Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap

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Veien ble til mens vi gikk. Om taus kunnskap, refleksjon og praksisfellesskap blant ansatte i et utlendingsfengsel
(2025-06-18) Opaas Haugli, Kristin
Denne studien undersøker utfordringene knyttet til fengselsansattes arbeid i Kongsvinger fengsel, en spesialisert enhet innen norsk kriminalomsorg der målgruppen omfatter kun utenlandske innsatte som skal utvises eller soningsoverføres til sine hjemland. Formålet med studien er å utforske det spesifikke innholdet i den tause kunnskapen, hindringene og mulighetene for kunnskapsdeling, samt erfaringens og refleksjonens rolle når det gjelder å gjøre denne kunnskapen synlig og bevisst for individ og gruppe. På bakgrunn av dette tar studiet også sikte på å gi en bedre forståelse av kunnskapen der den produseres og praksisfellesskapenes rolle for kunnskapsdeling og utvikling av praksis innenfor en spesialisert og utfordrende kontekst innen norsk kriminalomsorg der tilbudet om kompetanseheving og organisert faglig veiledning er sparsomt eller ikke eksisterer. Ved hjelp av kvalitative metoder, inkludert individuelle intervjuer, fokusgruppeintervjuer og lydopptak fra gruppesesjoner i dialogmetoden Livspondus, undersøker studien hvordan fengselsansatte utvikler og deler kunnskap i en kontekst hvor språk og kulturforskjeller oppleves som de største utfordringene i arbeidet med de utenlandske innsatte. Funnene viser at ansatte tilegner seg kunnskap gjennom praktisk erfaring, samarbeid med kolleger og strukturert refleksjon i praksisfellesskap. Konseptet dynamisk sikkerhet fremstår som en kjernekomponent i deres arbeid, der relasjonsbygging med innsatte er av stor betydning til tross for kommunikasjonsutfordringer. Resultatene viser at taus kunnskap er sentral for ansattes kompetanse, men den forblir i stor grad uartikulert. Refleksjon, både individuelt og i grupper, er avgjørende for å synliggjøre denne kunnskapen og muliggjøre videre utvikling av praksis. Studien identifiserer samtidig betydelige barrierer for kunnskapsdeling, slik som ressursbegrensninger, bemanningsutfordringer og organisatoriske omstruktureringer, som begrenser tilgangen til ulike praksisfellesskap. Ved å anvende teorier om taus kunnskap, refleksjon, praksisfellesskap og bakkebyråkrati, bidrar denne avhandlingen til en dypere forståelse av muligheter og hindringer for kunnskapsdeling innenfor kriminalomsorgen. Funnene understreker behovet for strukturerte faglige utviklingsmuligheter for å styrke ansattes kompetanse og forbedre deres muligheter til å håndtere de komplekse realitetene de møter i arbeidet med utenlandske innsatte.
Power relations in app-based food delivery in Norway
(2025-01-14) Jesnes, Kristin
What happens when companies that use apps and algorithms to manage a pool of workers with non-standard work arrangements enter a well-organised labour market? In this thesis, I analyse Foodora Norway as a critical case, to better understand how actors (companies, workers and unions) in a segment of the Norwegian labour market with weak union organising and low collective agreement coverage contest and shape new forms of work. Platform companies like Foodora have emerged on the margins of the Nordic labour market model, where non-standard forms of work are widespread and collective representation is weak, in an otherwise well-regulated labour market. The companies’ use of self-employed workers, combined with a potential for control through apps and algorithms, challenge labour rights and the collective bargaining framework of the Norwegian labour market model. My research has two aims: to (a) empirically explore the development of app-based food and grocery delivery in Norway and (b) investigate the evolving power relations and implications for working conditions and labour relations when platform companies like Foodora enter a well-regulated labour market like that in Norway. Building on qualitative methods, interviews, document analysis and observation, my decade-long research project answers the following questions: How do platform companies, workers and trade unions’ access to and use of power resources shape working conditions in Norwegian app-based food and grocery delivery? How do platform companies change their strategies in response to worker mobilisation and market competition, and what are the implications for labour relations? I understand app-based food and grocery delivery as an emerging field or socially constructed arena lacking clear norms and regulations, where the actors – companies, workers and unions – with opposing views and conflicts of interest try to shape the field to their advantage. Power resources are used by the actors to mobilise and shape the field – e.g., organising collectively, using labour laws and collective bargaining frameworks, building robust organisations, influencing public opinion and governments and building alliances with other actors. The thesis also includes an analysis of the situation of app-based delivery workers in Germany and France. These two labour markets are distinct from that of Norway, but there are some similarities involving instances of bottom-up mobilisation among delivery workers, which can help us to better understand the Norwegian case. The thesis builds on four papers. In paper I, I investigate how platform companies influence working conditions and pay, and I develop a typology of employment models emerging in Norway. In papers II and III, my colleagues and I take a worker perspective on power resources and explore how workers in Norway, Germany and France become collective actors, and how they build, use and combine power resources to improve working conditions and pay. In paper IV, using power as a relational concept by exploring the power resources of both workers and companies, I analyse (a) the emerging field of app-based food and grocery delivery in Norway with a focus on the interaction between the field and the broader structure of the Norwegian labour market model and (b) how power relations evolve among the actors and how this affects working conditions and pay. My findings offer several contributions. First, by combining the concept of an emerging field with power resource and mobilisation theory, I show how the actors use power resources strategically to shape the employment models of platform companies. Second, my research provides insights into how non-standard workers are mobilised in an emerging field, focusing on strategies that workers and unions use to build and maintain power resources. In particular, I show how combining different power resources is crucial, and that workers need to develop the capabilities to effectively use them. This is especially the case when companies consistently challenge the power resources of workers. Third, I offer theoretical reflections on the (non-)settlement of fields in relation to app-based food delivery. This field’s inherent characteristic seems to be its fluidity, with companies constantly changing their models to evade regulations. For capital, a fluid field is advantageous, as it enables continual adjustments to employment models and algorithmic management, helping companies to evade regulations. For the workers, it appears that a sector-level agreement and stronger enforcement of regulations could be central in protecting them from negative consequences of purely market-based relationships. However, the fluidity of the field may also allow app-based food and grocery delivery to remain in a state of continuous change (i.e., ‘messy’) on the margins of the Norwegian labour market model.
