| 1. |
- Bötker, Peter
(författare)
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Leviatan i arkipelagen : Staten, förvaltningen och samhället. Fallet Estland.
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sedan Max Weber har många forskare påvisat tendenser till ett samband mellan svaga regeringar och starka byråkratier. Man har i sammanhanget lyft fram två faktorer som gör att en byråkrati kan komma att dominera över sina politiska principaler: Å ena sidan har man menat att eftersom politikerna omöjligen kan ha egen expertis på alla områden och kunna sköta allt vardagligt behöver de delegera uppgifter till en förvaltning. Med tiden, och om principaler byts ut ofta, leder detta till att det till sist är förvaltningen som med sin expertis tenderar att bestämma över sina politiska huvudmän. Å andra sidan har man även påpekat att eftersom staten intervenerat i allt fler samhällsområden har detta gett förvaltningen möjligheter att där etablera olika allianser som i sin tur kan användas som källa till expertis och som en påtryckargrupp för att främja förvaltningens egna syften och planer. I denna studie försöker jag med hjälp av processer i den estniska statsförvaltningen under huvudsakligen 1990−talet visa att det inte med nödvändighet existerar ett kontinuum där man å ena sidan skulle hitta starka och aktiva regeringar med rationella, neutrala och lydiga kanslier till sitt förfogande och å andra sidan svaga regeringar som domineras av kansliet.Eftersom staten snarare är en social relation än ett givet subjekt utgår jag ifrån att de politiska ledaraktörerna och förvaltningen likt en ekologisk enhet ingår i en levande kontext som också påverkar dess interna processer och flöden. Därmed kan mycket av förvaltningens interna liv förstås om man relaterar det till händelser och beroendeskap i en organisk kontext. Jag kommer således att betrakta staten som en social relation. En viktig aspekt i resonemanget i detta avsnitt blir alltså dragkampen på scenen och dess omgivning. Tanken är att denna dragkamp bestämmer statens kapacitet, aktörernas relationer på scenen och på vilket sätt dessa aktörer kan få fotfäste i det omgivande samhället. Därför väljer jag att till beskrivningen av statens position i sin omgivning även lägga massorganisationernas och folkrörelsernas roll, vilka med sin utbreddhet i samhället kan lägga en bred grund för att bära upp de aktörer som intar staten alternativt omöjliggöra för staten att i politikskapande manövrera förbi dem. I detta ligger också att staten med hjälp av sin uppburenhet eller samarbete med stora medborgerliga sammanslutningar blir djupt inbäddad i samhället. Dock har massorganisationerna och folkrörelserna under de senaste decennierna förlorat sin förmåga att samla och organisera människor.I denna avhandling kommer jag att redogöra för de faktorer som medför att medborgarsammanslutningarnas förmåga att sammanfläta staten med medborgarna försvinner. Resultatet av denna process har blivit att de politiska organisationer som intog statsarenan saknar en bred och djup inbäddning bland befolkningen. När partierna därefter tvingas att garantera sin fortsatta delaktighet i utformandet av regeringsmaskineriet måste de vända sig till väljarkåren som de saknar all organisationell samhörighet med. Detta, menar jag, har fått vidare konsekvenser för politikskapandet och statens roll i samhället, samt i förlängningen även medfört konsekvenser för statsapparatens funktioner.
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| 2. |
- Dahl, Matilda, 1978-
(författare)
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States under scrutiny : International organizations, transformation and the construction of progress
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Opinions, rankings and evaluations of states’ development are proliferating. In the context of the transformation and EU accession of the Baltic States, there were many organizations involved in the scrutiny of their efforts to become accepted as modern and European. This scrutiny directed towards states can be seen as a new practice of transnational regulation. Especially in times of major transformation, as was the case in the Baltic States after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, monitoring and evaluation of achievements can be expected to shape how reforms were prioritized and how problems were perceived. In order to gain a better understanding of these transformations it is necessary to study the practice of organizations that scrutinize the states.The aim of the thesis is to analyze the role of scrutiny as a practice of transnational regulation. By analyzing how international organizations scrutinize states, this thesis adds knowledge to how transforming states are constructed in the everyday practices of scrutiny. A main argument is that by evaluating and reporting on states, international organizations can be seen as ‘auditors’ of transformations in states. The thesis compares three such ‘auditors’ and their respective relations to the states under scrutiny, namely: the European Commission, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the NGO Transparency International. The thesis contributes to discussions about the role of transnational regulation in the transformation of states. By comparing the three cases of scrutiny it is concluded that scrutiny produces both comfort and critique for and about these transforming states. In addition, through processes of scrutinizing, states are constructed as auditable and comparable. Scrutiny also inscribes states into a story about progress, it thus offers hope about reforms and of a better future.
