1.
Alvinius, Aida, 1979-
(author)
Bridging Boundaries in the Borderland of Bureaucracies : Individual Impact on Organisational Adaption to Demanding Situations in Civil and Military Contexts
2013
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to reach a deeper understanding of how boundary spanners are bridging boundaries between uniformed bureaucratic organisations and their environment, characterised by demanding conditions.The main part of this thesis is based upon empirical data gathered through 71 interviews with Swedish civil and military informants from several uniformed organisations. Four articles have been included in this thesis in order to address the overarching aim.The results show that boundary spanners are crucial to the adaption of uniformed organisations to demanding conditions. A number of aspects that are included in the process of organisational adaption have been identified. One of the tasks is to balance between structuring and improvisation where much is at stake. The other task is to create confidence among the involved actors and contribute in different ways to create a sense of symmetry between partners. Finally, the third task for boundary spanners is to recognise improvised roles such as spontaneous links in order to maintain stressful conditions and bridge a gap in the bureaucratic organisation. The present thesis contributes to sociological theory of emotions, disaster management and military studies through a common denominator, namely the demanding context. Taken together, the findings increase awareness of how organisations act towards their environments and how individuals, especially boundary spanners, adapt the organisation to its environment. For leaders and managers, it is important to make decisions, provide mandates and authorisation, as well as invest confidence in boundary spanners. The hierarchical chain may remain in existence, but it can be made shorter and more transparent through this kind of knowledge.
2.
Jonsson, Annika, 1976-
(author)
A Nice Place : The Everyday Production of Pleasure and Political Correctness at Work
2009
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation investigates heterosexed reality as an ongoing accomplishment by the members at a workplace. Observations were carried out sporadically for two years at a museum. During this period twelve formal interviews, fifteen informal interviews, three formal group interviews and three informal group interviews were also conducted. The study rests on an ethnomethodological understanding of how reality and order is achieved by actors in interaction through the use of ethnomethods, such as common sense. Order is produced in a number of situations and it is situations, as locations of shared practices, which are primarily focused. It is concluded that the members try to, in different ways, realise the museum as a nice place. The concept of straight-framing is introduced to describe one of the pleasure procedures performed by the members in order to generate good mood, solidarity and familiarity in everyday working life. To successfully straight-frame situations, the members must utilise the heterosexual matrix and produce themselves and others as intelligibly sexed beings, belonging to either the category women or men, and as relatable to people of the other sex in couple-like and/or sexualised (explicitly or implicitly) ways. Three different forms of straight-framing are distinguished; direct, mock direct and indirect. The members also routinely realise the museum as a nice place by creating a discourse of political correctness. The easiest way to produce and use this discourse appears to be to talk about gender equality. In conversations about gender equality women and men are commonsensically turned into a standardised relational pair and this is referred to as the body count routine. While the body count routine makes the issue of gender equality intelligible for the members and enables them to come across as politically competent, it also provides them with an opportunity to organise the working units at the museum. Sex-mixed units can be placed above non-mixed in a moral hierarchy.
3.
Pernrud, Björn
(author)
Explorations of a Sex Therapy Question in Feminism : Feminist Interventions in Sex Therapy
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This study aims to investigate the consequences for feminist sex therapy that it is promoted as an alternative to a mainstream approach. Analytically I focus on the relation between normativity, claims to knowledge and professional legitimacy. I study sex therapeutic academic texts, and the material is approached through a framework developed by combining Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges with elements from Karen Barad’s agential realismMy analysis starts in feminist sex therapists’ criticism of how masculine norms in mainstream sex therapy lead to a flawed theory of sexual matters. Feminist sex therapists, however, allege that it is specifically feminist norms that grant a more complete theory of sex and sexual problems within feminist alternatives in sex therapy. To that effect, feminists discern sexual problems in relation to the impact a patriarchal society has on particularly women’s sexualities, and treatment is articulated as seeking to liberate women from constraints associated with gendered social positions.In mainstream sex therapy, allegedly value-neutral insights into human physiology are called upon for the establishment of professional legitimacy. Nevertheless, normative investments are relied upon implicitly to discern sexual problems and sexual well-being with the consequence that sexual problems are understood as conditions that interfere with the ability to have sex, largely equated with coitus, and with the motivation to form coupled sexual relations. By alleviating sexual problems, these abilities and motivations are allegedly restored in the form of natural, already present, capacities for sexual functioning. Comparing my analysis to feminist critiques, I argue that the latter have not fully theorized the significance of normative investments, and have left unchallenged assumptions in mainstream therapy that enable a restorative and liberationist construal of sex therapy’s objective.Although feminist alternatives contain a markedly different theorization of sexual problems, they have retained, from the mainstream approach, the notion that sex therapy seeks to liberate its clients. This notion stands in conflict with feminist theorizations of sexual problems, and in my conclusion I argue that feminist sex therapy would benefit from abandoning its liberationist element.
