräns?
(2002) Carlson, Marie
This thesis is intended to increase the understanding of the encounter between a group of “im-migrants with low education” and the Swedish educational system in the form of SFI, Swedish Language Courses for Immigrants. The study uses a social-constructivist interpretative frame-work and discourse analysis in order to elucidate how “knowledge” and learning are orga-nized, handled and articulated within SFI, but also participants’ description of how they are influenced by SFI. The analysis of different actors’ perspectives and ideas focuses upon lan-guage and its usage as an important symbolic medium of power. In addition to a number of key persons within SFI and surrounding institutions, twelve female participants, nine teachers and three school principals at two adult education centres were interviewed. Documents about and for the school, including some of the most important textbooks, were also used in the study. Analytical elaboration proceeds from the social macrolevel via an institutional mesolevel to the microlevel of participants and their everyday context. The analysis shows that SFI rests upon a “Swedish model of society” anchored in a top-down perspective on welfare and strong educational optimism. SFI educators’ and other employees’ speech, as well as texts in SFI documents, research and debate, presupposes “the Swedish” as the norm, even if not always consciously. They jointly sustain numerous “deficiency discourses” and the study shows that SFI participants are often subjected to corrective efforts and a partially fostering attitude. In addition, when SFI participants are hence positioned as “the others”, a preoccupation with “the Swedish” occurs, which can be understood as an ongoing construction and cultivation of the social majority’s own ethnicity. On the institutional level, the analysis also reveals complex relationships between SFI and other institutions. SFI teachers, for example, criticize employment office clerks for their inter-pretation and use of the SFI certificate of approval as a sorting instrument for immigrants who apply for work. Similarly, the social service’s attendance checks and intervention in the peda-gogical assignment are questioned. At the same time, these three institutions collaborate in (re)producing “deficiency discourses” and an ambition of improvement directed towards the immigrants. For SFI, the analysis exposes a paradox: discursive exclusion and limited possi-bilities of influence in the instruction on behalf of the participants, despite organizing concepts such as “own responsibility”, “communication”, “critical reflection” and “participation” in the control documents. On the participants’ level, SFI gives rise to benefits and joy as well as shortcomings and frustrations. SFI studies yield greater opportunities for taking part in more social arenas, give better self-confidence and increase “everyday power”. The shortcomings are for example re-lated to “Swedish” ideas, not least the norm of gender equality and sometimes to feelings of being wrongly attributed traits such as “passive”, “traditional” and “backward”. Dominant per-ceptions of Swedish society, partly conveyed through SFI, seem to force the women into re-flexive resistance, but also to strengthen their role of being a “bridge” to a new life in Sweden.
Nära inpå: Maskulinitet, intimitet och gemenskap i brandmäns arbetslag
(2011-05-19) Ericson, Mathias
This study explores the profession of firefighter, in which the progression of gender equality has been particularly slow compared to many other professions in Sweden. The aim of the study is to explore constructions of masculinity in the firefighter profession and how they are related to specific forms of community among men in this profession. The starting point of the thesis is that one of the central mechanisms of gender segregation is male homosociality, which is men’s search for community with other men. Based on field notes and recorded interviews the study explores how affectionate and intimate relations between men are supported and upheld in this occupation. The analysis is presented in three parts that explore different aspects of firefighters’ life in the work teams. The first section explores that firefighters’ put value on spatial and temporal settings that demanded that they lived family life at work. They thought that if women were included in the work teams it would become more difficult to share that kind of intimacy. The second section focuses on the joking manner and jargon among firefighters. Being able to respond to brutal jokes and raw jargon confirmed their sense of being close, which was not thought to be able to uphold if women were included in the work teams. The third section focuses on how firefighters relate to the fact that their work is associated with notions of masculinity. It is argued that their ability to both support and criticise their profession’s association with masculine stereotypes enforced these men’s commitment to each other in the teams. The main contribution of the thesis to a deeper understanding of how men’s hegemony is maintained within this profession is exploring how the notion of homosociality and intimacy between men relates to the concept of masculinity. The thesis concludes that the concept of homosociality makes it possible to highlight other forms of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms than does the concept of hegemonic masculinity. The concept of masculinity emphasises the conflicts and hierarchies between men. The concept of homosociality however emphasises belonging and loyalty among men. It can be used to explore how gender is constructed, through the expectation that homosocial relationships would make possible an exclusive intimacy. That homosociality is valued as a guarantee for exclusive intimacy seems especially important in this profession, where this exclusive intimacy provides men with a sense of belonging and confirmation of having what it takes to be a real firefighter.
Icke-medborgarskapets urbana geografi
(2011-04-28) Holgersson, Helena
The object of investigation in this dissertation is the living conditions of refused asylum seekers in Sweden. More specifically, it is an ethnographic study of how a group of people organize their lives in Gothenburg under the threat of deportation. In Sweden these people are often referred to as “hidden refugees”, “without papers” or “illegal immigrants”, but since this study analyzes these terms the informants are described as deportables. The research questions evolve around both what constitutes the Swedish non-citizenship and what characterizes the urban environment. As many other post-industrial cities, Gothenburg is today working within the logic of what David Harvey refers to as entrepreneurialism, which means competing with other cities to “get on the map” and attract capital, tourists and events. This study discusses how deportables can make room for themselves in “the city of events” and “the city of knowledge”. Today we see a distinct conflict of interest in Gothenburg. At the same time as many non-citizens come here, the local authorities work hard to reduce this “inflow”. Consequently, this study focuses on how matters concerning how the welfare state ought to deal with the presence of non-citizens come to a head in cities. It argues that one consequence of what Gøsta Esping-Andersen characterizes as the social democratic welfare regime is that deportables are more obviously excluded in Sweden than in other European countries. Creating parallel systems where these people are given some welfare goes against the fundamental principle of providing a high degree of welfare to everyone. Such politics are hard to live by on the local level though. For instance, Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg has created routines for registering people without a Swedish personal number. In Sweden the most common way of naming rejected asylum seekers is “hidden refugees”, an expression that envisions these people living “underground” and “outside of society”. However, the informants’ everyday life turned out to revolve around learning to navigate in the urban geography and to create a life in the intersection between national regulations and the opportunities that the city, after all, has to offer. Drawing on Les Back’s notion of sociological listening this study aims at formulating a place-sensitive sociology, by, firstly, supplementing traditional methods such as participant observations and interviews with walk-alongs and “mental” maps, and, secondly, combining discourse analytical and symbolic interactionist perspectives.