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| 3. |
- Eellend, Johan
(författare)
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Cultivating the Rural Citizen : Modernity, Agrarianism and Citizenship in Late Tsarist Estonia
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies the ideas and political practices produced in the emerging rural public sphere in late Tsarist Estonia. The time period is characterized by radical social and economic change and growing national and political self consciousness. An underlying aim is to study the emergence and character of an agrarian ideology in Estonia, with a special concern paid for ideas on the organization of society.The first section examines the emerging of Estonian language agricultural instruction books and agricultural journals. Studying the content and the advice on modernization and organization of farm work uncovers their underlying ideas on the organization of the rural society. The second section deals with the ideas and ideals presented in the agricultural instructions through the work of local agricultural associations and agricultural cooperatives. Finally the ideals of the agricultural instructions and the practice of the associations are studied on a national level, as expressed at the Agricultural Congresses 1899 and 1905 and the All-Estonian Congress 1905.The study emphasizes the importance of the rural sphere in creating the foundation for the interwar Estonian society and shows significant ideological and organizational similarities between the Estonian agrarian movement and contemporary agrarian movements in Europe.
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| 4. |
- Garberding, Petra, 1965-
(författare)
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Musik och politik i skuggan av nazismen : Kurt Atterberg och de svensk-tyska musikrelationerna
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals with relations between music and politics in Sweden and Germany during the 1930s and 40s. I study how music was used as a political tool, and the ideas that existed about musical expression of national and ethnic identity and about “good” and “bad” music. I argue that these conceptions became a driving force and were important to Swedish relations with Nazi Germany. The study focuses on material by and about the Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg (1887–1974). Atterberg was a central figure in the world of Swedish music during the first half of the 20th century and his life gives a glimpse of the spirit of the time. The theoretical platform arises from a critical discourse analysis combined with theories about modernity, nationalism and ethnicity. The empirical basis of the thesis consists of material from Swedish, German and Austrian archives, newspaper articles, radio programmes and interviews with composers of today. My study shows how Sweden and Germany inspired each other in the musical relationship. Both countries encountered similar problems. In the first half of the 20th century, modernisation accelerated in Europe, which also meant dramatic changes in musical life. Music could be spread to a greater extent without the composer’s control. New techniques, for example the sound movie, left many musicians unemployed. New musical styles appeared and challenged establishments. I argue that different ideas about national identity and its musical expression were important for the development of relations between Sweden and Nazi Germany. For many composers and musicians an engagement in Nazi Germany was interpreted as a contribution to the establishing of a strong national identity and the improvement of their own national musical life. Swedish-German musical relations were also influenced by different views on music and politics. For Nazi politicians music and politics ran together and music was to give expression to Nazi ideology. In Sweden music and politics were to be kept apart. Different perspectives on music and politics made it possible for Swedish composers and musicians to be active in Nazi Germany and to define their engagement as purely musical work. The Nazi government could for its part use Nordic composers and music to confirm Nazi ideas on race biology and to spread Nazi propaganda.
