| 1. |
- Bondesson, Sara, 1981-
(author)
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Vulnerability and Power : Social Justice Organizing in Rockaway, New York City, after Hurricane Sandy
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This is a study about disasters, vulnerability and power. With regards to social justice organizing a particular research problem guides the work, specifically that emancipatory projects are often initiated and steered by privileged actors who do not belong to the marginalized communities they wish to strengthen, yet the work is based on the belief that empowerment requires self-organizing from within. Through an ethnographic field study of social justice organizing in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in Rockaway, New York City, the thesis explores whether and how vulnerable groups were empowered within the Occupy Sandy network. It is a process study that traces outside activists attempts at empowering storm-affected residents over time, from the immediate relief phase to long-term organizing in the recovery phase. The activists aimed to put to practice three organizing ideals: inclusion, flexibility and horizontality, based on a belief that doing so would enhance empowerment. The analysis demonstrates that collaboration functioned better in the relief phase than in the long-term recovery phase. The same organizing ideals that seem to have created an empowering milieu for storm-affected residents in the relief phase became troublesome when relief turned to long-term recovery. The relief phase saw storm-affected people step up and take on leadership roles, whereas empowerment in the recovery phase was conditional on alignment with outside activists’ agendas. Internal tensions, conflicts and resistance from residents toward the outside organizers marked the recovery phase. It seems that length of collaborative projects is not the only factor for developing trust but so is complexity. The more complex the activities over which partners are to collaborate the less easy it is. Based on this we could further theorize that the more complex the work is the more challenging it is for privileged groups to give away control. The internal struggles of the organization partially explain the failures to influence an urban planning process that the organization attempted to impact, which connects the micro-processes with broader change processes toward transformation of vulnerability.
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| 2. |
- Bynander, Fredrik
(author)
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The Rise and Fall of the Submarine Threat : Threat Politics and Submarine Intrusions in Sweden 1980-2002
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation analyzes the submarine problem in Sweden as an object of security politicization. It investigates how politicians and military officers dealt with the submarine incidents of the 1980s and 1990s, and how their actions were portrayed in the media. A popular assumption in modern literature on media and politics is that the media arena helps define the political arena—which players are important, what issues are placed on the political agenda, and which options are available for competitive political elites in democratic systems of government. By quantitatively analyzing the media image of the submarine “threat”, and comparing those results with indicators of public opinion and policy change, the dissertation investigates the influence of the media image on security policy over time.The results of the quantitative analysis inform a number of qualitative case studies, highlighting the important events and developments of the submarine threat and the causal mechanisms by which media and public opinion may have influenced Swedish security policy. The dynamics by which the political and military levels interact in creating a public image of the submarine threat are a particular focus in the strategically selected cases over the period—including both events that can be seen as escalating threat perceptions and those that have de-escalated such public anxieties. In the end, it is found that several problems relating to organizational coherence, institutional legitimacy and political controversy led the uncontrolled fashion in which the submarine issue became a publicly perceived threat.
