1.
Andersson, Kjerstin, 1975-
(författare)
Talking violence, constructing identities : young men in institutional care
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of the study is to investigate how young men constructing identities in talk about their own use of violence. The study is based on a fieldwork at a youth detention home in Sweden. The data consists of individual interviews and video recordings of the treatment programme Aggression Replacement Training (ART). Detailed analyses have been made of conversations between the young men, between the young men and the trainers, and of the narratives generated in the individual interviews. The study has a social constructionist approach to identity, which is seen as constructed in a joint achievement in social interaction. An important analytical perspective in the study is how social categories and subcategories are constructed. The study has a particular focus on gender, primarily masculinity, but age and ethnicity are also being emphasised.The analysis draws on four empirical studies. It is shown how the young men construct a preferred self-presentation when talking about violent events. The narratives on violence are either based on experiences or talked about as a hypothetical use of violence. Violence based on personal experience is problematized and legitimized in terms of self-defence, defending friends, restraint and justified violence. Narratives of violence are shown to be interactional resources available to the young men. When talking about violence, the young men can be seen to regulate social relations, and to position themselves in relation to particular discourses of masculinity. The specific understanding of what it entails to be a man enables the use of violence with respect to social categorizations such as age, ethnicity or criminal identity. It is also argued that the treatment programme ART may, at times, facilitate maintaining a criminal identity.
2.
Andréasson, Frida
(författare)
Doing informal care : Identity, couplehood, social health and information and communication technologies in older people’s everyday lives
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of the thesis has been a) to analyse how informal care influences the identity of carers and care recipients, their sense of couplehood and social health, and b) to explore the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of informal care and the everyday lives of older people. Study I focused on how older carers conceptualised their identity as carers on a Swedish online social forum, using a netnographic methodology. The findings indicated a change in self-perception as the carer role was acquired. Carers’ capacities were filtered through the needs of the care recipient, making their carer identities into invisible selves. The findings revealed that online communication had the potential to create a virtual space of social recognition. Study II aimed to reflect on carers’ experiences of participation in a co-design process consisting of user group sessions with carers and researchers. The goal was to develop a web-based support programme for carers. The findings emphasised a need to consider carers’ lifeworlds and to develop flexible human-centred design methodologies, that are able to balance carers’ needs and ideas with proposed research outcomes. Studies III and IV utilised an ethnographic methodology. In study III, the notion of couplehood in informal care was analysed. The findings showed that in the process of becoming a carer and a care recipient previous (often gendered) responsibilities were re- negotiated and new practicalities emerged. Although these changes were understood as a natural part of family life, they nevertheless led to changes in the (power) balance between spouses, expressed in terms of a professionalised relationship and a sense of social isolation. ICT was used as a means to get a respite from caring and uphold a social connection with others. In study IV, the social implications and consequences of spousal informal care and carers and care recipients’ experiences of illness and the ill body was explored. The findings showed that the participants experienced barriers to living life as before. Thoughts about or the presence of ill and “leaking” bodies thus lead to “self-chosen” social isolation or social distancing by others. The thesis highlights that informal care needs to be understood as an identity forming practice, having a significant impact on involved parties’ sense of couplehood, their social health and that ICT can contribute to ease carers’ and care recipients’ daily life.
3.
Alm, Björn
(författare)
The un/selfish leader : Changing notions in a Tamil Nadu village
2006
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
'The un/selfish' leader explores notions of selfishness, as they were perceived by people in the village of Ekkaraiyur, Tamil Nadu, India, at a time they associated with thorough changes in their lives.Discussing locally held notions about agrarian change, seen as causing the erosion of earlier village loyalties and leading to the emergence of a new type of leaders, the study focus on the censure of the alleged corruption of these leaders. Expressed in a rich repertoire of stories about the ideals of leadership and about the excellence of the past and foreign societies, the censure was routinely voiced in public debates and in everyday conversations.Set against a background an increasing role of the state for the people in Ekkaraiyur, the censure of leaders implied a critique of the contemporary society they were taken to represent. Moreover, the study argues that the critique was grounded in evaluations of individualism and selfishness in human nature.The study is based on fieldwork carried out in Ekkaraiyur between 1988 and 1990
4.
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.
5.
Fredin, Erik, 1934-
(författare)
Dialogen i socialt arbete : en studie av socialbyråsamtal i ljuset av modern dialogteori
1993
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation concerns the dialogical encounters that take place between social workcr and client within the social services. The empirical material consists of 21 dialogues, 19 of which wcre recorded at two social welfare offices, one located in the center of Stockholm and the other in a suburb, and two which were recorded at the youth counseling office. In all, the material comprises 5150 individual utterances. In the literature, the type of dialogical cncounters studicd is called "institutional discourse".The theoretical approach in the analysis is based on an interactionist perspective, particularly with respect to dialogical analysis of verbal encounters. The aim of thc study is to analyse the dialogue between social worker and client from three points of de parture: participallt structure, topic, and inherent perspectives.In studying the discourse, the ini tiative-response (IR-) method of analysis was applied. The IR-method focuses on the dynamics of the dialogue, its pattern of dominance and its coherence. The results show that the social worker was interactively dominant in about two-thirds of the dialogues studied, but this dominance was most forcefully evident with respect to soliciting inititatives. With respect to content, the study concerns how the topical structure of the dialogue is constructed, i.e. which topics are taken up in the discourse and which of the parties steers the transition between topics. In the case of transitions to a topic defined as the main issue of the dialogue, it was the social worker who, in four-fifths of the cases, strategically steered the course of the dialogue. The perspective analysis undertaken in the study is concerned with investigating how different topics are treated in the dialogues, i.e. which of the parties "establishes" the perspectives and which "submits" to them . This analysis, made on a selection of seven of the 21 dialogical encounters, shows that it was the social worker who, in about two-thirds of thc cases, established by means of various interactive moves a bureaucratic or social welfare perspective on thc main topic sequences. Lastly, discursive dominance and power are discussed in the light of the prececling analyses.
