| 1. |
- Brosché, Johan, 1978-
(författare)
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Masters of War : The Role of Elites in Sudan’s Communal Conflicts
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Why do communal conflicts turn violent in some regions but not in others? Communal conflicts pose a severe threat to human security and kill thousands of people each year, but our understanding of this phenomenon is still limited. In particular, we lack knowledge about why some of these conflicts become violent while others are resolved peacefully. This study addresses this knowledge gap and has a novel approach by addressing subnational variations that are unexplained by previous research. The theoretical framework combines insights from three different perspectives focusing on the role of the state, elite interactions, and conditions for cooperation over common resources. Empirically, the research question is investigated by combining within- and between-region analyses of three Sudanese regions: Darfur, Eastern Sudan, and Greater Upper Nile. Despite sharing several similar characteristics, communal conflicts have killed thousands in Darfur and Greater Upper Nile but only a few dozen in Eastern Sudan. The empirical analysis builds on extensive material collected during fieldwork.This study generates several conclusions about the importance of government conduct and how state behavior contributes to the prevalence of violent communal conflicts. It finds that when governments act in a biased manner – favoring certain communities over others – interactions between central and local elites as well as among local elites are disrupted. Unconstructive elite interactions, in turn, have negative effects on three mechanisms that are crucial for communal cooperation. First, when the regime is biased, communal affiliation, rather than the severity and context of a violation, determines the sanctions that are imposed on the perpetrators. Second, government bias leads to unclear boundaries, which contribute to violent communal conflicts by creating disarray and by shifting power balances between the communities. Third, regime partiality distances rules from local conditions and restricts the influence of local actors who have an understanding of local circumstances. The study also reveals why a regime acts with partiality in some areas but not in others. The answer to this question is found in the complex interplay between the threats and opportunities that a region presents to the regime. Taken together, the findings have important implications for the prevention and management of communal conflict.
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| 2. |
- 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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| 3. |
- Neuman, Nicklas, 1987-
(författare)
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Stories of masculinity, gender equality, and culinary progress : On foodwork, cooking, and men in Sweden
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to use foodwork and cooking in Sweden as a way to better understand theoretical questions about men and masculinities. Paper I discusses how an increased public interest in elaborate cooking and gastronomy in Sweden, a country with a cultural idealization of gender equality, could explain why men in Sweden assume responsibilities for domestic cooking without feeling emasculated. Papers II, III and IV draw on interviews with 31 men from 22 to 88 years of age and with different levels of interest in food. Paper II shows how domestic foodwork and cooking are associated with ideas of Swedish progress in terms of gender equality and culinary skills. Paper III demonstrates further that domestic cooking is not only a responsibility which men assume, but also a way of being sociable with friends, partners and children. Thus, both papers II and III challenge the idea that men only cook at home if they enjoy it. The data rather indicate that domestic foodwork responsibilities are a cultural expectation of men in Sweden, ingrained in desirable masculine practices. Paper IV explores men’s responses to media representations of food. The interviewed men responded to these representations with indifference, pragmatism, irony, and at times even hostility. In general, the responses are based on gender and age-differentiated taste distinctions and notions of masculine and culinary excess. Paper V uses a mix of texts (81 online texts and two magazines) and observations from the food fairs GastroNord (2014 and 2016), Mitt kök-mässan (2014) and the chef competition Bocuse d’Or Europe (2014) complemented with pictures and videos. I argue that a Swedish culinary community that promotes Swedish culinary excellence is constructed by drawing on preestablished national (self-)images. This culinary community is constructed as open and tolerant, with ethical concerns for the environment and for nonhuman animals. Its culinary icons are represented by chefs in whites and the leading restaurants. In sum, this dissertation provides empirical and theoretical contributions to both food studies and gender studies that critically scrutinize men and masculinities. Food-issues are permeated by gender, both in people’s everyday life and in the gastronomic elite.
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| 4. |
- Petitt, Andrea, 1981-
(författare)
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Women's cattle ownership in Botswana : Rebranding gender relations?
