1.
Pasquini, Mirko, 1991
(författare)
The Negotiation of Urgency: Economies of Attention in an Italian Emergency Room
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Urgency in a hospital Emergency Room (ER) is not a self-evident state. Urgency is made, by establishing priorities, distributing attention and material resources, and deciding who and what needs to be attended to first – and, simultaneously, who and what has to wait. The process of determining urgency is known as “triage” (from the French verb, trier, “to choose”). This thesis is about the vicissitudes of triage in an Italian ER. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when urgency is at stake; when it is contested and caught up between different, and frequently conflicting, perspectives. It explores how urgency is determined in practice, and shows how triage always is a vulnerable process of negotiation guided by economies of attention. How is urgency actually shaped in interactions between patients, their families and friends, and the ER staff? The different chapters explore how time in the ER is created through shifting registers of attention, and how attention in the ER is affected by widespread economic and social precarity, and neoliberal national policies of governance. It discusses how triage increasingly is structured by attitudes of mistrust; and also by potential or real outbreaks of violence. Addressing the particular positioning of the ER as a thick space of conjunction between neoliberal state politics and people's increasing need for care and recognition, the thesis aims to contribute to medical anthropology literature by analyzing triage not as a neutral medical way of sorting, but as a practice that actively creates difference. It explores both the limits of triage, and how those limits can spark improvisation and creative reinvention.
2.
Sjölander-Lindqvist, Annelie
(författare)
Local Environment at Stake : The Hallandsås Railway Tunnel in a Social and Cultural Context
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A major trend in facility siting research focuses on economic and psychological aspects of land-use regarding the location of potentially hazardous technological facilities including storage for high-level radioactive waste, landfills, chemical plants, large-scale dams, or waste incinerators. Such facilities frequently have profound environmental impact and are often understood by local citizens as intrusions on their environment that threaten landscape, place, and community. This investigation of local responses to facility siting is grounded in social anthropological theories of landscape and place. The study addresses the social and cultural impacts of the building of a railway tunnel through the Hallandsås ridge in an agricultural area in the southwest of Sweden. This tunnel project has met with technological difficulties and environmental problems such as a lowered groundwater table and toxic contamination of groundwater, soil, and surface water. A principal concern in this dissertation is how homeowners’ perceptions and views of the landscape, place, and locality—that is, their local environment—has been affected by the building of a tunnel beneath their farms and homesteads. The four articles on which the thesis build are derived from anthropological fieldwork carried out among local residents affected by the Hallandsås tunnel project. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, collaborative photography, nature walks, and participant observation at public meetings, between the years 1999 and 2003. The main findings of the study suggest that the construction of the tunnel and the subsequent environmental consequences have given rise to an increased sense among affected residents of the fragility and uncertainty of life systems and people’s livelihoods. Feelings of uncertainty regarding the future of the community and the landscape have stimulated a discourse about local history and collective memories bearing on the local environment. Shared responsibility for nature and the local environment is another theme. The building of the Hallandsås railway tunnel has both reinforced local identity within the rural community of affected residents and incited conflict as to how the natural resources of the area should be understood and interpreted. Groundwater issues play a central role in land-use disputes generated by the tunnel project. Groundwater serves as a ‘boundary object’ bordering the domains of the concerned parties: the local community and the Swedish National Rail Administration.
3.
Järlehed, Johan, 1968
(författare)
Euskaraz. Lengua e identidad en los textos multimodales de promoción del euskara, 1970-2001.
2007
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Much research has been done on the complex and often conflictive relationship between language and identity in different geographical settings. But little attention has been paid to the – mainly visual – campaigns that language movements realize in order to defend and promote their language. The aim of this study is to examine the representation of language and national identity in the campaigns which have been realized in the seven territories of the Basque Country during the last decades. The main concern is with the social construction and reproduction of what it means to ‘speak Basque’ and ‘be Basque’, and of the relationship between these two features, through the multimodal texts of the campaigns and the discourse that they articulate. Drawing on social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology, the analysis is carried out on a corpus of 1211 multimodal texts – posters, stickers and murals – which were produced by more than 240 social actors within the Basque language movement 1970-2001. The principal findings suggest that both the language movement and its definition of the Basque identity have become more heterogenous. Since the beginning of the 1980’s there has been an ongoing struggle between the institutionalized part of the movement and the politiziced fraction on the goals and mediums of the revitalization process. This struggle is also related to the political and administrative status of the different territories of the Basque Country and their inhabitants. The texts of the institutionalized actors present a process of standardization which seems to respond to the political and linguistical normalization of the Basque Country. While they now reproduce a more open understanding of what it is to be Basque, the texts of the radical actors continue to relate euskara and the Basque identity in a quite narrow way. At the same time, the pro-euskara discourse that these texts articulate seems to be increasingly influenced by the current globalization and regionalization, and presents therefore an increasing incertainty as to what it means to be Basque and to speak Basque.
