| 1. |
- Rosengren, Anna
(författare)
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Åldrandet och språket : en språkhistorisk analys av hög ålder och åldrande i Sverige cirka 1875–1975
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis analyses how old age and ageing were manifested and understood in Sweden from approximately 1875 to 1975. It thus aims to provide historical background to current debate about for instance the retirement age and how to best care for the elderly. Encyclopaedia entries from both the beginning and the end of this period describe ageing as a medical process of physical decline. Since much current research also uses such a medical perspective on ageing, it is tempting to conclude that ageing always was (and is) seen as a medico-biological phenomenon of physical decline. But has this medical perspective always dominated? The three sources studied in this thesis show that this was not always the case. The sources were birthday notices for women and men aged sixty or more, application letters to private old-age homes and, lastly, legislative material related to reforms for elderly people. Rather than establishing certain a priori criteria before conducting the empirical analyses – methods often used in previous historical research – I approached old age and ageing indirectly by examining related expressions. The theoretical perspective of the thesis builds on the work of, among others, German historian Reinhart Koselleck and British historian Quentin Skinner. The approach relies on the assumption of a mutual relationship between language and reality, and on the agency of individuals. I call this perspective “linguistic-historical research” (“språkhistorisk forskning”) to underline its reliance on both language and historical context. The analyses show that old age and ageing tended to be linked to the body and to chronology, alternating and combining the two, with no apparent evolution in a specific direction. By contrast, it is possible to discern a trend from societal to more individual manifestations of old age and ageing. Furthermore, the sources more than once exhibit a correspondence between the manifestations of old age and ageing, and contemporary ideas and events. This thesis therefore suggests that old age and ageing have not had a single well-defined essence at any point in time. Rather, their understanding and manifestations have changed with time, situation and person. Returning to my initial question, the thesis shows that medical perspectives on ageing were clearly distinguishable only towards the 1950s. Finally, the sources shed light on two common hypotheses: that women were perceived to age earlier than men, and that retirement could be seen as a form of “social ageing”. The three sources do not support either hypothesis.
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| 2. |
- Edberg, Hélène, 1952-
(författare)
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Kreativt skrivande för kritiskt tänkande : En textanalytisk fallstudie av studenters arbete med kritisk metareflektion
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I högskolesammanhang finns en tendens att betrakta fantasi och känsla som hinder för kritiskt tänkande. I denna studie, som har en högskoledidaktisk utgångspunkt, prövas tvärt om att se subjektivitet som resurs. Studien prövar lärande genom skrivande. Den prövar också hur man kan analysera den skrivna texten för att se vilka läranderesultat som följt avskrivandet. Närmare bestämt är det kreativt skrivande som metod för att öva kritiskt tänkande som undersöks. På en högskolekurs i kreativt skrivande får studenter i uppgift att skriva berättelser utifrån ett moraliskt dilemma. Berättelserna blir underlag för diskussioner och analyser under seminarier. Till sist sammanfattar studenterna sina tankar och iakttagelser i samband med övningen i en reflektionstext. Dessa texter utgör huvudmaterialet för studiens textanalytiska ansats.För att undersöka lärandet genom skrivande har aktivitetsteori, en organisationsteori på sociokulturell grund, använts som en textanalytisk modell. Analysresultaten visar att kritiskt tänkande blir olika i de närmare femtio texterna som undersökts, men att det följer vissa mönster som är beroende av vad skribenterna vill med sitt skrivande och vilka de blir när de skriver, alltså vilka skribentidentiteter som intresserar dem.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Wolrath Söderberg, Maria
(författare)
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Topos som meningsskapare : Retorikens topiska perspektiv på tänkande och lärande geonom argumentation
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- De flesta teorier om meningsskapande som är moderna inom ramen för den högskolepedagogiska diskursen i Sverige idag utgår från en perspektivisk kunskapssyn. Det kan emellertid vara svårt att realisera en didaktik som tar många synsätt på allvar i klassrummet utan att landa i hållningslös relativism. Det är detta övergripande problem som motiverar denna avhandling som anknyter till den retoriska toposläran. Den utvecklades som en kognitiv verktygslåda för tänkande och argumentation i problematiska, föränderliga och mångfacetterade frågor. Den byggde på antagandet att en fråga skulle kunna hanteras genom att teman, skäl och resonemangssätt som fungerat tidigare i liknande frågor skulle kunna ställas mot varandra i debatt och på så vis erbjuda en mångsidig perspektivprövning. Det finns skäl att anta att den därför också skulle kunna vara värd att pröva i arbetet med att utveckla en högskolepedagogik för problematisk kunskap och för en dynamisk värld. För att en sådan didaktik ska vara intressant bör den emellertid vara förankrad i en genomtänkt teori om meningsskapande. Det mer konkreta syftet med avhandlingen är därför att undersöka förutsättningarna för en sådan teori. Frågan som ställs är: Hur kan vi förstå meningsskapande om vi ser det genom toposbegreppets lins? Utifrån en undersökning av toposlärans framväxt och historiska kontext och en rekonstruktion av dess bakomliggande kunskapsteori föreslås en utvecklad toposmodell. Denna används sedan för att komplettera och vidareutveckla ett sociokulturellt och dialogiskt synsätt på meningsskapande, inspirerat av Bachtin. Till sist prövas dessa tankar som utgångspunkter för design av högskoleundervisning i seminarieform.