Working Class Power: The Decline and Reconfiguration of Trade Union Power Resources in the 21st Century
(2024-12-10) Prytz, Jesper
This thesis comprises four studies investigating the formation, uses, and interactions of trade union power resources. By applying a longitudinal approach, the studies analyse a variety of outcomes associated with four sources of labour’s power. The aim of this thesis is to explain how the power resources of labour, particularly those of trade unions, have been impacted by neoliberal reforms to institutions and the restructuring of labour markets for a broadly defined working class of wage earners. The main data sources used are original survey data, the Swedish Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the international EU KLEMS database. Study I used data from Swedish surveys spanning 1997 to 2018 to investigate whether changing conditions for trade unions are associated with changing attitudes to trade union-related issues. While union density declined due to structural and institutional shifts, attitudes toward wage negotiation remained stable. Union members favoured collective bargaining. Vulnerable labour market segments showed stronger support for unions. Overall, individuals endorsing union engagement often benefit most from union involvement in employment matters. Study II examined the impact of Ghent system reforms on Swedish union membership from 2007 to 2008. Amidst a notable decline in union density – which has been attributed to tax deduction removal and increased unemployment insurance fees – the study explored the interplay between these reforms and structural changes to the labour market. Analysing data from Swedish LFS identified two main factors that contribute to the decline: changes in labour force composition and direct Ghent system effects, which especially affected exposed worker categories. The results reveal cyclical union density patterns, disrupted by Ghent system changes, with increased temporary and younger employees driving the decline, particularly in specific sectors. Study III’s point of departure is from previous research that found that individuals typically join unions before the age of 35. This trend is most notable among younger employees, often in sectors that have high atypical employment and lack union representation. Previous studies focused on fixed individual characteristics when analysing membership likelihood, overlooking how employment paths, like transitioning from temporary to permanent roles, affect union density and membership. This study examines how job sequences influence youth union membership using Swedish labour data. The findings reveal varied effects based on age and time, with stable permanent contracts promoting membership and younger workers showing lower commitment due to limited labour market exposure. In particular, full-time students and workers drifting between spells of unemployment, employment, and studies are less likely to choose union membership and commit over the long term, with institutional changes to the Ghent system mediating these effects. Study IV departs from the fact that advanced economies have seen a decline in the wage share compared to profits. This decline is influenced by factors like decreasing union density and collective bargaining coverage. However, the impact varies based on institutional contexts. Analysing data from 22 OECD countries, the study explored how labour market institutions and wage-setting mechanisms affect income distribution across skill groups. Union density increases the wage share, especially where statutory minimum wages are absent, while the effect of collective bargaining is more nuanced. Statutory minimum wages benefit medium- and low-skilled workers but negatively interact with collective bargaining for medium-skilled groups. The findings highlight how wage-setting institutions influence outcomes for workers, offering key insights for balancing collective bargaining and statutory wage policies to promote equitable income distribution. The main conclusions from these studies point to the complexity of interactions between the power resources of the working class of wage earners. Of importance is also an implied resistance to neoliberal reforms to institutions to maintain unions’ power resources or to rely on other sources of power when institutional power diminishes, as well as a general shift in the class-based power dynamics in industrial relations. White-collar professionals and academics in Sweden have increased their bargaining power while the power of blue-collar workers has declined, suggesting an increasingly fragmented worker movement. At a broader level, the dynamic between capital and labour has shifted in capital’s favour as the share of wages in relation to profits are in decline, suggesting labour is unlikely to improve the wage share unless collective bargaining or adequate statutory minimum wages are introduced, highlighting the need for a nuanced approach to wage regulation.
Muslimer, skolan och förorten: Muslimska gymnasieelevers orienteringar och strävan efter erkännande
(2024-11-26) Thorén, Christopher Ali
The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how Muslim students in upper-secondary schools experience their education, and how their experiences influence educational strategies, such as choice of school. Muslim pupils have come to play a particular role in the Swedish school debate, particularly with reference to multicultural neighbourhoods. In the politicised discussions about Islamic practices, such as the prayer and the Islamic dress, practices are often understood as “disturbances” in the school environment, and religious identification is viewed as a burden rather than an asset. Previous research has also highlighted that Islamophobia, as well as secular norms, impact students’ educational experiences. This study has been conducted in an upper-secondary school in Sweden (gymnasium) where a large proportion of students identify as Muslim. The school is located in a structurally socio-economically disadvantaged area of Gothenburg, where average grades and qualification rates are lower than the city average. The area is associated with school failure, social problems, unemployment and crime, which contribute to the stigmatisation of the area and also “marks” the young people who attend school there. The impact of stigmatisation and socio-economic inequality on pupils has been well-researched. However, the experiences of religious minorities and the significance of religious identification in these contexts have been insufficiently analysed in Swedish research. This study, therefore, aims to contribute in-depth knowledge about how religious identification interacts with socioeconomic factors and area stigmatisation in relation to Muslim students’ experiences of school. The neighbourhood also holds significance, as young Muslims in Sweden grow up in multicultural and multi-religious contexts that often differ from the places where they or their parents were born. The heterogeneity and diversity of the Muslim population mean that religious affiliation takes on new meanings, requiring young people to navigate and negotiate between different identifications and normative systems. New and overlapping imagined communities are formed and serve as alternatives to the majoritised culture. This study employs theoretical concepts such as orientation, recognition, and misrecognition to understand students’ experiences. School secularities are used as a complementary concept to interpret students’ experiences across different educational contexts. In the analysis, intersectionality has been used for theoretical sensitivity to demonstrate that students’ experiences of vulnerability manifest in various ways based on intertwined power structures where class, gender, racialisation, and religion intersect. The thesis employs a qualitative and abductive approach, inspired by the ethnographic tradition, with fieldwork during four semesters, collecting material including 33 semi-structured interviews and 50 days of observation. The analysis shows that students experience invisibilisation due to their minoritized religious identification, where their religious needs are not met. Simultaneously, students feel hypervisible in a white and secular school environment, receiving unwanted attention and being questioned about their religious practices. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that Muslim students’ experiences of misrecognition and disrespect impact interactions with teachers, social relationships, and educational strategies. The latter includes applying to schools in multicultural neighbourhoods where students feel they receive recognition from teachers and peers for their religious identification and as learners.
Att översätta idéer om hållbarhet till praktik
(2024-08-12) Ärleskog, Caroline
This thesis is about sustainability work, which is a highly topical issue in social and political arenas. It is associated with many challenges and contradictions, partly because the vagueness of the concept opens up to a variety of interpretations. The overall aim of the thesis is to increase our knowledge of how ideas about sustainable development are translated into local practices. More specifically, the aim is to increase knowledge about the sustainability work conducted within municipal housing companies that struggle with the conditions that exist in rural areas. I examine how sustainability work is incorporated into one particular housing company’s various local practices, but also how sustainability work has been characterised by being conducted in rural areas. This is an ethnographic case study, based on meeting observations and field studies. The empirical material includes practices enacted at two organisational levels: the governance practices of management and the daily work practices of employees. Through the theoretical lens of translation theory, this thesis investigates how the company’s managers understand sustainability work and explores the governance that takes shape when sustainability work is introduced into companies’ operations. The thesis also investigates how employees react (and act) when management delegates responsibility to engage in sustainability work. The results show how the housing company’s management conceptualised the sustainability work as something that requires balance between continuity in existing operations and development of the company’s sustainability work. The idea of continuous sustainability work was characterised by an economic logic, stemming from an increasingly depopulated countryside. The management found it difficult to deviate from this logic, which ultimately meant that they largely devoted themselves to maintaining established ways of thinking and acting. The results show how the economic logic has contributed to the centralisation of operations over time. By referring to strengthened profitability, management continued to have an ambition to concentrate operations in the municipality’s central location. As part of developing the company’s sustainability work, employees were delegated responsibility for engaging in the development of various operational activities. The results show how sustainability work was translated in various ways, as employees adapted sustainability work to their daily work practices. Accordingly, this study also identifies how they engage in several different modes of subject formation, characterised by different rural areas and their different conditions. The variations reflect tensions between the centre of the municipality and the lower priority peripheries (implying the impact of local urbanization). The results also show how greater community involvement (described as a communitarian citizenship) and responsibility for the locality have emerged in more peripheral areas that lack the stable prosperity of the central town.
