1371.
Naldemirci, Öncel, 1983
(författare)
Caring (in) Diaspora: Aging and Caring Experiences of Older Turkish Migrants in a Swedish Context
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis investigates Turkish migrants’ aging experiences and their understandings about care by concentrating on the accounts of a group of first-generation Turkish immigrants who settled in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The aim is to explore how older immigrants’ lives have been marked by the experience of migration and re-establishment in another country, how the impact of having once lost caring relations affected their decisions and desires about care in old age. This study examines some common patterns about aging in a host country, ideals of care in old age, encounters with medical institutions, interpretations of formal care facilities, and identity and community construction processes. Rather than generalizing and categorizing cultural, ethnic, or even religious expectations in the case of elderly care, it seeks to grasp the complexity of the migrants’ ideals of care and caring relations by focusing on the positions they take in diaspora space. This study is based on ethnographic research which extended over two years (2011–2013). The empirical material consisted of observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 older Turkish people, 10 women and 10 men, who live in Sweden. By focusing on medical care stories, the study highlights the importance of looking at previous experiences of being cared about and cared for in the deliberation of future care needs and expectations. By elucidating how older Turkish people understand formal care facilities such as home-help services and elderly care homes, the study underlines ambivalent attitudes towards these options. This ambivalence is anchored in ways of perceiving “the Swedish” as modern but uncaring as well as in their understandings of family members as caring others. The study also shows how the Turkish family is imagined and done through three emotions: merhamet (compassion/pity), vefa (loyalty/ faithfulness), and şefkat (concern/affection). Emotionalization of the family is not about reinforcing, but, rather, about negotiating the filial duty towards older parents. Of note is also that these emotions circulate inside and outside the family and that a caring diasporic community is imagined. By exploring older Turkish migrants’ experiences and understandings, this study contributes to the growing research field of care for people with a migration background. It critically assesses older Turkish immigrants’ aging experiences, and their understandings about care options, not through cultural differences that are supposed to be unchanging and homogeneous, but based on the positions that they take in diaspora space. This study contributes by showing that, in order to understand the possible expectations of older migrants when it comes to decisions about and needs for care, it is crucial to consider their experience of having lived and aged in diaspora space. Designing, deliberating on, and deconstructing particular ideals of care become possible only if we take these experiential, mnemonic, and relational meaning-making processes into account.
1372.
Naranjo, Eduardo
(författare)
Den auktoritära staten och ekonomisk utveckling i Chile : Jordbruket under militärregimen 1973-1981
1997
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the institutional changes which occurred in Chile under the military regime from 1973-1981, and how these changes can be related to subsequent economic development in the country. The empirical material comprises of an investigation of the new economic policy in the agricultural sector, the political process behind this policy and the social and economic changes it led to. The study uses mostly secondary sources; official documents and publications as well as newspaper and journal articles. A number of interviews with civil servants and politicians were also conducted. The reason for choosing the agricultural sector is that precisely this sector has gone through a comprehensive structural transformation and experienced subsequent dynamic growth. The dissertation attempts to show that this institutional change was carried out by what I call an authoritarian developmentalist state, which both makes it possible for a special development oriented elite to strongly influence economic policy and legislation, and acts highly independently in relation to various particular special interest groups in society. First and foremost, the developmentalist state succeeded in neutralizing the old estate-owning class and its rent-seeking behaviour through a policy which favoured entrepreneurship and technical development in agriculture. In this dissertation I try to analyze the new economic policy and the institutional changes which created it. Empirically, this means that I have studied economic policy in the agricultural sector. The primary focus is on how the new economic policy developed and in what respects this has impacted the development of agriculture. Expressed more precisely, I attempt to answer the following question: How can it be that Chile, which for centuries has had a traditional estate form of agriculture supported by the state, so rapidly came to have new effective agricultural businesses which also became successful export enterprises? My answer is, as I try to show in this disssertation, that the military regime's new economic policy led to institutional changes which created entirely new conditions for agricultural production.
1373.
1374.