The Making of Protest and Protest Policing: Negotiation, Knowledge, Space, and Narrative
(2011-04-19) Wahlström, Mattias
The overall aim of this thesis is to advance our knowledge of the preconditions, processes, and consequences of the interaction between police and political protesters in contemporary Western democracies. Using qualitative analysis of interviews with police officers and political activists, activist Internet forum discussions, and documents produced by police and activists, along with direct observation of protest events and police training in policing tactics, the study seeks to capture the interplay between police and protesters as a continuous process, as opposed to a series of isolated incidents. A better understanding of the dynamics of this process is vital for facilitating vibrant, plural public spaces for deliberation and political representation in a democratic society. The four studies comprising this dissertation look at events and processes in Denmark and Sweden in 2001 through 2008 – a time period seeing a reform of policing tactics and an upsurge in protest activism in the two countries. Paper I analyses the communication between the police and activists, including explicit negotiations, both before and during the European Union summits in Gothenburg 2001 and Copenhagen 2002, examining in especial the protesters’ initial attitudes towards and subsequent evaluations of this communication. The analysis reveals that the possibilities for achieving sustainable agreements between the two parties were frequently constrained by a mutual lack of trust that made any commitments by the other party seem less than credible. Activists’ trust in the police was found to be heavily dependent on the recent history of police behaviour and something not easily influenced by the individual efforts of the negotiating officers. In addition, the different protest performances that various activist groups wanted to stage were found to be crucial in explaining their attitudes towards communication with the police. Paper II explores the way in which the Swedish police force works to improve its protest policing practices by trying to reform police knowledge through training and police officers’ individual interviews with activists and other counterparts. The discussion centres on the meanings that police officers confer on two organizing concepts framing the reform work – provocation and dialogue – and on the way in which police officers use “reality maintaining” strategies to comprehend activist perspectives without allowing these to fundamentally challenge their own points of view. It is suggested that the current policing style in Sweden, as used also in Denmark, is best conceptualized as proactive management of protests, which captures both the softer and harder aspects of this approach. Paper III draws upon Henri Lefebvre’s theory of production of space to explore how space is pro-duced through protests and protest policing, using a series of annual racist marches and counterdemonstrations as a case study. Conversely, the paper also considers certain key spatial aspects as explan-ations for how interactions between protesters and police unfolded in the cases concerned. It is argued that territorialization and deterritorialization affecting the boundaries of both physical spaces and the social order constituted the central spatial dimensions of this interaction. The case study, furthermore, illustrates how specific sites for protests can be used as ‘truth-spots‘ for movement claims. Paper IV explores how police provocation and subsequent violence by demonstrators are retroactively constructed in activist milieus in the aftermath of protests. Through an analysis of narratives about protest events as gleaned from interviews and Internet discussion forum discussions, the role of ‘provocation narratives’ in collective evaluation of protest tactics within activist milieus is examined. The analysis reveals how violence is accounted for by using distinct types of plot and particular characters to present the demonstrators as both victims and agents. Accounts of specific episodes of violence during demonstrations were found to theoretically bridge situational and cultural explanations of collective violence.
Scarcity, Abundance and Sufficiency: Contributions to Social and Economic Theory
(2011-03-03) Daoud, Adel
Economic sociology has established itself as a strong and vibrant field in the social sciences. A number of significant studies have been conducted on the relation between the economy and society: on firms, markets, networks, money, and general action theory. But little has been done on the issues of scarcity, abundance, and sufficiency (SAS). Both economical and sociological approaches seem to assume scarcity as an important premise. But none seems to question the deeper nature of it. The SAS theme seems to be analytically underdeveloped in both disciplines. This thesis aims to explore an alternative ground for critical economic sociology or more generally for social and economic theory. Instead of focusing on the problems of rational choice, which a number of sociological studies have done, the thesis starts even earlier in the set of assumptions that condition human agency, it focuses on the premise of scarcity. The central question posed is: ’What is the nature of SAS in social and economic theory?’ Five studies have been carried out in order to answer this question. These studies focus on quite divergent empirical fields – famine, voluntary simplicity, and educational choice – in order to explore the varying importance of the sociocultural mechanisms underlying SAS. Paper I deals with absolute SAS and the assumption of universal scarcity in neoclassical economics. A critical examination of this assumption is conducted by studying the empirical phenomenon of global hunger in relation to a theoretical elaboration of SAS. It also proposes a framework for explaining and understanding absolute SAS. Paper II further tests the framework developed in Paper I. The food entitlement decline and the food availability decline are commonly seen as conflicting approaches to explaining famine. The paper analyses the relation between these two approaches and argues that these approaches can in fact be reconciled under one framework by outlining their causal sources. This analysis also shows that there is a third causal source that needs to be incorporated with the other two approaches. The whole analysis is exemplified by the Bengal Famine of 1943. Paper III focuses on relative SAS. It studies how voluntary material simplicity countervails the causal effect of relative scarcity generated by the environment of a consumer society. Analyses of both interviews and texts were carried out. It is shown that voluntary material simplifiers manage, though with difficulty, to neutralize the causal effect of the consumer society. This is achieved by mediating the cultural properties of the economic ethic of material simplicity, which promotes the deflation of human wants. They actualize what has been called the modus vivendi of material simplicity, a practical state of relative abundance. The aim of Paper IV is to study the formation of wants based on interviews with upper secondary school pupils. The paper shows that an organic view of decision-making is in better accordance with observations than is a hierarchical view and thus supports previous research claiming that pragmatic rationality (based on habitus and reflexivity) plays a more important role in students’ decision-making processes than does instrumental rationally. Paper V compares two classical economists and their views on scarcity, namely Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and Lionel Robbins (1898-1984). However, both scholars’ views tend to naturalize and universalize scarcity, and thus to overlook abundance and sufficiency, which are important states in the social provisioning process. It is argued that this is due to neglect of the sociocultural causal underpinnings of SAS. Hence, the thesis offers three main contributions to social and economic theory in general: (1) a tentative typology of SAS; (2) a holistic (multi-casual) explanatory approach to SAS; and (3) an alternative foundation for social and economic theory, based on what has been called the SAS theme. It is shown that this theme contains various socioeconomic phenomena that are intimately linked to SAS (famine, want, property, market, justice, poverty, action, conflict, etc.), which then set the stage for new kinds of socioeconomic inquiries as well as new relationships between existing ones. Hopefully, this will enable an even deeper understanding of how SAS conditions social and economic life.