Tid för tillit? Om styrning, kontroll och inflytande i äldreomsorgen
(2024-04-25) Håkansson, Helena
Avhandlingens utgångspunkt är den övergripande styrningen av välfärdssektorn och den kritik mot New Public Management (NPM) som ökat intresset för en mer tillitsbaserad styrning i Sverige. Kontexten för avhandlingen är problem med hög personalomsättning och svårigheter att rekrytera personal i äldreomsorgen. Frågan är särskilt aktuell eftersom prognoser visar på demografiska förändringar med en växande andel personer i behov av omsorg, ett mindre arbetskraftsunderlag och färre personer som kan bidra till välfärdens finansiering. Trots återkommande uppgifter om brister i arbetsvillkor, stress och tidspress handlar politiska lösningar på nationell nivå i stor utsträckning om utbildningssatsningar och att höja arbetets status. På lokal nivå har lösningarna varit mer fokuserade på rekrytering, många kommuner har tagit fram program för att arbeta mer tillitsbaserat i syfte att bli mer attraktiva arbetsgivare. Tidigare forskning som rör tillit och inflytande uppmärksammar sällan anställningsrelationens roll, eller hur olika yrkesbaserade klasspositioner präglas av olika grader av autonomi och kontroll. Studier av autonomi utgår ofta från inflytande över arbetsuppgifter snarare än inflytande över arbetsdagens tidsmässiga ramar. Trots att många studier av arbetet i äldreomsorgen har belyst problem med stress och tidsbrist är det få som har undersökt hur den tidsmässiga styrningen genom digitala tidmätningssystem och verk-samhetsbaserade skiftscheman påverkar arbetet. Mot denna bakgrund är avhandlingens syfte att undersöka och förklara hur styrningen av äldreomsorgen påverkar arbetsförhållanden och upplevelser av arbetet hos arbetstagare i olika klasspositioner. Delsyften är att analysera hur olika institutionella logiker manifesterar sig och relaterar till varandra i olika delar av äldreomsorgen, och hur tillit, inflytande och kontroll kan påverka arbetsförhållanden, upplevelser av arbetet och viljan att byta jobb bland arbetstagare i äldreomsorgen. För att undersöka hur styrningen av arbetet kan villkora arbetets utförande, och därigenom upplevelsen av arbetssituationen kombineras ett institutionellt perspektiv med ett arbetsprocessteoretiskt perspektiv (Labour process theory, LPT). Medan institutionella logiker kan skapa förståelse för hur det är att arbeta i en hierarkisk organisation med många olika aktörer, och hur aktörerna relaterar till varandra kan arbetsprocessteori användas för att närmare studera kontrollsystem samt hur de påverkar arbetstagare. Alla tre delstudierna i avhandlingen relaterar till frågor om tillit, kontroll, inflytande och klass. I den första artikeln undersöks institutionella logiker i förhållande till ett tillitsbaserat utvecklingsprojekt och inomorganisatorisk tillit. I den andra artikeln jämförs olika typer av inflytande och hur de påverkar intentioner att lämna arbetet bland arbetstagare över 55 år i olika yrkesbaserade klasspositioner inom äldreomsorgssektorn. I den tredje artikeln undersöks arbetsprocessen i hemtjänsten och hur organisatoriska kontrollmekanismer relaterade till tidsstyrning påverkar arbetssituationen. Det empiriska materialet baseras på två kvalitativa fallstudier där data har samlats in i samband med forskningsprojektet VICE och följeforskning på projektet Den tvehänta förvaltningen samt en kvantitativ tvärsnittsstudie riktad till alla arbetstagare över 55 år i äldreomsorgssektorn i Göteborg (HEARTS-LEXLIV). Avhandlingens datamaterial om 37 intervjuer, 14 observationer, och 769 enkätsvar från arbetstagare på olika nivåer i äldreomsorgssektorn har genomförts och samlats in under perioden 2017–2019. Avhandlingen bidrar till att problematisera hur en tillitsbaserad styrning står sig gentemot den rådande ekonomiska logiken i den kommunala äldreomsorgen. Den första delstudien synliggör att det är svårt att beordra ett mer tillitsbaserat arbete i en hierarkisk organisation som domineras av en ekonomisk styrningslogik. Styrningslogiken ledde till ett misstänkliggörande av omsorgsarbetarnas motiv och intressen samt att tillit relativiserades till ett ekonomiskt och moraliskt ansvar att agera på ett visst sätt. Den andra delstudien visar att autonomi över tid och plats liksom att kunna påverka sin lön kan leda till lägre intentioner att lämna bland arbetstagare över 55 år på alla organisatoriska nivåer. Resultatet visar att personalförsörjningen kan påverkas av löneförhöjningar men också av tillit i form av möjligheter att kunna justera arbetsdagen vid behov. Huvudresultatet i den tredje delstudien visade hur digitala tidmätningssystem bidrog till en intensifiering av arbetet samtidigt som verksamhetsbaserade skiftscheman skapade en temporal prekarisering av arbetsvillkoren även för de tillsvidareanställda i hemtjänsten. Resultatet visar hur marknadsanpassningen av äldreomsorgen kan leda till likheter med arbetsvillkoren i mer renodlade liberala marknadsekonomier och en tidsstyrning av den kommunala hemtjänsten som påminner om plattformsekonomins algoritmbaserade tidsstyrning
Temporal Dispossession: The Politics of Asylum and the Remaking of Racial Capitalism in and Beyond the Borders of the Swedish Welfare State
(2024-04-10) Philipson Isaac, Sarah
This thesis sets out from the post-2015 Swedish asylum legislation, which made Sweden’s asylum policy among the most restrictive in the EU. The most decisive changes were the shift from permanent to temporary residence permits as the standard protection provided, along with the increasingly blurred lines between migration regimes and labour market policies. With temporary residence permits as the new norm, time and labour market productivity are central to the distribution of vulnerability and life chances, as labour market participation functions as the only means of qualifying for permanent residence. The policy shift can be seen as an institutionalization of temporality and deportability, as it carries the inherent risk of deportation if residence permits are not reissued upon renewal. Against this background, this thesis draws on temporal enactments of dispossession and racial capitalism as a theoretical framework to analyse how the control of time results in different forms of dispossession – a feature that is closely tied to the selection logics of late racial capitalism, namely: differentiation, devaluation, and competition. Although dispossession has been conceptualized as a mechanism of authoritative control over the spatial, emotional, and relational aspects of (neo)colonized subjects’ lives, research often fails to recognize the significance of time and temporality in understanding this process. Here, I seek to bridge this gap. Furthermore, where migration studies have been critiqued for perpetuating methodological nationalism, temporal dispossession foregrounds time as central to the distribution of rights to make visible how the control of time is an experience shared across multiple positions – citizens and non-citizens alike. While this directs our attention to the continuum of temporal control, those positioned as migrants are often experiencing the most acute effects of the temporal restrictions that affect access to rights. The thesis builds on four years of ethnographical engagements with interlocutors