1.
Redmalm, David, 1981-
(författare)
An animal without an animal within : investigating the identities of pet keeping
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
If the human is an animal without an animal within—a creature that has transcended the animal condition—what is a pet? This creature balancing on the border between nature and culture, simultaneously included in and excluded from a human “we”, is the focus of this thesis. The thesis analyzes the discourses and normative frameworks structuring the meaning of pets in people’s lives. By extension, it analyzes how the boundary between “human” and “animal” is produced, negotiated, and challenged in the relationship between pet and owner.Each of this thesis’ four constituent studies focuses on an aspect of personal relationships between humans and pets: pets as figures for philosophical thinking, the dual role of pets as commodities and companions, the grief for lost pets, and the power issues at play in the everyday life of pet and owner. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach, crossbred with Donna Haraway’s material-semiotic perspective, the analysis exposes the powers allowing pets to occupy these various positions.The thesis demonstrates that pets occupy a special position as boundary creatures in the lives of humans, allowing humans to play with and thus reproduce dichotomies inherent to the contemporary Western worldview, such as human/animal, person/nonperson, subject/object, and friend/commodity. However, pets’ conceptual transgressions may also challenge this worldview. On the one hand, pets are bought and sold as commodities, but on the other, they are widely included in the human sphere as friends or family members. This paradoxical position is accentuated in the construction of a more-than-human home, and it is also visible when pets pass away. This thesis argues that pets, these anomalous creatures, may help humans understand that there are no humans or animals within, only relations between them. Based on this argument, this thesis develops a sociological approach for analyzing the production of humanity and animality in relations between humans and other animals.
2.
Salmonsson, Lisa, 1978-
(författare)
The 'Other' Doctor : Boundary work within the Swedish medical profession
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about medical doctors with immigrant backgrounds who work in Sweden. Based on 15 qualitative interviews with medical doctors with immigrant backgrounds, this thesis explores the medical doctors’ feeling of professional belonging and boundary work. This thesis focuses mainly on the doctors’ experiences of being part of the Swedish medical profession while, at the same time, being regarded as ‘different’ from their Swedish medical counterparts. It starts off with the idea that medical doctors with immigrant backgrounds may have, or could be regarded as having, contradictory social positions. By virtue of being part of the Swedish medical profession, they belong to one of the most privileged groups in Swedish society. However, due to their immigrant background these doctors do not necessarily occupy a privileged position either within their profession or in society in general. This thesis shows that doctors with immigrant backgrounds feel that they are not perceived as full-fledged doctors, which seem related to how they are somewhat ‘othered'. The results show that these doctors cope with being seen as different from doctor with non-immigrant backgrounds, by using the notion of ‘migranthood’ as a resource in negotiations in everyday work life but they also do what they can to overcome the boundaries of ‘Swedishness’. Belonging should therefore be seen as having a formal and an informal side, as getting a Swedish license does not automatically mean that you feel belonging to, in this case, the Swedish medical profession. This seems to put doctors with immigrant backgrounds in a somewhat outsider within position, which seems having to do with boundaries between who is included in the ‘us’ and in the ‘them’. Lastly, these findings indicate that sociologists need to expand the understanding of professional groups to also include boundary work within these groups. In order to do so, this thesis argues that sociological theory on professional groups could be combined with sociological theory about social positions as that is one way to understand the outsider-within position that these doctors (and presumably other skilled migrants) have to cope with.
3.
Iversen, Clara, 1981-
(författare)
Making Questions and Answers Work : Negotiating Participation in Interview Interaction
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The current thesis explores conditions for participation in interview interaction. Drawing on the ethnomethodological idea that knowledge is central to participation in social situations, it examines how interview participants navigate knowledge and competence claims and the institutional and moral implications of these claims. The data consists of, in total, 97 audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a national Swedish evaluation of support interventions for children exposed to violence. In three studies, I use discursive psychology and conversation analysis to explicate how interview participants in interaction (1) contribute to and negotiate institutional constraints and (2) manage rights and responsibilities related to knowledge.The findings of study I and study II show that child interviewees actively cooperate with as well as resist the constraints of interview questions. However, the children’s opportunities for participation in this institutional context are limited by two factors: (1) recordability; that is, the focus on generating recordable responses and (2) problematic assumptions underpinning questions and the interpretation of interview answers. Apart from restricting children’s rights to formulate their experiences, these factors can lead interviewers to miss opportunities to gain important information. Also related to institutional constraints, study III shows how the ideal of model consistency is prioritized over service-user participation. Thus, the three studies show how different practices relevant to institutional agendas may hinder participation.Moreover, the findings contribute to an understanding of how issues of knowledge are managed in the interviews. Study II suggests the importance of the concept of believability to refer to people’s rights and responsibilities to draw conclusions about others’ thoughts. And the findings of study III demonstrate how, in evaluation interviews with social workers, children’s access to their own thoughts and feelings are based on a notion of predetermined participation; that is, constructed as contingent on wanting what the institutional setting offers. Thus, child service users’ low epistemic status, compared to the social workers, trumps their epistemic access to their own minds. These conclusions, about recordability, believability, and predetermined participation, are based on interaction with or about children. However, I argue that the findings relate to interviewees and service users in general. By demonstrating the structuring power of interactive practices, the thesis extends our understanding of conditions for participation in the institutional setting of social research interviews.
