1.
Ciziri, Nubin
(author)
(Dis)Integrating Families : Refugees’ social histories and their encounters with education in Sweden
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Refugees are often perceived as a homogeneous group and defined by their present conditions; the diversity of their social histories is thus overlooked. (Dis)Integrating Families explores the extent to which the backgrounds of Kurdish refugees from Syria shape their encounters with education in Sweden, as the key vehicle of state-led integration.The thesis breaks with the mainstream perspective on integration by emphasising refugees as products of their social histories. Family interviews are used to analyse parents’ backgrounds based on their individual, family, and social background, including the Syrian context. The focus is on Kurdish refugee families arriving in Sweden from Syria after the war in 2011 as parents encounter the constraint to further educate themselves and their children. Kurds in diaspora work hard at keeping their past alive, despite lacking a Kurdish education system and the disruption of migration. This particular case provides sociological insight into how individuals’ social histories shape their response to constraints from ‘receiving societies,’ drawing on Abdelmalek Sayad’s holistic view of immigration as determined by emigration in critique of ‘State thought,’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus.This thesis helps understand how forced migration challenges parents’ former dispositions. While in some respects, class background determines their strategies in Sweden, in others, their social status as refugees blurs the differences related to class and reinforces their national identity, which they relate to their sociopolitical history of oppression and statelessness. Their present status thus challenges family dynamics in terms of generation and gender, thereby highlighting the constraints they face in Sweden. While acknowledging the weight of these constraints on parents, the thesis shows how their engagement with education is shaped by their social histories and how their Kurdish identity becomes a source of unity beyond class.In contrast to the normative view that integration is the ultimate goal for refugees, this thesis reveals a constant process of negotiation between present and past social ties; between integration and (dis)integration. This suggests that integration in specific domains of social life in Sweden entails the (dis)integration from past identities previously internalised as ways of existing in the world. In summary, the dynamic between integration and (dis)integration can be seen as habitus clivé in the making.
2.
Duntava, Aija, 1985-
(author)
A View on the Invisible : A Study of Relationships between Different Aspects of Health in Populations
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis studies relationships between different aspects of health. Health is a multi-faceted concept consisting of various aspects: most commonly morbidity, functional limitation, subjective health, and mortality. The relationships between these aspects, however, are not fully understood, so this thesis aims at contributing to our knowledge on the topic. Three studies are included, each with a particular aim within the general objective.The first study is a systematic review of the articles that have attempted to study more than two aspects of health in one model. The review maps out the field of study, presenting and summarising the results of the articles selected to review, thereby also highlighting gaps in the research. One of its conclusions is that studies approaching health as one interconnected system are rare and that the relationships between the different aspects of health do not consistently show significant effects on each other. Additionally, many population groups in terms of age and place of residence are understudied. The findings from the systematic review have largely guided the scientific curiosity of the following two empirical studies.The second study proposes and tests a parsimonious model of health structure consisting of morbidity, functional limitation, and subjective health on the adult respondents of European Social Survey (n=32,679) using structural equation modelling. The findings suggest that, in general, the proposed model holds true but there are age and gender differences in the health structure.The third study explores the variations in the health structure of the adult population in 17 countries in three European regions (North, East, and West). The results show that the model does not apply in all the studied groups across the regions. Clear gender difference in health structure exist in the Western and Northern parts of Europe but not in the East. As to age groups, the analyses show that young adults are similar in their health structure across the regions while there are regional differences between the other two age groups.This thesis shows that it is necessary to study the relationships between different aspects of health as one interconnected system. Furthermore, when health is at centre of scientific inquiry its multiple dimensions as well as age, gender, and regional variations should be acknowledged and taken into account.
3.
