1.
2.
Sirén, Sebastian, 1985-
(author)
Social Policy in Development Contexts : Drivers, Mechanisms and Outcomes
2022
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Economic growth amidst staggering inequality in many low- and middle-income countries makes the quest to end global poverty more topical than ever. Calls to leave no one behind in the course of development underscore the need to reconsider the role of policy frameworks in emerging economies. Social policies have been expanded across the Global South during the last decades, and social protection is increasingly highlighted as a fundamental component of the global sustainable development agenda. This thesis, comprising three self-contained studies, analyses the drivers, mechanisms and outcomes of social policy reform in development contexts, asking which economic institutions could enable more rapid advancement towards ending poverty and reducing inequalities, and what conditions promote the expansion of such institutions?Study I investigates the driving forces of changes in social spending across 46 more recent democracies, with particular attention to the role of partisan politics. Using data from 1995 to 2015, multivariate fixed effect regressions reveal a positive association between left government and public social expenditures, also when controlling for structural and institutional factors. This finding indicates that interests and ideologies, articulated through partisan politics, matter for the evolution of social policy, also in development contexts.In light of the findings from this quantitative analysis, Study II investigates the mechanisms driving, and hampering, progress towards social policy expansion in a specific case. The politics surrounding a healthcare reform with the ambition to universalise access to public healthcare in Bolivia is examined using theory-guided process tracing methods. The study highlights how policy is shaped through an interaction between societal and state actors as well as how interests and ideas are intertwined in the process, but also how policy legacies give rise to reactive sequences militating against change.In Study III, the focus is on the outcomes of social policy. The study presents analyses of how government cash transfer systems moderate the effect of economic growth in both absolute and relative child poverty. Longitudinal data from 16 low- and middle-income countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) are analysed by means of descriptive statistics and multivariate regression techniques. Findings show that both economic growth and the expansions of transfer schemes are associated with declining absolute poverty. Meanwhile, growth is found to be related to reductions in relative child poverty primarily when combined with sufficiently extensive systems of government transfers, thus pointing to the relevance of social protection for inclusive growth.The findings from the three studies illustrate that central concepts from comparative welfare state research can be employed also in development contexts, converging on an analytical approach where changes in poverty and inequality are influenced by politics. Continued comparative analyses of social policies and their determinants in development contexts can accordingly generate much-needed insights into the causes of global poverty and inequality. Future research should further explore feedback effects of policy on politics and consider the potential synergies between social policy, equality, and economic growth.
3.
Bergman Blix, Stina, 1971-
(author)
Rehearsing Emotions : The Process of Creating a Role for the Stage
2010
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis takes as its starting point the dramaturgical metaphor of the world as a stage, which is used in sociological role theories. These theories often presume what stage acting is about in order to use it as a simile for every day acting. My intention is to investigate how stage actors actually work with their roles, in particular how they work with emotions, and how it affects their private emotions.The thesis draws on participant observation and interviews with actors during the rehearsal phase of two productions at a large theatre in Sweden. The results show that the inhabiting of a role for the stage is more difficult and painstaking than has been assumed in role theories so far. Shame and insecurity are common, particularly in the start up phase of the rehearsals. Interestingly, these emotions do not disappear with growing experience, but instead become recognized and accepted as part of the work process.The primary focus is the interplay between the actors' experience and expression of emotions, often described in terms of surface and deep acting, concepts which are elaborated and put into a process perspective. Analysis of the rehearsal process revealed that actors gradually decouple the privately derived emotional experiences that they use to find their way into their characters from the emotions that they express on the stage. Thus private experiences are converted to professional emotional experiences and expressions, triggered by situational cues. When the experience has been expressed the physical manifestation can be repeated with a weaker base in a simultaneous experience, since the body remembers the expression. It is important though, that the emotional expression is not completely decoupled from a concomitant experience; then the expression looses its vitality. The ability to professionalize emotions makes the transitions in and out of emotions less strenuous but can infiltrate and cause problems in the actors' intimate relations.
4.