4.
5.
Gäddman Johansson, Richard
(författare)
Managing Vulnerability : Everyday Interaction in Sheltered Accommodations
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to develop our understanding of the performance and management of vulnerability in social interaction. The term vulnerability is used frequently within a wide range of scholarly fields, however common conceptions of vulnerability have been criticized for containing normative assumptions about our propensities for being exposed to and capabilities for dealing with adverse events and experiences. Through ethnographic investigations carried out in sheltered accommodations for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Sweden, the dissertation seeks to challenge how scholarship on care and disability has approached matters of vulnerability. The analysis shows that vulnerability was performed in two distinct overarching forms: 1) vulnerability related to “situational uncertainty” perceived as a threat to individuals’ health and personal safety and 2) vulnerability related to “ritual automatization” perceived as a threat to individuals’ personal freedom and well-being. The study found that pervasive institutional demands for transparency, accountability, uniformity and self-monitoring were loudly echoed to be the formally sanctioned best course of action for managing vulnerability in the context of sheltered accommodations. However, the analysis suggests that these types of strategies only address vulnerabilities related to situational uncertainty, whereas they may do more to exaggerate vulnerabilities related to ritual automatization. By performing and managing vulnerability, service users and support workers participated in “interaction rituals” with socially stratifying effects based on the individuals’ perceived or assumed competences. By considering the positions, relationships, and encounters between service users and support workers who engage on an everyday basis in sheltered accommodations which are conceptualized as “vulnerability-based” and “chimeric” interventions for care and service provision, the dissertation opens new perspectives on the performance and management of vulnerability in social interaction.
6.
Halldén, Karin, 1977-
(författare)
What's Sex Got to Do with It? Women and Men in European Labour Markets
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis consists of four empirical studies on women and men in European labour markets. Study I examines effects of the sex of the immediate supervisor on the time men and women spend in initial on-the-job training (OJT) in Sweden. The results show that men receive longer initial OJT than women do, but men’s time in training is independent of the supervisor’s sex. For women in the private sector, the chances of receiving long initial OJT are higher if the immediate supervisor is a man. Study II analyses effects of labour market institutions on the quality of part-time work by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time jobs in Britain and Sweden. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantages when compared to female full-time workers. Study III examines associations between maternal employment policies and wage penalties for mothers by skill in 10 European countries. The results indicate that, net of variation in female labour force participation, extensive publicly funded childcare is associated with a modest decrease in the motherhood wage penalty, regardless of skill. By contrast, paid maternity leave is weakly associated with a larger motherhood wage gap in less skilled jobs only. Study IV examines the extent to which women’s opportunities to attain positions of high workplace authority are related to maternal employment policies, such as paid parental leave and part-time work. Based on data from 25 European countries, the results show that a high proportion of women working long part-time hours is associated with a wider gender gap in the attainment of high authority positions, to the disadvantage of women. However, paid parental leave appears to be unrelated to the gender authority gap.
7.
Jukkala, Tanya, 1981-
(författare)
Suicide in Russia : A macro-sociological study
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This work constitutes a macro-sociological study of suicide. The empirical focus is on suicide mortality in Russia, which is among the highest in the world and has, moreover, developed in a dramatic manner over the second half of the 20th century. Suicide mortality in contemporary Russia is here placed within the context of development over a longer time period through empirical studies on 1) the general and sex- and age-specific developments in suicide over the period 1870–2007, 2) underlying dynamics of Russian suicide mortality 1956–2005 pertaining to differences between age groups, time periods, and particular generations and 3) the continuity in the aggregate-level relationship between heavy alcohol consumption and suicide mortality from late Tsarist period to post-World War II Russia. In addition, a fourth study explores an alternative to Émile Durkheim’s dominating macro-sociological perspective on suicide by making use of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems. With the help of Luhmann’s macro-sociological perspective it is possible to consider suicide and its causes also in terms of processes at the individual level (i.e. at the level of psychic systems) in a manner that contrasts with the ‘holistic’ perspective of Durkheim. The results of the empirical studies show that Russian suicide mortality, despite its exceptionally high level and dramatic changes in the contemporary period, shares many similarities with the patterns seen in Western countries when examined over a longer time period. Societal modernization in particular seems to have contributed to the increased rate of suicide in Russia in a manner similar to what happened earlier in Western Europe. In addition, the positive relationship between heavy alcohol consumption and suicide mortality proved to be remarkably stable across the past one and a half centuries. These results were interpreted using the Luhmannian perspective on suicide developed in this work.