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cattle are often portrayed as a male affair in Botswana. However, venturing out into the Kalahari countryside to scratch the surface of this state of affairs, another picture emerges. There are in fact many women from different socioeconomic background who own, manage and work with cattle in different ways, and their farming is defined by both the connection to the EU beef market and interlinked local processes of power. Cattle are ever-present in Botswana and play a paramount role in the economy, in politics and in the rural landscape of the country, as well as in many people’s cultural identity, kinship relations and everyday routines.I study women’s involvement in cattle production in Ghanzi District to think about how peoples’ relations to certain livestock species produce, reproduce and challenge established patterns of material and social relations. More specifically I investigate how access and claims to livestock are defined by intersections of gender, ethnicity, race and class within broader contexts associated with the commercialisation of livestock production.The objective of this thesis is to explore how different women are able to benefit from their cattle ownership in terms of their social positions and material welfare in Botswana within the broader political, economic and sociocultural contexts associated with the commercial beef industry. Through ethnographic fieldwork and an intersectional analysis of gendered property relations to grazing land and cattle, I show how women do benefit from both subsistence products and monetary income from cattle sales. An increased need for cash together with the possibility to sell cattle stimulated by Botswana’s beef trade with the EU have motivated women to seek control over cattle. There are women who, encouraged by gender equality messages from the Ministry of Gender Affairs, make use of the government’s loans and grants designed to facilitate entrepreneurship to start up their own cattle operations and make claims to the cattle market. Many of these women, who have control over their cattle also benefit in terms of social status and a number of those women who engage in cattle production in ways seen as new and different speak of more equal gender relations.
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| 5. |
- 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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| 6. |
- Hall, Jonathan, 1979-
(författare)
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Migration and Perceptions of War : Simultaneous Surveys in Countries of Origin and Settlement
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation contributes to post-war public opinion research by examining the perceptions of migrants – the gastarbeiter, the refugee, the family reunited after war – and the local population in comparative perspective. Existing surveys of post-war populations are typically conducted in a single country affected by war. However, particularly following forced expulsion and campaigns of ethnic cleansing substantial portions of national communities affected by conflict no longer live within the boundaries of the state. Current research may therefore overlook important populations as well as contextual factors that shape post-war attitudes.I help to address this problem by examining three widely held assumptions in the literature: that migrants hold more conflictive attitudes than the local population after war; that assimilation in settlement countries leads migrants to hold more peaceful attitudes; and that traumatic experiences lead migrants to hold more conflictive attitudes. These claims are largely based on theoretical accounts, case studies that suffer from selection bias and quantitative results that have proven unstable. By contrast, I examine new micro-level data: two large-scale surveys conducted simultaneously in post-war Bosnia and Sweden as a settlement country. Sweden’s choice to grant permanent residency in toto to refugees from the Bosnian War in 1993 resulted in the vast majority remaining settled in Sweden. As a result, the population of ex-Yugoslavs in Sweden is arguably more representative than in other comparable settlement country contexts.To explain differences among ex-Yugoslavs in Sweden and between these migrants and the local population in Bosnia, I connect social-psychological processes that help meet individuals’ basic psychological needs. These include: belief formation in the context of war; acculturation strategies in settlement countries; the development of nostalgic memories; and coping with traumatic experiences. The findings shed light on largely misunderstood processes. Under certain conditions, migration may provide an exit from detrimental wartime and post-war settings that produce and sustain conflictive societal beliefs after war. At the same time, the migration context may provide a richer set of socioeconomic and psychological resources for coping, offsetting the need to rely on conflictive beliefs as a way of dealing with the conflict crisis.
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| 7. |
- Höijer, Karin
(författare)
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Contested Food : The Construction of Home and Consumer Studies as a Cultural Space
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Education about and for the home has been part of the Swedish education system for over one hundred years, and Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) has been compulsory for all pupils since the common nine-year school system was introduced in 1962. For all this time food has been a central theme, however we know very little of what food means in this context. The aim of this thesis was to seek to understand the construction of food in HCS. This thesis consists of four papers that explore food in HCS from the perspective of teachers and pupils, the role of the classroom and how food in HCS is part of a larger cultural context. Observations and focus group interviews were used to collect data. The material consists of field notes from 13 days in three HCS classrooms and transcripts of focus group interviews with 25 HCS-teachers and 20 pupils. The analytical methods used were based on social constructionist assumptions which were supplemented by theories on culture, space and spatiality. Results show that teachers constructed both pupils’ homes and society in general as deficient in relation to health. Their role, as public health commissioners, was to educate pupils about food on issues such as health and sustainability. Pupils relied on their personal experiences from home to make sense of food in HCS. To them, home was the authentic place for food where everyday life took place. Food in HCS on the other hand was de-authenticised and sometimes hard to make sense of. This meant that there was a limited shared understanding between pupils and teachers. A spatial analysis of the HCS classroom as a learning space for food showed that past ideologies and traditional power geometries were built into the physical layout and social relationships constructing the room. Food in HCS was found to reflect cultural values of the surrounding society at the same time as a specific HCS cuisine emerged. Food in HCS was thus constructed as contested in interaction between food, pupils, teachers and classroom as well as in relation to a wider context.