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| 3. |
- Danielsson, Anna, 1980-
(author)
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On the Power of Informal Economies and the Informal Economies of Power : Rethinking Informality, Resilience and Violence in Kosovo
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since the 1970s, the concept of “economic informality” has served as focal point for a comprehensive scholarly thinking and the development of policy initiatives enhanced by international organisations. Yet, informality displays a puzzling resilience. The problematique of this book concerns the lenses through which informality has been constituted, studied and acted upon as an empirical phenomenon. By developing a critical understanding of informality as object of study, the book uncovers the historical, scholarly and practitioner contexts in which contemporary conceptualisations of informality are constituted.The author argues that three dominant and conventional approaches to informality systematically fail to account for how the reasons behind people's participation in informal economic activities are constituted by an internal and hierarchically structured social order. To transcend the identified shortcomings of the established approaches, the book rethinks informality through a comprehensive power analysis and highlights the importance of hierarchy, covert violence and domination. A central assumption of this rethinking is that informality constitutes a social phenomenon that emerges and is expressed through social practices, which over time and across space have become institutionalised to the point that informality is considered commonsensical and unchangeable. By putting the reconceptualisation to use through the thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, the book performs an empirical analysis of the nexus between resilience, symbolic violence and informal economic practices in Kosovo from the late 1980s until 2011. Based on primary research material, the analysis offers a unique insight into informal dynamics and illuminates the workings of an intrinsic, circular, malleable and ambiguous system of domination that would otherwise remain hidden.By engaging the empirical, theoretical and meta-theoretical level at the same time, the book explores the twofold constitution of informality as a social phenomenon and brings to light a new understanding of the resilience of the informal. As such, the reconceptualisation forms a critical intervention into scholarly and practitioner discussions about informality. By revealing mechanisms of domination, the book offers an alternative and fruitful account of the socio-historical weave within which practices of informality in Kosovo crystallise.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Ericson, Marika, 1977-
(author)
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On the Virtual Borderline: Cyber Operations and their Impact on the Paradigms for Peace and War : Aspects of International and Swedish Domestic Law
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Contemporary disputes between states contain elements of psychological and information operations, intelligence operations and cyber operations as well as methods for physical use of force. Cyber operations may use, or contribute to, all of these different techniques and methods combined and can be focused on intelligence gathering, preparation of networks for future attacks, sabotage or on preventing access to information. States are also not alone as actors in cyberspace, non-state actors are continuously updating and reinforcing their abilities and capabilities and the dividing line between cyber operations that are a crime conducted by a non-state criminal and operations conducted by states have become increasingly blurred.International law, and Swedish domestic law, is built up around two foundational paradigms for peace and war. The paradigms are founded on the concepts of statehood, sovereignty and security. Situations, especially threats to states, are to be sorted into either the paradigm for peace or the paradigm for war and are through the division into paradigms also regulated by separate legal frameworks. There is in law no acknowledged state in between.This thesis explores the virtual borderlines of the paradigms for peace and war. It suggests that cyber operations is one development challenging the paradigms for peace and war. It further suggests that states are beginning to form their responses to cyber operations. States are defining cyberspace in terms of territory and sovereignty and they play on thresholds for breaches of sovereignty, interventions and use of force. They in essence structure and argue for a legal space in between the paradigms for peace and war.The thesis also takes the findings from research conducted on international law and views the findings from a Swedish domestic law perspective. Sweden adheres to a strict division of threats and situations into paradigms for peace and war. There is no state of emergency in Swedish constitutional law, the paradigm for peace is applied fully until a situation is defined as war or danger of war. The question for law is how to make this bipolar system function where threats cannot be sorted into either peace or war anymore.
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| 6. |
- Granberg, Magnus, 1970-
(author)
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Kognitivt stöd för lärande i arbetet : En teoretisk modell baserad på en fallstudie av ett svenskt militärt utlandsförband i Kosovo
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge on how formal education gives cognitive support to informal learning at work. The ambition is to combine different theoretical perspectives on learning. Formal learning, mostly within institutions for education, is usually seen from a cognitive or constructivist perspective, and informal learning from situational or socio-cultural perspectives. Combining these perspectives, this thesis is based on a case study of how a formal training program for Swedish military personnel, going on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, gives cognitive support to their informal, experiential learning during the mission.The case study has an ethnographic research design where 17 military leaders at different levels are interviewed, observed and “shadowed” during three field periods during training in Sweden and during work in Kosovo. The empirical material and the different theoretical perspectives on learning are used to construct a perspective-integrating conceptual model of how the formal training, through different learning resources, helps the leaders to develop a subjective understanding of their coming work. This understanding is then used by the leaders to mentally frame the specific experiences and actions they encounter at work. This mental framing is also prevalent in their reflections in and on their work, and their informal learning at work can be shown to be heavily influenced by the understanding the leaders developed during formal training. However, most of this understanding cannot be related to formal learning resources, but to learning resources the military leaders themselves bring to the training in the way of their earlier experiences, their military professional orientation, and their internal discussions in free time.The main conclusions are that 1) contrary to prevailing dogma, different perspectives on learning can be brought together, and 2) if formal education is going to give cognitive support to learning at work, it needs to address the question of how the conceptual structure of the training content can be integrated with the often private concepts the workers themselves have of their work.