6.
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.
7.
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.
8.
Nilsson, Elin, 1981-
(författare)
Facing dementia as a we : Investigating couples’ challenges and communicative strategies for managing dementia
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
We live longer than ever before, which means that we also live longer with disorders such as those connected with dementia. Most people diagnosed with dementia live in ordinary housing for a long time, relying on their social network for support, mainly involving spouses or adult children. There is limited research on how families and couples manage daily life with dementia, and social workers may only have knowledge and skills at a general level about older people with the condition.The aim of this thesis is to investigate how couples manage dementia-related challenges, as well as whether and how these challenges and ways of managing relate to aspects of couples’ we-ness. This aim has been specified in terms of research questions which involve the couples’ communicative management of dementia-related challenges, and how they approach and talk about sensitive topics connected with dementia. An additional question involves how the couples relate to and use their we-ness in managing dementia. Multimodal conversation analytic theory and methodology has been adopted to study sequences from 15 video-recorded joint interviews involving couples where one of the partners had a diagnosis of dementia.The articles demonstrate how the spouses managed dementia jointly, and how they used their common ground as a couple as an important resource for telling stories and remembering. When the spouses without dementia approached sensitive topics related to dementia, they made use of strategies such as mitigating talk, or touching the partner with dementia as they spoke. The spouses without dementia approached the issue of the future carefully, whereas the spouses with dementia were more direct in the way they talked about the future. A final finding involves the spouses without dementia using strategies such as giving clues or prompting to help their partner with dementia remember. However, this was seldom successful, and may even have had face-threatening effects. Taken together, the different aspects of this thesis emphasise the challenges faced by the couples and the communicative strategies they used, as well as the abilities and agency which surfaced during a micro-level analysis of their interaction. The results are further discussed in the light of implications for social work education, practice and theory, largely highlighting the importance of adopting a couplesensitive approach in which relational and interactional aspects are emphasised.
9.
Wallroth, Veronika, 1978-
(författare)
Men do care! : A gender-aware and masculinity-informed contribution to caregiving scholarship
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In caregiving literature, it is often the female gender that has been the focus of attention, and in particular women’s unpaid labor. Studies also tend to make comparisons between men’s and women’s caregiving, using men’s caregiving experiences to show not only that women face greater burdens, but also that men’s needs can be minimized. This means that while gender analysis is not uncommon in the caregiving literature, gender tends to be equated with womanhood. This is impeding us from moving the debates on care and caregiving forward. The dissertation argues – through a phenomenological analysis of men’s motives, experiences and perceptions of care and caregiving – that much could be gained if we were to rectify the gender bias by bringing attention to caregiving men in the gender-aware and masculinity-informed way that is lacking in the family caregiving literature at present. For this dissertation, 19 caregiving adult sons and sons-in-law were interviewed. The aim of the study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to contribute to the rectification of the gender bias found in the literature on family caregiving by focusing on men’s caregiving and answering the following research questions: What motivates men to provide care for their elderly parents? How do adult sons experience caregiving? What do adult sons think that care and caregiving are, i.e. what are their perspectives on care? Secondly, this dissertation also aims to explore whether a gender-aware and masculinity-informed perspective can be used to enhance our understanding of caregiving. This study discusses how motives, experiences and perspectives, which have so far been interpreted as unique to women, are also matters that men talk about and consider important in caregiving. Thus, this study shows that a gender-aware and masculinity-informed perspective on care can increase our understanding of family caregiving and contribute to rectify the gender bias that care research suffers from. The study suggests that caregiving men should not solely be regarded as empirically interesting. This is because they are an unexploited and theoretically profuse source of information about caregiving.
10.
Wernesjö, Ulrika, 1980-
(författare)
Conditional Belonging : Listening to Unaccompanied Young Refugees’ Voices
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis explores negotiations of belonging among unaccompanied young refugees in Sweden. The thesis further aims to shed light on methodological aspects of bringing out their voices. The analysis draws on postcolonial and poststructuralist approaches to belonging and relates belonging to the concepts of home, place, racialization and notions of “Swedishness”.The thesis analyses qualitative interviews with 17 young people, who arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors and have been granted permanent residency. The interviews are complemented with walk-alongs and photography-based interviews.Paper 1 gives an overview and discussion of research on unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors. I argue that there is a lack of their voices in the research, and that their own agency and perspectives are not addressed due to a focus on vulnerability and emotional health (or lack thereof). Paper II, which is delimited to participants in a rural village, shows that they negotiate belonging and a sense of home related to places but that othering is constraining. In paper II and III I suggest that the participants’ belongings and position in Sweden can be understood as conditional due to othering and racialization. In paper III, I argue that expressing gratitude can be understood as a form of impression management and, thus be a strategy to negotiate their position in the interview setting as in the host country.I finally argue that in order to understand the participants’ negotiations of belonging attention has to be paid to their agency as well as the conditioning of belonging in discourses and in interactions on the local level.