Våldets regler. Ungdomars tal om våld och bråk.
(2011-03-01) Uhnoo, Sara
Rather than adults’ indignation about today’s youth, the object of investigation in this dissertation is young people’s moral rules. Rules are flexible and formable, often unclear and ambiguous, which means that they need to be interpreted in order to be usable in concrete situations. The thesis analyses young people’s moral work when they talk about violence and fighting between youths. It proceeds by distinguishing which rules they create, recreate and negotiate, which repertoires of interpretation they use, and which societal discourses they refer and relate to. The dissertation’s empirical material consists of fifteen tape-recorded and verbatim-transcribed interviews (individual, in pairs or focus-groups), with 41 young people aged 15–21, about violence and fighting. In order to place the interviewed youths’ locally anchored moral work in a broader context and obtain a basis to contrast it with, the youth’s talk is related to more general adult-dominated and public societal discourses. A limited discourse analysis of documents such as daily newspaper articles has thus been carried out. The analysis of the interviewees’ moral work is summarized in the form of a typology of young people’s fighting and violence. It shows that youths’ talk about what one may or must not do to another young person is complex, ambivalent and equivocal, and that the rules of violence are negotiable and varies with the situation and the relationship (the relative power relationship, degree of social distance and whether it is a positive or negative relationship). It also makes clear that rules are actively referred to, produced, reproduced, and negotiated in the interviews. What is made morally relevant varies between different forms of fighting and violence. In a youth fight, the beginning is important, but also how the opponent reacts and when, whether, and how one may strike the first blow or return a blow. In the moral work on play fights and sibling fights, the relationship and the purpose are given greater weight. In talk about boys’ blows, kicks and sexual offences against girls, great importance is attributed to physical strength, but also to the character of the violence—whether it is constructed as sexual or as solely physical. The interviewees set limits on what is allowed or not allowed for a young person – stranger, peer, sibling and partner – to do. Their moral work shows that social control is exercised even in the absence of adults, and that young people control themselves and each other through a host of subtle, informal social rules for violence and fighting between young people.
At the End of the Rainbow - Post-winning life among Swedish lottery winners
(2011-02-17) Hedenus, Anna
This thesis is based upon empirical data from a quantitative survey among 420 Swedish lottery winners and from qualitative interviews with fourteen individual lottery winners. By examining how winners of large lottery prizes manage and experience their situation after winning, this thesis illustrates how sudden wealth affects people‟s behaviours and sense of self. The choices that lottery winners make in this situation can be understood as a reflection of how people prioritize and value different aspects of life: work, leisure, consumption, economic security etc. A special focus has been on the lottery winners‟ work commitment after the windfall, contributing to the previous knowledge on work attitudes and of people‟s appreciation of internal versus external rewards from work. The thesis consists of five papers that employ different research questions and thus illuminate the main issue of post-winning life from various theoretical vantage points. Paper I presents a basic account of how people relate to paid work after a lottery win. It also gives some indication of which groups of workers are more inclined than others to reduce the time they spend on work. Paper II explores this issue further, exploring the hypothesis that respondents who perceive difficulties in balancing their work and family life would be especially apt to devote less time to work. In paper III, finally, I investigate the relationship between lottery winners‟ socio-economic status and working conditions, on the one hand, and their commitment to work, on the other hand. Results from these three studies establish that only a minority of the lottery winners have spent less time at work since the windfall. Compared with winners of relatively lower prizes, however, winners of larger lottery prizes showed significantly higher incidence of having shortened their working hours or having taken periods of unpaid leave after the windfall. In addition to this finding, the different analyses showed that women, winners without children still living at home, blue-collar workers and workers who do not perceive that they have “good” colleagues, were more inclined to work shorter hours than winners of the respective reference groups. Considering the option to take periods of leave, it was instead the winners living without a partner and winners who perceived that their work place did not offer much opportunity for further training that were especially singled out. Older lottery winners, winners who felt that their jobs were physically strenuous, and winners who did not perceive that they could control their working hours, were, finally, more likely to cease work entirely. Papers IV and V, finally, illustrate how lottery winners conceive of the money that they have won as a “special” kind of money. Both papers address issues of how the prize money should be managed, notions governed by norms about consumption and saving. By managing the money properly, the lottery winners avoid the many risks associated with the win and can instead enjoy the feelings of freedom and security it also brings.