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| 5. |
- McWilliams, Anna, 1975-
(författare)
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain : Material and Metaphor
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Iron Curtain was seen as the divider between East and West in Cold War Europe. The term is closely connected to the Cold War and expressions such as ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ or ‘after the fall of the Iron Curtain’ are common within historical discussions in the second half of the twentieth century. Even if the term was used regularly as a metaphor there was also a material side with a series of highly militarised borders running throughout Europe. The metaphor and the material borders developed together and individually, sometimes intertwined and sometimes separate.In my research I have carried out two fieldwork studies at sites that can be considered part of the former Iron Curtain. The first study area is located between Italy and Slovenia (formerly Yugoslavia) in which the division between the two towns of Nova Gorica on the Slovenian side and Gorizia on the Italian side was investigated. The second study area is located on the border between Austria and Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia) within two national parks. A smaller study was also carried out in Berlin as the Berlin Wall is considered of major importance in the context of the Iron Curtain. This research has resulted in large quantities of sources and information and a constant need to re-evaluate the methods used within an archaeology of a more recent past.This thesis falls within what is usually referred to as contemporary archaeology, a fairly young sub-discipline of archaeology. Few large research projects have so far been published, and methods have been described as still somewhat experimental. Through my fieldwork it has been possible to acknowledge and highlight the problems and opportunities within contemporary archaeology. It has become clear how the materials stretch both through time and place demonstrating the complex process of how the material that archaeologists investigate can be created. The material of the Iron Curtain, is also well worth studying in its own right.
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| 6. |
- Huss, Markus, 1981-
(författare)
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Motståndets akustik : Språk och (o)ljud hos Peter Weiss 1946–1960
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study explores how language is thematized in a selection of literary texts written in Swedish and German by Peter Weiss between 1946 and 1960. The textual interpretations seek to establish how Weiss’s literary work forms a multifaceted reflection on language and its cultural, historical and material preconditions. The various literary conceptualizations of language in Weiss’s texts are shown to be intimately linked to historical processes, where early postwar Germany plays a crucial role as a contextual framework. The study demonstrates how the texts explore an acoustic dimension of language, where non-articulatory sounds and noises oscillate between two poles: they either pose a threat to the narrator, or form a promise of a future emancipatory linguistic expression beyond a territorializing and violent language. Furthermore, the study argues that the sounds and noises permeating Weiss’s literary work form a soundtrack of past violence haunting the present. Finally, this soundtrack is shown to undermine a German postwar literary discourse that postulates a historical break after the Second World War (Stunde Null) as well as a new German literary language cleansed of Nazi contamination (Kahlschlag).The study draws its theoretical framework mainly from research concerned with mono- and multilingualism in literature, as well as from intermedial studies examining the interaction between literary texts and other artistic media such as the visual arts and music.The material examined in the study consists of six short stories in Swedish published between 1946 and 1953 in the literary journals 40-tal, Prisma and All världens berättare; the prose manuscript “Der Vogelfreie” (1947), later published as Der Fremde. Erzählung (1980); as well as the “micro novel” Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers (1960). Aside from these literary texts, Weiss’s documentary film Enligt lag (1957) and his feature film Hägringen (1959) are also analyzed.
