1.
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.
2.
Carlestål, Eva, 1951-
(författare)
La Famiglia : The Ideology of Sicilian Family Networks
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Anthropological data from fieldwork carried out among a fishing population in western Sicily show how related matrifocal nuclear families are tightly knit within larger, male-headed networks. The mother focus at the basic family level is thereby balanced and the system indicates that the mother-child unit does not function effectively on its own, as has often been argued for this type of family structure. As a result of dominating moral values which strongly emphasise the uniqueness of family and kin, people are brought up to depend heavily upon and to be loyal to their kin networks, to see themselves primarily as parts of these social units and less so as independent clearly bounded individuals, and to distinctly separate family members from non-family members. This dependence is further strengthened by matri- and/or patrivicinity being the dominant form of locality, by the traditional naming system as well as a continual use of kin terms, and by related people socialising and collaborating closely. The social and physical boundaries thus created around the family networks are further strengthened by local architecture that symbolically communicates the closed family unit; by the woman, who embodies her family as well as their house, having her outdoor movements restricted in order to shield both herself and her family; by self-mastery when it comes to skilfully calculating one's actions and words as a means of controlling the impression one makes on others; and by local patriotism that separates one's co-villagers from foreigners. Hospitality, which brings inclusion and exclusion into focus, is shown to be a means of ritually incorporating non-kin and thus containing the danger the stranger represents. The author aims to answer the question of whether the social and physical boundaries around the family network, together with the distrust towards non-family members referred to by the informants themselves, constitute a hindrance as regards collaboration with non-kin, or if collaboration beyond the family boundaries is possible and, if so, whether or not this has to lead to the family's losing its position.
3.
Holm, Marie-Louise
(författare)
Fleshing out the self : Reimagining intersexed and trans embodied lives through (auto)biographical accounts of the past
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis explores how current ways of imagining possibilities for intersexed and trans embodied lives within medical contexts might be informed by and reimagined through the historical lived experiences of intersexed and trans individuals as they have been articulated in autobiographical accounts.Postmodern, queer, intersex, and trans researchers and activists have criticised existing standards of intersex and trans healthcare for limiting the possibilities for diverse embodied lives by articulating certain forms of embodiment and selfhood as more likely to enable a liveable life than others. This has often been done in a medico-legal context by referring to experiences in the past of the unliveability of corporealities and gendersexed situations that differ from privileged positions. With a point of departure in these critiques, this thesis reopens questions about how intersexed and trans people may be embodied and have relations with others by reflecting upon the period of the first three-quarters of the 20th century, when the present standards of care and diagnostic categories were emerging, but had not yet become established.Drawing upon a unique set of historical source material from the archives of the Danish Ministry of Justice and the Medico-Legal Council, intersexed and trans persons’ life stories are rearticulated from their own and medico-legal experts’ accounts written in relation to applications for change of legal gendersex status and medical transition. In this way, the process is traced through which these life stories have been repeatedly rearticulated in order to become a usable basis for diagnosis and decision-making. At the same time, the stories are unfolded once more in a rearticulation focusing on their complexity and diversity.
4.
Lundgren, Silje, 1978-
(författare)
Heterosexual Havana : Ideals and hierarchies of gender and sexuality in contemporary Cuba
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Drawing on two periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Vedado, Havana, in 2004–2007, this dissertation analyses the interconnections between gender, sexuality, and heterosexuality. With theoretical inspiration from the works of Stevi Jackson and Beverley Skeggs, it discusses how the logics underlying heterosexual relations also regulate hierarchical gendered ideals. It examines how gendered conceptions of sexuality confirm a position of heterosexual desirability, and traces a specifically heterosexual gender construction of men and women as oppositional forces, glued together in a relationship of eroticized complementarity.Moreover, the dissertation shows that the everyday negotiation of ideals around gender and sexuality is characterized by constant hierarchization. It explores how the emic concept of ‘cultural level’ is used in a process of othering to mark moral distance and create a position of superiority. It also suggests that in post-crisis Cuba, the body has become a new site on which to inscribe distinction and mark privilege, as a way of navigating in a context of new and unfamiliar differentiations.The dissertation demonstrates how female eroticism, male eroticized performances in street interaction, and the female body ideal are central sites for establishing an image of national particularity. In this historic moment, these have also become sites for marking difference and creating hierarchies. The dissertation argues that inclusive and unifying conceptions of ‘Cubanness’ are both delineated and reinforced through exclusion and the demarcation of difference within this collectivity.This notion of the nation carries gendered and sexualized inscriptions. It has been constructed through the historical exclusion of non-heterosexuality, which has been closely connected to the consolidation of a specific ideal of masculinity. The dissertation analyses the destabilizing potential of a shift in Cuban sexual politics during the last two decades and explores how this might imply a new configuration of the relationship between gender and sexuality.
