| 1. |
- Pasquini, Mirko, 1991
(författare)
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The Negotiation of Urgency: Economies of Attention in an Italian Emergency Room
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Urgency in a hospital Emergency Room (ER) is not a self-evident state. Urgency is made, by establishing priorities, distributing attention and material resources, and deciding who and what needs to be attended to first – and, simultaneously, who and what has to wait. The process of determining urgency is known as “triage” (from the French verb, trier, “to choose”). This thesis is about the vicissitudes of triage in an Italian ER. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when urgency is at stake; when it is contested and caught up between different, and frequently conflicting, perspectives. It explores how urgency is determined in practice, and shows how triage always is a vulnerable process of negotiation guided by economies of attention. How is urgency actually shaped in interactions between patients, their families and friends, and the ER staff? The different chapters explore how time in the ER is created through shifting registers of attention, and how attention in the ER is affected by widespread economic and social precarity, and neoliberal national policies of governance. It discusses how triage increasingly is structured by attitudes of mistrust; and also by potential or real outbreaks of violence. Addressing the particular positioning of the ER as a thick space of conjunction between neoliberal state politics and people's increasing need for care and recognition, the thesis aims to contribute to medical anthropology literature by analyzing triage not as a neutral medical way of sorting, but as a practice that actively creates difference. It explores both the limits of triage, and how those limits can spark improvisation and creative reinvention.
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| 2. |
- Lutz, Peter A.
(författare)
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Tinkering Care Moves : Senior Home Care in Practice
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation builds on the current anthropological studies of care relations in practice. It draws inspiration from science and technology studies (STS) and postfeminist technoscience. A qualitative ethnographic approach grounds the empirical data collection and analysis. This entails ethnographic fieldwork with senior home care in the United States and Sweden during 2007–2008 and 2011–2012. Analytical attention centers on how movements situate various tensions of senior home care in practice. Four interrelated published works comprise the main thematic chapters. Each article exemplifies how human and nonhuman relations move and mediate care. They develop several heuristic terms that advance ideas about how older people, aging bodies, technologies, spaces, and times that tinker each other through movements of care in practice. The comprehensive summary frames these articles with an overview of the primary thematic orientations and methodological concerns. A discussion of the main contributions and implications of the dissertation concludes the work.
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| 3. |
- Edkvist, Ingela, 1957-
(författare)
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The performance of tradition : An ethnography of Hira Gasy popular theatre in Madagascar
- 1997
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study deals with the popular theatre performance of Hira Gasy, and its actors andaudiences in the central highland regions of Imerina and northern Betsileo in Madagascar. The Hira Gasy has developed from a court to a rural performance during the last two centuries, a period influenced by first the British and then by the French presence in the country. Today, the performances are given in diverse contexts, the most common being in connection with reburial ceremonies. The Hira Gasy troupes all have a common form of their performance, with speeches, songs, acrobatics, dance and music, while the content is unique for each troupe, although given in a culturally recognized form. The study is based on 19 months of fieldwork divided into five periods between1991 and 1996. The main argument is that the Hira Gasy performances provide a forumin which the problems of identification and belonging are discussed. The `foreigner' isused as a `mirror image' for the rural and the poor in their aims to assert and shape theirsense of belonging in a changing society. The symbols of identification - the ancestralland, the common tomb, and the family solidarity - are felt to be threatened by increasingindividualization and the decrease in the fulfillment of the ancestral duties. For the ruralpoor their feelings of marginality and powerlessness in relation to the economically andpolitically powerful urban elite are expressed in Hira Gasy. Through the practice ofcustom they sustain their moral dignity, which is one of the most important means inorder to remain malagasy. The Hira Gasy performances are indigenious arenas for existential and moral discussions, and for providing a sense of belonging in a problematic reality shaped by both the `way of the ancestors' and the `way of the foreign'.