4.
Grönberg, Anna Gunnarsdotter, 1967
(författare)
Ungdomar och dialekt i Alingsås : Young people and dialect in a small town in West Sweden
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis presents a study of sociolinguistic variation among students from five municipalities, all attending an upper secondary school in Alingsås, a town of 25,000, northeast of Göteborg, Sweden. The material consists of recorded interviews with 97 students. The informants are categorized according to social variables representing different aspects of background and identity: Sex, type of study programmes (vocational, intermediate, preparatory for university), demogeographical areas and Alingsås neighbourhoods (divided on the basis of urbanization and socio-economic factors), and lifestyle based on two-dimensional mapping (concerning taste, leisure, mobility, plans for the future, etc.). The lifestyle analysis both complements and includes traditional sociolinguistic variables. Eight phonological and lexical variables are analyzed. The variants are found to be associated with traditional local dialect, regional and supraregional standard, Göteborg vernacular, general and Göteborg youth language. Correlations with demogeographical area generally show a pattern going from southwest to northeast (along the E20 highway and the railway from Göteborg). One area does not fit into the continuum, in Sollebrunn (NW of Alingsås), where particularly female informants tend to use standard and innovations to a higher extent than informants in Herrljunga, which is situated the same distance from Göteborg (but NE of Alingsås). Gender is the second most important social factor, in two different ways. There are general differences in linguistic behaviour between sexes, but also differences between groups when gender is combined with study programme and lifestyle. There are major differences from one social group to another when it comes to expressing gendered identity through linguistic means.
5.
Bajqinca, Nuhi
(författare)
Mother Tongue Education - The Interest of a Nation. A policy study in Sweden 1957-2017.
2019
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This doctoral thesis is a policy study about mother tongue education policies as they have developed historically in Sweden.The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the policies of mother tongue education from 1957 to 2017, focusing on how Swedish nation-state politics and societal change characterized the status and positioning of mother tongue education in the Swedish school system.
6.
Borelius, Ulf, 1961
(författare)
Om befrielseteologins uppkomst i Latinamerika. En sociologisk analys av religiös förändring. : On the Rise of Liberation Theology in Latin America. A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change.
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The overall purpose of the present study is to contribute to our understanding of religious change and to an explanation of the phenomenon. The emergence of the theology of liberation is an important case of religious change in Latin America during the 1960s. Hence, the focus of this study is on how and why the theology of liberation emerged. The theoretical framework is primarily based on the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, habitus and capital. This framework is used as an alternative to the dominant theories of religious change, that is, the secularization theory and the theory of religious economies. The data come from a variety of sources, including interviews, electronic and conventional letters, archives, books and articles. The most important conclusion is that Liberation Theology emerged within the Catholic Student Movement, as a product of collective work. More specifically, it arose as part of a reproduction strategy, aimed at defending the Church’s position in the national fields of power and at strengthening the Catholic Student Movement in the struggle for symbolic power at the universities. In the early 1960s, the Catholic Student Movement thought that the primary threat to the Church came from Marxism and Marxist groups. This threat was fought by means of involvement in the struggle for social change and development. Later, the commitment to development became a commitment to liberation. This commitment was shared with Marxist groups, but the Student Movement members simultaneously distinguished themselves from these groups as militant Catholics. The theology of liberation emerged when the Catholic Student Movement discovered new aspects of the Gospel as a result of its commitment to liberation, of its efforts to mobilize more Christians in the struggle for liberation, and of its pastoral care for radical Catholic students.
7.
8.
Petersson, Jesper, 1974
(författare)
Geographies of eHealth: Studies of Healthcare at a Distance
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis examines the proliferation of healthcare services using information and communication technology to overcome spatial and temporal obstacles. These services are given such names as telemedicine and telecare, which are sometimes grouped together as telehealthcare under the umbrella term eHealth. My main argument is that a prevalent and overoptimistic rhetoric of how the possibilities of digitalization are expected to produce a homogenous and ubiquitous healthcare space conceals many of the spatiotemporal complexities involved in introducing telehealthcare and in the overall organizing of healthcare. To counteract such simplifications, I contend that we need a relational understanding of the technical and the geographical as always nested in the social and vice versa. With such an approach, it is arguably possible to begin to tease apart the many spatiotemporal entanglements of these innovations and to trace their political ramifications. This position is developed by integrating perspectives from science and technology studies with insights from human geography. The four constituent papers of this thesis pursue this argument in qualitatively grounded case studies of telehealthcare and its geographies. Paper I looks at various initiatives for fetal tele-ultrasonography, demonstrating that this practice cannot be reduced to a mere transparent relay for the speedy transmission of digital information across space and time. The paper investigates how its introduction could affect medical knowledge production, power hierarchies, and subject positions, for example, the status attributed to the fetal figure. Paper II traces Swedish transformations of telehealthcare. The use of telemedicine to reach those outside medicine’s range has arguably been accompanied by efforts to achieve intra-organizational streamlining via telemedicine. This process has continued with the emergence of telecare for personal use directed toward the overlapping groups of the elderly people and patients with chronic conditions. I contend that this shift can be understood through a geographical lens as attempts to save space and time by keeping as many patients as possible out of costly hospitalization and preventing them from engaging scarce specialist resources. Paper III compares four telemedicine projects in Sweden. In detailing how the purpose of practicing telemedicine differed between these projects in relation to, for example, the specifics of distance, care availability, and treated medical conditions, the paper demonstrates the existence of many versions of telemedicine. Whereas this fluidity could further the spread of telemedicine, it could also cause problems. To various actors wanting to use telemedicine in a homogenous and fixed way for national streamlining purposes, this diversity has generated confusion when they wished to align telemedicine in a preferred direction. The paper concludes that technology travels best when it can contain both fluid and fixed relationships. Paper IV argues that, whatever is claimed about creating a space- and time-independent healthcare by means of telehealthcare, the use of telecare to connect the standardized spaces of healthcare with the fluid everyday lives of elderly people and patients with chronic conditions actually works by unfolding new spaces of visibilities and establishing new temporalities as well. By investigating these spatiotemporalities, I demonstrate how these applications draw together discourses on individual freedom with medically derived algorithms and concerns about how to make best use of scarce healthcare resources.
