1.
Elsrud, Torun
(author)
Taking Time and Making Journeys : Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers
2004
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This work addresses the phenomenon of long-term, so-called ‘independent’ travelling, or backpacking, often to destinations described as the ‘third world’. It regards backpacker journeys as arenas for identity work, for expressing individuality and a ‘strong character’. Rather than merely being a parenthetic detour in time and space a backpacker’s trip to the tropics can be understood as a creative effort by the individual to regain the control over time and space thought to be lost in places travellers call home. Yet, at the same time, backpacking reproduces structures of power, through (re)constructing the image of a ‘primitive other’ upon which much of a successful ‘western identity’ rests. The success is, however, not only dependent upon inventing and encountering ‘primitive’ others but also upon the gender of the traveller as well as the competence in mastering manifestations of adventure and risk. The work argues, for instance, that stereotype expectations of femininity (and masculinity) make female ‘adventurism’ into a challenge beyond the actual (or faked) ordeals encountered on the road. Adventurous women are forced to negotiate and balance between expectations placed upon them as (non-adventurous) females and as adventurous travellers. The arguments rest upon the ontological and epistemological conviction that individuals are creative, making the most out of the tools for identity work which society supplies them with. However, in the process of individual self-articulation, structures are both maintained and altered. Consequently, it is through studying individuals and their products/expressions (such as media texts or choice of clothing, food or ‘proper’ transport) that information can be gathered concerning individual thoughts and actions and the structures within which these are manifested. Such an undertaking has been accomplished within this project by means of a qualitative, ethnographically influenced approach, including interviews with backpackers, observations in backpacker areas and analysis of travel media.
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4.
Sandberg, Carl, 1979-
(author)
On Board the Global Workplace : Coordination and Uncertainty on Merchant Ships
2014
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how work and social life are coordinated on board merchant ships. The merchant ship is a global workplace where people from different nationalities come together to work and live for an extended period of time.The study is based on ethnographic field work on board merchant ships. The core of the study is field work on two Swedish-flagged RoRo-ships with ethnically mixed crews coming from Sweden, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. Participant observation and interviews are the two methods that have been used to generate the material.The empirical material shows that although the ships have a formal organization, the ships with mixed ethnic crews are in a disorderly state, a state of dissonance. The dissonance is due to a conflict between two evaluative principles. One principle refers to the Swedes’ way of doing things, which involves a flattened hierarchy and autonomous workers. The other principle refers to the Filipinos’ way of doing things, a formalized relationship between officers and crew and respect for the chain of command. These two principles sometimes come into conflict in the coordination of work tasks. The analysis also shows that social life on board is coordinated by ethnic networks, i.e. the seafarers spend their free time segregated by ethnicity. Furthermore, the results show that these two evaluative principles are in a hierarchical relationship. They form a hierarchy of worth where the Swedes’ way of doing things is seen as superior.
5.
Baral, Anna, 1984-
(author)
Bad Guys, Good Life : An Ethnography of Morality and Change in Kisekka Market (Kampala, Uganda)
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Based on ethnographic data gathered over a period of almost three years, this dissertation scrutinizes the everyday lives of informal workers selling auto parts in Kisekka Market, central Kampala. Its ambition is to understand how the workers navigated a highly moralized environment in today’s Uganda, where the supposed moral deterioration of society is passionately discussed in public and in private.Analytically the dissertation focuses on three “moral landscapes,” or moral discourses of different geographical scales, that intersected in the workers’ lives: first, the Ugandan nation or the country; second, the Buganda kingdom with its cultural institutions to which the majority of the workers professed allegiance; and third, the capital city Kampala. Materializing in Kisekka Market, each landscape posed moral demands that the workers navigated daily as they struggled to balance norms with lived practices.The workers were perceived by external observers as morally ambiguous for their supposed instrumentality in riots and violent crimes in Kampala. Their notoriousness increased for the fact that they were men, often uneducated, and therefore, in public discourse, potentially threatening. Consequently, they were referred to as bayaaye, translated as hooligans or bad guys, and this label defined their relations with customers from all parts of Kampala and Uganda.In exploring the implications of the three moral landscapes, particular attention is paid to the in-between. Rather than focusing on mediatized events like riots and crimes, the dissertation investigates and locates the workers’ agency in the mundane processes of care and getting by and the tentative paths to a good life that unfolded daily in Kisekka Market, regardless of larger political tensions in Kampala and beyond. The city’s development plan to replace Kisekka Market with a fancy shopping mall rendered the workers’ situation increasingly exposed and their lives increasingly vulnerable. In the workers’ quest for some degree of control and self-worth, the label of bayaaye refracted into its multiple dimensions – proudly appropriated or painfully rejected by the workers themselves – attesting to the complexities of everyday ethics, in Kampala as elsewhere. Consequently, the ethnography of this dissertation problematizes the dominant yet fraught narrative around young men in urban Africa.
6.
