1.
Olofsson, Anna
(författare)
Waves of controversy : gene technology in Dagens nyheter 1973-96
2002
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis investigates the public debate on gene technology, between 1973 and 1996, in one of the agenda-setting media in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter. Gene technology is one of the latest controversial technologies which characterise our present Western society. The main concern of the study is the dynamic of this mediated debate on gene technology, which represents variation in the intensity and content of the debate over time. Potential controversies in this debate have also been a major focus. The study is mainly based on a quantitative content analysis of all articles published by Dagens Nyheter with gene technology as the main theme, but also on a qualitative text analysis of a smaller amount of articles covering controversies within the same population of articles.The results show that the debate has ebbed and flowed in a more or less regular way, as four waves, and that the number of articles increases over time. Different themes have been in focus at different periods of time, each corresponding to a wave: Risk and safety in the late 1970s, ethics in the early 1980s, regulation in the end of the 1980s and finally applications of gene technology in the 1990s. Therefore, the 'RERA hypothesis' was formulated, suggesting that the overall themes of the public debate on a new technology will follow this specific sequence. It is also shown that the coverage is divided between two separate types of debates, or media packages, one reporting latest news and discoveries, and one discussing the technology more critically. This latter debate covers the explicit expressions of the underlying controversy between the scientific and the humanistic view of technology in society.The author's main conclusion is that the public debate on gene technology follows a wave-like pattern corresponding to cycles of attention given to the issue, and that the characteristics are context initiated. Real world events trigger the underlying controversy between the scientific and humanistic point of view, which, if it fits media logic, is exposed in the media. The media package characterised by controversy brings with it the coverage of general news, and as the controversy ends, interest cools off and so does media attention. Waves of controversy arise.
2.
Ekholm, Sara
(författare)
Föräldraskap och klimatoro – betydelsen av omsorg
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of the thesis is to study the relationships between parenthood, care and worry about the consequences of climate change and how these relate to climate behaviour. The thesis is based on the argument that care affect the degree of worry for the person to whom the care is directed and that the social context surrounding the individual has an influence on their experiences and worries about risks, in this case climate risks. In relation to climate change worry, it addresses differences in care practice between parents and people who are not parents, and between mothers and fathers. Time and practice with caring responsibilities may differ between these groups and may therefore also relate to levels of worry. Care practice can thus be one of several aspects that can be significant for climate change worry. Four studies have jointly addressed the overall purpose of the thesis and a ‘mixed methods’ approach has been used where quantitative and qualitative methods have been combined. The studies have thus complemented each other through four different sets of empirical material: three sets of quantitative survey data with random samples and one set of qualitative interview data. The empirical context of the survey studies includes a regional and a national survey in Sweden and a European survey. The qualitative material is based on interviews with respondents from several regions in Sweden that are vulnerable to climate change. The results of the thesis as a whole show a recurring pattern, in a Swedish context, regarding the relationship between parenthood and worry about the consequences of climate change. They show that parents in general are more worried about climate change than people who are not parents (Articles 1, 2 and 3). So, this pattern is reflected in the three independent surveys mentioned above, conducted at different times over a six-year period. The results also show that women are generally more worried than men are about the consequences of climate change. Fathers, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to experience climate change worry than men who are not fathers, a difference that is not evident between mothers and women who are not mothers (Articles 2 and 3). One of the studies (Article 3) examine whether the role of parenthood, as well as the role of mothers and fathers, differs between three care regimes (Orloff, 2002), in relation to climate change worry. Regimes here refer to normative and regulatory systems that are not reduced to individual institutions in society (Hood, Rothstein & Baldwin, 2001). It is only in the care regime prevailing in Sweden that parenthood reveals a significantly greater degree of climate change worry, both between parents and people who are not parents and between fathers and men who are not fathers. One possible explanation for