| 1. |
- Giritli Nygren, Katarina, 1971-
(författare)
-
"e" i retorik och praktik. : Elektronisk förvaltning i översättning.
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion of eGovernment implementation by making the implicit organisational micro dynamic processes involved in the framing and implementation of eGovernment explicit. I want to highlight the important process trough which eGovernment is framed and translated by organisational members and in what way it effects different divisions of practice. To do so, two different analytical aspects of organisational life, the rhetoric of management and the reality of work practices are used as a theoretical context for analysing some implications of eGovernment implementation. These analytical dimensions of organisational life are used to discuss a case study looking at the implementation of eGovernment in a local Swedish municipality. The main contribution of this thesis is a theorisation of how to understand the organisational micro dynamic processes involved in the implementation of eGovernment in public administration. New insights could be gained, for researchers and practioners, by analysing the transformation of practice as an ongoing process characterised by micro-political translation processes involving actors as well as actions and meanings in both rhetoric and practice.
|
|
| 2. |
- Kvarnlöf, Linda, 1982-
(författare)
-
Först på plats : Gränsdragningar, positioneringar och emergens i berättelser från olycksplatsen
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When accidents occur, citizens often are the real first responders. This has been acknowledged and studied from an international perspective, particularly in relation to large crises and disasters, but remains relatively unstudied from a Swedish perspective. This thesis takes its point of departure from people who have been emergency callers or witnesses to traffic accidents, studying their actions and interactions at the scene of an accident in terms of boundaries, positioning and emergence. The aim of this thesis is to study how people’s actions in a specific situation are affected by their interactions with both real and imagined others and how their actions are affected by the spatial context. The thesis consists of four individual studies that relate differently to the main aim of the thesis. The first study focuses on first responders’ options to act in a place that simultaneously is the workplace of emergency personnel: the incident site. This study shows how first responders’ options to act are governed in large part by their interaction with emergency personnel and their boundary practices at the incident site. In this study, we apply theories of boundary practices from Nippert-Eng and the concept of boundary work from Gieryn to explain how emergency personnel control their place of work through boundary practices and through that process control those first responders who are present at the site. In other words, people’s actions at the incident site are affected by both the social and the spatial context. The second study focuses on a limited selection of first responders: those who have placed emergency calls. Through interviews with callers and transcriptions of their emergency calls, this study explores how the callers frame their decision to stop and place the call through different presentations of self. These presentations are constructed through moral positioning, in which the callers position themselves and their actions in relation to both real and imagined others. Thus, the callers also construct normative accounts of what is considered a “preferable” and “non-preferable” way to act at the scene of an accident. The third study takes its point of departure from theories and previous research on emergence because they have been used by disaster sociologists to explain how citizens are the real first responders to crises and disasters. Through the concepts of emergent behavior and emergent norms, papers in this research field have argued that people in these situations act according to “new and not-yet-institutionalized behavior guidelines”. In this study, I argue that emergence, in other words, citizens as the real first responders, is also present in everyday emergencies. Through the narratives of citizen first responders, I explore how they frame their actions through different normative narratives. These normative narratives are not necessarily emergent, however. Rather, the interviewees use past experience and presentations of self to justify their actions at the scene of an accident. The fourth study is an ethnographic reflection of the researcher’s place-bounded identity in a field study that revolves around several different places. Rather than focusing on a story of first responders, this study focuses on the researcher’s, i.e., my own, story from the scene of an accident, the fire truck and the fire station. What I have been able to study through these different studies are stories of actions rather than “actual” actions or behaviors. In these stories, it becomes clear that first responders relate to both a social and spatial context as they provide accounts of their actions at the scene of an accident. They relate to a social context because they frame their actions through their interactions with different actors and position themselves in relation to those actors—and in relation to a spatial context. That is, they perform their actions in a place that is someone else’s place of work, with jurisdictional claims of both legitimacy and control. In summary, this thesis contributes a deeper knowledge of how citizen first responders interpret, understand and tell the story of their actions at the scene of an accident. The contribution considers the fact that citizen first responders are something of a “blind spot”, not only in the field of emergency research but also for emergency personnel who do not always acknowledge the experience of first responders at the scene of accidents.
|
|
| 3. |
- Lundgren, Minna
(författare)
-
Boundaries of displacement : Belonging and Return among Forcibly Displaced Young Georgians from Abkhazia
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation explores the implications of borders and boundaries for how forcibly displaced young Georgians from Abkhazia understand issues of belonging and return. My theoretical framework draws from theories on home and belonging as well as theories on border and boundary making, and locates them in geographies of uncertainty – or riskscapes – areas characterized by conflict and/or inequality. Empirical data was collected through two sets of interviews in Zugdidi near the border to Abkhazia and a questionnaire survey in Zugdidi and the capital Tbilisi. These data have been analysed through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The young respondents providing material for this research do not constitute a homogenous group. Some of the respondents have family still living in Abkhazia or even partly grew up in the area; others have never been there. The primary goal of the Georgian government has been that the displaced population should return to their homes, and the government’s efforts for local integration has long been insufficient. Since no peace accords have been signed, a lack of security prevents a large-scale return. Notwithstanding increased border controls that have made it difficult to visit former homes, some young people still cross the de facto border. By doing this they contest both the Abkhazian de facto authorities and the border as a symbol of separation and differentiation, while claiming a right to belong in Abkhazia. Property and social relations in Abkhazia contribute to stronger connections and an imperative to return. On the other hand, experience of hardship in contemporary Abkhazia has resulted in some young people not considering return as a viable option. Youth who never visited Abkhazia depend mainly on other peoples’ memories and political discourse to create emotional bonds to the area their parents fled and to form their ideas of return. Results from the quantitative survey indicate that youth living in Tbilisi, closer to the political centre, to a higher extent intend to return than their peers in Zugdidi. Meanwhile young people’s experiences of everyday life in current dwellings in relative stability create emotional bonds to their present place of living. These experiences challenge both collective processes and experiences from Abkhazia when it comes to maintaining the desire to return. This research offers insights into the human consequences of war and conflict. More specifically, this dissertation sheds light on how young internally displaced persons (IDPs) are living in a borderland (in both temporal and spatial terms) characterized by uncertainty-- between the past and the future as well as between Georgia and Abkhazia. Practices of exclusion and segregation are constitutive of the borders and boundaries that permeate life experiences of the forcibly displaced youth. Furthermore, these borders and boundaries are situated in riskscapes of disputed belongings, which makes this borderland more or less stable for different groups of IDPs. This dissertation contributes to an increased understanding of how political aspirations and personal desire to return preserves instability and uncertainty as long as return is not possible.