Free software to open hardware: Critical theory on the frontiers of hacking
(2011-02-15) Söderberg, Johan
Starting from the experiences of hackers developing free software and open hardware, this thesis addresses some key and recurrent themes in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It poses the question: how are technologies conceptualised, constructed and used in ways that render some aspects of them transparent, while leaving others opaque? This question is complicated by the fact that what is visible and transparent to some will remain opaque to others, depending on the level of technical expertise commanded. The political implications of this stand at the heart of my inquiry. Since technical know-how is unevenly distributed among groups in society, the same concern can be rephrased as follows: How are relations of power and conflict mediated through technology and relations of technical expertise/ignorance? While trying to address this question, the thesis delves into matters of epistemology. Just as programming skills are required for seeing what is going on behind the computer screen, so theoretically informed reflection can be considered necessary for rendering visible social relations not immediately apparent to the casual eye. Discussion of the actions of hackers is therefore combined in this thesis with discussion of the alternative programmes of research which can be applied to the study of these actions. Two programmes of research in particular receive attention: the critical theory of technology and constructivist science and technology studies (STS). Of these two, the relevance of the former tradition is emphasized and its value for research in the STS field defended. The thesis is composed of four articles and an introductory chapter summarizing and encapsulating my concerns. The first article discusses belief in technological determinism among hackers and how this does not necessarily stand in opposition to political engagement. On the contrary, it is common within hacker politics for contending viewpoints to be articulated in relation to seemingly apolitical narratives about technical neutrality and progress. The second article also deals with antagonistic relations at the heart of processes of technological change. It argues that the punitive actions of law enforcement agencies provide a clear indication of the presence of asymmetrical power relations in technological change through, for example, attempts to suppress filesharing inventions. Hackers are negotiating with legal authorities and the mass media, but also amongst themselves, about how to draw the line between the legitimate users and harmful misusers of technology. The third and fourth articles are based on a case study of a group of Czech hardware hackers who invented a wireless network technology for sending data with visible, red light. The challenges faced by these hardware hackers in their attempts to design technical solutions capable of being built by non-expert users are discussed at length in a theoretically-informed fashion.
I fäders och mödrars spår. Landsortsungdomars identitetsutveckling och vuxenblivande i ett livsformsperspektiv.
(2010-10-18) Jonsson, Christer
Abstract Title: Following in their Father’s and Mother’s Path: Young people’s steps to adulthood in a Swedish municipal community from a life form perspective. Language: Swedish with an English summary, 280 pages. Author: Christer Jonsson Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Box 720 SE-405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-975405-9-9, ISSN: 1650-4313 Gothenburg 2010. This dissertation examines young people, aged 16-24, their life expectations and steps towards adulthood. Life form analysis of their families plays a central role in understan- ding how social and cultural reproduction continues in traditional class-patterns in Swedish late modern society during the 1990’s. Theories of the ’individualized society’ are considered to have less validity for interpreting how these young people look at diffe- rent aspects of their everyday lives. In this study, five groups (types) of young people are distinguished. Four types demonstrate discernible patterns related to the career life form and the wage-labour life form. The young people with this two life-orientation were then separated according to gender for further interpretation. The fifth group of young people seems to be less connected with cultural socialisation in the family; their every-day engagements and their life expectations are devoted to a special interest. The empirical study, grounded in semi-structured interviews, focuses on growing-up in a Swe- dish rural community. Data was collected during a turbulent time in Swedish society. The first occasion of data collection took place at the beginning of the 1990’s when entering adult society had a relatively low threshold. The second occasion, the follow-up study some years later, took place when the unemployment rates of the 1990’s economic crises had reached their summit. This societal changes complicated, particularly for the wage labour-oriented, young people’s integration into adult society. Keywords: Youth, young people, life form, life expectations, social and cultural repro- duction.
Tjänsteresor i människors vardag - om rörlighet, närvaro och frånvaro
(2010-05-11T11:57:30Z) Bergström Casinowsky, Gunilla
Title: Business travel in everyday life: Mobility, presence and absence. Written in Swedish and English. 248 pages. Author: Gunilla Bergström Casinowsky Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE 40530 Göteborg, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-975405-8-2 ISSN: 1650-4313 Göteborg 2010 In this thesis, current debates on mobile lifestyles and the work-life interface are woven together and studied from the perspective of frequent business travellers. The overreaching aim is to investigate the significance of travel at work in people’s everyday lives. More specifically, the main objective is to shed some light upon emotional and practical consequences of travel-related absence from home for friendship and family relations. The thesis consists of four papers based on two different empirical studies: one qualitative study comprised by two sets of observations and 15 interviews, and one quantitative study based on survey data. The analysis of the qualitative data resulted in two papers written in Swedish (papers I and II). The results from the quantitative study are presented in two papers written in English (papers III and IV). Paper I is an exploratory study with the purpose of discovering focal dimensions of the work-life interface from a business traveller’s perspective. The second paper further explores gendered experiences of overnight work travel revealed in the first paper. Whereas the women’s experiences are characterized by feelings of loneliness, guilt and a sense of vulnerability, the men’s experiences are less negative and they also call attention to some positive sides of being cut off from everyday life at home. The gendered experiences have practical implications for how the respondents organize their mobile life. In prioritizing being at home, the female strategy aims at reducing the amount of nights away and, consequently, leads to comparatively many hours on the road. In contrast, the male strategy is more focused on minimizing the hours on the road with the purpose of actively “being there” for the family while at home and taking advantage of the “free” time while away. Questions about implications of overnight work travel in terms of the traveller’s ability to keep in touch with locally based as well as long-distance friends, and the opportunities that the travel might offer as a source of geographically extended social networks, are elaborated through analysis of the survey data (paper III). The benefits of mobility in terms of extended social networks represent the main social consequences of work travel as established in the analyses. Staying away from home due to work travel is also seen as potentially facilitating the coordination with friends living elsewhere. Some downsides are reported as well. The most frequent travellers feel negatively affected by mobility, reporting problems hampering coordination with friends close to home. Following up one thread noticed in the qualitative study, one issue explored by the quantitative data is the significance of work-related travel for the gendered division of domestic responsibility (paper IV). The results reveal a clear pattern in two key respects. When the work traveller is a woman, the allocation of home-based responsibility seems to remain unaffected. By contrast, the effect of the business trips when the travellers are men is a reduction in their relative share of responsibility for the home and the family.