Ginnerskov, Josef, 1989-
(author)
Quest for Sociology : Revisiting Prevailing Understandings of a Discipline with Computational Text Analyses of Dissertations
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
What is sociology? For centuries sociologists have struggled to answer this question and repeatably proclaimed that their discipline is in crisis. The problem has generated a field of its own, the sociology of sociology, where sociologists of knowledge offer concepts for how the paradigmatic status of discipline and its crisis ought to be understood. Yet, the foundation of these understandings has often been limited to conceptual reasonings, historical exposes, and anecdotes from prominent scholars. Following the increasing availability of digitized texts and the development of computational techniques, new venues have been opened for investigating the empirical bearing of what sociology is. This dissertation offers a synthesis of, and a contribution to, this growing literature at the intersection of the sociology of knowledge and computational social science.The starting point is a review of literature in the sociology of sociology that has found that our discipline is believed to exist in a state of fragmentation, lacks a paradigm, and is conditioned by the context of its production. Akin to the supposed crisis, these conceptualizations are often taken for granted rather than being empirically put to test. This is why this dissertation aims to shed new light on the crisis of sociology by empirically scrutinizing prevailing disciplinary understandings with an interpretative and theory-driven methodological approach to computational text analysis (i.e., word correlation networks, topic modeling, stylometry, and shallow neural networks). To account for textual representations of sociological knowledge that are firmly institutionalized and exist across different local contexts, hundreds of dissertations in this discipline published in Sweden between 1980 and 2019 by five main universities have been digitized to form two corpora – 380 full-texts and 850 abstracts. Using these corpora, the conceptualizations are operationalized to be able to scrutinize, and trace, reoccurring instances where dissertations allude to certain images of sociology, which, drawing on the work of Margaret Masterman, can be regarded as crude replicas of paradigms. The study design allows us to problematize prevailing understandings of what sociology is.In contrast to the notion of fragmentation, the corpora are constituted by a core conditioned by local institutions attuned to different paradigmatic images of sociology. A discrepancy is also found between the two corpora where the abstracts appear to follow a divide between qualitative and quantitative research, and the full-texts are characterized by five paradigms with distinct methodological, epistemological, and ontological positions. These results suggest that the coexistence of multiple paradigms has been conflated with fragmentation and that sociologists tend to present their knowledge along the lines of simplified dichotomies. In response to the crisis, a more fruitful approach might be to embrace paradigm pluralism.As a contribution to the sociology of knowledge, this dissertation is an example of how the methodological divide can be overcome by merging insights from the conceptual strand with a hermeneutical take on computational methods to empirically explore taken-for-granted assumptions behind the production of disciplinary knowledge.
4.
Lillo Cea, Pablo Antonio, 1989-
(author)
The World-Class Ordination : A Field Theory Approach to the Study of Global University Rankings
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Using Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, this thesis explores the idea of a “world-class university” by analysing the narratives and dynamics that shape this classification in the context of global university rankings. It uses a combination of methods, including historical studies, bibliometrics, multiple correspondence analysis, and social network analysis to examine the socio-historical factors determining world-class status in higher education.The research reinterprets the rise and evolution of global university rankings, framing it as a process of field formation. Influential entities like the IREG Observatory and the Center for World-Class Universities have been instrumental in fostering a global discourse that encourages competition among higher education institutions, leading to the establishment of a worldwide system for evaluating academic excellence.A comparative analysis of institutions, nations, and regions based on ranking results over two decades spotlights the enduring dominance of U.S. and U.K. institutions amidst the rising presence of Chinese. Focusing on 2022 data from the Academic Ranking of World Universities, QS World University Ranking, and Times Higher Education World University Ranking using Multiple Correspondence Analysis. It finds that prestige, heavily influenced by private reputation surveys, outweighs performance or internationalisation metrics in these rankings. The analysis also reveals a contrast between international recruitment and a domestic orientation, with English-speaking institutions attracting more international students and faculty. A dichotomy in scientific recognition emerges, opposing older institutions with award-winning alumni and staff to younger universities excelling in citations per faculty. Euclidean clustering supports these findings, identifying distinct groups of institutions, such as domestically focused Asian institutions and well-rounded Anglo-Saxon universities.Lastly, the thesis examines patterns of academic collaboration using social network analysis, with a focus on Swedish, English, and German higher education institutions. It observes a shift in partnerships from American to Asian counterparts, indicating Asia’s ascending role in the global academic landscape and reflecting changes in global university rankings. Overall, this study enhances our comprehension of higher education from a global perspective, uncovering the pervasive dominance of the Anglo-Saxon educational model in university evaluations, where the quantification of reputation is misrecognised as academic excellence.