|
|
| 4. |
- Wall, Erika, 1978-
(författare)
-
Riskförståelse : Teoretiska och empiriska perspektiv
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis introduces the concept of ‘sense-making of risk’ (riskförståelse) for the purpose of the theoretical and empirical study of the individual’s sense-making of risk. Particular weight is attached to an examination of the term’s various components, its compass, and the relationship between sense-making of risk and behaviour. The premise is that risk is created and defined by the common conceptions that exist within the framework of a specific social context; the effect is to focus attention on the significance of social and cultural contexts. To provide a full picture of sense-making of risk, and risk behaviour, and to study these phenomena using a variety of methodological perspectives, the data was gathered from both polls and focus-group interviews. It is in the first article, based on a focus-group interview study, that the concept of sense-making of risk is introduced: the empirical results demonstrate that it can be used to chart how young people with similar risk perceptions differ in their understanding of a variety of risks. A theoretical model is proposed that establishes that there are two dimensions to the individual’s sense-making of risk. The second article considers young people’s risk behaviour in traffic milieus. The principal conclusion drawn in this study is that the individual’s sense-making of risk is insufficient to explain behaviour in relation to risk: the spatial context must also be taken into account. The third article focuses on the relationship between place attachment and sense-making of risk, and demonstrates that various aspects of place attachment have implications for the individual’s sense-making of risk. The fourth and final article offers a cluster analysis. The article’s most important result is its refinement of the theoretical concepts. Structure of meaning is singled out as the basis for the individual’s sense-making of risk. In its empirical application the concept was shown to be useful in studying the behavioural differences between various social groups, since grouping by structure of meaning furnishes an explanation for variations in risk and risk-reducing behaviour. The introductory and concluding chapters assemble the studies’ findings and offer a full account of the concept of sense-making of risk. The thesis’ most important conceptual contribution is to the question of how the individual arrives at a personal sense-making of risk. However, it will fall to future studies to establish the concept’s general applicability by considering its theoretical ramifications and empirical implementation. In this way, sense-making of risk can take its place in a specifically sociological conceptual apparatus that focuses on how the individual relates to risk.
|
|
| 5. |
- Öljarstrand, Anneli, 1967-
(författare)
-
Den mångtydiga församlingen : Organisering, roller och relationer i spänningen mellan sekularisering och desekularisering
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Parishes of the Church of Sweden work under the influence of a religious and cultural tradition as well as a societal, individual and internal secularization (Chaves 1994). The organization therefore has to react to the requirements of change alongside the need to preserve its distinctive character. The aim of this thesis is to analyze experiences of how a secularized context and internal organizational requirements influence the parishes' organization of structure and activities, the role of the actors and the relations between them. The data consists of two empirical studies. The first study (carried out in 2007) is based on semi-structured interviews with 26 diocese employees at twelve of Church of Sweden's diocese secretariats. The second study (carried out in 2009) is based on semi-structured interviews with vicars and focus group-interviews with members of the faith ministry, employees and volunteers in four different parishes, in total 77 informants. Three different analyses of the material have been carried out.The first analysis, guided by new institutional theory, focuses on the parish’s organization in relation to a secularized context. Results show that the majority of the parishes have accepted a “market adapted organization model” in order to compete on the religious market, or perhaps most importantly, to retain their current members. The study concludes that the major challenge for the Church of Sweden’s parishes today is to find a balance between preserving traditions and adapting the organization to the ambient society's requirements of market adaptation and rationalization, which can result in internal secularization. The second analysis is guided by role theory and focuses on the actor´s (vicars, members of the faith ministry, employees and volunteers) different roles in the parishes, in the light of organizational change. Results show how the different roles are affected by the organizational structure as well as by the societal context. The study concludes that a role is not static; instead it is affected by ideas from society, the organization, and other actor’s expectations as well as the actor him/her self. The four investigated roles tend to be more and more complex and, despite role, intra- and inter- role conflicts seems to be common in the parishes.The third and last analysis is guided by network analysis and focuses on the relations between the four actor groups. The results show that the actors sometimes have difficulty in separating between formal and informal relations. The relations seem to overlap each other, be multiplex and have more than one content. This can be related to the parish ambiguity as well as the actor´s many different roles within the organization. The thesis concludes with a theoretical discussion there a modifying of the concept internal secularization is proposed.
|
|
