| 1. |
- Lindberg, Sara, 1987-
(författare)
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Forming EU-professionals : Geopolitical and Symbolic Hierarchies at the College of Europe
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to understand how international educational processes and practices enable the formation of student dispositions related to Europe and the EU labour market. The College of Europe, located in Bruges, Belgium, is a postgraduate independent private institution. It is a boarding school with approximately 350 students representing around 50 nationalities. It was created in the aftermath of the Second World War by European federalists and has a political mission of contributing to European integration. The method consisted of ethnographic fieldwork combining participant observations with semi-structured interviews (27 with students and 11 with the school administration). I mainly interviewed students from Scandinavian and Central and Eastern European Countries. In addition, informal interviews were conducted with faculty, students, school administration, alumni, and EU officials. Contextual information and data were collected from the school website, school brochures between 1953–2017, the Student Yearbook, and students LinkedIn profiles. Departing from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, I constructed the College of Europe as a social space in the intersections of various fields at the national, European, and global level. Rather than making a field analysis of the school, the intersection across fields was used as an analytical prism when making sense of what was taking place within the school. To grasp the structure of such a space I investigated the distribution of different assets and resources that the students possess before arriving in Bruges as well as accumulated during the school year. The College of Europe is a social space positioned towards the EU and Europe yet where the national is continuously present. It is aiming to contribute to European integration through the formation of EU-professionals for both the public and the private sector. It is a social space where the objective is to overcome national barriers and acquire a European outlook through diversity, yet it is marked by geopolitical and symbolic hierarchies that relate to students previously inherited and acquired national, international, and linguistic capital and social class as well as macrolevel structures and social order such as European social inequalities and EU member states hierarchies. The students, endowed with large amounts of international capital, come from middle and upper middle class, acquire social distinction through the College of Europe and while striving to build Europe, they continuously also build themselves. The academic year, through the forging of dispositions such as valuing social dispositions over academic excellence, professionalism, being at ease with people in positions of power, understanding EU geopolitical and symbolic hierarchies and situating oneself within them, largely reproduces the existing European social order.
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| 2. |
- Döring, Stefan, 1986-
(författare)
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Cooperation and Conflict amid Water Scarcity
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over two billion people remain without safe drinking water and more than four billion lack basic access to sanitation. Safely managing water is key for livelihoods, food security, energy production, and overall socio-economic development. This dissertation analyzes how scarce water resources affect cooperation and conflict. First, I study water scarcity in relation to communal violence. Second, I consider how water scarcity can be a source of cooperative behavior, a key ingredient to peace.This dissertation contributes to research on peace and conflict issues and across other disciplines, studying the consequences of water scarcity. Essay I shows how lacking groundwater access increases incidences of communal violence. This is the first study on armed conflict that combines data on groundwater, surface water, and precipitation. Essay II analyzes spatial spillover processes of conflict-inducing factors. The study introduces a theoretical framework explaining spillover dynamics of communal conflict. Furthermore, the analysis shows that drought explains violence not locally but through wider neighborhood exposure. Essay III suggests drought-prone regions could be harbingers for water cooperation even in places with a history of violence. This research is also the first to analyze water cooperation at the sub-national level, thereby providing more detailed insights into peaceful hydropolitics. Essay IV shifts to the individual level. Studying the effect of exposure to water scarcity on altruism, the essay contributes to our understanding of microdynamics in conflict and adds to social psychological research on altruism.In sum, the dissertation makes four broader contributions. First, the findings suggest we need to look beyond resource scarcity as a cause for conflict. Instead we ought to study the potential of peaceful resource sharing and cooperation. Second, the dissertation addresses political actions by both individuals and groups, while also considering those in relation to government action. Addressing different group levels is key because conflict or cooperation dynamics address different spheres of action (individual, group, state). Third, the dissertation covers Africa, the Southern Mediterranean, and parts of the Middle East, thereby showing relevant findings for a larger geographic area than many previous studies. Lastly, the dissertation contributes to research on water issues by focusing on access to groundwater, which has been largely neglected in previous research. The findings can provide insights into our understanding of sustainable water management and environmental peacebuilding. Climate change challenges how we engage with water and, therefore, we must find more sustainable ways to use this resource.