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| 4. |
- Rodéhn, Cecilia, 1977-
(författare)
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Lost in Transformation : A critical study of two South African museums
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this dissertation Transformation, as understood in South Africa, is investigated in the ‘Natal Museum’ and the ‘Msunduzi Museum Incorporating the Voortrekker Complex’ in terms of socio-political structures, the museum as a place, its collections and displays. I have emphasised the ethnographical perspective and analysed it by using key concepts such as new museology, time, space and place. My research focuses on the perception and mediation by museum staff-members of Transformation which is compared and positioned against South African and international museological theoretical discourses. I further explore the political backdrop to Transformation of South African museums and discuss related problems and aspects such as reconciliation, nation-building and the African Renaissance. Socio-political structures, acts, reports and policy documents are analysed over a long temporal sequence, but focus on the period 1980-2007. The long temporal sequence is a tool to capture the development connected to the museums in space and time and aims to compare and present previous developments in order to investigate how Transformation positioned itself as against the past. I hold that Transformation should be treated as an ongoing process connected to other transformation processes across time. I also propose that Transformation started earlier than previously suggested and that it is not a question of one Transformation but of many transformation processes. The urban landscape and the concept of place and name are explored. My research examines the urban landscape from the establishment of Pietermaritzburg to study how the museums were positioned in the landscape and how this has contributed to associated meanings. The museums are treated as demarcated places in the urban landscape which are named and infused with meaning and ownership. The museums are constituted and acted out within specific socio-political structures. The dissertation suggests that the objectives of Transformation reveal themselves through negotiation and alteration of place and name. My research explores the history of the museum collections – how objects were acquired, classified and used to materialise the museums´ institutionalisation of time and what this brought about for heritage production. I investigate what did and did not change when the museums transformed and I deconstruct the new and old objectives and socio-political ideas of collections. I analyse displays as socio-political spaces, the agent’s appropriation, and the discrepancies within dominant socio-political structures. When Transformation materialises in displays it becomes visible for the public to see. The negotiated displays show how the museum tries to visualise Transformation to the public. The discussion analyses the discussed concepts of Transformation, the structures, place, name, display and collection, and relates these to the concept of time, and to how agents create time and make it visual. I also discuss how museological writing and political speeches shape and negotiate Transformation through their articulation and how they sometimes constrain and form discrepancies to actual reality.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Maria
(författare)
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Arbetslöshet och arbetsfrihet : Moral, makt och motstånd
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Unemployment is constructed as a problem by institutions and individuals, at a structural as well as individual level. In the "black discourse" of unemployment, power is produced by talking and naming, by symbolic images, by dichotomisation and hierarchisation of categories based on the fundamental dichotomy of nature/reason, but also by feelings, actions and bodies. The well-being of the unemployed is constantly threatened by this discourse, yet they nevertheless reproduce it when necessary. But there is resistance to all this. First, there is a resistance against politicians and former employees in particular and elites in general. Then there is a reflexive resistance, characterised by a critique and de-legitimation of the myths of unemployment and thereby the modern work ethic. This depreciation of values and a relativistic standpoint is seen here as a sign of a representational crisis. In the practising of a life free from work, I also see a kind of resistance. The women seem to need what I call an "existential space", sometimes fulfilled in unemployment. The men living happily without work seem to need an ideological legitimation of this, rejecting the materialistic lifestyle in the contemporary western world. Finally, I see a kind of "practised resistance" (often unintended) in alternative outcome, such as the mutual help in a "moral economy", small-scale cultivating, fishing and hunting and economic strategies. Since the discourse of unemployment is motivated by the relation between the modern institutions of wage labour and capitalism, the activities based on other relations, such as reciprocity and non-consumption in this case, can be defined as a kind of resistance. It is a resistance readable in the effect, not the intention, of it.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Farahani, Fataneh, 1966-
(författare)
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Diasporic Narratives of Sexuality : Identity Formation among Iranian- Swedish Women
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals with the sexuality of Iranian women living in Sweden. Considering sexuality as gendered and socio-culturally constructed, I examine the impact of Iranian Islamic discourses, contemporary socialization and migration on women’s narrations of sexuality. The theoretical platform arises from a Foucauldian discursive analysis of sexuality, including Iranian and/or Islamic discourses on sexuality, and diasporic and feminist postcolonial theories. The empirical basis of the thesis consists of ten in-depth interviews with first generation Iranian immigrant women in Sweden. The narratives are the textual field for exploring the divergent and contingent intersections of discourses that constitute the women’s sexuality. Themes that surface in the narratives are the importance of virginity, veiling practices, requirements for modest dress codes, lack of sexual education, first sexual experience, marriage, divorce and diasporic experiences.With sexuality as the main subject of analysis, my focus draws on articulations involving gender, otherness, agency and marginality. Being alert to different (at times contradictory) discourses, I study the tension that develops between the process of (self)disciplining the body and the women’s coping tactics. The study examines the ways women take part in existing institutions while exhibiting agency and creating new ways to negotiate across discourses. This thesis shows how moral values regarding sexual behavior undergo various and sometimes contradictory transformations. The women report being torn between two different cultures. Yet, while consistently facing a crossroads of racist and sexist discourses filled with stereotypes of so-called natives and outsiders, I argue that the women are not caught between two cultures. Rather, they live a hybrid experience of ‘Swedishness,’ ‘Iranianness’ and other social relations. Complexity defines their tactics; the women exist in the interstices of culture(s) and discourses.
