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- Fröhlig, Florence, 1971-
(author)
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Painful legacy of World War II: Nazi forced enlistment : Alsatian/Mosellan Prisoners of War and the Soviet Prison Camp of Tambov
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns the legacy of the Nazi forced enlistment during World War II and focuses more precisely on the case of Alsace/Moselle. Many of these French men, enlisted by force from 1942 in the German army, were sent to the Eastern Front and experienced Soviet prison camps.The aim of this thesis is to examine how knowledge and memories about forced enlistment and Soviet captivity have been remembered, commemorated, communicated and passed on since the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs (Prisoners of War) carried the tokens of enemies or traitors when reintegrating their motherland, France.Four strategies dealing with the experiences of forced enlistment and of internment in Soviet prison camps are examined. I present how the first and most common strategy, i.e. avoidance, is contributing to an individual and collective construction of silence. Then I argue that a second strategy, the constitution of families of remembrance, is helping them to articulate and narrate their experiences (third strategy). The fourth strategy is the organisation of pilgrimages (emic term) to the former prison camp of Tambov, where the majority of the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs were gathered during the war. This last strategy actualises the issue of the transmission of the war experiences given that pilgrimages bring together three to four generations. Through fieldwork observations of the journeys I show how the pilgrims engage with a sense of the past. They remember and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of the social, cultural and political needs of the present. The importance of place and the aspect of self-in-place are thoughtfully analysed in order to highlight the process of passing on the memory of Tambov.I conclude by arguing that the agents of remembrance interviewed for the purpose of this thesis are engaged in turning the tangible and intangible legacies of World War II into heritage. This is done by releasing the legacy of forced enlistment and internment in Soviet prison camp from the private/familial sphere and inscribing it in the public sphere. Yet, the agency of the former POWs and their descendants shows how to let pass a past “that does not want to pass” in a contemporary European context.
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- Gerber, Sofi, 1973-
(author)
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Öst är Väst men Väst är bäst : Östtysk identitetsformering i det förenade Tyskland
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) the overthrow of the socialist regime did not only bring about both an economic and political shift, it resulted also in the inclusion of the GDR into the Federal Republic of Germany. The fall of the Wall brought with it transformations in everyday life as well as changes in social identities.This study examines how people who grew up in the GDR define the East and the West in unified Germany, as well as identifying which concepts play a role in the self-interpretations given by former GDR citizens. Through applying discourse theory, I investigate how identities are partially fixed and change over time, relating this always to historically situated discourses. In the analysis, East and West are considered as floating signifiers, which, through articulations made with other categories such as class, nation, place and gender, come to be filled with meaning. The study is based on twenty-five life story interviews conducted in Eastern Germany. The group of interviewees consisted of fifteen women and ten men born in the GDR between the years of 1970 and 1979, all of whom had different levels of education.The demise of the socialist state and the transition to a capitalist society is central in the interviewees’ life stories. Their narratives about the past are formed in a discursive order other than the one in which the events themselves took place. Conversely, the past is used as a foil against which the present is compared. With the dislocation, the interviewees have developed a reflexive stance to both themselves and the world. The study reveals both how East and West are still used to make the world intelligible in a number of fields and, at the same time, how these same concepts are transcended. It shows in what ways the interviewees employ different strategies to adapt to the new circumstances and to handle a potentially marked position in unified Germany.