who sought asylum between 2015 and 2017, and interviews with street-level bureaucrats, from the Swedish Migration Agency, NGOs, asylum lawyers, to the Swedish Public Employment Service. Consequently, engaging with the interlocutors’ experiences through the theoretical lens of temporal dispossession is a means of centring time not only within the workings of racial capitalism, but also on how border regimes work to sustain racial capitalism and how labour market exploitation is exacerbated by the legal liminality the interlocutors inhabit. Chapter 5, on temporal dispossession through migration bureaucracy, examines the temporal dimensions of the Migration Agency’s New Public Management (NPM) procedures as they assess asylum applications. It traces the enforced deceleration, interrupted by pockets of acceleration, that obscures the interlocutors from frames of intelligibility in the asylum process. Here, temporal dispossession consists of preventing those seeking asylum from making progress in their cases, using temporal means of discarding their need for protection and relegating them to a different pace of time as compared to the surrounding society, effectively positioning them as untrustworthy and thus as undeserving asylum subjects. Chapter 6 investigates ‘islands of dispossession’ where time and space merge in the analysis of the body as the most intimate scale of such islands, asylum camps and make-shift camps as the national scale, and enforcement archipelagos as the global scale. Together, these tease out the role of temporal dispossession in carceral geographies and the role of border regimes in sustaining border regimes. The chapter also engages with how interlocutors redefine and resist the spaces of the camp through community formations. The final analytical chapter on the workings of temporal dispossession in the labour market (Chapter 7) examines the productivity of time in the production of surplus, cheap, and disposable labour forces, where labour market participation constitutes the only means of securing permanent protection. This is examined through the interlocutors’ experiences navigating the informal labour market, ‘fast track’ labour market programmes, and their attempts to ‘switch’ tracks from asylum to labour market migration to secure their futures and reduce the pervasive threat of deportability. Taken together, the thesis seeks to contribute to research on how dispossession operates in and through the border regime, specifically through its temporal configurations, and how the latter is weaponised to dispossess people of their life chances. The thesis further seeks to contribute to research on the political economy of borders in the Nordic context by examining the operation of racial capitalism through the welfare state, where labour market exploitation is exacerbated by the precarity produced through its migration bureaucracies.
Conditional Progress: Technical Rationality and Wicked Problems in Nuclear Waste Management
(2023-05-09) Lagerlöf, Hannes
While various states and enterprises have produced nuclear power for decades, that is, demonstrated the functionality of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to power production, the waste that is simultaneously produced has been provisionally stored awaiting a safe solution. Still, no country has implemented such a solution. Nuclear waste is both dangerous and notoriously controversial, implying a range of social and technical problems. However, according to prevailing assertions in nuclear waste management (NWM), lingering concerns have now been addressed and definitive solutions are ready to be implemented. In this thesis, I problematize these claims. By asserting that NWM constitutes a ‘wicked problem’ – that is, a problem to which there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution, only a set of suboptimal options to choose from – my ambition is to produce knowledge of that which has remained unsolved, de-emphasized, sacrificed, or even suppressed as NWM has progressed. Rather than understanding NWM as progressing because it has solved remaining problems, I ask how progression is possible in spite of the insolubility of these problems. Points of departure like my own are marginal in previous research. Albeit sometimes critical, research has far from exhausted critical perspectives readily available for social scientists. I argue that such concepts are a viable future research route. To contribute to formulating a more critical research path, I turn to science and technology studies (STS) because this field contemplates a broader range of sociotechnical issues than does most NWM research. However, STS has increasingly come to elaborate theoretically on instances in which sociotechnical configurations are made unstable, change occurs, and actors challenge taken-for-granted scientific facts and technologies. My core observation is that such a focus downplays the significance of stability and inertia, which I hold to be far more prevalent phenomena in NWM. With a few caveats, I propose that these aspects of NWM can be understood using ‘critical constructivism’, that is, an alloy of the Frankfurt School’s critical procedure and STS. By emphasizing the critical legacy of critical constructivism – primarily by borrowing the concept of ‘technical rationality’ – I argue that NWM’s progress can be understood in new ways. Empirically – by means of participant observation and textual analysis – I engage with four NWM sites, both locally and internationally. In Study I, we study how contradictory social interests in NWM were concealed by means of technical consensus and the production of technicaliv standards at the European policy level. In Study II, I seek to understand why a scientific controversy over copper corrosion remained the main issue in a Swedish court of law for technical and nontechnical actors alike, and why the broader implications of nuclear power and NWM were not made explicit. In Study III, I analyse the Swedish nuclear industry’s tactics to secure consent in order to prevent opposition in a local community where a final repository for spent nuclear fuel will be built. In Study IV, we analyse how internationally influential implementers conceive of public emotions, and how implementers foresee the transformation of public emotions to facilitate the implementation of repositories. On an aggregate level, the individual studies together show the ways in which NWM – in order to implement geological disposal – depresses and excludes reasonable objections that could challenge NWM’s biases or expose its historical contingencies and preconditions. In the prevailing culture of NWM and its technical rationality, one of the few areas in which critique is still seen as legitimate is in strictly technical domains. The scrutiny of scientific and technical detail is recognized as viable because of its association with technical rationality, taking precedence over other forms of critical procedures based on, for example, the lived experience of technology and/or ethical concerns. A core conclusion that I draw, and that is enabled through the deployment of critical constructivism – is that the material nature of nuclear waste has rendered irreversible damage to the prospects of achieving change in the field.
Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community
(2023-02-20) Sunnerfjell, Jon
In the aftermath of automation and globalisation of production, the Western welfare states have come to leave industrial society behind in favour of an increasingly competitive and service-oriented economy. Nevertheless, there are many environments whose inhabitants still identify with the culture that developed in typical industrial communities. In addition to high unemployment rates, these environments are often burdened by a situated lack of study tradition whereby unemployed people still aspire to occupy manual labour despite a lack of such jobs. This thesis examines the attempts to break with the reproduction of a manual working-class culture in a former industrial community in Sweden. Using ethnographic methods, it explores how so-called activation policy intending to reduce public expenditures on economic benefits in favour of fostering responsible and employable individuals, is translated locally given the community’s situated rationality. With theoretical inspiration from the governmentality perspective, literature on social class, as well as Boltanski and Thévenot’s economic-sociological pragmatism, the analysis shows how the municipality’s translation of activation policy tended to incorporate rather than transform a manual working-class culture in the activation of unemployed. The thesis argues that this hindered the market imperatives and logic of self-realisation pervading activation policy to take root in the activation schemes. Furthermore, the thesis points to how concepts such as inclusion and exclusion, which are central to the active society orientation, appeared ambiguous in light of unemployed who already nurtured a sense of belonging and social attachment. By deepening our understanding of situated rationalities and how they may compete with the logic imbuing supranational policy recommendations on activation and active inclusion, these are conclusions of interest to both policy makers and actors involved in the activation of unemployed locally.
Menstrual dirt - An exploration of contemporary menstrual hygiene practices in Sweden
(2022-05-30) Persdotter, Josefin
Menstrual Dirt is a sociological study of how some aspects of menstruation come into being as dirty phenomenon, both in material and symbolic terms. Through engaging with a variety of empirical material Persdotter explores the everyday details of menstrual hygiene practices: how people roll their used pads, dispose their menstrual waste, wash their bloody genitals, change and clean their menstrual cups, clean toilets, and wash dirty clothes and carpets, and much more. With a theoretical basis in Mary Douglas’ arguments surrounding dirt as symbolic pollution, Persdotter explores the symbolic underpinnings of menstrual pollution, while also exploring the materiality and sensoriality of menstrual dirt, as well as adding a focus on the personal and emotional consequences of dirt and pollution. Persdotter employs primarily qualitative research methods, but the empirical material utilized in the study includes both in-depth interviews (12 interviewees) as well as survey data (445 respondents), and documents, commercials, online discussions, and de-scription of selected menstrual technologies. The thesis focuses on two specific technologies: the disposable pad and the reusable cup. The results showcase how everyday practices and technologies take part in the (re)enactment of ideas of menstrual pollution as well as material, sensory and emotional experiences of menstrual dirt. The thesis elaborates on these processes in four analytical chapters. Two revolve around the pad and explore dirt and pollution in relation to wearing the pad, and in relation to disposing of a used pad. Two revolve around the cup and explore the cup as a dirty and/or polluted object in itself, and the practice of changing (exerting, emptying, reinserting) as a practice that can make other objects dirty. Through using analytical tools from Science and Technology Studies, this thesis provides insights on the many heterogeneous actors and factors that take part in making menstruation into a matter of dirt and/or pollution. It explores technological, material and embodied aspects of that which critical menstruation scholarship often have regarded as merely social. This thesis adds to Critical Menstruation Studies also in shedding light on how pollution-beliefs, concealment imperatives and stigmatization of menstruation come into being in everyday practices. Through studying a Swedish context, it makes visible how a polluted status of menstruation can come into being in a Western society with a comparatively high level of gender equality and menstrual activism. Moreover, this research contributes to sociological explorations on dirt, and expands on the ways in which dirt can be utilized as an analytical tool, as well as facilitate greater understanding of the world around us, as well as exemplifying how exploring the seemingly trivial and inconsequential can make visible invisible how gendered inequalities are maintained and reaffirmed. Persdotter argues that exploring makings of menstrual pollution and dirt offers a sociological opportunity to make visible naturalized, routinized and trivialized practices and technologies in our everyday lives, and opening them up as more problematic, less given and more possible to change.
Interpreting the Haitian Revolution: From the Rights of Man to Human Rights
(2022-05-19) Wilén, Carl
In recent decades, a ‘Haitian Turn’ has emerged as both academic and public readerships in the anglophone sphere have been flooded by a wave of essays, articles, and monographs on the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). At the epicentre of the present study is one of the major interpretations of the Haitian Revolution in the Haitian Turn, which I call the ‘universality paradigm’. The universality paradigm highlights that while the three great revolutions towards the end of the eighteenth century – the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), and the Haitian Revolution (1791) – all mobilised the political categories of freedom and equality against old-regime privilege and naturalised inequality, only the Haitian Revolution achieved the long-term abolition of slavery. Therefore, insofar as we are interested in the history and origins of human rights and universalism, the adherents of the universality paradigm assert, we need to attend to the Haitian Revolution in particular, which more fully realised universalist ideals. However, severe objections have been raised against the way in which the Haitian Revolution is connected to universality and human rights in our own time. The major ‘sceptical responses’ interpret the revolution in terms of authoritarianism instead of universalism and human rights, or they focus on continuities between old-regime labour conditions and inequality on the one hand and post-revolutionary conditions on the other. Other critics emphasise that contemporary human rights differ radically from rights in the late eighteenth century. The study takes advantage of arguments made in the sceptical oeuvre against the universality paradigm together with the critical resources found in the Marxist critique of right to offer a minimal defence of the universality paradigm. I defend the conclusion that the abolition of slavery in the Haitian Revolution adjusted the imbalance between the dominance of the commodity form and the absence of the legal form in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue, and that the revolutionary results therefore appertain more to the age of the legal form of equality and freedom in capitalism than to the age of privilege and self- evident inequality. However, to settle with inclusion, universalism and human rights according to the premises of the universality paradigm implies that the legal form is accepted uncritically, that historical continuities of inequality are underrated, and that the difference between political equality and social inequality becomes concealed. Moreover, differences between the revolutionary rights of man in the time of the Haitian Revolution and contemporary human rights matters, not least since the former event was anchored in a class of enslaved workers. Then again, to cling to inequality and concrete differences between past and present rights in the sceptical vintage entails that the legal form is sidestepped altogether, alongside an underestimation of revolutionary change and of the split of the absolute inequality of slavery into legal equality and socio-economic inequality. Thus, against the universality paradigm and the sceptical turn alike, I stress that both the rights of man and human rights nonetheless relate to the legal form of equality and freedom as two of its major politico- legal contents in the era of capital. In this constellation, universalism and rights on the one hand and socio-economic inequality on the other hand are not so much theorised in terms of paradoxes, tensions and contradictions but rather as compatible. Lastly, I argue that our comprehension of human rights today becomes sharper if we have a clear idea of our assumptions about where human rights come from, how they have been utilised, and what effects and functions they have had. In this respect, the radically different interpretations of universal human rights offered by the Haitian Turn represents a significant limit as regards the historical case and indeed much the same can be said of discussions about human rights today. Ultimately, therefore, through the minimal defence of the universality paradigm, this study adds a small piece to the much broader puzzle of the status and politics of human rights in general.