5.
Lindegren, Stina, 1982-
(author)
Support and Treatment for Men Convicted of Sexual Offending : Readiness, Change, and Previous Help-Seeking
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Social work plays a crucial role in the prevention of sexual abuse. Such prevention can involve protection for potential victims but also measures directed at those who perpetrate sexual abuse. However, research on desistance among those who have committed sexual offences, their treatment readiness, and help-seeking prior to conviction is scarce.This doctoral thesis aims to explore support and treatment from the perspective of adult men convicted of sexual offences in Sweden. What are their experiences of change after participation in sex offender treatment, and how do they engage in risk-reducing interventions? Particular attention is placed on the roles of relatives and society.Data consist of pre- and post-tests (n = 99) and in-depth interviews with men convicted of sexual crimes (n = 19). The interviews were carried out with both participants (n = 13) and non-participants (n = 6) in sex offender treatment.Participants’ self-reports (n ~ 26) and therapist ratings (n = 46) analysed in paper I suggest that participation in the sex offender programme called SEIF may be associated with changes in criminogenic needs, potentially reducing issues linked to recidivism. However, caution is advised due to methodological limitations. Further studies are needed to determine effectiveness. According to paper II, interviewees who participated in SEIF (n = 13) appeared to have started building new prosocial narrative identities, indicative of early desistance.The findings in paper III suggest that non-rehabilitative, punitive elements within correctional systems can create barriers to readiness. Nevertheless, supportive and non-punitive responses from staff, close ones, or fellow inmates seemed to counteract these negative loops. This hypothesised relational mechanism, promoting readiness, is termed looping disruption. Paper IV examines help-seeking behaviours and indicates that prevention efforts can either succeed or fail at various societal levels. Barriers to seeking help include a lack of awareness of the problem, fear of social consequences, and a neglectful welfare system. Professionals with specific knowledge and focus were seen as providing meaningful support, while the involvement of loved ones was a central motivator.In conclusion, a non-judgmental, person-centred, and supportive approach is recommended, as it seems to increase willingness to change. Professionals may need specific training to tackle the challenges associated with this task. Furthermore, the thesis highlights how the significant stigma associated with sexual offences is a major obstacle when reintegrating individuals convicted of such crimes into society.
6.
Waddling, Jennifer
(author)
Playing with the Global : Family Dynamics and International Education in a Marketised Preschool Landscape
2024
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The surge in popularity of international schools around the world has extended to the domain of Early Childhood Education and Care. In the past few decades, international preschools have become more commonplace in marketised educational contexts. This thesis studies families who enrol their children in international preschools in Stockholm, Sweden, framing the rise of these institutions as embedded within two aspects of globalisation: the growing worth of transnational assets and the increasing prevalence of transnational families, encompassing those raising their children in foreign countries and those composed of parents from different national backgrounds. The study, departing from Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology, examines preschool choice from two angles. The first inspects the social recruitment of international preschools through statistical analysis of individual-level register data concerning families. This analysis considers social characteristics such as education level, income, and migration histories. Secondly, through interviews with middle-class parents, it explores families’ choice-making processes, examining how they navigate their children’s preschool options and ultimately select international preschools. The results show that international preschools cater to families with strong and weak social positions and those with Swedish and foreign backgrounds, which evidences a widespread belief in the value of transnational attributes. However, differences between international preschools’ specific languages highlighted that some languages are more closely linked with social advantage than others. Preschool choice was found to be shaped by complex dynamics, wherein social class, gender, migration experiences, family structures, and parenting cultures intersected with the local context and supply of preschools, both international and not. This first encounter with institutionalised education emerged as a situation where families renegotiated their family identity and priorities. Due to preschool children’s young age, transnational assets were not always easily transmitted or acquired, especially when parents desired divergent international and national investments. Such acquisition demanded considerable efforts in parenting, commuting to international preschools, and altering family dynamics. Preschools were shown to serve as providers of transnational assets and as possible hindrances to the particular forms of internationality families wished to nurture in their children.
