| 1. |
- Hallengren, Anders, 1950-
(författare)
-
The code of Concord : Emerson's search for universal laws
- 1994. - 1
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this work is to detect a pattern: the concordance of Ethics and Aesthetics, Poetics and Politics in the most influential American thinker of the nineteenth century. It is an attempt to trace a basic concept of the Emersonian transcendentalist doctrine, its development, its philosophical meaning and practical implications. Emerson’s thought is analyzed genetically in search of the generating paradigm, or the set of axioms from which his aesthetic ideas as well as his political reasoning are derived. Such a basic structure, or point of convergence, is sought in the emergence of Emerson’s idea of universal laws that repeat themselves on all levels of reality.A general introduction is given in Part One, where the crisis in Emerson’s life is seen as representing and foreshadowing the deeper existential crisis of modern man.In Part 2 we follow the increasingly skeptical theologian’s turn to science, where he tries to secure a safe secular foundation for ethical good and right and to solve the problem of evil.Part 3 shows how Emerson’s conception of the laws of nature and ethics is applied in his political philosophy.In Part 4, Emerson’s ideas of the arts are seen as corresponding to his views of nature, morality, and individuality.Finally, in Part 5, the ancient and classical nature of Concord philosophy is brought into focus.The book concludes with a short summary.
|
|
| 2. |
- von der Heiden, Gregor, 1974-
(författare)
-
Gespräche in einer Krise : Analyse von Telefonaten mit einem RAF-Mitglied während der Okkupation der westdeutschen Botschaft in Stockholm 1975
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When crises develop, people are confronted with difficulties beyond those experienced in normal everyday activities. Due to the perceived threats inherent to such situations, familiar behaviors may prove ineffective, and such attempts can pose dangerous and unpredictable risks. Crises are extreme situations, occurring at the very edges of human experience. Oral communication in such situations cannot be casual; the seriousness of the situation demands exceptional communicative performance on the part of the participants. Therefore, certainties about everyday communication conventions are called into question. The following work examines conversations during which the participants were involved in an extreme situation. In this particular crisis, a politically motivated kidnapping, the personal involvement of the interlocutors is substantial. A clear and present fear of the situation escalating and the possibility of a failure to anticipate the resulting reactions from the other party(ies) characterize the communicative acts of those involved. Recorded telephone calls during the occupation of the West German Embassy in Stockholm by members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) on April 24, 1975 comprise the basis for this analysis. One of the occupiers speaks with various interlocutors located in an adjacent embassy building. These interlocutors are relatives of the hostages, the Swedish Minister of Justice, and a German official charged with leading the negotiations. In this study, the communicative processes of the crisis are reconstructed. In order to show how the interlocutors attempt to reach their goals in this tense situation with the resources available to them, as well as what they in fact achieve, ethnographic methods of analysis have been employed. This study shows how, despite strong conflicting interests and motives, a shared reality is built through the actions of the interlocutors. The interaction between two key figures in the early stages of the crisis can even be characterized as a form of coalition building. An explanation as to why this collaboration is not retained in the subsequent course of the events, however, leading to an escalation of the situation, is also presented. Furthermore, the following work sets forth qualities needed to interactively build a coalition in a precarious crisis situation, which has arisen between parties characterized by diametrically opposed aims.