The Governance of Global Climate Finance – The Management of Contradictions, Ambiguities and Conflicts in the Green Climate Fund
(2021-12-16) Bertilsson, Jonas
Governing citizens in the age of financialization: A study of Swedish financial education
(2021-12-06) Pettersson, Jane
In contemporary Western capitalist societies, the state has increasingly withdrawn from its role as welfare provider, while financial institutions, actors, products, and narratives play an increasingly important part not only in global and national economies, but also in everyday life and thus for societies as a whole. This development is described by scholars as financialization and the financialization of everyday life. Contributing to this scholarly field, this dissertation examines Swedish financial education and the case of the Gilla din ekonomi (Like your personal finance) financial education network and its attempt to create financial subjects who embrace this development and its rationale. The overall aim of this dissertation is to describe and understand the different levels of problematization and practices of financial education, on a policy implementation level, by the study of educational practices, and through the study of how financial education occurs in the everyday lives of the people such initiatives are intended to govern. I do this by investigating financial education from several angles. First, I situate financial education and the problematization of Swedish consumers in the local context of time and place, i.e., in relation to contemporary and historical political discourse and practice. Second, I investigate the translation from policy to practice, showing how consumers are problematized by categorization, and by examining what role emotions play in fostering responsible and rational financial subjects. Through the theoretical lens of governmentality and sociology of emotions, I thus explore how the practices of financial education rely on emotions as a governing technique. Finally, I explore the subjects’ reactions to such governing attempts and their different problematizations, and strategies of resistance in encounters with financial education. In this way, this thesis contributes to and builds on previous research that understands financial education as governmentality in the age of financialization, i.e., the three aspects considered above constitute different methods of influencing the conduct of subjects—by conveying certain ideas, norms, and emotions—to align with and counter conduct, prevailing discourses of what constitutes “good” financial behavior. In summary, I argue that Swedish state-led financial education is a case of financialization of everyday life. Governing citizens’ financial knowledge and behavior has been a political issue since financialization took off in the 1980s. The results of the three studies in this dissertation show that the purpose of financial education is to guide and educate citizens into active, responsible financial subjects. Financial education does this by teaching course participants how to both think and emotionally relate to financial markets and products. Course attendees are taught to take care of, and take responsibility for, their financial well-being through activities such as planning for their future retirement and saving money by investing, while avoiding “bad” financial products and thus avoiding over-indebtedness. Nevertheless, the analysis showed that course attendees (re)acted by problematization, and conducted themselves counter to the encouragement to become financially savvy as they related the teachings to other life concerns that were inconsistent with the financial subjectivity they were encouraged to perform.
Retaining the Aging Workforce: Studies of the interplay between individual and organizational capability in the context of prolonged working lives
(2021-11-23) Jonsson, Robin
Amidst the realities of workforce aging and policies to prolong the working life across Europe, policymakers and researchers have emphasized the employer’s role in providing suitable working conditions for older workers under the human resource term “age management.” Although the definition of age management refers to all age groups, previous research has primarily used the concept in the context of older workers’ employment participation. The age-management imperative stresses employers’ active role in adapting work to older workers’ abilities and preferences by developing, modifying, sustaining, and providing flexible work arrangements to strengthen these workers’ capabilities and encourage them to remain in work longer. However, previous research has repeatedly shown that employers often take a passive or reactive approach to implementing measures to retain older employees. Also, knowledge of effective workplace interventions to promote older workers’ employability, work ability, and health is sparse. Against this background, this thesis seeks insights into enabling and hindering conditions at the individual and organizational levels using the capability concept as a theoretical approach. Capability refers to individuals’ and organizations’ ability to convert existing resources and perform actions to realize selected goals, such as continuing to work or retaining older workers. This thesis intends to answer the following questions: What personal and work-related factors promote or hinder older workers’ ability and willingness to continue working? What barriers and opportunities influence public welfare organizations’ capability to retain older workers? How do individuals’ capabilities interact with organizational capabilities in the context of prolonging the working life? The empirical studies of this thesis are based on three data sources: (a) a population-based representative panel and registered data covering 55–64-year-olds (from Panel Survey of Aging and the Elderly, PSAE), (b) a cross-sectional study of employees aged 55 years or older in the city of Gothenburg (Hearts–Lexliv study), and (c) an interview study with 19 line managers and their HR partners in the healthcare sector (ArbetsKraftsprojektet). The first article compared personal and work-related determinants of retirement preferences and subsequent behavior. Findings indicated that people tended to retire later than initially preferred. Personal health, work ability, physical work exposure, and job satisfaction were important determinants of preferences and actual retirement behavior. The second article explored the role of work accommodations among older workers with poor health measured in terms of disease, illness, and sickness. Poor health conditions in combination with few opportunities to accommodate work increased the risks of early retirement. However, these associations were not equally consistent with illness. The third article examined the impact of negotiated individualized work arrangements, so-called idiosyncratic deals, on retirement preferences. It found negotiated individualized work arrangements matching employees’ competence, experience, and growth opportunities to be important for public-sector employees’ retirement preferences. The fourth article examined organizational barriers to retaining older workers in Swedish public-welfare organizations. The findings suggested that public welfare employers’ ability to retain older workers is hindered by line managers’ high workload, inflexible HR strategies, and the absence of elaborated age-management strategies and coordination within the organization. Empirical data also indicate that preferences for earlier retirement and earlier actual behavior are more frequent among females and among individuals in lower socioeconomic positions with lower education. This thesis demonstrates that older workers’ preconditions for prolonging the working life are largely shaped by the interaction between personal factors, such as health, perceived work ability, and physical and psychosocial working conditions, and organizations’ capability to adapt and provide flexible solutions concerning, for example, negotiated individualized work arrangements or accommodations. The model presented in this thesis provides guidance in identifying vulnerable groups and conditions in the labor market.
Temporary safety. Contextual factors behind job quality in using temporary agency work.