Nasseh Lotf Abadi, Mozhdeh, 1977-
(författare)
Social support, coping, and self-esteem in relation to psychosocial factors : A study of health issues and birth weight in young mothers in Tehran, Iran
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Introduction: Generally, pregnancy is considered to be a positive period in life in Iranian culture. For the parents, it is important to have a healthy pregnancy and, as a result, a healthy child. A sufficient birth weight of the infant represents one of the crucial conditions of a healthy development of a child during infancy as well as later in life. Ongoing research has been carried out regarding various medical factors related to birth weight, but there is a gap in knowledge about psychosocial factors such as social support, coping, self-esteem, stress and mother’s mental health, and various socio-demographic factors including domestic violence, which may lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes such as low birth weight. This thesis aims to provide knowledge to fill this gap.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Tehran, Iran, including 600 young mothers who had delivered in Akbarabadi hospital, one of the main gynaecological hospitals affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The investigation included a self-developed socio-demographic form, the Social Support Questionnaire, the Ways of Coping Checklist, Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale, the General Health Questionnaire-12, and a Life Event Checklist.Results: We could not find a significant association between birth weight and mother’s level of education, and there was no substantial relationship between general mental health and birth weight. Verbal abuse was reported by 26.0% of the young mothers, 4.8% reported physical abuse, 5.5% reported sexual abuse, and 1.3% reported all three types of abuse. The abuse-index was significantly negatively associated with satisfaction with social support and with self-esteem.The higher the abuse-index, by trend, the lower was the infants’ birth weight. Weight before pregnancy, current weight, weight gain during pregnancy, and the number of prenatal care visits were significantly positively associated with the weight of the newborn. Mothers who reported having a history of a low birth-weight (LBW) child or were physically abused during pregnancy had infants with significant lower birth weight.The more the pregnant women were satisfied with their social support and the more often they used positive reappraisal as a way of coping, the higher was their infants’ birth weight. The higher the self-esteem, the less often they used escape avoidance and confrontive coping.Conclusion: The results suggest the importance of relationships between a healthy pregnancy and psychosocial as well as socio-demographic factors. Providing pregnant women with social support is a key component for a healthy pregnancy, especially when faced with stressful situations. The number of people available for support did not provide a significant buffering effect on domestic violence (DV), but the perceived quality of social support did. Higher education in the mother and husband, and women’s employment represented protective conditions against the occurrence of DV. Women who reported physical abuse during pregnancy had infants with lower birth weight. Satisfaction with social support and use of positive reappraisal were significantly associated with higher birth weight.
1375.
Neergaard, Anders
(författare)
Grasping the Peripheral State : A Historical Sociology of Nicaraguan State Formation
1997
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis has two aims. The first one is to contribute to the field of political and historical sociology through an understanding of the processes of state formation in a Third World country. The second aim is to describe and analyze the development of the Nicaraguan state from independence to 1990. In the first part of the dissertation theories of the nation-state and state formation are discussed and criticized. The Eurocentric origin and bias of the nation-state concept is seen as a significant problem in conceptualizing and understanding state formation in the Third World. Taking into consideration the experience of state formation in Western Europe, a theoretical frame work is presented that operationalize the concept of nation-state and the process of state formation. This frame work is further elaborated by discussions of some central aspects pertaining to countries of the Third World that differentiate them from the Western European experience. Nation-state formation is thus seen as a process in the international, "national" and state arenas encompassing the strengthening and the coordination of repressive, extractive and integrative capacities of the state. A central aspect in understanding state capacities is through the conceptual pair of infrastructural and despotic power. The empirical study focuses on the development (state formative processes) of the Nicaraguan state from independence in 1823 until the Sandinista electoral defeat in 1990. The role of the colonial legacy, the world capitalist economy and the international system of states in influencing the shape of the Nicaraguan state is analyzed. Through the history of Nicaraguan state formation, phases are outlined with different state formative characteristics. State disintegrative phases are represented by the city-states of early independent Nicaragua and the protectorate years at the beginning of the 20th century. Reproductive peripheralness is seen as dominant during the second half of the 19th century and the Somoza dynasty. Finally projects of nation-state formation are to be found during the Zelaya regime and during the Sandinista regime. The importance of the agroexport economy, foreign interventions and a fractured social formation is seen as an important factor blocking the development of a Nicaraguan nation-state. Through the notion of the peripheral state and frameworked in the concepts of extractive, repressive and integrative capacities the author provides new theoretical insights on Third World states dynamics in creating and maintaining a national arena, squeezed between international and local forces. The author shows that the peripheral state is not a traditional state form but a modern state form interdependent on the successful consolidation of nation-stateness in the First World.