|
|
| 3. |
- Falk, Hjalmar, 1978
(författare)
-
Det politisk-teologiska komplexet. Fyra kapitel om Carl Schmitts sekularitet
- 2014
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 1922, the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) wrote that “all significant concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts”. He qualified this statement by describing the connection between theology and state theory as being both historical – signifying a process of transition and transmission – and structural-systematic – signifying a structural likeness. How are we to understand Schmitt’s particular version of the secularization thesis, and what is the meaning of the concept of “political theology” in his work? This dissertation answers that question through a critical-hermeneutical contextualization of Schmitt’s work. Specifically, what is investigated is the way Schmitt himself relates his project to contemporary theology and strands of social theory he designates as inherently politico-theological. A major premise of this study is that earlier studies of Schmitt have treated his secularization thesis within a pre-understanding formed by ideological secularism. They have tended to regard Schmitt’s thought as properly belonging to either a modern political sphere, or a religious sphere, the latter most often characterized as antimodern. This way of reading measures Schmitt against standards formed out of modern liberal preconditions that he intended to critique. This dissertation argues, from a postsecularist view, that Schmitt’s politico-theological project is better read in terms of a both-and structure. To properly grasp Schmitt’s way of thinking, we need to pay greater heed to his own way of constructing the categories he employs throughout his writings on politico-theological themes. The dissertation is divided into four chapters, mapping Schmitt’s thought on political theology in a combination of themes and chronology. It follows Schmitt’s writings from the late Wilhelmine period, through the Weimar Republic, Hitler’s totalitarian regime and the postwar era, basically covering Schmitt’s work from 1912 to 1978. One important finding in this study of Schmitt’s thought is that he pursues his investigation of secularity in two registers. First, he discusses the impacts of secularization especially within the field of jurisprudence and law. Second, he discusses the impacts of secularization generally in Western culture. I have called this the special and the general theory of secularization in Schmitt’s work. Another finding is that Schmitt locates his theory of modern law and jurisprudence in a position “in-between” the holy and the profane, a Zwischenlage between theology and technology. The traditional European theory of state was created in an attempt to escape the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but this in turn opened up for a process of profanation. With the decline of theological authority, European thought turned more and more to technology. Eventually, Schmitt claimed, technological rationality is closing down the relationship between jurisprudence and theology. Schmitt’s secularity, therefore, is to be viewed as a declining modern position between theology and technology. It names a science and a way of thinking that has been “secularized, though not yet profaned” in Schmitt’s words. In this way, Schmitt’s secularity challenges established preconceptions of “the secular”, presenting it as a complex of interacting tendencies, combining features of historical continuity as well as breaks.
|
|
| 4. |
- Duus-Otterström, Göran, 1978
(författare)
-
Punishment and Personal Responsibility
- 2007
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What justifies punishment? What are the features of a justified penal regime? Answers to these questions often centre on punishment’s capacity to change unwanted behaviour, either by deterring would-be rule breakers or addressing their criminal motivations through various forms of rehabilitation. This book instead defends (a version of) the retributive theory of punishment, according to which punishment should aim to give rule breakers what they deserve. Why should desert play such a role in penal justice? The book dismisses the controversial notion of intrinsic-good retributivism, and instead proceeds to identify two merits of a penal regime that aspires to give rule breakers what they deserve. On the one hand, such a regime is in better alignment of central principles of justice, such as principles against punishing the innocent and taking pre-emptive action against potentially dangerous individuals. On the other hand, retributive punishment conveys attractive symbolic messages, which serve to validate rule breakers as personally responsible agents whose choices warrant respect. Having defended the retributive theory on normative grounds, the book then discusses a formidable factual criticism that hits all desert-sensitive theories: starting by questioning the alleged difference between scientific explanations and excuses, the book challenges the factual plausibility of the notion of personal responsibility and entertains the possibility of hard determinism being true. While hard determinism is a stronger position than one may think, a pragmatic argument can be made against it: given that libertarian free will is “worth wanting”, and given the epistemic uncertainty surrounding it, it is defensible to bet that determinism is false and that people indeed can be personally responsible for their actions. Punishment and Personal Responsibility may be understood as a defence of “prescientific” morality in the age of science.
|
|
| 5. |
- Petersson Hjelm, Ann-Christine
(författare)
-
Fängelset som välfärdsbygge : Tre studier om behandlingstanken i svensk fångvård
- 2002
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis discusses "social engineering", in the fields of prison treatment, during the development of the Swedish Welfare State, from 1930 to 1950. The penal political ambitions were laid down under a Social Democratic government and realized in the party’s program of 1944. It is often stressed that the prison reform of 1945 marks the transition to a modern prison system. In a broader perspective of society the idea was to integrate prisoners into the Swedish welfare system. The main facet of the Act 1945 of Correctional Treatment in Prison is in the individual treatment of prisoners, based on their work in open institutions. After World War II, the number of persons incarcerated increased and this became the main symbol of the political and administrative failure of the reform.The prison reform of 1945 marked an ideological change in the individual preventive treatment model of prisoners in Sweden. However, the establishment of a modern welfare prison was hard to accomplish and a crucial divergence emerged between what the legislation intended and what actually occurred in the prison system. This research shows the absence of an individual preventive strategy for the offenders and in that sense implementation of treatment was not successful. In this study the political and legal matters primarily originate from the archives of the Committee of Penal Law (sw. Strafflagberedningen), complemented by an empirical study, including 328 prison files from the National prison register, during the years 1938, 1943 and 1947.This thesis shows some of the more relevant changes in prison care in relation to the prisons as a reflection of society as a whole. In some portions the study discounts the innovations of the prison reform, especially based on the fact that the Act of Correctional Treatment in Prison was a conglomerate of enacted laws and regulations. At the same time the study shows a belief in the dubious philosophy that racial biological explanations and a deterministic approach to prisoners created. In reality, the prison registers were used on prisoners as a label, which led to a diagnosis put in front of treatment.