(2021-08-19) Strauss-Raats, Pille
The aim of this thesis is to explore and explain how job quality in organizations using temporary agency work (TAW) is shaped by national regulatory regimes and how organizational practices and employee experiences in this context relate to patterns of workforce segmentation. The thesis also aims to contribute to the development of the PDR model of workplace health (Quinlan et al., 2001), testing it as a conceptual framework through comparative case studies in the context of TAW use. The thesis draws on the multilevel mixed-methods comparative case study methodology. Data is collected at the two manufacturing sites of one multinational company (MNC) using TAW in contrasting EU regulatory regimes: Sweden and Poland. The MNC has the same production system, follows the same flexibility strategy and uses agency workers and user firm employees in the same jobs at both sites. As such, this data allows a unique opportunity to “control for” organizational level variables in exploring the impact of regulatory regimes. Throughout the study, qualitative data from expert interviews with employer and union representatives, documents and on-site observations is sequentially integrated with survey data at employee level. Empirical part of the thesis relies on three studies. Study I investigates the role of regulatory regimes in shaping workplace level occupational health and safety (OHS) in using TAW. Results illustrate how workplace level practices that impact OHS are overwhelmingly shaped by economic pressures and suggests a hierarchical relationship between the factors of the PDR model, with economic pressures and work disorganization moderating the effect of regulatory failure. Study II explores social support at workplaces using TAW, contextualizing employee-level survey results in qualitative data at organizational and regulatory level. Results indicate higher perceived support for agency workers when compared to user firm employees, particularly in the context of organizational segregation and exclusion. Qualitative data allows to conclude that exclusionary practices increased agency workers’ need for support as well as reliance on informal support mechanisms and while that need was met in the user firm, there was an associated risk of insufficiency of support for regular employees. Study III explores the role of regulatory and organizational level contextual factors in shaping OHS outcomes in the form of work accidents and work-related exhaustion. The results show higher accident risk for TAW in both cases, but different comparative pattern for exhaustion, where higher level of exhaustion for user firm employees could be explained by segregation of TAW into organizational periphery and increased task complexity for user firm employees. In conclusion, this thesis connects national regulatory regimes to organizational practices of TAW use, showing that job quality in general and OHS in particular are largely shaped by regulation addressing economic pressures rather than work disorganization. In capturing the complex, interconnected and contextual nature of job quality experiences in organizations using TAW, this thesis finds that the inconclusive associations between TAW and health outcomes is an inevitability and research into job quality in TAW needs to address contextual pathways and mechanisms.
Att stanna kvar: arbete, plats och mobilitet i småstaden
(2021-03-04) Uddbäck, Hanna
The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how young adults in an industrial small town in Sweden perceive and negotiate their work opportunities and their position in the local labour market. The study is theoretically informed by a relational understanding of place, mobility and immobility in addition to concepts such as capital, habitus and field. Empirically drawing on qualitative interviews with young adults, as well as local actors, the study makes visible the different negotiations and tensions dealing with a changing labour market and dominant notions and norms on mobility. The main findings suggest that those who have mainly social capital are oriented towards staying in the local area. In contrast, those who have educational capital have a more ambiguous spatial horizon and are not convinced that they will be able to fulfil their career aspirations locally. Dominant notions and norms on mobility are challenged by local values such as place-loyalty and work-ethics. The young adults find themselves in-between value systems where mobility, place and work have different meanings causing them to reflexively relate to sometimes contradictory norms and values. The study makes visible the local structural conditions in terms of access to labour market and housing that make it more beneficial and desirable for some young adults to stay locally, rather than to move to bigger cities. However, this is not an advantage that is equally accessible to all. The young adults’ different spatial horizons, strategies and perceived opportunities have been conceptualized as having different place-specific habitus: identified as adaptable habitus, cleft habitus, marginalized habitus and disoriented habitus. Through the theoretical frames of the study, the analysis contributes to a complex understanding of labour market negotiations among young adults and how these negotiations are shaped by access to different resources and the local structural conditions in the industrial small town.
Alienation och Arbete. Unga behovsanställdas villkor i den flexibla kapitalismen
(2020-03-04) Alfonsson, Johan
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how flexible capitalism, drawing from the case of on-call employees, influences the ability to control life and work and affects relationships with other people, both inside and outside work; and to investigate how this can be understood in terms of alienation. A subsidiary aim that emerges from this investigation is to develop existing alienation theories in a way that enables them to be used to understand human existence under flexible capitalism. Alienation is understood as a process in which something that should be connected has lost its connection: it is a relation of relationlessness. This raises three questions: How can we decide what a relation “ought” to be? What relations are being alienated and what is causing these relations to become relationless? In the thesis I use an immanent perspective to identify the “ought” in the studied context: the capitalist mode of production. For value to exist it is required that man is, as Marx puts it in Capital, “the free proprietor of his own labour-capacity, hence of his own person”. Thus, there is a premise of self-determination in capitalism. A premise which, because of man’s need to create value and the fact that her activity must be subordinated to the value logic, cannot be realized. This applies to everyone in our society, capitalists and labourers alike, and alienates man from her activity, herself, others and her product. This is understood as abstract alienation. On a concrete and specific level the control of how to reach this value-goal and to what extent this affects the individual’s life may differ depending on how value production takes place and the individual’s position in production. I call this concrete alienation and it can be understood as the concrete expression of the abstract alienation. In this way, alienation is neither a purely structural nor a purely subjective phenomenon. It can be both. Following changes in the accumulation regime the concrete alienation has transformed during the last decades, which is expressed in the on-call employees’ situation. Based on an analysis of 17 in-depth interviews I conclude that that their subjective motifs of being in the employment differ and their employment is objectively shaped differently. The objective and subjective dimensions are the basis for understanding on-call employees’ alienation at a concrete level. Drawing from Jaeggi’s qualified subjectivism I argue that since a premise of capitalism is self-determination, the individual must have a say in their situation and experience. If an individual feels that she can’t control her life she is thus alienated from the premise of self-determination. If she feels that she can control her life but this feeling is not realised, meaning that there is no objective possibility to control or steer her life, there is no self-determination and thus alienation persists even though it is not perceived. The result tells us that on-call employment can be used both as a way to increase the freedom and self-determination over one’s life and hinder it, it can instrumentalise life and work in a specific way, and it can hinder the control over social relations, both in and outside of work. As a result, even though they all experience abstract alienation, their level of concrete alienation differs.
Standardiseringsarbetets kollektiva praktik. En studie om att kvalitetssäkra integrationssatsningen Samhällsorientering för nyanlända.