9.
Söderman, Alexandra, 1983
(författare)
Digital studentkultur. Om slutna grupper på Facebook som icke-formell arena i högre utbildning : Digital Student Culture. Closed Facebook Groups as Non-Formal Arenas in Higher Education
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Sedan Facebook lanserades i Sverige 2006 har plattformen vuxit dramatiskt och utgör numer det dominerande sociala mediet även för svenska studenter. I tidigare forskning har fokus i hög grad riktats mot möjliga pedagogiska vinster med Facebook, eller Facebook som en alternativ lärandearena i högre utbildning. Denna avhandling tar istället avstamp i mediekritiska perspektiv och kultur- och utbildningssociologisk teori, inom vilken sociologen Pierre Bourdieus arbeten är centrala. Detta för att analysera den icke-formella studentkultur som tar form i studentorganiserade slutna Facebook-grupper. Det övergripande syftet är att bidra med fördjupad kunskap om varför digital studentkultur formeras som den gör i tre slutna Facebook-grupper kopplade till tre olika högre utbildningskontexter. I arbetet adresseras därför följande frågeställningar: Hur präglar studenternas dispositioner formeringen av de olika utbildningskontexternas digitala studentkulturer på Facebook? Vilka distinktionsmekanismer och andra dominansförhållanden kommer till uttryck i Facebook-grupperna och kring vilka värden och ställningstaganden formeras dessa? På vilka sätt formas Facebook som digital kulturell miljö av de tre olika högre utbildningskontexterna? De Facebook-grupper som ingår i studien studeras med etnografiska metoder och består av ett förskollärarprogram, ett statsvetarprogram samt en grupp för studenter på konst- och designutbildningar. Resultaten visar hur Facebook kommit att fungera som en första anhalt för nyblivna studenter, men också hur den studentkultur som tar form i dessa grupper är tydligt präglad av studentgruppernas sociala bakgrund. Därigenom framträder bland annat något som kan förstås och diskuteras som Facebooks inlåsningseffekt, eftersom studenternas dispositioner inte utmanas i de egenorganiserade slutna grupperna.
10.
Acosta García, Nicolas, 1986
(författare)
Chocó challenges : communities negotiating matters of concern and care on Colombia’s margin
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Chocó is a remote and biodiverse region located on Colombia’s Northern Pacific Coast. The region is home to indigenous Embera and Afro-descendant communities. Both communities share and contest a legacy of colonisation, violence, dispossession and discrimination. This thesis explores the ways in which the local communities of Chocó challenge and transform the matters that concern them. It focuses on their concerns over the effects of biodiversity conservation, development, and drug trade on their communities. It first investigates the challenges associated with doing research concerning both global and local concerns. Then, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Chocó, it develops a methodology to address environmental value conflicts over the use of Utría National Park, located in the region. Third, the thesis studies the social protest of both local communities for the construction of a small hydroelectric power plant inside the park, finding that this protest for electricity reflects a complex post-colonial politics complementary to the discourse concerning political resistance as expressed by local and indigenous communities protesting against development. Fourth, drift-cocaine has been arriving recently to the coastal region of Chocó as a side effect of the country’s war on drugs. In Chocó, this phenomenon is referred to as the White Fish and is investigated here by situating its associated practices and transformations within the local context. Fifth, Utría National Park is explored visually as a place of rhythms and temporalities. Lastly, it argues that the mechanisms, grounded in concepts of solidarity and co-existence, which are employed by the local communities in negotiating the matters that concern them, provide alternative narratives to the ones often used to described them as in “poverty” and in need of “development”.