Passionerad politik. Om motstånd mot heteronormativ könsmakt
(2010-03-18T12:06:06Z) Wasshede, Cathrin
Abstract Title: Passionate Politics. Resistance to Heteronormative Gender Power Written in Swedish, summary in English, 350 pages. Author: Cathrin Wasshede Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-86980-44-3 Göteborg 2010 This thesis analyses resistance to heteronormative gender power in order to explore both the possibilities and limits of this kind of resistance. Through a case study of young left-wing political activists in Gothenburg – a group of people that are supposed to offer an intense and well-articulated feminist resistance to dominating norms around gender and sexuality – the relation between power and resistance is brought into focus. The empirical materials drawn upon consist of interviews and focus group interviews with 36 activists in Gothenburg and documentation from part of the movement culture. Theoretically, resistance is seen as part of and depending on power, and vice versa. Through the activists’ strategies and attempts to resist the heteronormative gender power this very power structure is made visible. The alternative spaces produced are not free from power relations. In fact, they involve both traces of the heteronormative gender order, which they oppose, and new norms - so called counter-norms, and limits. Change and stability co-exist. One important resistance strategy is to oppose subjectivation, either by counter-identification or by disidentification. Among the activists it is common to be very critical of the gender dichotomy and in different ways they seek to escape from it or eliminate it. Because of the penalties – often in the form of abjection – imposed on people who break norms around gender and sexuality in a way that disturbes the heteronormative gender order, even many of the activists tend to pay attention to the limits for their transgression and make sure that they are on the ”right” side, that they have so-called hetero protection. Those who challenge the boundaries between different identity categories or between the normal/intelligible and the abnormal/unintelligible are performing limit experience and are actively using the abject position to offer resistance. Contradictions, emanating from opposing discourses trying to win superiority, are transformed into ambivalences, in the sense that the activists not only endure ambivalences, but that they also produce and use ambivalences as part of their resistance. The main ambivalence is the awareness of the possible in doing resistance and the impossible in leaving the structures and discourses behind. Through their passionate politics the activists both change and reinforce the heteronormative gender power. Keywords: gender, sexuality, heteronormativity, resistance strategies, social movement culture, subjectivation, intergendered, intersectionality, abject/abjectifying, passionate politics, gender equality discourse, Sweden
I moderniseringens skugga? Om förändring och identitet i två administrativa serviceyrken
(2010-03-18T08:57:01Z) Karlsson, Anette
The overarching aim of this dissertation is to study what happens with occupational identities in occupations subject to substantial and protracted pressure for change, more specifically in administrative service occupations in Sweden today. The dissertation centres on two cases within this broader category: medical secretaries and post-office cashiers. Typically for administrative service occupations, both have a large majority of women and their existence has repeatedly been questioned. At the same time, they represent two diverging lines of the differentiation this type of occupations has gone through. While the medical secretaries so far have kept their place in medical/health care, the post-office cashiers have gone from expansion of the work content in the 1980s and 1990s to dequalification, splitting, and finally being abolished. The study combines interviews as a main source of data with various types of text material. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2004–05 with a total of 39 medical secretaries and post-office cashiers. The theoretical backbone of the dissertation is a pluralistic identity perspective combined with an intersectional analysis that takes into consideration various bases of identity like gender and class but also modernity. Focus is also put on the use of discourses and narratives. The results support the view that it is meaningful to speak of occupational identity in administrative service occupations and, more generally, that it is neither an obsolete phenomenon nor something reserved for well-defined professional, high-status or craft occupations. Both secretaries and cashiers have occupational identities which are distinct and strong within certain limits. There is a distinct core of tasks, competences and ethical norms that stands out as generally considered important. This core is also in many respects the same in both occupations (emphasizing among other things the balanced exertion of carefulness and service), which points toward the plausibility of the concept ‘administrative service’. There is furthermore some basis for suggesting that a strong but delimited occupational identity of this type can be evoked by technological and economic changes if these are perceived to collide with human and social concerns, and that it can also - at least under some circumstances - be a resource for resistance and action. Swedish medical secretaries constitute an example of this. In their collective identity work, they walk a fine line between embracing contemporary discourses of modernization, professionalization and change, and holding their ground in spheres of the occupation that easily get dismissed or neglected in these discourses.
Studying ageing: experiences, description, variation, prediction and explanation
(2010-02-26T14:11:05Z) Eriksson, Bo G.