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- Kanematsu, Makiko, 1968-
(author)
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Saga och verklighet : Barnboksproduktion i det postsovjetiska Lettland
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the dissertation is to examine the production of children’s books for the Latvian-speaking population in Latvia and attempt to illustrate how the post-Soviet transformation has affected the conditions surrounding its development. To this end, the study investigates how the economic, political, and cultural aspects of the transformation are perceived and dealt with by actors active in children’s book production. The concept of the field of the production of children’s books as a subset of the broader field of cultural production is based on the term “literary system” as defined in the sociology of literature and the term “field” as defined in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of cultural production. The fundamental theoretical standpoint of the study is based on social constructivist theory. The study also investigates the phenomena in the field from the aspect of sociopsychologist Michael Billig’s concept of “banal nationalism” and sociologist Daina Stukuls Eglitis’ model of “narratives of normality.” The material is based primarily on interviews conducted between 2003 and 2005 in Riga with the actors involved with the production of children’s books in Latvia, but also on data gathered from other sources. The results indicate that the role of the state and the commercial market are perceived and dealt with differently amongst the actors in the studied field, where opposing attitudes towards mass-market products indicate that children’s books can be seen as cultural products by some and as commercial products by others. The material further implies that the opinions of the interviewees about the role of children’s books in post-Soviet Latvia are closely related to their personal visions for the future of this newly-reborn independent nation. It is the various survival strategies adopted by the key actors in the field as a response to the changing conditions in the new era that ultimately constitute the transformation of the field.
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- León Rosales, René, 1971-
(author)
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Vid framtidens hitersta gräns : Om maskulina elevpositioner i en multietnisk skola
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to highlight the central conditions, norms and values which enable the staging of certain masculine pupil positions and hinder others at a school located in the northern part of the municipality of Botkyrka, during 2004–2005. The school and the neighbourhood in this study are characterized by a high percentage of people with immigrant background, a result of urban ethnic segregation. The methodological approach is qualitative. The empirical data consists of interviews with 15 boys in grade 6, participant observations, and official documents. The study examines the central position of socially sanctioned conceptions of “good becoming” in society. Children are expected to control their own bodies and take on certain areas of knowledge in the correct way in order to create themselves as expanding subjects: they learn to ask for “success” and “upward” social mobility. But as this study shows this does not apply equally to all pupils. The boys in this study have to create themselves as pupils on terms that make it harder for them to establish themselves as successful pupils. The teaching they encounter in school, the socioeconomic conditions and the effects of the segregation that characterises the urban landscape they live in makes it harder for them to live up to the requirements of what an “ideal pupil” should be. The study also highlights the ways in which difference is being made between girls and boys in school, creating arenas that are more open for boys than for girls to enter into in everyday life, namely football and the multiethnic youth language. These arenas allowed the boys to stage masculine coded subject positions which in one way or another were connected with a positive social status. Thus boys in this study do not have as much reason to establish themselves in the position of a good pupil in comparison to girls since there is a greater variety in how they can create themselves within subject positions connected to social status.
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- Pripp, Oscar
(author)
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Företagande i minoritet : om etnicitet, strategier och resurser bland assyrier och syrianer i Södertälje
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study deals with how Assyrian and Syrian entrepreneurs in Södertälje relate to those around them both within and outside the ethnic community. It is based on conversational interviews conducted between 1992 and 1996 with thirty male and five female entrepreneurs as well as on participatory observation in the summer and autumn of 1994. The purpose of the study is to investigate when, where and how ethnicity becomes or is made socially relevant for the entrepreneurs. I conducted this investigation by studying how they shape their business activities in relation to the structural conditions which are generated in social relations. The study highlights the strategies that the individual entrepreneur uses to remove obstacles and take advantage of opportunities. Theoretically it takes its departure in an interactionist perspective.The strategies of the entrepreneurs showed how they actively tried to influence the way people in their surroundings categorized them. The entrepreneurs who had ambitions to develop their businesses were, for example, extremely scrupulous with hygiene and with how they expressed themselves in the Swedish language in their encounters with customers and the authorities. It was their way of creating more latitude for action and trying to influence and modify structural conditions.The importance of having a common ethnic background varied. Ethnic resources were utilized to a much greater extent in smaller businesses than in those that were larger and more specialized. The opportunities for personal loans and for obtaining labor and other support varied according to the person’s/family’s reputation in the eyes of others. The extent and the quality of the social network also had great significance for a person’s opportunities to utilize the family-based and ethnic resources to start and run one’s own business. Common ethnicity was, however, not a sufficient criterion for borrowing money from or working together with relatives, friends and acquaintances. The evaluation of personal characteristics was at least as important.
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