1.
Pauletto, Franco, 1968-
(författare)
L’ordine sociale a tavola : L’interazione tra genitori e figli in famiglie italiane e svedesi
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation examines mealtime conversations between parents and children in eight Swedish and eight Italian middle class, dual-earner households, exploring the ways in which children are engaged in the cooperative construction of social order. The study is part of an international project (cf. Aronsson & Pontecorvo, 2002), coordinated with prior work in the US (cf. Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2013).Study I explores how children’s accounts work during family dinner conversations. So called proto-accounts (laments, multiple repeats, want-statements) and varied verbal accounts are analyzed in relation to age class or prior language socialization experiences.Study II focuses on the use of endearment terms in directive sequences between parents and children. The findings show an asymmetrical distribution of endearment terms, in that only parents make use of them when interactional problems – children’s non-compliance with parental requests in particular – arise. Study III examines the ways in which Italian parents deploy the discourse marker dai (‘come on’) in directive sequences. This is a flexible linguistic resource that is employed by parents as a cajoling token when children fail to comply with parental requests, hindering the advancement of the in-progress activity.This thesis describes family mealtimes as parent-directed activities where sociality, morality and local understandings of the world (Ochs & Shohet, 2006) are collaboratively re-created and enacted. This confirms the crucial role of everyday family meals as rich cultural sites (Ochs & Shohet, 2006) for reasserting moral attitudes of the family: participants learn moment by moment how to be competent actors that are able to choose between alternative courses of action and that can therefore be held accountable for their actions (Bergmann, 1998: 284). From this point of view, a dinner is paradigmatic of the deep moral sense that permeates the making of a family.
2.
Wroldsen, Kim Jarle, 1990-
(författare)
Hand-in-Hand in the Peach Flower Land : Analysis of Huí Cadre Agency in the Literature Propaganda Magazine Kāidū River in the North-West Borderland of China
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis studies how mínzú (ethnic) agency is effectuated through propaganda literature among Muslim minority cadres in the Yānqí Huí Autonomous County of the Xīnjiāng Uyghur Autonomous Region of North-West China in the 2010s. The aim is to understand to what extent and in what ways mínzú identification can have a socio-politically significant impact on the activities of mínzú cadres in a restrictive environment and in a medium where mínzú agency is controversial and difficult to implement. The thesis is motivated on the one hand by studies that presume the “monolithic” nature of cadres that speak the language of the Party-State, and on the other hand by studies that too readily presume that the invocation of Party-State orthodoxy is mere lip-service paid to authorities.The questions are approached by studying the implications that the cadre writers’ literary activities have on Huí mínzú identity in the context of the discourses that they invoke. In the process, national concerns are contrasted to mínzú concerns in order to evaluate and ascertain the intentional nature behind the invocation of mínzú concerns.The implications of the writers’ literary activities are identified by studying the role that they play in the discursive context of the literary Kāidū River magazine. The study finds that the discursive context can best be described as hybrid in nature, involving the three “sub” discourses of Neo-Confucian cosmology, Republican race theory, and Maoist thought transformation. The first revolves around a notion of cosmic truth, the second around the significance of mínzú or nations, and the third around the threats of and safeguards against ideological pollution. By employing this hybrid discourse of truth, the writers legitimized their texts as state orthodoxy.Having identified the implications relevant for the formulation of Huí identity, the thesis describes the ways in which the Muslim minority cadres attempted to address mínzú concerns. Although national concerns permeated the texts of the Kāidū River, the writers demonstrated awareness of and the ability to work around the restrictions of Party-State discourse during the early 2010s—at least to some extent. Through selective interpretation, they legitimized off-center views while remaining within the discourse of "truth.”The thesis demonstrates how the intention of mínzú authors can be identified by studying the implications of their texts in the discursive context within which they are embedded, even when these implications are multivalent. Significantly, the thesis is able to do so by studying how relevant implications consistently are invoked and examining the degree of tolerance for contradictory meaning.