|
|
| 6. |
- Mortensen, Therese Boje
(författare)
-
NGOs as child rights implementers in India : How NGO workers negotiate human rights responsibility in 'partnership' with a neoliberal and restrictive state
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) increasingly enter into “partnerships” with states to implement human rights, a phenomenon that has been studied both as a necessary inclusion of civil society in human rights practice, and as a slippery slope towards a neoliberal state retreat. What remains to be studied is how this partnership practice shapes the concepts of human rights and their duty bearers. What happens when the “covenant version” of rights – where the state is the duty bearer – meets this partnership practice? Through an ethnographic conceptual analysis inspired by Sally Merry’s “vernacularisation” theory and Sumi Madhok’s theory of “vernacular rights cultures,” this study analyses NGO-state partnerships in the paradoxically both rights-based and neoliberal, but also autocratising, Indian state. My case study is CHILDLINE, India’s national child helpline that is financed by the central government, managed by a foundation and implemented by small NGOs. I show how, in this context, a specific articulation of rights and duties was prevalent, namely one that emphasised “everyone’s” duty – society’s, the state’s, parents’, businesses’, NGOs’, communities’, “stakeholders’” – for realising children’s rights. It was an articulation that contained elements from both rights-based thinking, from neoliberal thinking, and from sevā, or “service”-based thinking. It was in curious contrast to what I call the hegemonic version of human rights duties, where children have a right by their state to be protected. I also found that in practice NGOs took upon themselves the role to fill “gaps” in the state’s lacking rights regime which, in their view, only existed “on paper.” I prompt us to think about these “gaps” between formal and everyday conceptualisations, and between law and practice, as not simply unfortunate or a parenthesis before we reach an ideal human rights state, but rather as an empirical reality of what rights are. Human rights are never fully implemented. Rather, implementation is a constant exercise between pressure on the state, action from the state, and filling gaps in the state’s implementation, and NGOs play a crucial role in rights implementation, a role they negotiate with a state they sometimes meet as an ally, sometimes as an antagonist, and sometimes as a reluctant bureaucracy. In other words, I show what happens when international human rights obligations that are based on on a vision of robust and unified statehood are imposed on fragmented, neoliberal and restrictive states where NGOs are key “partners”. I argue that the conceptual production and practice of human rights should not only be taken seriously when it comes from “hegemonic” or “vernacular” spaces, but also from these “semi-governmental” spaces in which rights and duties are practiced.