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| 3. |
- Westin, Martin, 1974-
(författare)
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Rethinking power in participatory planning : Towards reflective practice
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- High hopes for democracy and sustainability are placed on participatory planning. Policy makers and scholars argue that broad participation can revitalise democracy and tackle sustainability challenges. Yet, critics claim that power asymmetries stand in the way of realising the potential of participatory planning. In the everyday practices of planning, this controversy comes to a head. Here, planners interact with citizens, politicians and developers around making choices about places and societies. Planners’ practices are contested and they are challenged by the complexity of power relations. They need conceptual tools to critically reflect on what power is and when it is legitimate. Reflective practice is a prerequisite for making situated judgements under conditions of contestation.Yet, the planning theories, which are most influential in practice, have not been developed with the intention of conceptualising power. Rational planning theory, which still is influential in practice, largely reduces planning into a technical power-free activity. Communicative planning theory, which underpins participatory practices, instead suggests that expert power ought to be complemented by inclusive dialogue. This theory criticises hierarchical power relations as domination, without providing elaborated understanding of other facets of power. Hence, the conceptual support for reflective practice is too reductive.The aim of this thesis is to rethink power in participatory planning by developing concepts that can enable reflective practice. I draw on power theory and explore the utility of treating power as a family resemblance concept in participatory planning. Applying this plural view, I develop a family of power concepts, which signifies different ideas of what power is. The usefulness of this “power family” is tested through frame analysis of communicative planning theory and Swedish participatory planning policy and practice.The result of the research is a family of power concepts that can enable reflective practice. Power to signifies a dispositional ability to act, which planning actors derive from social order. This ability can be exercised as consensual power with or as conflictual power over. The latter is conceptualised as an empirical process which, on a basic level, can be normatively appraised as illegitimate or legitimate.This thesis contributes to planning theory and environmental communication by problematising reductive notions of power and, as an alternative, rethinking power as a family resemblance concept. This theoretical contribution matters to planning practice as it can enable planners to develop their ability to be sensitive to what a situation requires, i.e. to acquire practical wisdom (phronesis).
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| 4. |
- Berglund, Christofer, 1985-
(författare)
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Borders and Belonging : Nation-Building in Georgia's Armenian and Azerbaijani Ethno-Regions, 2004–2012
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since the fall of the Soviet Union, scholars researching ethnic politics have approached the South Caucasus as a testing ground for theories of separatism and conflict. But the 2003 Rose Revolution brought a new generation of politicians to power in Georgia. President Mikheil Saakashvili distanced himself from the ethnic nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. The incoming authorities instead sought to foster an inclusive nationalism, wherein belonging hinged on speaking the state language and all Georgian-speakers, regardless of origin, were to be equals.This thesis investigates this nation-building project and its influence on the integration of Georgia's Armenian and Azerbaijani borderlands. I first examine the mode through which these peripheries were incorporated into post-Soviet Georgia. Since Armenians controlled "their own" domain to a greater extent than the Azerbaijanis, I infer that the former were absorbed along integralist and the latter along colonial lines. Moving to the time-period after the Rose Revolution, I next explore if Georgian officials and Georgian adolescents were tolerant towards Georgian-speaking minorities. With the help of elite interviews and a socio-linguistic experiment (n = 792), I reveal that officials and adolescents were open to integrated Armenians and Azerbaijanis alike. I then proceed to inspect the centre's nationalising agencies and their efforts to incentivise minorities to interact with Georgians, and to use the state language during these contacts. Last but not least, I turn to the reactions this nation-building project elicited in the borderlands. On the basis of interviews with local elites and a socio-linguistic experiment involving Armenian and Azerbaijani adolescents (n = 434; n = 483), I discovered sharp differences: Armenians reacted with defiance and Azerbaijanis with compliance.These findings augment our knowledge of ethno-linguistic stereotypes in the Caucasus. They also demonstrate that inclusive nation-building projects can inspire minorities to integrate – despite adverse circumstances – but hint at one condition conducive to this end. Armenians perceived the state language as a battering ram against "their own" domain, while Azerbaijanis saw it as a tool to escape their isolation. This within-country comparison suggests that similar nation-building projects can trigger different reactions in integralist and colonial borderlands.
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| 5. |
- Larsson, Johanna, 1986-
(författare)
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Trainee teacher identities in the discourses of physics teacher education : Going against the flow of university physics
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates what is involved in being recognized as a legitimate physics teacher-to-be in a Swedish physics teacher programme. Drawing on in-depth, qualitative interviews with 17 physics teacher educators and 17 trainee physics teachers, this thesis sees learning to become a physics teacher as a process of performing professional identities. It demonstrates aligning discourses of educators and trainees, and outlines a number of challenges that trainees have to negotiate when learning to become physics teachers.The first part of the project analyzes the discourses of teacher educators. Four discourse models are identified which demonstrate how the talk of physics lecturers portrays the default goal of learning physics as becoming a researcher. Choosing to become a teacher in this system, means diverting from the expected path of a physics student, and moving backwards towards school physics. In such a system, trainee physics teachers are described as less competent and ambitious than other physics students, and can be understood to be incomprehensibly “going against the flow” of university physics by aiming towards school physics.The second part of the project shows how physics courses are experienced by the trainee physics teachers as primarily meeting the needs of other student groups. The educators’ talk about trainee teachers as less competent and ambitious is mirrored by trainees who see no incentive to try hard for good results. The analysis shows a physics study culture that emphasises brilliance and nerdiness, resulting in a passive classroom culture and high stress. Deepened analysis of the identity negotiations of three female interviewees shows how trainee teachers are resourceful in navigating this study culture. Combining positions of feminine woman, trainee teacher, and physics student, these students create practices of relaxed and constructive physics learning that challenge the elitist physics discourse.The education of physics teachers is important for many reasons. There are projected shortages of trained teachers, and physics teachers have the power to affect how physics, a field that is lacking diversity, is perceived by young people. By exploring how becoming a physics teacher is entangled with discourses of competence, femininity, and the status of the physics discipline this thesis takes a novel approach to the education of physics teachers. The findings suggest that physics faculty in their role as teacher educators examine assumptions about physics teacher education and trainee physics teachers, and can be used to empower trainee physics teachers to challenge norms of brilliance and masculinity in physics.