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| 5. |
- Gradskova, Yulia, 1967-
(författare)
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Soviet People with Female Bodies : Performing Beauty and Maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930-1960s
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The everyday practices of maternity and beauty are important for the enactment of femininity. This dissertation deals with femininities created in the context of changing ideas about “normality” in Soviet Russia during the mid 1930s-1960s and explores a diversity of norms, discourses and rituals. The main sources are women’s magazines, advice books, and interviews with women living now in three different cities of the Russian Federation – Moscow, Saratov (Volga region) and Ufa (capital of Bashkortostan Republic).The results of the research suggest that some parts of the Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty turn out to be similar to those that were characteristic for other European countries of the same historical period. At the same time the interviews show that the modern practices of medical and welfare institutions, the consumption of clothes as well as advice about appearance and childcare were situated in the context of shortages of goods, women’s work outside of home, rhetorics of the “naturalness” of maternity for every woman as well as that of a woman’s particular need to care about looking nice. Together with the home reproduction of many rural/patriarchal rituals of maternity and beauty it led to a contradictory everyday performance of femininity. Fluctuating categories of social status, ethnical belonging, geographical location and generation also contributed to a diversity of femininity constructions. Common sense normativities concerning practices of becoming a mother, caring for a baby and making oneself beautiful suggest that Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty were only partly accepted and reproduced by women. They were also partly rejected and subverted in everyday practices. The analysis of maternity and beauty practices shows that performative femininities were utterly complex.
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| 6. |
- Ingbrant, Renata, 1966-
(författare)
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From Her Point of View : Woman's Anti-World in the Poetry of Anna Świrszczyńska
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book is a monograph about Anna Świrszczyńska’s poetry. It may be described as one woman’s attempt to read another woman’s literary work by taking into account established canons as well as the tools of feminist literary analysis. Part One begins with a discussion of Świrszczyńska’s biography (Chapter One). It then moves on to an overview of critical (mainly male) reactions to Świrszczyńska’s work (Chapter Two), with special regard to Czesław Miłosz’s contribution to its interpretation and popularization (Chapter Three). In Part Two there are three principal discussions: 1) of Anna Świrszczyńska’s early work Wiersze i proza [Poems and Prose] (1936), in which the poet develops her specific female view of European art and culture as disintegrated into incongruent fragments. Her premonition of the apocalypse, which is soon to be fulfilled in the events of World War II, finds its expression in the poet’s desperate attempts to unite the fragments of a shattered culture into individualized versions of myths (Chapter Four); 2) of the collection Budowałam barykadę [Building the Barricade] (1974), in which what is most crucial to the poet (biographically and poetically) is expressed – the encounter with human suffering in an inhuman world. Following this, her poetic view of the mortal body exposed to suffering under an empty sky becomes a well established motif in her work (Chapter Five); 3) of the collection Jestem baba (1972), in which Świrszczyńska introduces into poetry, by making the non-poetical “baba” her lyric heroine, the “outlawed feminine” and, as a result, revolutionizes the language of poetry and poetic representation, which leads in turn to liberating herself from the hegemony of the totalizing male gaze. In this way her anti-world is created (Chapter Six). The “world” is understood here as a male term – one might say that Świrszczyńska creates a “woman’s anti-world” as a place where the woman herself has to regain the right to name things according to her own terms.
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| 7. |
- Petronis, Vytautas
(författare)
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Constructing Lithuania : Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800-1914
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Up until now the discipline of history has most often used maps as a convenient tool for illustration. Scholars have thus touched only briefly upon the development of maps and their role in the processes underlying the formation of national territories and the establishment of ethnic boundaries. It is against this backdrop that the present study focuses on the use of maps and their significance during the construction of the Lithuanian ethnic/national territories in the period prior to 1914.The work employs a wide spatial and contextual perspective. One of its main arguments is that at the beginning of the 20th century the Russian Empire could be perceived as a multi-ethnic and regional state. Although the imperial authorities and wider public may have rejected this notion or found it problematic to accept, it was a fact which was clearly evident in the research of Russian scholars. To demonstrate this, I focus on two processes: the gradual formation of the Lithuanian ethnic space on maps, and its transformation from an ethnographical concept to an ethnic and national territory.The attempt to introduce a rational and optimal form of territorial governance in the Russian Empire depended on an increased level of geographical and statistical knowledge of the land and its peoples. Various investigations started in the early 18th century. A geographical perception was largely dependent on the mapping of the country, and from this perspective it can be argued that the Empire only really started to become visible in detail in around 1840, with the establishment of a stable administrative-territorial system. From this time onwards, Russian