8.
Wickford, Jenny, 1979
(författare)
Physiotherapists in Afghanistan. Exploring, encouraging and experiencing professional development in the Afghan development context
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Aim: The aim of the thesis is to analyze the matter of supporting professional development of physiotherapists in Afghanistan, and the issues involved in expatriate physiotherapists working with professional development cross-culturally and in development contexts. The thesis is based on two field studies, aspects of which are reported on in four papers. The first field study aimed at analyzing and describing the physiotherapy component of a disability programme. The aim of the second field study was to explore the process of a development project, in order to gain understanding of how such work can be done in a better way. Participant observation was used for the data production of both studies. The adult learning theories of transformative learning and situated learning were used as a theoretical framework in the thesis. Paper I describes the situation, needs and challenges for developing physiotherapy in Afghanistan. The therapists worked in isolation with little opportunity for further education or professional development. Their approach was mainly medical, where the work was dictated by the patients’ expectations and doctors’ recommendations. They used primarily passive methods of treatment, and their work was affected by cultural, religious and situational factors and they demonstrated a basic capacity of clinical reasoning. Paper II explores factors that impacted learning and professional development of the Afghan physiotherapists in the development project. Examples of these factors were: a pattern approach to treatment, linear thinking, and socially oriented decision-making that affected how new things learned were put into practice; concrete representations and an instrumental view of knowledge characterized learning approaches; language barriers, different interpretations of meaning and cultural codes challenged communication; and a prescriptive, encouraging approach of the expatriate physiotherapy development worker affected teaching and learning. Paper III explores professional ethics for Afghan physiotherapists and identifies two ethical tensions for the professional practice of Afghan physiotherapists: between individualistic and communitarian ethical perspectives, and between normative ethics and local morals. Paper IV is a critical reflection over the expatriate development worker’s development process through, and impact on, the development project. The perspective of the development worker is transformed from an idealistic helper to an enterprising learner as a consequence of active participation in and a self-critical reflection of the process. Conclusion: Working with and researching professional development cross-culturally and in development contexts is complex and requires consideration of many different factors. Cultural competency is essential, where to understand others one needs to first understand oneself, and oneself in relation to others. This requires support when in the field. Physiotherapy theory and practice must be adapted to the local context. Actions taken towards promoting learning and professional development must be firmly rooted in the Afghan context, and investigated, planned and implemented together with Afghan physiotherapists. The professional development of Afghan supervisors and teachers should be a priority. To encourage reflection of both Afghan and expatriate physiotherapists a communicative learning approach could be taken, where ethical challenges and disorienting dilemmas can form the basis of a reflective discourse and lead to increased understanding.
9.
10.
Johansson, Carl, 1986-
(författare)
The quest for cultural sensitivity : how cultural sensitivity can be practised while mitigating othering in Swedish eldercare
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The need to provide culturally sensitive care for older adults with immigrant backgrounds has been expressed by care professionals. Meanwhile there is a lack of consensus about how this should be done, and critical perspectives in research highlight the danger of causing this group to be viewed as problem bearers. This thesis explores the possibility of using the welfare theory of health to achieve cultural sensitivity while limiting the risk of othering. It uses a goal-oriented perspective of health that could be useful in an active ageing context. Study I used a mixed-methods design and the Delphi method. Study II used a quantitative design and survey method. Study III used a qualitative design and semi-structured interviews. Study IV used a qualitative design and vignette method.Study I showed that municipal decision-makers in eldercare find it hard to agree on what cultural sensitivity entails. They prefer to consider individual preferences in less complex cases, but look for fixed cultural categories in more complex cases. Study II showed that the welfare theory of health can be used as a viable, personal, holistic approach to health among older adults, and that it can be measured with the HACT questionnaire. Study III built on the questionnaire in Study II, expanding it to include immaterial capital theory. It elucidated how immaterial resources of older adults with immigrant backgrounds, such as social capital, influence their goals related to good ageing. Study IV showed that assistant nurses could use the welfare theory of health to increase cultural sensitivity in their work. However, like the decision makers, they looked for fixed cultural categories in more complex cases.The thesis shows how the welfare theory of health can be used to conceptualize cultural sensitive care with a starting point in the personal goals of older adults with immigrant backgrounds. With the help of immaterial capital theory, the thesis can shed light on the importance of immaterial resources, such as social capital, both in forming those goals and as resources to achieve them. With this knowledge, decisions and practices aiming to provide culturally sensitive care could be based on assessments of needs and resources without relying on preconceived and fixed ideas about other cultures.