1376.
Neuman, Nicklas, 1987-
(författare)
Stories of masculinity, gender equality, and culinary progress : On foodwork, cooking, and men in Sweden
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The general aim of this thesis is to use foodwork and cooking in Sweden as a way to better understand theoretical questions about men and masculinities. Paper I discusses how an increased public interest in elaborate cooking and gastronomy in Sweden, a country with a cultural idealization of gender equality, could explain why men in Sweden assume responsibilities for domestic cooking without feeling emasculated. Papers II, III and IV draw on interviews with 31 men from 22 to 88 years of age and with different levels of interest in food. Paper II shows how domestic foodwork and cooking are associated with ideas of Swedish progress in terms of gender equality and culinary skills. Paper III demonstrates further that domestic cooking is not only a responsibility which men assume, but also a way of being sociable with friends, partners and children. Thus, both papers II and III challenge the idea that men only cook at home if they enjoy it. The data rather indicate that domestic foodwork responsibilities are a cultural expectation of men in Sweden, ingrained in desirable masculine practices. Paper IV explores men’s responses to media representations of food. The interviewed men responded to these representations with indifference, pragmatism, irony, and at times even hostility. In general, the responses are based on gender and age-differentiated taste distinctions and notions of masculine and culinary excess. Paper V uses a mix of texts (81 online texts and two magazines) and observations from the food fairs GastroNord (2014 and 2016), Mitt kök-mässan (2014) and the chef competition Bocuse d’Or Europe (2014) complemented with pictures and videos. I argue that a Swedish culinary community that promotes Swedish culinary excellence is constructed by drawing on preestablished national (self-)images. This culinary community is constructed as open and tolerant, with ethical concerns for the environment and for nonhuman animals. Its culinary icons are represented by chefs in whites and the leading restaurants. In sum, this dissertation provides empirical and theoretical contributions to both food studies and gender studies that critically scrutinize men and masculinities. Food-issues are permeated by gender, both in people’s everyday life and in the gastronomic elite.
1377.
1378.
Niemi, Mariella, 1965
(författare)
Naturbaserade aktiviteter i daglig verksamhet och gymnasiesärskola. En studie om personer som lär långsammare och om trädgårds- och naturbruksarbetets möjligheter och begränsningar i ett socialt perspektiv.
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This study is about people with learning disabilities and nature-based activities. The study has an ethnographic approach and is based on observations and interviews at a daily activity center specializing in horticultural work and in an upper secondary special school specializing in farming. Totally the empirical evidence consists of 46 occasions of observation and 21 interviews. The study proceeds from three questions at issue. How can the interaction between man and nature be understood within the framework of the academic discourse, and which interpretative repertoires are found in the nature-based practice directed towards persons with learning disabilities? How are nature-based activities used in a social pedagogic perspective for social learning and preparation for work-life? How are persons with learning disabilities categorized and disciplined in the nature-based practice? The analysis shows that within the academic discourse a cultural and an evolutionary type of discourse have emerged. The former type of discourse emphasizes the value of nature as being relative and includes a cultural, a pedagogic as well as a social dimension. The evolutionary discourse type instead emphasizes nature as being vital for man. The discourse type includes three directions: nature for everyone, nature as medicine and gardening as social treatment. Within the discourse order of the practice, three interpretative repertoires including nature are distinguished. Nature makes us happy consists of statements such as nature is a positive factor for the wellbeing of man. The interpretative repertoire gardening demands motivation implies that nature is not beneficial to everybody, but rather emphasizes the fact that an interest in gardening is needed. The third interpretative repertoire, nature activities can lead to fellowship, has similarities with the former in that the value is not found in nature itself. The analysis shows that when the floodlight is placed on a social pedagogic perspective in the work with nature-based activities, social learning and learning of vocational skills come into focus. The study has demonstrated that learning with the help of nature-based activities can be productive and develop the participants, who learn to take social responsibility as well as concepts and vocational skills. The value of nature in this context consists of nature-based activities becoming tools for social learning, but also for learning a trade. When another floodlight is turned on and focused on power relations, and instead problemizes the work with persons with learning disabilities in nature-based activities, something else appears. The disciplinary aspects become more manifest and more revealing. Consequently the value of nature-based activities can be explained as that of helping persons with learning disabilities find their “right place” in the distribution of work. In Swedish with an English summary
1379.