this may be the nature of care regimes and how they relate to the individual, including the regulation of care time structures for both men and women through parental insurance. The fact that climate change worry increases for men who become fathers may be about the development of “caring masculinities” (Elliot, 2016) that relate to men’s emotional experiences such as worry, here through their spending time with their children. This seems to be particularly evident for men who become fathers in contexts where men are given more time for care practice, as shown in the Swedish context. Parents’ worry about the impact of climate change thus appears to be linked to care practice. A term for this kind of worry is referred to in the thesis as care-worry (Article 4) and includes a worry rooted in caring for and having a responsible attitude towards other people, both towards the specific child being cared for, and a concern for people in general and for future generations. This is supported by van Manen’s (2002) argument that worry is part of caring. People’s care-worry is also shaped by the specific context of discourses about caring, worry and risk (see Lupton, 2013; see also Giritli Nygren, Olofsson & Öhman, 2020). Based on parents’ experiences of climate change, the concept of care-worry has been empirically explored (Article 4) and reveals four ideal types that can illustrate parental care-worry in different ways. These are the worrying type, the trusting type, the calculating type and the security-seeking type. Differences between the ideal types are evident in the degree of worry, sense of uncertainty about the future and desire for control or security, with the common link of taking responsibility for the climate situation. Parents’ different types of climate behaviour can also be related to their type of care-worry. The worrying type talks about the climate situation with others, while the trusting type cares about sustainable consumption and is confident that global climate action will solve the climate situation. The calculating type focuses primarily on a climate-mitigating approach, such as reduced energy consumption, and the security-seeking type on a lifestyle adapted to the climate by means of such things as sustainable housing. Parents’ care-worry thus seems to relate to practical action with climate behaviour that takes personal responsibility for limiting the impact of climate change on future generations. The overall conclusions and contributions of the thesis are thus essentially that parenthood is significant for worry about climate change in the Swedish care regime, i.e. that parents have greater climate change worry than those who are not parents. It is also the case that in Sweden fathers’ climate change worry is greater than that of men who are not fathers, a difference that does not appear in women who become mothers. Caring for children can thus increase worry about the consequences of climate change, i.e. parents experience care-worry in relation to future climate risks that their children and other people may face. A further conclusion is that care-worry can also be a motivating aspect to act on climate change by limiting one’s climate impact for the sake of future generations.
3.
Linnell, Mikael, 1976-
(författare)
Scenarios we live by : Theorizing anticipatory practices for societal security
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis explores and theorizes practices for generating knowledge and experience of possible futures in the present. Often, our unreflected everyday actions are clearly focused on the future. We plan future events into calendars, buy insurances, follow weather forecasts, and practice for performances of various kinds, all to reduce the uncertainties that the future brings. Various societal areas have developed specialized and systematic ways of generating knowledge in order for people to prepare for possible future events. A particular and extensive area is that involving societal security and preparedness for extraordinary events. The thesis explores various aspects of futures-making practices in the overall field of societal security, with a special focus on recent measures to strengthen the public's emergency preparedness. The overall aim is to deepen knowledge about the contemporary use of futures-making practices (such as imagination and enactment) and related techniques (such as scenario writing and simulations). Societal security and emergency preparedness have recently come to be recognized nationally and globally in ways that we have not experienced since the Cold War era. The empirical backdrop of the thesis tells about some major events that occurred during the first five years of the new millennium. During this period, a number of terrorist attacks and natural disasters occurred which greatly affected futures-making practices in areas related to societal security and preparedness. Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, many actors in the security business began to implement new, or revived, ways of relating to the future. From previously focusing mainly on plausible events, interest now turned to possible and unexpected events. Following the criticized management of hurricane Katrina in 2005, a visionary work was initiated with the aim of creating an inclusive and all-encompassing culture of preparedness, a culture that would involve all sectors and actors of society, including the public. The examples may by from a unilateral American context, however the events can also be perceived as part of a global trend with local variations. A trend that includes new ideas about public participation in societal preparedness, as well as new ways in which we create preliminary representations of possible futures in order to prepare for them. In order to clarify different ways in which we relate to the future, I apply cultural geographer Ben Anderson’s (2010) classification of anticipatory practices. Anderson highlights three principal practices: imagination, calculation, and performance. The thesis explores how futures are imagined and enacted through the techniques of scenario writing and simulation, in four separate studies (articles I-IV). Studies I and II examine how imaginations of future emergencies are articulated in interviews with local safety coordinators and volunteers in Sweden, as well as in institutional exercise scenarios in the US. The first study shows how collaboration between the public and professionals is perceived as an ideal for managing societal stress and, furthermore, how various forms for organizing the voluntary public may facilitate for or interfere with fruitful collaboration. The second study investigates how governmental authorities has popularized emergency preparedness through a campaign aiming to prepare people for a possible zombie invasion. The study shows how the campaign makes use of a dynamic interplay between reality and fiction, realism and irrealism, and affirmation and distancing. Studies III and IV examine the meanings of spatiality, materiality, and affect in large-scale disaster simulations for the public. The studies are based on documents and observations collected and conducted in Japan and Turkey in 2014 and 2015. With the third study, I wish to contribute to existing debates on experience design and affective atmospheres in disaster simulation, while in the fourth study I explore enactment-based exercises and experience design through a lens of Foucauldian governmentality and spatial rationality. The four articles are given a common theoretical framework consisting of sociological perspectives on time and temporality, which highlight how the conditions for futures-making practices has evolved through changes in people’s relation to the future. The overall results in the thesis indicate that possibilities for the public to participate in enactment-based exercises are currently limited. However, when made publicly available, exercises are most often designed as entertaining, sensory, and affective learning experiences. Present imaginaries and enactments of negative futures are thus enmeshed with considerations regarding what is possible and probable, real and unreal, near and distant. Furthermore, facilities for public exercises are part of a complex apparatus involving political, economic, and educational perspectives, as well as aspects of entertainment, urban planning, educational technology, and public space.
4.
Montelius, Elin, 1983-
(författare)
Att göra det materiella virtuellt : Subjektifiering, moral och motstånd i konstruktionen av den riskfyllda mathållningen
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Den här avhandlingen syftar till att bidra till förståelsen av hur risk konstrueras och förändras i diskussioner om mathållning på nätforum och vilka subjektspositioner som görs möjliga då risk uttrycks i relation till klass och kön. Mat har kommit att få stor uppmärksamhet i samhällsdiskussionen, men i det moderna samhället är det inte bristen på mat som står i fokus, utan snarare de val människor måste göra relaterade till mat. Vad vi äter har kommit att bli en signal om vem vi är och vem vi vill vara, men diskussioner kring mat handlar också om vad som betraktas som riskfyllt eller inte. Därtill har mat länge använts för att göra distinktioner mellan människor baserat på maktstrukturer som klass och kön. Avhandlingen är inspirerad av en feministisk poststrukturalistisk ansats vilken används för att undersöka hur maktrelationer och subjektifieringsprocesser uttrycks i konversationer på nätbaserade diskussionsforum.Genom att ta avstamp i den kritiska riskforskningen samt i genusvetenskaplig forskning visar avhandlingen hur risk konstrueras genom riskperformativ. Riskperformativ, uttryckta i det virtuella rummet, medför att olika ”sanningar” konstrueras runt mathållningar vilket får konsekvenser får vilka subjektspositioner som möjliggörs. Genom riskperformativen konstruerats olika förväntningar om vad som kan och bör sägas för att konstituera sig som ett ansvarsfullt och moraliskt subjekt. Därigenom görs olika riskpositioner, det vill säga klass- och könskodade subjektspositioner som konstitueras i relation till riskkonstruktioner, tillgängliga. Analysen visar också hur utrymme för betydelseförskjutningar och motstånd mot riskkonstruktioner skapas i diskussionerna, vilket sker genom dels bekännelsen som teknik och dels genom en teknik som här kallas en responsibiliserad paternalism varigenom det individualiserade ansvaret för upprätthållandet av självreglering inför risk uttrycks i samverkan med kollektivt upprätthållna klass- och könsnormer. I avhandlingen analyseras därigenom hur kön och klass görs i samverkan med riskkonstruktioner på sätt där dessa förstärker varandra.
5.