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| 7. |
- Andén, Lovisa
(författare)
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Litteratur och erfarenhet i Merleau-Pontys läsning av Proust, Valéry och Stendhal
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore the relation between literary expression and experience in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. The principal focus is Merleau-Ponty’s investigations into literature, in two of his first courses at Collège de France, 1953- 1954: Sur le problème de la parole (On the Problem of Speech) and Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage (Research on the Literary Use of Language). While the former remains unpublished, the latter was finally published in 2013. At the time of his premature death, Merleau-Ponty left thousands of pages of working notes. They were supposed to contribute to a major philosophical work, the planned title of which was Être et monde (Being and world). Merleau-Ponty had planned to undertake an extensive examination of language in the last part of the work. However, in the absence of this text, the courses on literary language afford us the possibility of sketching the direction that this research might have taken.The examination of literary language use is, for Merleau-Ponty, made possible by an understanding of language found in Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics. Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Saussurean linguistics anticipates the structuralist reading that was later to dominate the intellectual scene. Instead of reading the linguistics of Saussure in opposition to phenomenology, he finds in the former an ally that allows him to think Husserlian phenomenology further.In the course notes, Merleau-Ponty explores the relation between sensible experience and linguistic expressions through close readings of Proust, Valéry and Stendhal. In the writing of Marcel Proust, he finds a writer that perpetually examines his experience, searching for expressions that are capable of bringing it forth. In Stendhal’s writing, Merleau-Ponty finds a literary method that makes the world appear through the “small true facts” that describe it. Finally, in Paul Valéry’s poetic writing he finds a writer superimposing words over other words, in order to create new significations. In their literary writing he finds a capacity to seize the world anew, beyond our habitual preconceptions of it, thus bringing us closer to the experience we already perceive.
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| 8. |
- 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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| 9. |
- Moberg, Jessica
(författare)
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Piety, Intimacy and Mobility : A Case Study of Charismatic Christianity in Present-day Stockholm
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Stockholm County is a post-industrial Swedish region characterized by high levels of mobility and technologization as well as ethnic and religious diversity. Among its religious minorities exist various strands of charismatic Christianity, some of which originate from the Pentecostal revival of the early 20th century and some of which belong to more recent movements.The aim of this ethnographic study is to examine how affiliates of the multicultural charismatic Christian congregation New Life Church practice religiosity within the context of their personal daily lives, within the framework of the general congregation and in terms of their involvements with other religious organizations in the area of Stockholm.Beginning with the assumption that the practice of contemporary religiosity and the development of a religious identity are part of an ongoing process of habituation, the study describes how practitioners cultivate a form of charismatic piety characterized by certain embodied orientations, patterns of ritualization and narrative genres. To shed further light on this process, it draws upon a variety of theories concerning ritualization, embodiment, performance, narratives and materiality. Apart from this, the study also constitutes an attempt to explore and measure the impact on the practitioners’ religiosity of late modern developments such as urbanization, detraditionalization and global mobility as well as the growing absorption in consumerism, emotional intimacy and the unfolding of the “authentic” inner self.While pursuing these ends, the study also calls into question previous assumptions about charismatic Christianity in Sweden, most particularly the assumption that today’s practitioners remain inclined to be entirely faithful to one given institution and its system of beliefs and practices. Indeed this view is directly challenged herein by the finding that contemporary charismatics are far more inclined to eclectically appropriate elements and models of thoughts from various contexts of origin as well as to affiliate with and/or visit multiple Christian institutions.
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| 10. |
- Petrov, Kristian
(författare)
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Tillbaka till framtiden : Modernitet, postmodernitet och generationsidentitet i Gorbačevs glasnost´ och perestrojka
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with the concepts glasnost and perestroika during the Gorbachev era 1985–1991. It offers an explanation to the rise and fall of these concepts and casts light on their modern and postmodern implications, as well as their historical and generational preconditions. In light of the Soviet and Russian conceptual history, Gorbachev’s articulation of glasnost and perestroika is contrasted with the reception of these concepts in what at that time came to be called Russian postmodernism. Glasnost and perestroika both confirm and transcend Soviet modernity. They are both future-oriented but at the same time possess retrospective anchorage. The present study reconstructs the experience encapsulated in the concepts, the expectations they unleashed and the tensions they triggered. The Gorbachev era signaled a rupture in the temporal order of modernity. During this time Soviet modernity lost confidence in its self. With glasnost and perestroika a suppressed past opened up which blocked the futurist potential inherent in the present. The concept-theoretical perspective assumed in the dissertation helps explain essential aspects of the dramatic turn of events. Postmodernism’s relationship to the concepts is mainly antagonistic. At the same time glasnost and perestroika were essential to the self-identity creating process of postmodernism and its development of an understanding of a specific late Soviet postmodern situation. Beneath the surface a conflict evolves, constituted in intergenerational terms. The vast differences in deployment of the two key notions appear related to generation specific historical experiences. This is apparent in the glasnost- and perestroika discussions of the 19th and 20th centuries. In several respects the 20th century discourse reflects that of the 19th century. The analysis in the present dissertation demonstrates how Gorbachev, on the basis of his generation-specific experience as a man of the 1960s actively sought to articulate an alternative reconstruction (perestroika) and did so with a distinct ideological accent. The postmodernists, the last Soviet generation, bore the imprint of the stagnation of the Brezhnev era and had no ideal past to resuscitate. Instead of reconstructing social reality they tried to place themselves outside it. This apolitical stance however embodied both anti-political and political implications.
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