ethnographers, geographers, cartographers and statisticians started to investigate the state’s western borderlands, collecting, scrutinising and presenting information about the peoples that lived there. However, while the imperial authorities envisioned Russia as a solid “Russian” state, the work of scientists revealed that the Empire was not just regional, but also multi-ethnic.In the case of the Lithuanians the separation of their ethnic territory occurred most clearly after the 1863-1864 uprising, and the growth and spread of propagandistic ethnic cartography that took place in its wake, which had as its goal the Russification and de-Polonisation of the western borderlands. Although the imperial authorities were able to identify the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic North Western provinces as a result of this process, at the same time it enabled the educated and nationalistically inclined local population to begin to perceive its own ethnic space. Therefore, every ethnic line placed on a map during this period not only allowed these peoples to be ethnographically separated, but also allowed the territory to be simultaneously disassociated in a nationalistic sense from its “other” neighbours. For the Lithuanian nationalists the imperial maps and other data acted as the springboard from which they produced their own cartographic responses designed to counter the Russian and Polish points of view. The specificity of the Lithuanian maps was that even though they claimed to depict either ethnographic, or ethno-linguistic Lithuanian territory, they nonetheless emphasised Lithuania in geo-political terms, thus undermining the claims of other ethnic groups living in the border areas.The methods employed in this study can also be used in other contexts to undertake similar investigations on other ethnic groups, thus opening the possibility to obtain a better understanding of the evolution of particular territorial constructions, territorial conflicts, border disputes and so on. Moreover, although much work still remains to be done in developing this approach, the present study nevertheless points to the way in which a fusion of the history of cartography, historical geography and other related disciplines offers the historian a new way of understanding the past.
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| 8. |
- Semenenko, Aleksei, 1978-
(författare)
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Hamlet the Sign : Russian Translations of Hamlet and Literary Canon Formation
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This work is an attempt to answer one simple question: What is Hamlet? Based on the material of Hamlet translations into Russian, the dissertation scrutinizes the problems of literary canon formation, translation and textuality proceeding in two parallel directions: the historical analysis of canon formation in translation and the conceptualization of Hamlet’s textuality. The methodological framework is defined in the context of Jurij Lotman’s semiotics of culture, which is invaluable for an understanding of the mechanisms of literary evolution, the theory of translation and literary canon formation.The study examines the history of Hamlet in Russia from 1748 until the present with special attention to analysis of the canonical translations, theater productions of the Shakespearean classic and the phenomenon of Hamletism. The case study of the 1964 film by Grigorij Kozincev focuses on the problem of the cinematographic canon of Hamlet. Further, the work scrutinizes various types of representation of Hamlet in such semiotic systems as the theater, the cinema, and the pictorial arts, and also examines how Hamlet functions as a specific type of sign.The final section returns to the question of canon formation and textuality. The results of the research show that 1) the literary canon appears to be closely associated with the concepts of genre and myth, 2) in order to become canonical it is imperative for a literary text to function on the level of microcanon and to be represented in modes other than the written.
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| 9. |
- Søvik, Margrethe
(författare)
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Support, resistance and pragmatism : An examination of motivation in language policy in Kharkiv, Ukraine
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Ukrainian society has gone through vast changes since independence in 1991 and in this thesis some of these social changes are discussed through the prism of language policy. The main topic of the study is language policy (conceptualised as language practices, language beliefs, and language management) in the eastern Ukrainian city Kharkiv. This topic is examined within a framework focusing on motivation, allowing for a study of how people in Kharkiv describe, explain and rationalise language policy in the context of change in society. Ukrainian is the only state language in Ukraine, but Russian is widely used in Ukrainian society, and in Kharkiv Russian is the predominantly used language. One specific topic of the study is how young Ukrainians perceive the role granted the Ukrainian language in on-going processes of nation-building, related to the formation of a national identity. This is contrasted with discussions on individual linguistic rights and what is considered reasonable to demand from the Ukrainian population in terms of language practices. Further, the study examines the concept of language conflict, notably what kinds of conflict can be identified in and extracted from discussions on the role of language in society. This examination shows that it is not necessarily a case of potential conflict between groups or individuals, but also that individuals may struggle with internal conflict. This study demonstrates how language conflict is not about language, but rather about social positions, interests and value systems. This also illustrates the fact that the three components of language policy are not necessarily interrelated and consistent. Especially language practices and language beliefs are often at odds. Fieldwork was carried out in Kharkiv 2003-2005 and the study relies on a combination of methods (in-depth individual interviews, group interviews and a large-scale questionnaire).
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