4.
Wettergren, Åsa, 1969-
(author)
Moving and Jamming : Implications for Social Movement Theory
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The present compiled dissertation explores culture jamming as a social movement in late capitalist information society. Culture jamming embraces groups and individuals practicing symbolic protest against the expansion and domination of large corporations and the logic of the market into public and private life. The central aim is to understand the meaning of culture jamming; its “model” of collective identification, and its protest and mobilizing strategies. International social movement research mostly focuses upon well established movements that are traditionally organized and directed against conventional political institutions. Studying culture jamming as a social movement therefore entails implications for social movement theory and research. For instance, concepts must be adjusted to cover emerging “individualized” forms of collective action and the effects of cyberspace on collective identification. Furthermore, attention is directed to emotions in culture jamming. It is thereby also argued that social movement research generally may have a lot to gain from incorporating emotion theory.Data consists of texts and visuals from the organization Adbusters Media Foundation, and seven interviews with culture jammers. The groups represented in the interviews are Institute for Applied Autonomy, Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping, New York Surveillance Camera Players, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Rtmark, and the French Casseurs de Pub. The method of analysis is “abductive” qualitative text analysis inspired by hermeneutic qualitative analysis and the epistemological and ontological foundations of discourse theory and post-structuralism.Analysis is carried out in five separate studies presented in text I-IV (previously published) and in chapter eight. Text I maps the Adbusters Media Foundation (AMF) along the lines of narrative, organization, ends, means, and strategy. Text II offers an analysis of the various nodal points in the AMF discourse and discusses the tensions inherent to the AMF effort to “hegemonize” the meaning of culture jamming. Text III offers an analysis of culture jamming as political activism from the thematic perspective of culture, place and identity, based on four of the interviews. In text IV the AMF visuals are analyzed from the perspective of emotions and social movement mobilization. Chapter eight brings together the seven interviews and the AMF material into an analysis of emotions in culture jamming.
5.
Henriksson, Andreas, 1980-
(author)
Organising Intimacy : Exploring Heterosexual Singledoms at Swedish Singles Activities
2014
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Single activities have long been places where single people can come to meet friends, build community or look for partners. The activities have relevance for studies of heterosexuality, intimacy, personal life and space. This dissertation discusses a conference, a cruise, an online site and an association for heterosexual singles in contemporary Sweden. It shows how these activities, analysed as organising people and spaces, offer participants different versions of intimacy, relationships, personal life and ultimately singledom itself. The concept non-relationality is coined to describe how people understand and enact what it means to lack a certain kind of relationship.Multi-sited ethnographic observations are combined with interviews and a survey (n=416). The chosen methods allow insight into both the heterogeneous character of the contemporary single activity scene, as well as existing tendencies to form communities. The group whose single activities are examined is deemed fairly typical of the single population at large. Nevertheless, most conclusions centre on the specific set of activities described in the book and relate them to historical examples and theory.The single activities examined can be interpreted to enact different practices entailed in a relationship without necessarily demanding commitment to a whole relationship or a specific person. In that way, the activities accommodate the inflexible personal lives that some singles report having. This challenges strict boundaries between coupledom and singledom. Such transgressive or “hetero-doxical” potential in single activities is nevertheless circumscribed by organisers’ notion that the activities provide therapeutic community in a phase before singles take the step (back) into coupledom.