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| 7. |
- Hermansson, Helena, 1980-
(author)
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Centralized Disaster Management Collaboration in Turkey
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Following unprecedented earthquakes in 1999, highly centralized Turkey initiated reforms that aimed to improve disaster management collaboration and to empower local authorities. In 2011, two earthquakes hit the country anew affecting the city of Van and town of Erciş in Turkey’s southeast.In attempts to reduce disaster risk, global disaster risk reduction frameworks and disaster scholars and practitioners advocate collaborative and decentralized disaster management strategies. This thesis investigates how such strategies are received in a centralized and hierarchical national political-administrative system that largely is the anti-thesis of the prescribed solutions. More specifically, this research investigates the barriers and prerequisites for disaster management collaboration between both public and civil society actors in Turkey (during preparedness, response, and recovery) as well as how Turkey’s political-administrative system affects disaster management collaboration and its outcomes. The challenges to decentralization of disaster management are also investigated.Based on forty-four interviews with actors ranging from national to village level and NGOs, the findings suggest that the political-administrative system can alter the relative importance, validity, and applicability of previously established enabling or constraining conditions for collaboration. This may in turn challenge previous theoretical assumptions regarding collaboration.By adopting a mode of collaboration that fit the wider political-administrative system, collaborative disaster management progress was achieved in Turkey’s national level activities. Although there were exceptions, collaboration spanning sectors and/or administrative levels were generally less forthcoming, partly due to the disjoint character of the political-administrative system. Political divergence between local and central actors made central-local collaboration difficult but these barriers were partly trumped by other prerequisites enabling collaboration like interdependence and pre-existing relations. The findings suggest that the specific attributes of disasters may both help and hinder disaster management collaboration. Such collaboration generally improved disaster response. The findings also indicate that the decentralization attempts may have been premature as the conditions for ensuring a functional decentralization of disaster management are presently lacking. Decentralization attempts are commonly suggested to increase local capacity and local participation but the findings of this dissertation suggest that in Turkey, these commodities may currently have better chances of being increased by refraining from decentralization.
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| 8. |
- Käihkö, Ilmari
(author)
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Bush Generals and Small Boy Battalions : Military Cohesion in Liberia and Beyond
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- All organizations involved in war are concerned with military cohesion. Yet previous studies have only investigated cohesion in a very narrow manner, focusing almost solely on Western state militaries or on micro-level explanations. This dissertation argues for the need to broaden this perspective. It focuses on three classic sources of cohesion – coercion, compensation and constructs (such as identity and ideology) – and investigates their relevance in the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003). More specifically, this dissertation consists of an inquiry of how the conflict's three main military organizations – Charles Taylor’s Government of Liberia (GoL), the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) – drew on these three sources to foster cohesion. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with former combatants, this dissertation contains five parts: an introduction, which focuses on issues of theory and method, and four essays that investigate the three sources of cohesion in the three organizations. Essay I focuses on the LURD rebels, and provides an insider account of their strategy. It shows that even decentralized movements like the LURD can execute strategy, and contends that the LURD fought its fiercest battles not against the government, but to keep itself together. Essay II focuses on coercion, and counters the prevailing view of African rebels’ extensive use of coercion to keep themselves together. Since extreme coercion in particular remained illegitimate, its use would have decreased, rather than increased, cohesion. Essay III investigates the government militias to whom warfighting was subcontracted. In a context characterized by a weak state and fragmented social organization, compensation may have remained the only available source of cohesion. Essay IV investigates identities as sources of cohesion. It argues that while identities are a powerful cohesive source, they must be both created and maintained to remain relevant. Taken together, this dissertation argues for a more comprehensive approach to the investigation of cohesion, and one that also takes into account mezzo- and macro-level factors.