Wall, Erika, 1978-
(författare)
Riskförståelse : Teoretiska och empiriska perspektiv
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis introduces the concept of ‘sense-making of risk’ (riskförståelse) for the purpose of the theoretical and empirical study of the individual’s sense-making of risk. Particular weight is attached to an examination of the term’s various components, its compass, and the relationship between sense-making of risk and behaviour. The premise is that risk is created and defined by the common conceptions that exist within the framework of a specific social context; the effect is to focus attention on the significance of social and cultural contexts. To provide a full picture of sense-making of risk, and risk behaviour, and to study these phenomena using a variety of methodological perspectives, the data was gathered from both polls and focus-group interviews. It is in the first article, based on a focus-group interview study, that the concept of sense-making of risk is introduced: the empirical results demonstrate that it can be used to chart how young people with similar risk perceptions differ in their understanding of a variety of risks. A theoretical model is proposed that establishes that there are two dimensions to the individual’s sense-making of risk. The second article considers young people’s risk behaviour in traffic milieus. The principal conclusion drawn in this study is that the individual’s sense-making of risk is insufficient to explain behaviour in relation to risk: the spatial context must also be taken into account. The third article focuses on the relationship between place attachment and sense-making of risk, and demonstrates that various aspects of place attachment have implications for the individual’s sense-making of risk. The fourth and final article offers a cluster analysis. The article’s most important result is its refinement of the theoretical concepts. Structure of meaning is singled out as the basis for the individual’s sense-making of risk. In its empirical application the concept was shown to be useful in studying the behavioural differences between various social groups, since grouping by structure of meaning furnishes an explanation for variations in risk and risk-reducing behaviour. The introductory and concluding chapters assemble the studies’ findings and offer a full account of the concept of sense-making of risk. The thesis’ most important conceptual contribution is to the question of how the individual arrives at a personal sense-making of risk. However, it will fall to future studies to establish the concept’s general applicability by considering its theoretical ramifications and empirical implementation. In this way, sense-making of risk can take its place in a specifically sociological conceptual apparatus that focuses on how the individual relates to risk.
6.
Lundgren, Minna
(författare)
Boundaries of displacement : Belonging and Return among Forcibly Displaced Young Georgians from Abkhazia
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation explores the implications of borders and boundaries for how forcibly displaced young Georgians from Abkhazia understand issues of belonging and return. My theoretical framework draws from theories on home and belonging as well as theories on border and boundary making, and locates them in geographies of uncertainty – or riskscapes – areas characterized by conflict and/or inequality. Empirical data was collected through two sets of interviews in Zugdidi near the border to Abkhazia and a questionnaire survey in Zugdidi and the capital Tbilisi. These data have been analysed through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The young respondents providing material for this research do not constitute a homogenous group. Some of the respondents have family still living in Abkhazia or even partly grew up in the area; others have never been there. The primary goal of the Georgian government has been that the displaced population should return to their homes, and the government’s efforts for local integration has long been insufficient. Since no peace accords have been signed, a lack of security prevents a large-scale return. Notwithstanding increased border controls that have made it difficult to visit former homes, some young people still cross the de facto border. By doing this they contest both the Abkhazian de facto authorities and the border as a symbol of separation and differentiation, while claiming a right to belong in Abkhazia. Property and social relations in Abkhazia contribute to stronger connections and an imperative to return. On the other hand, experience of hardship in contemporary Abkhazia has resulted in some young people not considering return as a viable option. Youth who never visited Abkhazia depend mainly on other peoples’ memories and political discourse to create emotional bonds to the area their parents fled and to form their ideas of return. Results from the quantitative survey indicate that youth living in Tbilisi, closer to the political centre, to a higher extent intend to return than their peers in Zugdidi. Meanwhile young people’s experiences of everyday life in current dwellings in relative stability create emotional bonds to their present place of living. These experiences challenge both collective processes and experiences from Abkhazia when it comes to maintaining the desire to return. This research offers insights into the human consequences of war and conflict. More specifically, this dissertation sheds light on how young internally displaced persons (IDPs) are living in a borderland (in both temporal and spatial terms) characterized by uncertainty-- between the past and the future as well as between Georgia and Abkhazia. Practices of exclusion and segregation are constitutive of the borders and boundaries that permeate life experiences of the forcibly displaced youth. Furthermore, these borders and boundaries are situated in riskscapes of disputed belongings, which makes this borderland more or less stable for different groups of IDPs. This dissertation contributes to an increased understanding of how political aspirations and personal desire to return preserves instability and uncertainty as long as return is not possible.