The study follows a line of experiences, description, variation, prediction and explanation concerning ageing, health promotion and longevity. The experiences of aging were acquired during my studies of conversations, participation in longitudinal population studies in Gothenburg, and working with the Centre for Development of Home help services. A main interest of mine has been to understand how health and longevity can be promoted during aging. The first paper reports the start of the intervention studies. During these studies I have met an increasing variation between individuals in age cohorts. The other striking phenomenon is the high degree of trainability in higher ages by putting load on human functions. This training by functional load is of increasing importance with increasing age as the reserve capacity of functions generally decline during aging. Thus I am interested in variation in factors related to health, survival and death. I studied the variation of registered death causes during one year in the United States. I expected an increased variation by increasing age as a result of decreasing functional reserve capacity and thus an increased vulnerability. Contrary to my expectation the variation by age had a bimodal distribution like a camel’s back. I interpreted this finding as one example of institutional ageism. In the third report I studied variation in aspects of social participation measured in the longitudinal population studies. In agreement with my expectation the variation increased by increasing age. This is contrasted to the common attitude that the aged are lonely. In that respect I interpret that attitude as one example of ageism. The forth paper reports predictions of 7-year survival studied by a common method, binary logistic regression, compared to a less used method: Artificial neural networks (ANN). Both methods could predict survival. The ANN gave a better prediction when the predictors were medical and health variables but not when social variables were entered as predictors. Conclusions were that ANN could be used 1) as predicting models for outcomes with a multi factor genesis which is not well understood by other methods and 2) that ANN can be used to evaluate results provided by other methods of analyses. The two last papers reports developments of sociological theories in order to explain how social interaction can promote health and longevity. Durkheim’s theories of social facts, nomie and anomie are developed in the fifth paper. I argue that the production of social facts, nomie and anomie promotes health by promoting activities. The social fact production also supports identity and feelings of cohesion. The production of nomie and anomie produce self esteem. The last paper reports health promoting functions of ordinary conversations, especially with confidants: Definition of situation, reducing ordinary anxiety, decision making, training of attention and memory, identity construction, formulation of dreams and maintenance of social networks. By these efforts I hope that I have achieved to report experiences, descriptions, variation, predictions and explanations in studying aging. Keywords: Sociology, Gerontology, Demography, Longevity, Health promotion, Social facts, Sense of cohesion, Population, Random sample
Entrepreneurship in Russia: Western Ideas in Russian Translation
(2009-11-12T09:03:30Z) Shmulyar Gréen, Oksana
The aim of this thesis is to outline, both historically and in our own time, the development of entrepreneurship in Russia, a country where the very existence of the phenomenon has for a long period of time been either denied or confined to the margins of illegality and semi-legality. The primary focus of this work is on the emergence of a new generation of entrepreneurs that came to thrive in the 1990s, the most turbulent but also the most promising years of Russia’s economic, political, and social transformation. Theoretically, the thesis is based on both current research on entrepreneurship in Russia and abroad and classical theories on entrepreneurship crosscutting economics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Methodologically, the work relies on empirical observation conducted during periods of fieldwork in the St.Petersburg, Russia, supplemented by a broader qualitative analysis of documentary sources such as official statistics, mass media, and other circulars and publications, in addition to existing scholarly literature on the subject. One specific case, Western business education in Russia, was selected for a closer study to provide a better picture of the development of new entrepreneurship, in particular independent entrepreneurship in the Russia of the 1990s. Given the primary focus of the work, special attention is given to the country’s transformation processes in the 1990s, and their relation to broader issues involving the development of capitalism, the role of the middle classes, gender and networks, and Western influence on economic and social developments in Russia throughout history. The study summarises and critically evaluates the existing body of knowledge in these areas while adding new data and hypotheses to improve our understanding of the subject. First, the thesis challenges the widespread belief about the absence of entrepreneurship in Russia prior the economic changes of the 1990s. The various meanings of the concept of entrepreneurship are defined in different historical contexts, with the pre-revolutionary, the Soviet, and the post-Soviet Russian economy and society serving as significant landmarks in a continuum helping us to better understand the opportunities and constrains within which the contemporary Russian entrepreneurs have to operate. Two major historical continuities are analysed: the close relationship between entrepreneurship and the Russian state, and the significant overlap between the social categories of the entrepreneurs and the middle classes. The phenomenon of entrepreneurship in Russia is further examined as a creative response to the new opportunities opened up in a society undergoing change. Thus, although the new entrepreneurship in Russia evolved from within the collapsing communist system, it was also born out of great expectations and efforts, originating in the East and West alike, for a new society, a new type of economy, and new opportunities in life. Thirdly, the thesis extends the analysis of contemporary Russian entrepreneurship beyond its three commonly identified origins in the Soviet second economy, the Soviet cooperative movement, and the Soviet state and ministries. The forth origin for entrepreneurial initiative was the new private business sector that became professionalised in aftermath of the 1998 economic crisis. The study looks at Western business education as one of the major channels for the recruitment and training of a new generation of entrepreneurs in Russia and one of the key mechanisms of influence and interaction between Russia and the West from the early 1990s onward. The argument is then developed that Western notions of capitalism, business, and entrepreneurship, instead of replicating the original patterns of development they reflect and refer to, produced considerably more varied results when intersecting with local conditions and the country’s historical legacies. On the one hand, the ideas they represented had to be “translated” to better suit the Russia realities; on the other hand, they lent themselves to the creation of an alternative source of authority among Russia’s new entrepreneurs, showing a potential to influence their business practices and business ideology in general.