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| 9. |
- Larsson, Oscar, 1978-
(author)
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The Governmentality of Meta-governance : Identifying Theoretical and Empirical Challenges of Network Governance in the Political Field of Security and Beyond
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Meta-governance recently emerged in the field of governance as a new approach which claims that its use enables modern states to overcome problems associated with network governance. This thesis shares the view that networks are an important feature of contemporary politics which must be taken seriously, but it also maintains that networks pose substantial analytical and political challenges. It proceeds to investigate the potential possibilities and problems associated with meta-governance on both theoretical and empirical levels.The theoretical discussion examines meta-governance in relation to governmentality, and it puts forward the claim that meta-governance may be understood as a specific type of neo-liberal governmentality. The meta-governance perspective regards networks as a complementary structure to traditional administration that can be utilized in the implementation and realization of public policy, but which also preserves the self-regulating and flexible character of networks. This generates a contradiction between the goals of public management and the character of networks that requires further investigation.The combination of the specific dynamics of the political field of security, the diminishing role of sovereign powers, the emergence of security networks, and the meta-governance stance adopted by the Swedish state constitutes a situation that should have been favorable for the successful employment of meta-governance. The empirical investigation of meta-governance is divided into two parts. The first part reviews the historical process involved and shows how the Swedish government and public authorities have adopted a meta-governance stance. The second analyzes the specific instruments and strategies that have been deployed in the governance of security communications and in the management of Sweden’s new security communications system which is an important aspect of security networks. The historical study together with the analysis of the meta-governance tools deployed reveals that the meta-governors neither reached the goals specified, nor fulfilled the overall purpose of successful security communications.I argue on the basis of the theoretical and empirical findings obtained in the present study that it is very difficult to successfully employ meta-governance in respect to security and crisis management, and that we have sound reasons to suspect that meta-governance will run into similar difficulties in other political fields as well. I conclude that meta-governance is a far more difficult practice than has been anticipated by existing theories and policy recommendations. Turning to meta-governance as a way to govern and control organizations may in fact lead to further fragmentation and distortion of public politics.
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| 10. |
- Ledberg, Sofia Knöchel, 1972-
(author)
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Governing the Military : Professional Autonomy in the Chinese People's Liberation Army
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The reform process that has been underway in China the past 30 years has affected most parts of Chinese society. In regard to core branches of the civilian state administration, public administration research provides evidence of far-reaching decentralization, marketization, and a relaxation of direct political control within many policy areas. Despite the fact that the military in any Marxist-Leninist state is an indispensable part of the state administration, it is rarely included in research on the Chinese state administrations. In this dissertation, it is argued that the military is intrinsically linked to the overall political stability of the Chinese state not only because it constitutes one of the most central branches of the Chinese cadre administration, but also given its close connection to the ruling communist party. Hence it deserves greater research focus.The overarching focus of this study is political control and governance vis-à-vis the Chinese military. Contrary to previous studies that have approached the issue of control by investigating military infringement on civilian policy making, the analysis here illustrates that the structures and the underlying logic of control are better captured by a study of the professional autonomy of the Chinese military officer corps. Professional autonomy is investigated within the military education system, given that education is a central undertaking for any profession.By suggesting a new approach to the study of the relationship between the political entities of the state and the military, an approach which makes use of insights from both the political science subfield of public administration and the sociology of professions, this dissertation makes important theoretical and analytical contributions to the field of civil-military relations. Yet the usefulness of the actor-centered approach put forward here, which focuses on the autonomy of the profession within the organization, reaches beyond the immediate study of the military and can be used in any analysis of power relations between the political entities of the state and its administrations. This dissertation also contributes to increase the understanding of Chinese military education, which is one of the military’s most important peace time undertakings.
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