|
|
| 7. |
- Dahlberg, Leif, 1962-
(författare)
-
Spacing Law and Politics : The constitution and representation of judicial places and juridical spaces in law, literature and political philosophy in works from Greek antiquity to the present
- 2014
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation studies judicial places and juridical spaces, constituted and represented in a variety of media as well as material objects and physical buildings, exploring the inherent spatiality of law, both theoretically and as social practice. The judicial places and juridical spaces analysed in the dissertation have diverse forms and functions and are analysed from different perspectives, allowing for a historical and genealogical understanding of the spacing of law and politics. The principal question that the dissertation investigates concerns the relation between law as historical event and law as socio-political institution.The first chapter presents the research questions and introduces key concepts. The body of the dissertation consists of seven chapters (chapters 2-8), beginning with a chapter (chapter 2) containing an ethnographic study of legal courtroom practice in Stockholm, Sweden. The chapter focuses on the role of emotion and affect, an important but unacknowledged dimension of legal proceedings. The chapter shows not only that emotion and affect are key factors in the juridical process, but also that the ruling by the court itself has the form of a counter-mood.The third chapter takes us backward in time, to Archaic Greece and to the charged dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad. The chapter focuses on the spatial relation between positive law and equity, and also their relation to political power, exploring conceptual figurations based on human anatomy and the social body (with or without organs). The fourth chapter performs a rhetorical reading of Roman law, focusing on the paratexts surrounding the Corpus iuris civilis (533 CE). It is shown that the Roman jurists – contrary to received opinion – engaged in both critical and theoretical reflection. The chapter also highlights the rhetorical figures used by Justinian both to legitimise the Digest and to defend it against future corruption.The fifth chapter brings us to Medieval and Renaissance Italy, and investigates a radical change in the social and political imaginary, illustrated by two case studies. Firstly Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes in Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (1340), depicting the classical conception of good government – as the art of ruling in justice and according to reason – and also making a defence for republican ideology. The painting also depicts the political ideal of social cohesion and political friendship. Secondly the chapter conducts a reading of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (1517), effecting a critique both of the idea that politics should be informed by justice and that social cohesion is necessary for the body politic. Based on his reading of Livy (Titus Livius), Machiavelli argues that what made Rome into a strong and long- lasting republic was the conflict between the patricians and the plebs.The sixth chapter remains nominally in Italy, but physically moves to Elizabethan London. The chapter performs a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596/1598), analysing the construction of spaces both in the play itself – the spaces of Venice – and the non-diegetic spaces of performance and!screening, and how these spaces constitute paradigmatic chains. The chapter also focuses on the conversion as a figure of both judicial and juridical space.The seventh chapter has a different approach from previous chapters. Instead of focusing on one work (or on occasion two) it follows the development of cartography in Early Modern and Modern Europe – taking as object maps of Strasbourg – and studies both what they can tell us about the legal development from the sixteenth century to the twentieth and how the art of map making has affected the conception of space, in particular juridical and political space. The most striking juridical development is the physical separation of places for adjudication and political power and the emergence of national jurisdictions. The latter development is connected with the shift from the personality principle to the territoriality principle.The eighth chapter brings us back to contemporary Stockholm. It studies the introduction of digital media in the courtroom, in particular the use of video-recorded testimony in the Swedish court of appeal. In the ninth and last chapter I reflect on the different ways that spacing law and politics has presented itself in the different chapters. I argue first that it is in fact the spacing of law and politics the serves as the ground for judicial and juridical spaces, and second that the places and spaces analysed in the dissertation could be viewed as meeting places for law and space, a “becoming juridical” of space.
|
|
| 8. |
- Lacbawan, Macario
(författare)
-
The Burden of Responsibility : Predicaments of Environmental Life in the Caraballo Mountains, Northern Philippines
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Indigenous people are not obviously, or naturally, stewards of the environment. But when the idea that they are such custodians gains legal traction, and when indigenous land-use practices are codified to reflect environmental principles, they become a burden of responsibility that has significant consequences for the lives and the livelihoods of indigenous communities.This thesis is about Ikalahan people of the Caraballo Mountains in Northern Philippines and the vicissitudes of their obligation to the environment. Based on twelve months’ ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when the legal recognition of Ikalahan people as an indigenous group demands that they re-fashion their ancestral land from a place where they practice swidden agriculture into a space where they are supposed to ensure environmental conservation. It explores how the Philippine state utilizes scientific knowledge such as cartography and forestry to facilitate the expulsion and estrangement of Ikalahan people from their land even as it relies on those people to maintain their ancestral land as an exclusive ecological sanctuary.How do Ikalahan communities enact this environmental responsibility, and how do they contest it? The different chapters explore how villagers deploy the cultural power of shame to impose ecological obligations, how they also create tactics to evade and subvert such obligations, and how they use the rhetoric that the land should not be monetized to, precisely, monetize it. The chapters also discuss how traditional moral principles provide a means for Ikalahan people to both understand and facilitate the economic inequalities that have emerged since their land was transformed into an ecological zone. By addressing how Ikalahan communities negotiate the consequences of their legal recognition as indigenous people, the thesis contributes to the expanding literature that shows how indigeneity is not a neutral label, but is, rather, a potentially burdensome positionality whose attachment to the environment is anything but straightforward.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
|
|