Lärares lärande om elever - en sociologisk studie om yrkespraktik
(2009-11-04T13:28:41Z) Ranagården, Lisbeth
This is a study of how professional teachers’ learning about students takes place in relation to changed requirements and new organisational preconditions. Based on an approach from the theory of professions with inspiration by Lipsky’s concept of street level bureaucrats, it examines which strategies or methods teachers develop in order to cope with the changes. Important points of departure for the study are theories of organisation, professions and knowledge. The three phases that are considered to distinguish professional work – diagnosis, inference, treatment – organise the disposition of the work. The study is empirically based on interviews with primary school teachers, recorded development conversations, and teachers’ written documentation for the latter. The teachers’ own accounts of their learning process, as well as how they interpret what is experienced, form an interpretive and analytical foundation together with analysis of the development conversations. Teachers’ meetings with students usually occur with the entire class as a collective, which makes the teaching profession special. Other professionals normally meet their clients individually. At the same time, teachers are expected to individualise the instruction. The study shows how the organisation creates obstacles by intensifying the teachers’ work. This diminishes the leeway for teachers to work professionally. A recurrent problem for the teachers’ teaching is therefore lack of time. They have to find standardised forms such as the categorising of students. The analyses demonstrate that there is great uncertainty about the measures’ effects, and that teachers do not have enough knowledge. One develops new knowledge by trial and error, and the study points to a need for the teachers’ teaching in and through its practice to be given room to develop. In this context the study discusses teachers’ professional language as a hindrance to professional development. As the study also shows, leeway for conversations is a prerequisite for learning about students. This in turn influences the possibilities of creating good relations. The study discusses teachers’ interest in relation-building from a power perspective and as an important tool for successful instruction. But teachers lack tools for handling certain students who challenge the teaching role, and the analysis reveals deficiencies in both the organisation in the profession. According to the study’s results, teachers do not have support for coping with the changes that were made in the schools. Especially the profession’s social dimensions prove to be a weakness for newly educated teachers, who need continued learning in professional practice, but more experienced teachers also lack tools for being able to individualise the instruction. While the causes are numerous, the bottom line is a scarcity of resources – in terms of time, institutional measures for solving problems, and knowledge about how the problems should be solved.
Social Movements and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia. The Case of the Soldier's Mothers NGOs
(2009-09-11T11:08:49Z) Jagudina, Zaira
This dissertation provides a study of gender processes in the maternal human rights movement of the Soldiers’ Mothers NGOs, which were created in the arena of the military draft politics in post-Soviet Russia. It also includes an analysis of the depoliticized and gendered civil society of the formalized NGOs, which provides a broader social context for the soldiers’ mothers’ movement. The dissertation is founded on a combination of ideas borrowed from three theoretical perspectives. First, the concept ‘woman’ is approached as an analytical and political category constructed through the social locations by gender, class, region and culture within the framework of a military nation-state. The conventional maternal femininity, ‘naturally’ linked with caring labor, is produced as a part of the modern nation-states’ ideologies of militarism and patriotic duty. Second, participants in social movements create an oppositional sub-universe of meaning and try to deintegrate from the dominant beliefs, social norms, and rules of feeling. Finally, gender processes affect the political opportunities, mobilizing structures and collective identity construction in social movements. The case study´s primary empirical material is 22 semi-structural qualitative interviews conducted in 2000-2005 with 17 members of two organizations of the Soldiers’ Mothers, located in two different large cities. In addition, a participant observation of these two organizations and a discourse analysis of 35 articles in the Russian press were carried out, as well as 36 interviews with members of other human rights NGOs in Russia. The impact of gender processes upon the Soldiers’ Mothers movement is analyzed in relation to three dimensions: institutional and ideological structures, mobilizing social and organizational resources, and collective identity framing. In the context of the ongoing military operations and the depoliticizing trends in civil society, mothers of soldiers were supposed to work in the social serviceoriented NGOs as a helpmate to the military officials. Through the rituals of storytelling and interactions with their allies and their constituency, the Soldiers’ Mothers activists have deintegrated from the mainstream norms of women’s civic duty. The goals of the Soldiers’ Mothers NGOs have been reframed by connecting the maternal frame with the counter-discursive rhetoric of human rights, rooted in the Soviet legacy of political dissent. The feelings of fear, shame and anxiety are managed, and solidarity, pride and hope are instilled among the activists and parts of their constituency. Challenging the post-Soviet traditionalist gender ideology, the activists create a more critical identity of soldier’s mothers based on an anti-draft/military ideology. This ideology varies among local civic groups, depending on their access to material, human and symbolic resources. Relying on informal social networks, the activists sustain the autonomous status of their groups. From the viewpoints of the local grassroots’, the Soldiers’ Mothers activists reframe the concept ‘gender’ in the elitist feminism imported by Western donors in the NGO sector. The key findings in this dissertation suggest different revisions and expansions of earlier empirical research of the Soldiers’ Mothers NGOs and development of theories of gendered social movements.
Social Recognition and Employees' Organizational Support
(2009-04-23T08:04:44Z) Bjarnason, Tómas
The focal point of this study is to explore the support service employees give to their organization. Its main objective is to define the concept of organizational support and to examine its causes, in particular to investigate the effects of social recognition on employees’ organizational support. Three separate questions are examined: the definition of employees’ organizational support; the effects of social recognition on employees’ organizational support; and whether the causes of organizational support are the same in different service settings. In defining organizational support from service employees, a four dimensional view is proposed, comprising organizational commitment, intent to stay, service effort, and service improvements. The choice of these four dimensions is motivated by the importance of employee commitment, retention, and service performances for the competitive edge of service organizations. In examining the origins of employees’ organizational support, main emphasis is placed on “social recognition.” Social recognition is argued to be of fundamental importance for employees, as it contributes to perceptions of self-worth and identity. Social recognition is proposed to comprise “influence,” “skill-utilization,” and “approval.” The process in which social recognition elicits employees’ support is explained through reciprocity mechanisms; that employees reciprocate social recognition with their supportive attitudes and behaviors. Diverse management strategies are applied within the service sector, affecting employees’ opportunities for receiving recognition at work and allegedly their organizational support. It is proposed that levels of social recognition and employees’ organizational support will vary according to the type of services provided. It is also proposed that social recognition is a general reward that elicits employees’ organizational support in similar ways in different service settings. Confirmatory factor analysis using data from two service organizations (N=929 and N=227) confirms a four-factor structure of employees’ organizational support and three-factor structure of social recognition, as proposed. Results from four structural equation models specifying the relations between demographic variables, social recognition, and employees’ organizational support using data from one service organization (N=929) indicate that social recognition is of importance in explaining levels of employees’ support. Skill-utilization and influence have positive effects on organizational commitment, and approval has an indirect positive effect on organizational commitment through skill-utilization and influence. Organizational commitment and skill-utilization have positive effects on intent to stay and service effort. Influence is found to have positive effects on service improvements. Examination of mean differences between three service divisions; a retail division (N=307), a support division (N=146) and a manual-maintenance division (N=383), indicate that retail employees have less influence and utilize their skills to a lesser degree than employees in the other divisions, as expected. Levels of employees’ organizational support are, however, not found to vary in similar ways between the three divisions, contrary to what was expected. Using structural equation models, the applicability of the four models across the three service divisions was supported, indicating the importance of social recognition for eliciting organizational support from employees in different service settings. The main contribution of this thesis is to show that social recognition elicits organizational support from service employees in different service settings.