3.
Lindström, Eva, 1965-
(författare)
Topics in the grammar of Kuot, a non-Austronesian language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
2002
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis describes certain areas in the grammar of the little-known Kuot language, spoken by some 1,500 people in New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea. Kuot is an isolate, and is the only non-Austronesian (Papuan) language of that province. The analyses presented here are based on original data from 18 months of linguistic fieldwork.The first chapter provides an overview of Kuot grammar, and gives details of earlier mentions of the language, and of data collection and the fieldwork situation. The second chapter presents information about the prehistory and history of the area, the social system, kinship system and culture of Kuot speakers, as well as dialectal variation and prognosis of survival of the language. Chapter three treats Kuot phonology, with particular emphasis on the factors that govern allophonic variation, and on the expression of word stress and the functions of intonation. Word classes and the criteria used to define them are presented in Chapter four, which also contains a discussion of types of morphemes in Kuot. The last chapter describes in some detail the class of nouns in Kuot, their declensions, non-singular formation, and the properties of grammatical gender.Appendices give the full set of person-marking forms in Kuot, a transcription of a recorded text with interlinear glossing and translation, the Swadesh 100-word list for Kuot, and diagrams of kin relations and terminology
4.
Hofvendahl, Johan, 1970-
(författare)
Riskabla samtal : en analys av potentiella faror i skolans kvarts- och utvecklingssamtal
2006
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In this thesis, conversation analysis (CA) is applied to study “risk strategies” in parent-teacher-student conferences in the Swedish nine-year compulsory school. The material consists of 80 conferences collected at two different points in time: 45 from the period 1992–93 (at that time called kvartssamtal, lit. “quarter of an hour conference”) and another 35 collected in 2004 (at the present time, and since the latest curriculum from 1994, called utvecklingssamtal, lit. “development conference”). All conferences in the material concern students in the 5th grade, i.e. when students are 11–12 years old.Each year, approximately 2.6 million student conferences in total are held in the Swedish compulsory school and upper-secondary school, involving about 5.5 million participants. Yet, we have virtually no knowledge of what actually happens in these conferences, i.e. how they are conducted. Hence, this study contributes to “filling the gap” and to meeting this want, the how of the student conference as a practical achievement.The aim of the study is to analyze conversational strategies in use to handle “risk”, i.e. a moment whose outcome is uncertain and that could possibly lead to a problem. Here, strategy refers to recurrent line of action and does not necessarily comprise speaker awareness. Strategies are part (and the materialization) of everyday cultural norms, rules of social behavior and habitualized “ways of practice”. They are used “for self”, “for someone else” or “for all” and should be considered in the light of Goffman’s notion of “face-work”, i.e. what the speaker does in order to counteract possibly face-threatening acts. The study is aimed at three particular situations of considerable analytic value: (i) the opening of the conference, (ii) the initiation of talk about trouble (problem), and (iii) the closing of the conference, or more immediately, the possibility for students and parents to raise their own issues.The results show that the conference opening is a coordinated achievement and to a great extent oriented to meet the possibility of the student being nervous. The conference is an “ordinary conference” and the opening questions are “what I ask any student”. When a speaker initiates talk about possible trouble, the pace decreases and utterances very often comprise “perturbations of delivery”, i.e. filled and unfilled pauses, mitigating expressions, abandoned turn beginnings and restarts, “repairs”, etc. These and other circumstances make it possible to forecast the action as (possibly) a trouble-initiating action. At the closing of the conference, students and parents are commonly offered the opportunity to raise their own issues. However, when analyzing the different ways of offering a prolongation of the conference, the study shows that the opportunity is strongly restricted, e.g. due to the design of the question.
5.