Bildtgård, Torbjörn, 1970-
(author)
Hur maten blev en risk: Medicinens bidrag till regleringen av det svenska ätandet
2002
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to historically study the medical and political regulation of swedish eating, with a special focus on the contribution of medicine to such a regulation. In a first theoretical part the study is placed within a "sociology of food" tradition. It is argued that in order to understand modern eating a historical approach needs to be taken. It is also argued that the role of medicine and politics in shaping modern eating is often overlooked in sociology. For this purpose a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis is choosen to look at how food and eating has been problematised in medical and political documents over the last two centuries and what strategies, techniques and apparatuses have been developed to solve these problems.The empirical part consists of three interrelated studies. In the first study three qualitatively different historical medico/political approaches to food and eating are identified: an economising approach, a "hygienic nourishment" approach and finally a risk-management approach. It is argued that nutritional science has been been closely involved in setting the agenda for as well as legitimising a number of political concerns for more than a century. The second empirical study looks closer at how medicine has been involved in the regulation of eating at a micro-level. This is done through a study of how overeating/obesity has been problematised within medicine and how disciplinary background effects the way in which overeating is constructed as well as the techniques developed to treat it. Finally, the third study looks closer at how risk became a central category in the medical discourse. This is done by looking closer at the hypothesis that dietary fat was an important risk factor behind atherosclerotic heart-disease and the process it had to go through in order to reach medical concensus or near-concensus.Finally it is argued that we have to understand the modern concern with food risks not as a reaction to an essential state of the modern world but as a discursive effect to a large extent generated by the medical discouse around food.
5.
Kravchenko, Zhanna, 1978-
(author)
Family (versus) Policy : Combining Work and Care in Russia and Sweden
2008
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The twentieth century has witnessed a revolution in the ways in which the social division of labour is organised, and in terms of how waged work and caring for children are reconciled. This study explores family policy from the perspective of its capacity to manage the socio-economic risks emanating from combining the roles of breadwinner and caregiver which many parents are beginning to do in contemporary society. This study is focused on Russia and Sweden, countries which have a large share of their female population in the labour force and an institutionalised public policy directed towards meeting the challenges of childrearing in dual-earner families.In the first empirical stage of the study, I examine the establishment and development of family policies in these countries, and analyse their effects in terms of how they have attempted to reconcile the competing demands of work and family life in recent years, specifically, by focusing on three main components: parental leave regulations, the organisation of early childcare and education, and schemes of financial assistance and support for families with children (including their impact on poverty reduction, with the use of Luxemburg Income Survey data). The next stage, involved the exploration of the normative setting in which employment and parenting are realised. To do this I used survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and its modules on Family and Gender Roles. In the final stage, by conducting in-depth interviews with families in Stockholm and St. Petersburg I was able to examine how decisions about using the available public means of assistance and support are negotiated within households, and which factors, other than public policy, influence such decisions. The results of these three empirical parts are juxtaposed in order to establish the relation between official inputs into family policy and the complex picture of its outcome in the two countries.
6.
Polanska Vergara, Dominika, 1980-
(author)
The emergence of enclaves of wealth and poverty : A sociological study of residential differentiation in post-communist Poland
2011
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Since the fall of communism, some crucial political, economic and social changes have been taking place in the former communist societies. The objective of the thesis is to examine the processes of residential differentiation taking place in the urban landscape of the Polish city of Gdańsk after the introduction of the capitalist system. The focus is on different forms of residential differentiation and the social, economic and historical factors behind these forms. The empirical material that forms the basis of the thesis consists of interviews, newspaper articles, a questionnaire, official (national and local) reports and documents.Study I examines the way in which different social, economic, historical and physical conditions coincide in the formation of space and the processes of decline in the period of transformation in Poland. The focus lies on a specific residential area in the center of Gdańsk and the lack of improvements in this particular area, which would stop its successive decline.Study II explains the emergence of gated communities in the post-communist urban context and discusses the reasons for their increasing numbers and popularity. The main argument is that the popularity of gated communities is tightly intertwined with the communist past, emerging in reaction to the housing conditions that prevailed under communism.Study III investigates how social class markers are constructed in the discourse on gated communities in post-socialist Poland. The “new” capitalistic system, with its inherent social divisions, is described in the discourse as creating demands for “new” forms of housing, where gates function as separators, protectors and class identifiers.Study IV concentrates on the support for the formation of gated communities in the legal and regulatory framework in Poland since 1989. The paper asserts that the outcome of liberal politics and legal regulation in the country is the neglect of spatial planning and imprecise urban policies.
7.