(2020-02-27) Åberg, Linnéa
Societal efforts to support the integration of newly arrived immigrants have been repeatedly highlighted in the political debate in Sweden and they are described as inadequate and ineffective. Demands have been made for improvements and one of the designated efforts is Civic Orientation (CO). The Civic Orientation programme is a course about Swedish society, targeting newly arrived refugees and their relatives who have received a residence permit. It provides basic information about Swedish society to aid and expedite integration (SFS 2010:1138). The criticism has led to the production of written, national instructions containing correct information that should be provided by the civil servants in CO. The aim is that quality should be high and equal across the country. The overall aim of the dissertation is to deepen the understanding and knowledge of the work-process to develop standard guidelines, that will be used in a welfare sector, where it is difficult to establish definitive knowledge. The dissertation's purpose is also to deepen the understanding and knowledge of instruction work as a collaborative activity. The term ‘instruction work’ covers both work that experts and managers undertake when they develop written guidelines, and work done when implementing these guidelines in local practice. The thesis is rooted in activity theory where work is viewed as a collaborative activity aimed at taking on a task, event or object, such as interpreting, paying attention, participating, thinking, and performing. The study involves five different categories of actors: a representative from the county administrative board, experts from various authorities and universities, coordinators and the head of a unit from a management group in a municipality, and integration workers, who are the local civil servants. The study is based on a field study where video recorded observations of meetings, lectures and workshops have been conducted. Semi structured interviews and written communication have also been used. The result shows that there are different perceptions of what work needs to be done to ensure that the instructions are correct. A variety of, sometimes contradictory, tasks developed: to make the information scientifically correct with multiple perspectives on social phenomena, to make educational simplification, to provide an ideal image of Sweden according to policy, or to describe Swedish society as irrational with hinders and obstacles (papers 1- 3). Another major task was to make the instructions politically neutral which meant producing information that was not offensive for external readers such as politicians and the general public (paper 1). When guideline models have been used for other welfare activities, the work is usually based on analysis of the needs of the target groups. That task took on an obscured role and was first noticed as important by the civil servants in the latter part when the material was used during implementation (papers 1, 3). A further result concerns the work of developing standard guidelines. The study shows that there is formal instruction work (paper 1) which is the planned work, most often done by experts and/or researchers, and informal instruction work (paper 2) often hidden and performed by civil servants in the implementation phase. This informal work is about transforming the instructions to be useful for the individual in the local situation. But the study also shows a third type of work - semi-formal instruction work (paper 3) that is also carried out by the local civil servants, where they, with their biographical and informal instruction work experience, try hard to influence formal instruction work. One conclusion is that it is more fruitful and accurate to perceive standardized instructions as dynamic and integrated in the practical work, than to see them as fixed by an externally controlled process. Developing standards to be used to improve practice is an ongoing fluid process that never ends, and that involves tensions and conflicts that need to be addressed.
Moral i rätten. Utredningar av hedersrelaterat våld i Sverige 1997-2017
(2020-01-07) Rosquist, Johan
This doctoral thesis investigates assumptions about honour that emerge in the Swedish justice system’s investigations of honour related violence and oppression during the period 1997 – 2017, and with what implications. The aim is to deepen the understanding of how the Swedish justice system manages crimes presumed to be honour related, and shed light on implications of current descriptions of these crimes as new in Swedish society. The thesis is rooted in a Sociology of Law tradition, and studies the confrontation between formal law (the Swedish Code of Justice) and living law (honour as a discursive and social practice assumed to be enacted amongst some immigrant groups and families in Sweden) at different levels of the justice system. The thesis includes two chronological studies of policy documents and court decisions respectively, and a micro study of speech and action in courtrooms and interrogation transcripts from police records. Critical discourse analysis is combined with the moral sociology of Émile Durkheim, and four discourses are delineated. The discourses are either gender or culture oriented, and depart from either a structural or a relational perspective. Additionally, two more overarching discourses are delineated and used analytically to shed light on talking and writing about honour as a supposedly new phenomenon in Sweden. Honour practice is a discourse concerned with routine activities aimed at maintaining social order and predictability in clan-based and gender segregated societies. Honour problematics are discourses that problematise the consequences of honour practice in Swedish society, from the perspective of Swedish authorities. Results from the thesis indicate that although they vary over time, discourses in Swedish policy documents primarily focus on assumptions about gender, whereas discourses in court records focus on assumptions about culture. In court observations and police interrogations, discourses depict families as honour practicing (expressed by court professionals as well as by suspects, victims and witnesses themselves), and position family members in different ways depending on both generation and gender. Furthermore, the cohesion of Swedish society is reflected through the identification of an ‘other’ group that it is assumed does not share Swedish values about gender equality. Conversely, within that identified group, assumptions that gender equality is a threat to the social order of honour practicing families are frequently present. This implies that proponents of the living law (honour practice) experience a threat towards moral values, while the legislative body calls for changes in the formal law as countermeasures against an experienced threat to Swedish moral values.
Inequity in Mind. On the Social and Genetic Risk Factors of Dementia and Their Interactions
(2019-09-20) Hasselgren, Caroline
The present thesis seeks to further explain the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias by studying the long-term impact of class- and gender-based inequities as well as the extent to which they potentially moderate genetic risk. Central to this endeavour is the recognition of social inequity as multifaceted, and of potential intersections between different drivers of structural (dis)advantage in relation to individual health prospects. The main point of departure is that even though the causes of dementia are heterogeneous and cannot be reduced to either genetic or environmental factors, dementia is, just like many of its potential risk/protective factors, unevenly distributed in the population. Nevertheless, our knowledge of whether and how systems of structural inequity intersect and interact with individual genetic endowments in the development of disease is still scarce. The thesis encompasses four empirical studies, all of which should be considered examples of interdisciplinary efforts to incorporate theory and expertise from different fields in order to create a more holistic understanding of dementia aetiology. The analyses are based on data derived from the longitudinal Gothenburg H70 Birth Cohort Study (H70) and the Prospective Populations Study on Women (PPSW) from Gothenburg, Sweden. The baseline sample (N =1019) was first examined in 2000 and followed up in 2005 and 2009. Study I lays the foundation upon which the other studies rest. It does so by asking whether socio- economic status (SES) could in fact moderate the increased risk of dementia that carrying one or more copies of the APOE (apolipoprotein E) ε4 allele implies. Having identified that high SES seems to buffer the effect of APOE ε4 among men but not among women, Study II and III set out to explore two mechanisms that could possibly shed further light on the link between socio-economic (dis)advantage and dementia risk as well as on the previously identified sex difference: work environment exposures and access to social networks. The findings of Study II suggest that work control is the most influential aspect of the work environment, with respect to moderation of genetic endowments, but that it is only protective among men. While no significant gene-social network interactions were revealed in Study III, the results indicate that there might be important differences between men and women in the impact of social networks on dementia risk. Finally, Study IV tests the assumption that the higher lifetime risk of dementia among women could, at least in part, be the result of differences in educational attainment and/or in experiences of general psychological distress. The results confirm that education ought to be considered a ‘gendered’ dementia risk factor and propose that psychological distress constitutes a potential, and hitherto rarely acknowledged, pathway between dementia and female sex, on the one hand, and dementia and low educational attainment, on the other. In light of the findings presented in this thesis, it is evident that dementia is an emergent phenomenon that must not be reduced to the sum of its parts, especially considering the results suggesting that genetic endowments can actually be moderated by externally imposed factors. Additionally, all four studies underline that the risk/protective factors that are more proximate to the individual, such as work environment exposures, social networks or distress, must not be studied as if they were distinct from the social structures that ‘put people at risk of risks’. Consequently, I argue, class and sex/gender must be attended to as fundamental, and intersecting, causes of dementia if we are to better understand why some individuals develop the disease, while others do not.

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