7.
Anderson, Lakin
(author)
Tensions in Transdisciplinary Research : A study of a climate research group
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In a time of sustainability predicaments and ‘grand challenges’, transdisciplinarity has been put forward as an approach through which researchers can engage with societal transformation for a better world. This study examines tensions that arise in the on-the-ground efforts of researchers to establish and manage a transdisciplinary research group within a Norwegian university. Tensions have been of interest in both studies of science and studies of organizations. Scholars have inquired into the ways in which tensions between interrelated, divergent demands influence the work of scientific knowledge production and organizational life. Transdisciplinary research groups, centers and institutes are proliferating, yet studies of the tensions and challenges they face at the micro-level remain nascent. Drawing on intermittent fieldwork over a two-year period, this dissertation analyses a local case in which climate and energy researchers took a transdisciplinary approach in establishing a “societally engaged” research group and research center in a social sciences department. Key questions are: which tensions do they encounter? How do they respond to them? The study makes use of concepts on tensions and paradox developed in organization and management studies to inform discussions on challenges in inter- and trans-disciplinary research in practice. The case study identifies, illustrates, and analyses several tensions salient for researchers: between the need for both consolidation and interrelation; between the need to grow and formalise the group while also maintaining its closeness and values; between ideas of researchers’ relationship to societal change as both distant and engaged; and between the need to maintain academic autonomy while providing usefulness to non-academic actors. Various responses to these tensions are identified and explored, including defending against, and actively embracing them. The findings allow for rethinking transdiscipclinary research in practice, with implications for research managers, practitioners, and policy makers.
8.
Caballero, Adelaida, 1986-
(author)
Shortchanged : Elderly Women Street Vendors in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Normative assumptions regarding reciprocity between adult children and elderly parents continue to dominate narratives on later life in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet strenuous socioeconomic conditions make it difficult for families to meet expectations of care and support. In Malabo, elderly women commonly engage in economic activities such as street vending for survival. Separation from male partners and high unemployment among men and youths often turn senior women into sole providers in multi-generational households. The cultural script of self-sacrificial motherhood, however, leads people to believe that these senior women are hardly entitled to demand reciprocal support – that as proper mothers and grandmothers, they are merely fulfilling a duty. Gender-based forms of exploitation and feelings of desertion characterize family life for many older Equatoguinean women. Elderly women street vendors who live and work in Malabo are also mistreated outside their homes. Harassment, humiliation, and physical invisibilization are some of the means by which ‘patriotic citizens’ and representatives of state authorities protect the government’s narrative of ‘unprecedented development.’The thesis explores how elderly women street vendors try to counter the routinized types of violence to which they are exposed and how they strive to assert themselves as persons. I approach the women’s articulations of personhood through the concept of moral economy and discuss them with regard to normative African relationality. The empirical basis of the work is fourteen months of uninterrupted ethnographic field research in Malabo between 2017 and 2018. The analyses rely on social gerontological theories on dependency, intergenerational tensions, prosocial behaviors, gender identity, sexuality, and autonomy, as well as on anthropological theories on the category of the person, everyday violence, morality, gossip, and older women’s sexuality in Africa. The thesis aims to contribute to humanistic gerontological literature by highlighting the meanings that autonomy can take for seniors who live in conditions of no institutional support, normalized violence at home, gender prejudice, and the kind of ageism that arises from narratives that equate social advancement with development, hence identifying old age with anti-values such as ignorance and backwardness. Findings suggest that, among elderly women street vendors in Malabo, striving toward a sense of autonomous personhood is not only a means for coping with the challenges of aging in a difficult socioeconomic milieu, but also a more encompassing rejection of ‘retraditionalized’ national politics and authoritarianism.
9.