Urban, Susanne, 1966-
(author)
Att ordna staden : Den nya storstadspolitiken växer fram
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The sociology of the city has two faces: one of threat and one of promises. Originally, the city was portrayed as a threat to social life and individual identity, while, in contrast, the neighbourhood was seen to include the promise of restoring basic social relations to the web of city life. Later, the neighbourhood itself came to be perceived as a threat, as it was seen to separate people from one another. The solution to this dilemma was that the neighbourhood should be an arena for meetings between different groups, supplying not strong ‘excluding’ bonds, but subtle ‘bridge-building’ ones.The aim of the first part in the thesis is to study the public view of the neighbourhood and its significance for social integration. The aim of the second part is to investigate the new metropolitan policy approach to attain the challenging goal of integration at the local municipal level. This is explored using the theoretical model of a democratic welfare society, as developed by Jürgen Habermas.Ethnic housing segregation, as a social problem, has evolved in several stages. In 1990 the promise became to combat ”problem areas” through various methods for integration, commitment, improved reputation, an increasing sense of community and environmental improvement. More recently, since 2000, the question of ethnic housing segregation appears to be being dealt with through a process of delegation of responsibility to various authorities with different areas of expertise and to local municipal authorities. This suggests a possible fragmentalization of approaches to ethnic housing segregation. In official discussion of ethnic housing segregation, an acknowledgement of the relational approach has been severely lacking. A review of the literature of neighbourhood effects shows that ethnic clustering can result in positive as well in negative effects. In a relational perspective, local networks are one of several other relations that, in combination with different structures and power distributions, effects integration between ethnic groups in the society.Principles from new metropolitan policy, referred to as ”bottom-up”, are similar to Habermas’ ideal. However, the concrete experiences highlight the difficulty in offering possibilities for rational communication, development of communicative knowledge, and even less communicative power. The new metropolitan policy has posed a new formulation of threat and promise. The dichotomy of segregation versus integration has developed into one of exclusion versus participation. The ideal has changed from formal to subjective integration, which includes civil participation in state business. The neighbourhood has served as one arena to start inclusive processes. The practice, on the contrary, is still dominated by measures aimed at making society work more efficiently through state intrusion into private matters i.e. governmentalization.
8.
9.
Tham, Pia, 1960-
(author)
Arbetsvillkor i den sociala barnavården : förutsättningar för ett kvalificerat arbete
2008
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis describes and analyzes the working conditions of child welfare social workers who responded to a comprehensive questionnaire (n=309, dropout rate 3 per cent).In Study 1, the working conditions of social workers new to the profession (0-2 years) were compared with those of social workers with longer experience. The study shows that less experienced workers were more often found working in areas characterized by worse socioeconomic conditions and in workgroups where many others were also new and inexperienced. Although they described some aspects of their working conditions more positively they tended to report more health problems.In Study 2, working conditions of the child welfare social workers were compared with those of other professional human service workers. The study shows that although social workers in general and child welfare social workers in particular made positive assessments of their working lives, social work was unusually demanding among human service professions on several measures of workload, complexity of tasks and quality of management.In Study 3, the associations between the child welfare social workers’ working conditions and their health and well-being were investigated, controlling for background variables. The negative consequences of high job demands, especially for psychological health and well being emerge.In Study 4, factors associated with the social workers’ intention to leave the job were investigated. The study showed that lack of human resource orientation within the organization was of greatest importance. The results are analyzed from two different perspectives; the effort/reward model and new institutional theory. The main conclusions are that improvement is needed of the introduction to the profession at the workplace, that the status of child protective work needs to be raised and that social workers need help to limit their responsibility load, more time and space for reflection, and greater valuation of their work.
10.
Ullberg, Susann, 1968-
(author)
Watermarks : Urban Flooding and Memoryscape in Argentina
2013
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The relationship between social experience and action in the context of recurrent disasters is often thought of in terms of adaptation. This study problematises this assumption from an anthropological perspective by analysing the memoryscape that mediates past experiences of disasters. The inquiry is based on translocal and transtemporal ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2004-2011 in the flood-prone city of Santa Fe in Argentina. The study examines how past flooding is remembered by flood victims in the middle- and low-income districts and by activists of the protest movement that emerged in the wake of the 2003 flood. It deals with flood memory in the local bureaucracy, in local historiography, myths and popular culture. The analysis reveals that the Santafesinian flood memoryscape is dynamically configured by evocative, reminiscent and commemorative modes of remembering, which are expressed in multiple forms, ranging from memorials and rituals to bureaucratic documents, infrastructure and everyday practices. The study addresses the relationship between memory, morality and social inequality and discusses the implications for questions regarding vulnerability, resilience and adaptation.