Jezierski, Wojtek, 1979-
(författare)
Total St Gall : Medieval Monastery as a Disciplinary Institution
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
How much was a medieval monastery reminiscent of a modern prison? Or insane asylum? And if it was in the least - what can such a metaphor tell us about power relations structuring the life of medieval monks?The purpose of this compilation thesis (sammanläggningsavhandling) is to render explicit and analyze relations of power and modes of control comprising the social tissue of early medieval Benedictine monasteries. By bringing up the examples of tenth- and eleventh-century monasteries of St Gall, Fulda, and Bury St Edmunds, this thesis seeks to understand what power was in medieval monasteries, how and between whom it was exercised, what and how it affected in terms of collective and individual identity.The thesis consists of three introductory chapters, four previously published empirical articles, and a concluding remarks section. Article 1 investigates the problem of surveillance and patterns of social control dispersed in the monastery of St Gall. Article 2 studies the early and high medieval institutional expectations and means of enforcement of the monk’s role. Article 3 scrutinizes an example of a persecution process and a set of defense measures in the hands of the St Gall community warding off an unwanted visitor. Article 4 examines a number of internal monastic conflicts from several monasteries and strategies, both political and cognitive, guiding them.In investigating these problems, the thesis proceeds in a manner of deliberate anachronism. It asks questions about how human subjectivity was manufactured in early medieval St Gall, what were a medieval monastery’s ‘conditions of possibility’ to operate as a social regime, or oral and literary means of conflict management etc. The crucial modern social theories on which the thesis hinges are: Erving Goffman’s notion of ‘total institution’, and Michel Foucault’s analysis of power, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s logic of action.
6.
Curtis, Reed T., 1984-
(författare)
Without mast, without sails, without compass : Non-traditional trajectories into higher education and the duality of the folk-market
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In 1809, the trajectory of Swedish history and the identities associated with the country changed after Finland was lost to Russia. Swedish General von Döbeln explained that the loss left the nation "without mast, without sails, without compass." The research within this dissertation is not of war but of a similar sense of loss. The loss of the folk-home.Through an abductive case-study of present-day students entering higher education, the author explores the sociocultural history of Sweden, the Swedish education system, student self-efficacy beliefs, and the educational trajectories students experience on their way into higher education. This research uses a mixed methods design where a quantitative survey and qualitative narrative interviews complement each other. First, students within an introduction to university learning summer course at a large research university in Sweden completed a psychosocial survey measuring their self-efficacy beliefs about their academic skills and career decision making abilities. A statistically significant correlation was found between the two measures. Second, 11 students from the same course participated in narrative interviews where they detailed their educational trajectories between upper-secondary education and higher education. The author constructed, analyzed, mapped, and discussed each narrative using careership and social cognitive theory. Students within this study suggest that their transition between compulsory education and upper-secondary education was particularly impactful and shaped their self-efficacy beliefs and educational trajectories into higher education. Students describe a lonely process of upper-secondary education decision making at the age of 15 when they were sent to market without preparation, without support, and without the necessary tools. The majority eventually changed academic programs and schools during upper-secondary education. This led to lengthy ruptures outside of formal education that significantly delayed their progress towards graduation. Students only later decided to pursue a non-traditional trajectory into higher education after the negative self-efficacy beliefs they developed during these ruptures were challenged externally.Lastly, previous research, theory, and the empirical findings were systematically combined through an interactive process of abduction. First, the author developed the concept of the folk-market, which better represents the current neoliberal welfare model present in late modern Sweden. The folk-market must be understood as a duality. The folk-market is both a market for folk and a market of folk. Citizens are both the consumers and the consumed. Second, the author presents folk-market theory, which suggests that neoliberal reforms that embed markets within welfare systems alter transition regimes, redirect state responsibility, and distance the connections citizens have with the state. Therefore, the findings suggest that notions of statist individualism misrepresent late modern Sweden. The relationships individuals and families have with the state are now indirect and filtered through the folk-market. This study also indicates that though Swedish, neoliberal, and adolescent narratives of "autonomous youth" are unrealistic, they directly shape educational policy in Sweden. As such, many students in Sweden are left navigating a competitive folk-market without mast, without sails, without compass.
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