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| 8. |
- Ingelsson, Erik, 1975-
(författare)
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Insulin Resistance and Inflammation as Risk Factors for Congestive Heart Failure
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and the identification of modifiable risk factors is crucial in order to diminish suffering of this common disease. The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate novel metabolic risk factors for CHF, with a focus on insulin resistance and inflammation. The secondary aim was to examine the validity of the CHF diagnosis in the Swedish hospital discharge register.This thesis was based on the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men (ULSAM) cohort, a community-based prospective study started in 1970. The participants were examined at age 50 and 70 and the data was completed with annual updates on mortality and in-hospital morbidity using national registers. We showed that insulin resistance predicts CHF incidence independently of established risk factors in both middle-aged and elderly men. The previously described association between obesity and subsequent CHF may be mediated partly by insulin resistance. Moreover, it was established that inflammation, measured as erythrocyte sedimentation rate is a significant predictor of CHF, independent of established risk factors including an interim myocardial infarction. Furthermore, a low beta-carotene level, as well as an increased apolipoprotein B/A-I-ratio was found to predict CHF independently of established risk factors.We also showed that the validity of the CHF diagnosis in the Swedish hospital discharge register appears less precise than for other recently investigated cardiovascular diagnoses. However, when including only cases from selected clinics or cases with a primary diagnosis of CHF, the validity is comparable to the above diagnoses. In conclusion, insulin resistance and inflammation are strong independent risk factors for the development of CHF, and seem to be involved in the early process leading to CHF. If confirmed, our observations could have large clinical implications as they may offer new approaches in the prevention of CHF.
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| 9. |
- Johansson, Catrin
(författare)
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Visioner och verkligheter : Kommunikationen om företagets strategi
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The starting point for this study is the question of why organizational visions are often interpreted by employees as unintelligible and insignificant. The knowledge gap in this area makes the study of communication about vision and goals both urgent and interesting.Accordingly, the purpose is to advance knowledge on communication processes in organizations through description and analysis of communication about strategy, encompassing vision, strategic objectives and common values, in a company.A case study design was chosen and a longitudinal qualitative study was conducted in the company, from April 1998 to January 2000. A combination of methods were used, including participant observation, discourse analysis and interviews.Communication about the strategy followed a typical top-down model, starting on group level and ending on department level. In this process, Balanced Scorecard was used as a tool to communicate the strategy.It was concluded that visions formulated by top managers met different realities constructed by managers at lower levels in the company. Managers’ attitudes, knowledge and interpretations were important individual factors that influenced communication about the strategy. Employees did not have the same detailed knowledge of the strategy as the managers, nor were they given the same opportunities to obtain it.The discourse analysis reveals power structures, conflicts, individual attitudes and perspectives. The study thus results in a deep understanding of communication problems in the organization.
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| 10. |
- Lövestam, Elin, 1983-
(författare)
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Dietetic documentation : Content, language and the meaning of standardization in Swedish dietitians’ patient record notes
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis was to explore dietetic notes in Swedish patient records regarding content, language and the meaning of standardization.Firstly, an audit instrument for dietetic notes in patient records, Diet-NCP-Audit, was elaborated and tested. The instrument, a 14-item scoring questionnaire based on the four steps of the Nutrition Care Process (NCP), proved to have high content validity and moderate to high inter- and intra-rater reliability. The instrument was then used in an evaluation of the content, language and structure of 147 Swedish dietetic notes. Although the nutrition intervention and some information about the evaluation were well documented, the overall result showed a need for improvement in several aspects of documentation, such as nutrition prescriptions, goals and the connection between problem-etiology-symptom.After this, 30 of the audited dietetic notes were also included in a critical linguistic study exploring how the patients and dietitians were referred to in the notes. The dietetic notes contained several linguistic devices that impersonalized and passivized both the patient and the dietitian. Thus, the grammar of the dietetic notes did not enhance or reflect the patient-centered care and the active patient-caregiver relationship that is emphasized in most health care guidelines today.Finally, a focus group study was performed. Swedish dietitians’ experiences of the standardized Nutrition Care Process (NCP) and its connected terminology (NCPT) were explored and analyzed from the perspective of Habermas’ system and lifeworld concepts. While recognizing many advantages with the NCP and NCPT, dietitians also expressed difficulties in combining the structured and standardized process and terminology with a flexible, patient-centered approach in nutrition care.In summary, I argue that strategies for the improvement of dietetic documentation are needed. I also suggest that the NCP and NCPT play an essential role in dietetic professionalization. At the same time, however, this standardization may entail the risk of a reductionist view and difficulties regarding how to balance the different ideals of health care. Thus, there is a need for discussions concerning how to use and develop the NCP and dietetic language in a way that ensures the best possible care for the patient.
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