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| 6. |
- 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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| 7. |
- Tängh Wrangel, Claes, 1980-
(författare)
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The Use of Hope : Biopolitics of Security During the Obama Presidency
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Through a compilation of four research articles, this PhD thesis investigates ‘hope’ as a biopolitical technology. It interrogates the use of hope by the United States security apparatus, on the one hand, to pre-empt processes of radicalisation and, on the other hand, to prepare the subject of security to cope with permanent insecurity. The dissertation analyses the security dis- course of the Obama Administrations 2009 – 2016, paying particular atten- tion to strategic narratives of hope across three principal domains of US secu- rity: diplomacy, development and military. The thesis thereby renders visible a set of ambiguous relations between hope and insecurity in US foreign poli- cy during the Obama period: between hate and hope in the domain of (public) diplomacy; between despair and hope in the domain of development; and between fear and hope in the military domain. To analyse the respective strategic narratives, the thesis employs a theoretical framework drawn from Giorgio Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, through which hope appears as a means of governing the future, a technology employed to regulate processes of subjectification. The dissertation’s theoretical ambition is to question a central assumption undergirding important critique of the post-9/11 biopoliti- cal condition: namely that practices of security are inherently at odds with hope, operating through discourses and practices of fear and suffering to reduce the capacity to hope within the global populace. By analysing the appropriation of hope by US security discourse, the thesis explores how prac- tices of security works through hope to achieve security. US security dis- course achieves this by means of constituting a particular form of hopeful life: an individualised and resilient form of neoliberal life who is called to embody an indistinction between fear, despair, hate and hope.
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| 8. |
- Wendschlag, Mikael, 1977-
(författare)
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Theoretical and empirical accounts of Swedish financial supervision in the twentieth century
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis is concerned with the history of financial supervision in Sweden during the twentieth century up to the financial crisis in the early 1990s. To this end a theoretical framework is developed which is based on institutional economics, law and economics, theories on bureaucracies, regulatory enforcement and policy analysis. Except for the attempt to propose how financial supervision and supervisors could be understood theoretically, the thesis address problems ranging from the organization of supervision in relation to regulation and the changes of the regulated market, the constraints and abilities put on supervisors in different institutional arrangements and regulatory regimes, and the competence of supervisors. The extensive use of empirical data aims to make the thesis a contribution also to financial history research in general, and the growing research on the histories of financial supervision in particular.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Krigh, Josefine
(författare)
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Språkstudier som utbildningsstrategi hos grundskoleelever och deras familjer
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This investigation has sought to understand and explain the investments made by compulsory school pupils and their families’ stances towards the study of modern foreign languages (English not included). Which pupils (with regard to gender, social and national background and grade point average) chose to invest in the study of modern foreign languages? What strategies pertaining to the study of modern foreign languages did families from different backgrounds develop and how can these differences be understood?The conceptual tools, capital and strategy, developed by Pierre Bourdieu were used. The analysis utilizes national register data as well as questionnaires and family interviews conducted in Uppsala and Southern Dalarna.Analysis of register data identifies language study as a socially differentiated practice, especially with regard to which pupils attained a final grade. Most pupils began studying a modern foreign language. Predominantly children from upper middle class families, particularly daughters, persisted and achieved the highest grades. Lower middle class and working class children had higher deselection rates and lower grades – especially sons. The gap between daughters and sons was most prevalent within the working class, and less so for the well-educated upper middle class. Resource-rich families resembled one another across the two regions, barring grade point average, which was higher among Uppsala pupils.The geometric data analysis generated a space of resource-rich families’ stances on modern foreign languages and language teaching. In Uppsala, well-educated families and families with plenty of transnational capital held positive views towards modern foreign languages and language teaching’s cultural and formalistic aspects, yet they held negative views towards grades and grading. The opposite was true for families with lesser amounts of educational capital.In Southern Dalarna, well-educated families valued modern foreign languages as useful whilst families with lesser educational capital emphasised English as the most important language. The more the families had invested in education, the more positive they were towards cultural and formalistic aspects of language teaching. Grades did not hold the same value for Southern Dalarna families.Language study is both a national and a transnational investment that reinforces other types of capital: cultural, educational and transnational.
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