Demokrati på delegation. Lokaliseringen av det svenska kärnavfallet
(2008-11-20T11:55:26Z) Johansson, Hanna Sofia
The present study concerns the siting of Swedish nuclear waste. Four cases are examined: the feasibility studies in Nyköping and Tierp (cases 1 and 2), as well as three public consultation meetings with conservationist and environmental organisations, and two study visits to nuclear facilities in Oskarshamn and Östhammar, which were held during what is called the site-investigation phase (cases 3 and 4). The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB) began the search for a nuclear waste site in the 1970s. Since 1992 SKB has conducted feasibility studies in eight municipalities, including in the four municipalities mentioned above. At the present time more comprehensive site investigations are underway in Oskarshamn and Östhammar, two municipalities that already host nuclear power plants as well as storages for nuclear waste. In addition to SKB and the municipalities involved in the site-selection process, politicians, opinion groups, concerned members of the public, and oversight bodies are important actors. The analysis of the cases employs the concepts of “sub-politics”, “boundary work”, and “expertise”, together with the four models of democracy “representative democracy”, participatory democracy”, “deliberative democracy”, and “technocracy”. The aim of the study is to describe the characteristics of Swedish democracy in relation to the disposal of Swedish nuclear waste. The main questions of the study are: Which democratic ideals can be found within SKB’s siting process during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process during the site investigations? and Which democratic ideals were influential during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process? The study is based on qualitative methods, and the source materials consist of documents, interviews, and participant observations. In summary, the form of democracy that emerges in the four case studies can be described as delegated democracy. This means that a large part of the political preparatory work is delegated from parliamentary actors and arenas to sub-political actors and arenas. At the same time, this form of democracy is characterised by the final decisions being taken by elected representatives in the parliamentary arena. Most of the requisite information, however, is provided by a sub-political actor in sub-political arenas, as a result of the preparatory work having been delegated to SKB. This provision of information, however, is often intended to win support for SKB’s activities. During the preparatory work, various forms of expertise are accorded great influence, while elected politicians, many of whom are laymen, have the final say in the decision making. This expert influence is also a consequence of the fact that the elected politicians have delegated the issue to a corporation and to opinion groups. The nuclear waste democracy is characterised by a division into two parts: on the one hand a process of deliberation between sub-political actors during the preparatory phase, and on the other a representative democracy in connection with decision-making. The large extent to which the preparatory work is delegated to sub-political actors, and the marginal degree of political decision making in parliamentary arenas are what make it possible to call this form of democracy delegated democracy. It will be of great future interest to study the government’s public review process, investigation, and decision concerning SKB’s application for a permit to construct a repository. First then will we learn the nature of the connection between the sub-political actors’ preparatory work and the parliamentary actors’ decision, or, put differently, we will then have a picture of how democratic the delegated handling of nuclear waste is. Keywords: deliberative democracy, participatory democracy, representative democracy, technocracy, expertise, boundary work, sub-politics, nuclear waste, public consultation, Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB).
Laissez-faire, systemkritik eller reformism? En studie av den svenska opinionsbildande globaliseringsdiskursen i dagspress, 1992-2001
(2008-09-04T12:37:43Z) Pellbring, Mats
Individen stämplar in. Arbetet, facket och lönen i sociologisk belysning
(2008) Bengtsson, Mattias
This dissertation comprises a sociological analysis of processes of individualisation in Swedish working life during the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It also deals with the distribution of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes among various categories of employees. The point of departure is various theories of individualisation and not least their lack of empirical validation. As society is depicted as individualised, the structural conditionings of peoples’ lives tend to be made invisible. Individualisation is seen as a process whereby traditional collective solutions and identities lose their impact upon people, leaving greater freedom of action and scope for decision-making, in which the situation of the individual is linked to his/her characteristics, capacities and achievements. The primary empirical material is survey data of employees 16-64 years of age. The survey was conducted in 2003 with 3286 respondents and a response rate of 72 percent. Also other types of surveys and statistical material are referred to. The degree of individualisation, as well as individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes, are analysed in relation to three main areas of investigation: work, the trade union and pay. The structural transformation of the labour market during the last decades of the 20th century gave an increased proportion of the employed freedom of action. On the other hand, it is not empirically supported that the content of peoples’ jobs has been individualised. Regarding attitudes towards the trade union, individualisation is opposed by the fact that the Swedish level of union membership is very high in an international perspective and many employees agree that the union is needed in negotiations with their employer. On the other hand, many are positive towards individual negotiations, and union membership has fallen since the middle of the 1990s. There is empirical support for an individualisation of wage determination, although wages are still collectively agreed upon on a national level. There is strong support for a structural conditioning of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes, and the two are in some ways related. They are clearly class-based; the service class being more individualised and individualistically directed than the working class. The degree of selfdirectedness in work, an indicator of individualised conditions, is important not least for explaining class differences. Finally, age, sex, sector of employment and size of establishment are other factors that clearly have an impact on the distribution of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes.

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