Chabosseau, Tom
(author)
Sailing or Sinking Together : Container Shipping in Digital Platform Capitalism
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis addresses the classical research problem of collaboration among competing actors in the context of digital platform capitalism. This study investigates how ocean carriers attempted, and sometimes managed, to set standards, exchange data, and jointly develop supply chain management platforms despite the alleged risks of doing so. Using a mixed methods research design articulating quantitative and qualitative analysis, the investigation sheds light on how the incumbent company that launched those two initiatives engaged in meaning-making processes with the challengers it hoped to get on board. Following those meaning-making processes illustrates the hurdles for field-dominating actors to stimulate collaboration as their position is perceived by other actors as resulting from predatory practices and thereby casts doubts on the nature of their actual motives. The thesis first provides an analysis of the structure of the field of container shipping by characterising the variety of positions it contains and their relationships. The aim is to set the stage for the second part of the research design that delves into the emergence of two digital initiatives: the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) and Tradelens. The first initiative consisted of the establishment of an industry-wide organisation to provide container shipping with a set of standards, while the second had the ambition to serve as a for-profit digital infrastructure for the exchange of information on container journeys. The emergence of digital collaboration traces back to the activities of a group of IT executives in search of solutions to their common issues outside the boundaries of their organisations. While that professional group succeeded in making standardisation a key concern for the industry, as shown by the establishment of DCSA, the exchange of standardised data turned out to be much more problematic. The case of Tradelens underlines the boundaries of digital collaboration in a competitive field. While the incumbent that launched the platform managed to alleviate doubts about its willingness to derive a competitive advantage from the platform, it never managed to do it to the extent where the platform would gain operational traction. This study adds new knowledge to the field of digital platform capitalism by turning the attention to a case where platforms affect interfirm relationships by increasing the need for collaboration and by showing the utility, against technological-centred approaches, to rely on the tools of neo-institutional theories to grasp how technological change is embedded in the long-term trajectory of an industry.
10.
Kjellberg, Josefin
(author)
Fri från (efter)våldet? : Om partnervåldsutsatta kvinnors motstånd, uppbrott och stödbehov
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation investigates resistance strategies and leaving processes of female survivors of male intimate partner violence (IPV), and sheds light on the importance of support from social workers when survivors try to break free from IPV. It also contributes knowledge on how Swedish social workers in social service support units and women’s shelters (run by NGOs or companies) interpret and handle support needs of survivors. This is investigated through interviews with 17 adult Swedish survivors and 49 Swedish social workers in 13 different organizations, and through observations of social worker meetings and analysis of texts from the organizations. The data is analyzed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2022).Responding to Hydén’s (2005) and Rajah and Osborn’s (2022) call for further research on resistance, the dissertation shows how survivors may utilize several resistance strategies to end violence: active opposition, covert resistance, help-seeking, and leaving (cf. Rajah & Osborn, 2022). It also sheds light on what survivors think enable or hinder their resistance and leaving processes, especially the role of social responses. Hester’s (2011) Three Planet Model is used to analyze survivors’ experiences of vast differences in support from social workers on different “planets” post-separation – of positive experiences of support from social workers on the “Domestic violence planet”, but of post-separation violence being enabled on the “Child contact planet”. These results may aid social workers to better align their services with experiences of survivors.The dissertation also sheds light on how knowledge use and working conditions shape social workers’ support on the “Domestic violence planet”. Social workers in all organizations utilized a paradigmatic practice theory (cf. Payne, 2012, 2021) to educate survivors on violence and relieve them of guilt. The paradigmatic practice theory connected to goals of social work aimed at (cognitive, emotional) liberation from violence, rather than structural social change. Furthermore, the results indicate that structural obstacles preventing survivors from leaving their abusers may be handled as individual rather than social problems. Additionally, social workers expressed that survivors need long-term, holistic support when breaking free from IPV, but their discretion as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010) to meet these support needs differed. Some (social service support units) offered only counseling, other (shelters) also more “practical” support. Hence, the dissertation indicates that what kind of support survivors are offered may differ, and that support risks becoming a lottery where survivors might not always receive the help they need to break free from violence.