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| 8. |
- Forsberg, Anette, 1966-
(författare)
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Kamp för bygden : En etnologisk studie av lokalt utvecklingsarbete
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When collective action for community is defined as local development or as a struggle for survival different understandings are in focus. Politically, this kind of community action is defined as local development and understood in terms of growth and economics. An economic approach to community action is also emphasised in the EU-programmes that support local development groups and projects. On the other hand local groups describe their activities as a struggle for community and community survival. Inspired by feministic research approaches and with an interest in human aspects and values this study investigates meanings of community action as experienced and expressed by rural inhabitants and activists. The study is based on fieldwork that was carried out in a small rural community in the northern inlands of Sweden: Trehörningsjö. Since the middle of the 1990s, the women in Trehörningsjö have driven collective action to uphold the community. With its point of departure in the community and expanding into the arenas of reserach and politics, the study takes on the form of a reflexive research process in which the researcher's former knowledge and new understandings are made visible and discussed parallel with the interpretations made. The main focus of the study is the activist's demand of voice, visibility and worth. The first chapter presents the local community and provides a background to the study. The chapter includes an account of the reflexive approach that widened the field of research from a local to a translocal study of community action. In chapters two, three, four and five the struggle for community is reflected through fieldwork experiences in Trehörningsjö and other arenas beyond the village. Situated events and instances of collective action such as the fight for the local health care centre, are analysed as symbolic expressions of community values and rural importance. From chapter two and onwards, the study follows the footsteps of the leading female activist in and beyond the community itself; that is, the day-to-day work, meetings, conferences and other places where community action is acted out. The struggle for community is proven to focus on translocal rather than local action. In chapter six the fieldwork experiences - that tell about resistance and a struggle for community values and perspectives - are placed in the wider context of the rural development movement, local development research and governmental rural policy in Sweden. On all these arenas community action tend to be interpreted as local development in line with a growth perspective, rather than as community protests and struggles that expresses other meanings. Chapter seven takes the analyses and discussion further, and relates community struggle to concepts such as civil society and social economy. Anthony Giddens concept of life politics and Alberto Meluccis concept of collective action are used to deepen the analysis on how humane meanings and relation based aspects of community action are made invisible on the political "growht and development" agenda. Community struggle presents a possibility for rural inhabitants to (re)define and reclaim their community and themselves as important and valuable. However, to be able to understand what the concept of community struggle expresses, and demands, it needs to be acknowledged as a form of action that has the potential to challenge established bureaucratic and political defintions, which, in practice, proves to be difficult.
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| 9. |
- Frihammar, Mattias, 1967-
(författare)
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Ur svenska hjärtans djup : Reproduktion av samtida monarki
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to show how Swedish royalty is reproduced and gains its extraordinary status through interaction between people, institutions and artefacts in the beginning of the 21st century. The analysis is based on data collected between 2003 and 2009 in different contexts where royalty and the monarchy are brought to the fore. The data consists of field notes from a municipality’s preparations for a visit of the king and queen of Sweden and three official events where royals are present, transcribed interviews, answers to a museums questionnaire and media material. The main theoretical premise is Actor Network Theory (ANT). Additionally, the study draws upon theories about cynical reason, modernity, humor and ritual. The study shows how royal sovereignty is reproduced basically by acts that separate persons and artifacts, put them on display and evaluates them as extravagant. These processes are at hand both in people’s everyday lives and during official event that present royals as the center of attention. Monarchy is interpreted as a modern institution mirroring notions of rationality through notions of irrationality, and the analysis shows how royal charisma is produced through performances fully in accordance with late-modern thinking and acting. The attractive royal mystic is interpreted as a consequence of a general strives to bring together the contrasting concepts of royalty and ordinariness. By analyzing humorous as well as servile attitude towards the royal institution and its representatives, the study shows how monarchy and the concept of royalty interact in the re-production of Sweden as a nation and in the individual citizen’s project of self-identity. Through creating memories of royal ancestors, individually and collectively, and through preserving the relations to existing royals and imagining the future of the royal family, a collective immortality is formed. In the process structures of inequality and social differences are established and made reasonable.
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| 10. |
- Fröhlig, Florence, 1971-
(författare)
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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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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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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