Nieminen Kristofersson, Tuija
(författare)
Krisgrupper och spontant stöd : om insatser efter branden i Göteborg 1998
2002
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of the dissertation is to study the organized professional process and the spontaneous integrating and unifying process after the discotheque fire in Gothenburg 1998, when 63 young people died. Over a hundred crisis groups and duty centres were opened for the affected people. These groups are composed of representatives of the social services, psychiatry, the churches and voluntary organizations. The theoretical foundation of the study is Émile Durkheim's (1912/1995) sociological theory of rites and grief and the significance of the collective in connection with grief and crisis. The professions are analysed with the aid of Andrew Abbott's (1988) theory of their jurisdiction. Theories of social networks, of organizations (Lipsky 1980) and of social responsivity are also used in the analysis of the interviews with 21 persons affected by the disaster and with 29 representatives of the crisis groups. The affected people could obtain both emotional support and practical help from the social network. The work of the crisis groups consisted of practical support. For social workers, this meant that some low status tasks became meaningful. There was plenty of scope for other tasks than conversation. After a few weeks the crisis groups were closed down and the affected people were referred to the social services. The people then became dependent on the discretion of the street level bureaucracy, with different assessment of the entitlement to benefits in the different parts of the city. The professionals used the abstraction and knowledge of the psychiatrists as a major element in their jurisdiction when they described the situation of the affected people. An interesting finding is that many of the professionals toned down their professional role in connection with the disaster. Emergent groups, or spontaneous crisis groups, also grew up as a response to the fire. The great significance of the spontaneous groups was that they could arrange meetings between representatives of the authorities and the afflicted immigrant families. This was crucial in an situation where most of the immigrant families were suspicious of the authorities. The leaders were also able, albeit temporarily, to bridge over the differences that they had seen to exist between Swedes in the prosperous suburbs and immigrants in segregated estates. The spontaneous and organized professional processes are interwoven. The spontaneous crisis groups arranged important contacts between the affected families and the authorities, and the social network is a self evident support. The weakness of spontaneous support is that it declines after a time, when friends no longer have the energy to listen. The strength of professional support is its endurance. With the aid of the resources in the organizations where the professionals work, the support can be developed over a long time, provided that the street level bureaucracy does not hinder, for example, the continuity of contacts.
1380.
Nilsson Blom, Marcus, 1980-
(författare)
Opioidberoende : en studie om beroendevården och det sociala sammanhangets betydelse
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Opioid dependence is highly associated with health problems relating to physical health (infectious diseases) as well as mental health (depression, anxiety, antisocial behavior). In addition, research has found an association between use of opioids and increased risk of premature death as a consequence of overdose or other circumstances, such as suicide. Furthermore, opioid dependent individuals experience a high level of social exclusion and problems with relationships, housing, income and livelihood. Overall, there is a connection between opioid dependence and physical, psychological and social vulnerability as well as premature death.The importance of social cohesion has rarely been the focus in research on opioid dependence. Therefore, there is a need to further explore whether differences in outcomes (medication assisted treatment, mortality and co-morbidity) in addition to individual characteristics, can be derived from social aspects of the opioid dependent individual’s life.The overall aim of the dissertation is to examine individual and social factors among individuals who are dependent on opioids and how they are associated with outcomes relating to: a) medication assisted treatment; and b) mortality and co-morbidity.This dissertation is based on data from four different registers. The first and second sub-studies use ASI data. The third uses DOK data from the National Board of Institutions (SiS) and the Death Registry (National Board of Health and Welfare). The fourth study is based on both DOKdata and data from the national patient registry (National Board of Health and Welfare).Overall, this dissertation confirms the understanding of opioid dependence as associated with a high level of vulnerability. This dissertation shows that opioid dependence is characterized by extensive care efforts, low levels of employment, and a high level of mental health and comorbidity.This dissertation shows that the characteristics related to the social network (parenting, work and education) are of significance for being in treatment, but also remaining in care (medication assisted treatment), which in turn promotes the individual's health and long-term health development. In that, this dissertation shows that for individuals dependent on opioids, there is an association between being part of a social network and favorable health development.
