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.
Wide, Sverre, 1973-
(författare)
Människans mått : Om statistik, sociologi och världen som socialt vara
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation should be understood as an effort to provide a kind of critique of statistical reason. “A kind”, since it has another focus as well: the question of sociality. It is argued that these two topics are closely interrelated, not only, as the short exploration into the prehistory of statistics shows, for historical, but also and mainly for systematic reasons.The first part of this thesis is concerned with methods; not, in fact, so much with different methods as with the idea of methods in general. The second part deals with statistics, its prehistory and structure. It is argued that statistics is inherently causal and always and only understands the world as means (for our power), as it is. The third part explores a socio-logic, a concept meant to capture both the essence of sociality and our understanding of this sociality. And sociality, in the last analysis understood as play or game, turns out to be what cannot be controlled or dealt with in a methodical manner; it can never be reduced to what it is. The fourth and final part discusses and tries to overcome the proposed antithetical relation between statistics (methods) and sociality, and discusses possible consequences of the analysis for the fields of sociology and social thinking.In sum: The dissertation contributes to our understanding of methods, statistics and sociality and their interrelations.
4.
Hjorth Aronsson, Christina, 1948-
(författare)
Struktur, handling och rumslig morfologi : Två fall av förnyelse och byggande i urban miljö
1999
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The dissertation addresses problems concerning relations between decentralised welfare and centralised planning and building authorities as central matters in the public sector on communal level. Problems concerning relations between public planning and private market according to building are also focused. The study is based on Durkheim's macrosociology, social epistemology, and sociology of knowledge, developing an analysis model built upon Mary Douglas' grid-group typology, new-durkheimian theory of ritual action and urban semiotics. Key concepts are cosmologies, social welfare, market, and claims for influence on the process of physical planning. The analysis is made in relation to changes in welfare state perspective on macro level.The study's empirical material is collected from documents, official statistics, and interviews with essential actors in public sector and private enterprises, reflecting renewal efforts and of new planning.Decentralization of public decision-making evolves claims of local influence as results of new insights and knowledge among local professionals and politicians as results of new cooperation. Emancipation and ambivalence in relation central-local are consequences. Increased participation from private market on planning and building reflect knowledge-based differences and tensions due to their respective cosmological belonging. Changes in the post-war welfare sector are reflected in accumulated problems in a neighbourhood-area. Decarceration is reflected as normalisation in ordinary housing. On urban level, this reflects increased morphological, as well as socio-economical differentiation. Theoretically is discussed the possible expansion of grid-group typology through integrating concepts of action, of structure, and of spatial morphology (semiotics), called intra- and inter cosmological phenomena.
5.
Bruhn, Anders
(författare)
Individualiseringen och det fackliga kollektivet : En studie av industritjänstemäns förhållningssätt till facket
1999
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation is based on a research project focusing privately employed industrial white-collar workers in Gothenburg, Sweden. The project was initiated due to signs of changes in the way employees perceive and act in relation to the union. The aim of this thesis is to study the causes behind individual patterns of action in relation to union membership and activity. My ambition is to increase our knowledge of the conditions of unions in contemporary working life, as well as of organisations of interest more generally. The problem is tackled in two steps: First I describe and analyse the individual motives behind different patterns of action. Second I analyse contextual causes, both in the workplace and in society at large, behind changes in motives evidenced today. My point of departure is theories about value change and individualization. The concept of value is here used to analyse how the individualization process changes the conditions for organized collective behaviour. My methodological approach is multistrategic. The main component of the approach is qualitative interviews. I interviewed employees at seven different companys during the period of 1993-1995. 1997 these were complemented with a postal survey to a representative sample of the target group in Gothenburg. The analysis reveals a distinctive generation gap in motives in relation to union membership and activity. Group-utility based instrumental views about the union, often in connection with "solidarity" and other traditional union values, was quite common among the older employees. These views were related to "security-based" materialistic value patterns. Instrumental considerations based on personal utility were mote frequent among the younger employees and coexisted with "private post-materialistic" value patterns. The private postmaterialist is fairly open-minded, critically reflexive and ambivalent. He/she gives priority to "libertarian" values, such as personal development and self-fulfilment. Situationally bound activities and objects ate not evaluated in relation to any deeper ideological convictions. As a result of this peripheral values, attitudes and actions adapt rapidly to situational changes and opinions are easily altered. This is a "risk-group" for unions and other established organizations of interest. They are not against organized collectives as such. To participate though, they demand direct personal influence and benefits. To attract them unions has to revaluate both how activity is carried out and what issues to give priority. Private postmaterialism is, along with the more principled and ideologically based "social" variant of postmaterialism, a reflection of increasing individualism. Causes for value change and individualisation can be accounted for by changes in the socialisation process and the growing differentiation and fragmentation in todays complex society.
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8.
