| 1. |
- Alm, Erika, 1975-
(författare)
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”Ett emballage för inälvor och emotioner” : föreställningar om kroppen i statliga utredningar från 1960- och 1970-talen
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation focuses on the polyphonic body politics of modern society, as activated in three Swedish Government Official Reports from the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis takes as its point of departure the assumptions about embodiment and identity uncovered in these reports. I argue that the reports – which concern the establishment of juridical sex, the right to abortion, and sterilization – all deal with the question of the individual’s right to decide on issues relating to his or her own body. The commissioners themselves claim that their proposals are formulated in the name of individual rights; and that they are progressive and modern. Although the importance to uphold the individual’s right to autonomy is thus emphasized, there are other values that need to be accounted for. The individual’s sovereignty in these matters is per definition a question open for discussion, and it actualizes a conflict of interest between the individual on one hand and the state or the public interest on the other, or between the individual and professional experts. Who is to decide in matters of the body? What assumptions are made in relation to sex, gender and desire? In addition to the historical approach – the attempt to reconstruct the discourses on sex, gender, and desire, individual autonomy and public interest, generated in the mentioned reports – I initiate a theoretical line of inquiry that draws from the conviction that we need to seek new ways to approach the body; ways that challenge dichotomies that are taken for granted, such as the distinction between body and mind, inner and outer, biological and social, nature and nurture etc. Focusing on Judith Butler’s reformulation of Aristotle’s concepts form and matter into the dynamic concept of materialization, I argue that the concept form has analytic qualities that make it especially useful when analyzing discourses of the body.
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| 2. |
- Dzin, Amela, 1979-
(författare)
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Kunskapssyner och kunskapens vyer : Om kunskapssamhällets effektiviseringar och universitetens själ, med exempel från Karlstads universitet
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with the multi-faceted phenomenon of knowledge conceptions. The aim is to describe the meaning of “academic knowledge” in today’s knowledge society from the perspective of “education” (a term used here in relation to the ‘liberal arts’ tradition as used in the English language or in German ‘bildung’) and “commodisation”. These two perspectives create a field of tensions in higher education. The study analyses the flow of knowledge in the process of commodisation - partly through a network of relations between societally-relevant actors, partly through career geography. The actors studied are: the state, the university, the university departments and the graduates/students. The research ‘design is a descriptive case study of Karlstad University during the years 1997-2007. The theoretical approach combines two perspectives; commodisation of academic knowledge and career geography. Commodisation is studied by the developments in higher education seen from a wider national and international perspective. Career geography entails both a geographical mobility and a social mobility of the students. The results show that there are different conceptions about academic knowledge from the different actors. Two different perspectives of commodisation of academic knowledge have been found, one from the “top down” perspective and one from the “bottom up” perspective. The top down perspective means that commodisation is driven mostly by the state and then is followed by the university and the university departments. In the bottom up perspective, commodisation is driven by the students. Furthermore, the results from the study of the Swedish state reveal an increasingly clear commodisation of academic knowledge with emphasis on economic growth, regional development and international competition. However, Karlstad University’s and the university departments’ view of knowledge differs somewhat from that of the state’s, and aims instead to combine ‘commodisation of knowledge’ with ‘knowledge as education’ in its efforts to be a ‘learning university’. It is also shown that students appreciate this combined view. On a general level, the main argument from this dissertation is that it is necessary to place more attention on how to obtain a balance between the commodisation of academic knowledge and knowledge as “education” in today’s higher education system.
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| 3. |
- Falk, Hans, 1949-
(författare)
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"Socialistprästen" : H.F. Spak (1876-1926)
- 1998
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present thesis is based on the life and works of H.F. Spak, known as ”the socialist priest”. He started out as a conservative priest, became a Social Democrat and was forced to resign from the church in 1911. He became a leftwing agitator and later a Communist and atheist.In his earlier days H.F. Spak tried to combine Christianity with Socialism, claiming that the two shared the same faith.The quest for justice and for equality seemed for him all the same, as well as the final goal: to establish the kingdom of God on earth. After his resignation from the church, he became increasingly influenced by non-Christian thinkers like Karl Marx naturally, but also Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche and others. These new influences he tried to combine with the message av Jesus Christ, who gradually lost lois role as a saviour of souls and became the ideal man, another in the line of the great heroes in human history, alongside men lika Buddha, Babeuf and Lenin.In the beginning of the 1920 he abandoned the last remnants of Christianity. Gods was replaced by History, which, in his deterministic view, as God ruled everything: society as well as and the minds of every human being. At last he even lost his faith in History and the future communist society. He left the Communist Party of Sweden and six month after that he died.The life and works of H.F. Spak are here mainly seen as an illustrative example of the efforts to combine Christianity and Socialism and even more of the similarities between the two doctrines: Socialism as a secular religion.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Friberg, Ulf, 1962-
(författare)
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Den kapitalistiska skådespelaren : Aktör eller leverantör?