Peterson, Helen, 1974-
(författare)
Gender, Power and Post-Bureaucracy : Work Ideals in IT Consulting
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis deals with work environments defined as post-bureaucratic, and which are characterised by individualisation and a decrease in the employer's formal control. The study shows how the employees in such work contexts are both empowered and disciplined. The main questions concern to what extent power shifts in relations between the employer and the employees and between female and male employees are visible and how such potential power shifts manifest themselves. The primary analysis of this power shift focuses on post-bureaucratic work ideals. Work ideals prescribe the skills, competence, manner and qualities of the ideal worker. While bureaucratic work ideals have emphasised employees' rule-following and role adaptation, reflecting the employer's supervision and control over employees, the post-bureaucratic work ideal has been suggested to a shift in power and control that challenges the bureaucratic relationship between power and position. The study uses a narrative analysis to highlight post-bureaucratic work ideals through examining in depth how Swedish IT consultants constitute, and position themselves in relation to, the ideal IT consultant. Although the consultants present themselves as powerful and autonomous vis-à-vis their managers, they also appear highly controlled by the system of consulting, by customer relations and by a work environment restricted by economic, individualised rationality. They also portray themselves as powerless in relation to threats of being made unemployed. Notwithstanding the supposed feminisation of a post-bureaucratic work ideal characterised by social competence, this study also shows that the work ideal that is rewarded in post-bureaucracy is not a feminine ideal. Although alleged to be gender-neutral, it is concluded that the idealised character of IT consulting is a gendered construction that gives precedence to hegemonic masculinity, and subordinates traditional feminine qualities, thereby reproducing gendred power relations.
9.
Alexanderson, Karin, 1952-
(författare)
Vilja, kunna, förstå : om implementering av systematisk dokumentation för verksamhetsutveckling i socialtjänsten
2006
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this study is to analyse conditions that either promote or hamper the implementation of methods for systematic documentation, follow-up and evaluation in social-work services with individuals and families. The theoretical framework consists of organization theories. Human Service Organizations (HSO) theory is complemented with concepts from the new institutionalism, domain theory, implementation theory, and theory about interventions.A concrete case, a project has been studied. The purpose of project was to implement methods for systematic documentation in public social services. With the notation “integrated” is meant that the methods should be built in and adjusted to the social-work practice. The methods were ASI (Addiction Severity Index) and IUS (a locally based model for integrated evaluation by inspiration from Göran Sandell).Data has been captured in a pretest/ posttest design (Marlow 2000). This means that “state of things” has been described before the intervention and after. The methods used were surveys and interviews (individual and group). The process has been documented through research notes proceeding records, protocols and some diaries written by social workers. Four municipalities from the middle of Sweden took part with five working groups. Two groups contained social workers acting with children and families and three groups were working with drug abusers. The population consisted of the social workers, the managers responsible for the individual and family entities, the politicians and the clients who were affected during the time of the project.The implementation of ASI and IUS has not occurred in the extent that was stated in the intervention theory. This means that ASI and IUS were not used in all new cases that occurred during the time of the project. The interviews supposed to be done in the beginning of the clients contact with the agency tended to be done more often than the follow-up interviews. After the project ended, three of five working groups decided to continue to use ASI (one group) and IUS (two groups). The overall impression is that the respondents comprehend, they have the willingness but they do not have the capability of using ASI and IUS. The organization does not seem to have the capacity of imposing requirements and giving resources. The outcomes do not seem to be the most important issue for the social services. These conditions are discussed in the study by means of the theoretical concepts. In the end, there is an effort to adjust the implementation theory to human service organizations.
10.
Löfmarck, Erik, 1974-
(författare)
Den hand som föder dig : En studie av risk, mat och moderskap i Sverige och Polen
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This is a study of how mothers of young children relate to risk in everyday life, with an emphasis on the invisible risks associated with modernity in general, and with food in particular. It explores variations and similarities in how mothers deal with risk in two cultural contexts: Sweden and Poland. The study is based on twenty qualitative interviews with university educated mothers of small children in Stockholm and Warsaw. While risks more generally challenge how we “get on” with our lives, mothers of young children in particular have a special relationship to risk. During pregnancy and breastfeeding they are subject to all kinds of risk minimization efforts, and mothers are ultimately held "infinitely responsible" for their children's welfare by society. Women's transition to parenthood then makes for a particularly interesting case as to how risks manifest in everyday life. The theoretical framework draws on modernization theory, combined with insights from cultural theory. In addition, various contributions from sociological and psychological risk research, family sociology and research on parenting and motherhood are used to highlight contextual aspects and to interpret the empirical results. Two aspects of the mothers’ relationship to risk and food are examined in this study: firstly, their risk constructs, i.e. what they perceive as ‘risky’ with regards to food; and, secondly, their risk management strategies, i.e. how they deal with identified risks on a practical and cognitive level. The overall risk management depicted in this study is characterized by reflexivity, critical thinking, information retrieval, attention to scientific evidence, purposely transferred trust, confidence and the ability to make fairly sophisticated tradeoffs between risks and other aspects of life. Neither the Swedish nor the Polish mothers then conform to popular notions of ‘security junkies’ or ‘paranoid parenting’. Nonetheless, the comparative approach demonstrates how contextual differences, such as general trust levels and family policy, influence both the risk constructs and the employment of different risk management strategies.