- 2014
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation revolves around an actor’s craft as a changing craft. Theatre workers– like many other professions in Sweden – have experienced major changes in thelabour market during a relatively short period of time. In what way has capitalisticideology changed society over the last 25 years, and in what way has this affected theactor’s craft, and what impact has been experienced? What strategies can the field ofthe theatre, in general, and the actors, in particular, use to create space for the developmentof the craft of acting in a new era?The different parts of the dissertation attack the questions mentioned above from anumber of different angles. References from other disciplines such as philosophy, thehistory of ideas and sociology, which are placed in dialogue with the theatre in thisdissertation project, are all-important.In the first part of the dissertation, the author positions the research and himselfand also presents the methods used and the theories from other disciplines throughwhich he discusses the issues to be addressed.The next section discusses leadership and organisation through the 1990’s until today.The economic crises that affected Sweden during this time not only producedfairly extensive changes for publicly funded theatres but also brought about a changingbalance of power in theatres.Theatrical craft is discussed in the next section, where the main questions addressedare: In what way do changes in power relations affect the actor’s craft? What is theactor’s craft and who is really portraying the role? Actors in fact need what the authorwould like to call “informal power” in relation to their craft; however, this informalspace, the author argues, has been cut back.The fourth act in this dissertation consists of the text of a play, which adopts a freerand more associative approach to the issues discussed, and, as part of the discussion,is staged in a publicly funded theatre in connection with the actual public defence ofthe dissertation.The Epilogue carries and drives issues towards a changing future – if this futureexists.
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| 6. |
- Karlsohn, Thomas, 1967-
(författare)
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Passage mellan medier : Vilém Flusser, datorn och skriften
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), a philosopher of the media who was best known in the German-speaking world during the 1980s. Hitherto, penetrating studies that show Flusser’s dependence on the idea-historical contexts in which his thought took shape have been lacking. By approaching Flusser’s media-philosophical essays from the 80s via these contexts, we can gain a deeper understanding of his thought. The thesis focuses on the significance of the Jewish community in Prague between the wars, where Flusser spent his youth. Space is also devoted to his dependence on cybernetic theory and on various theories of writing.This contextualizing approach is complemented, however, by an in depth reading of two of Flusser’s most well known texts, Ins Universum der technischen Bilder and Die Schrift. Hat Schreiben Zukunkft? Through a detailed analysis of these texts, I show not only that Flusser is influenced by different currents of ideas, but also how these various currents interact in his texts. The enquiry tackles the question of how the relationship between man and technology is depicted in the texts. I indicate how, in accordance with his ideas on what the essay as a form should mean, Flusser works with a method that involves a constant shifting of perspective. I also clarify how, on certain points, Flusser’s texts show a clear ambivalence with regard the relationship between man and technology. This becomes particularly clear when the existential philosophical perspective is juxtaposed to other perspectives, such those of cybernetics and writing theory.Through the study of a thinker like Vilém Flusser, it becomes possible to gain deeper insights into how information technology influences the shaping of ideas. The thesis concludes with Flusser being positioned in the debate on Postmodernism that was going on at the time he published his most influential essays. In this connection, I show that Flusser’s thought in many respects can be said to be in line with that of the postmodernists. In other important respects, however, he stands out as an distinctive thinker.
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| 7. |
- 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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| 8. |
- Zetterfalk, Per, 1968-
(författare)
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Inter esse : Det skapande subjektet, Norén och Reality
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- At the centre of this dissertation is the artistic formation and, as an extension, the scientific formation. The purpose of the work is to reflect on the way from ambition to creation, to capture what about this process is unique. I have chosen two objects for my research. First, the Swedish playwright Lars Norén's (1944-) direction of a new work for the theatre, his own play Kyla (Chill). Second, Swedish Television (SVT) as they produce their largest-ever stake in the field of entertainment, the Reality-TV series Riket (The Kingdom).Concerning the creative process, I partly focus on beginning and end, and partly on the transformation from chaos to order. In this way I am able to focus on the way something unexpected occurs. The question of what constitutes creativity is often raised, but I set out to frame it in my own way: not only with the help of two processes, but also within myself. What is the difference between being a subject, doing something oneself, and observing? In this work I assume both positions. I am a registering and documenting researcher as well as a filmmaker.The work is structured by a principle of three: a documentation of the creative processes, a documentary film on Norén, Kall (Norén's drama), and a dissertation which unites everything into a synthesis.First, my work acts as a purveyor of insights into and understanding of two major and very different creative processes. Second, it is about two extremely established contemporary phenomena: Norén and the SVT together constitute somewhat of a counterpoint, which make it possible to compare a creative process within the art of theatre to one within TV/entertainment. Third, my work creates a field of tension between the creative process and the analysis via my own production: Norén's drama is both a tool of interpretation in the study of Norén and an intensifying of the overall research result. Fourth, my dissertation aims to bring together aspects, categories and literature in a new way.
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