Bååth, Jonas, 1985-
(author)
Production in a State of Abundance : Valuation and Practice in the Swedish Meat Supply Chain
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis is a sociological contribution to the study of abundance. It discusses the case of Swedish meat producers and how they persist in producing pork and beef despite a lack of demand and competitive disadvantages compared with foreign suppliers. In doing so, this study answers how abundance is perpetuated in the production of a foodstuff in over-supply. This monograph further adds new empirical and theoretical knowledge to the fields of food studies, economic sociology, and the social sciences studying problems of abundance.The study explores how Swedish meat producers deal with problems stemming from supplying more than demanded volumes of food. The inquiry into this topic combines pragmatism, economic sociology, and qualitative fieldwork. The empirical materials mainly consist of in-depth interviews with 41 informants and more than one month of participatory observations from the Swedish meat supply chain.The evidence supplied shows how farmers, meat processors, and retailers continue supplying an abundant foodstuff by studying the valuations used in their production practice. The conclusion is that meat is not supplied to meet the consumers’ demand for food. Instead, this foodstuff is supplied as a marketing tool to meet the producers’ demand for commerce as an aesthetic of market exchange, or sustained production in line with Swedish agrifood policy, distinguished by high animal welfare and low antibiotics use. It is further argued that abundance is perpetuated because these producers rely on valuations which distinguish certain qualities of a good, rather than sufficient quantity of supply. Without using a quantitative, commensurable measure, it is not possible to limit the supply. This study contrasts existing theories of abundance by stating that problems thereof depend on how sufficiency is valuated, not the existence of some excess. These findings further support the argument that supply chains must be granted more attention in food studies primarily preoccupied with consumers. They also suggest further investigations into the relationships between markets in supply chains, and the role of production sites in economic life, would benefit economic sociology.
7.
Eliassi, Barzoo, 1978-
(author)
A stranger in my homeland : The politics of belonging among young people with Kurdish backgrounds in Sweden
2010
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation examines how young people with Kurdish backgrounds form their identity in Sweden with regards to processes of inclusion and exclusion. It also sheds light on the ways these young people deal with ethnic discrimination and racism. Further, the study outlines the importance of these social processes for the discipline of social work and the ways social workers can work with disadvantaged and marginalized groups and endorse their struggle for social justice and full equal citizenship beyond racist and discriminatory practices. The empirical analysis is built on interviews with 28 young men and women with Kurdish backgrounds in Sweden. Postcolonial theory, belonging and identity formation constitute the central conceptual framework of this study. The young people referred to different sites in which they experienced ethnic discrimination and stigmatization. These experiences involved the labor market, mass media, housing segregation, legal system and school system. The interviewees also referred to the roles of ‘ordinary’ Swedes in obstructing their participation in the Swedish society through exclusionary discourses relating to Swedish identity. The interviewees’ life situation in Sweden, sense of ethnic discrimination as well as disputes over identity making with other young people with Middle-Eastern background are among the most important reasons for fostering strong Kurdish nationalist sentiments, issues that are related to the ways they can exercise their citizenship rights in Sweden and how they deal with exclusionary practices in their everyday life. The study shows that the interviewees respond to and resist ethnic discrimination in a variety of ways including interpersonal debates and discussions, changing their names to Swedish names, strengthening differences between the self and the other, violence, silence and deliberately ignoring racism. They also challenged and spoke out against the gendered racism that they were subjected to in their daily lives due to the paternalist discourse of ”honor-killing”. The research participants had been denied an equal place within the boundary of Swedishness partly due to a racist postcolonial discourse that valued whiteness highly. Paradoxically, some interviewees reproduced the same discourse through choosing to use it against black people, Africans, newly-arrived Kurdish immigrants (”imports”), ”Gypsies” and Islam in order to claim a modern Kurdish identity as near to whiteness as possible. This indicates the multiple dimensions of racism. Those who are subjected to racism and ethnic discrimination can be discriminatory and reproduce the racist discourse. Despite unequal power relations, both dominant and minoritized subjects are all marked by the postcolonial condition in structuring subjectivities, belonging and identification.
8.
Scarpa, Simone, 1976-
(author)
The spatial manifestation of inequality : residential segregation in Sweden and its causes
2015
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The thesis examines the relationship between income inequality and residential segregation in Swedish cities. In recent years, in Sweden, much attention has been given to the direction of causality from residential segregation to income inequality. Residential segregation is considered to lead to a differentiation of opportunities between neighbourhoods and, therefore, to be a contributing factor to or even a major cause of income inequality in cities. The thesis focuses on the opposite direction of causality, from income inequality to residential segregation. In fact, residential segregation can also be seen as the spatial manifestation of existing disparities in income distribution, since residential location choices are always (although not exclusively) made within a predetermined framework of economic constraints.Specifically, two research questions are addressed in this thesis. What institutional factors, in the Swedish context, favour the transformation of the social divide between specific population subgroups into a spatial divide between those groups? To what extent and in what ways does income inequality contribute to the development of residential segregation in Swedish cities?The first part of the thesis explains why Swedish cities are characterized by higher levels of residential segregation than cities of other countries characterized by higher levels of income inequality. The historical and comparative analyses developed in the first two studies indicate that it is not so much the magnitude of immigration that accounts for this difference between Swedish cities and their more unequal counterparts in other countries but, rather, the institutional factors influencing the modes of incorporation of immigrants into cities.The second part of the thesis analyses how, in recent decades, the increase in income inequality has influenced residential segregation patterns in Malmö and in the three major Swedish metropolitan areas. The third and the fourth study show that, during the studied period, the widening of income disparities between neighbourhoods mirrored the general upward trend in income inequality in the population. The growth of the immigrant population contributed only slightly to this trend and income inequality was primarily driven by changes in the distribution of market incomes. During the late study period, however, income sorting processes have played a steadily more important role in contributing to economic residential segregation. Therefore, neighbourhood-based urban policies have not succeeded to reverse, or even just impede, the trend towards an increased spatial clustering of poverty and wealth in Swedish cities.
9.
Andréasson, Frida
(author)
Doing informal care : Identity, couplehood, social health and information and communication technologies in older people’s everyday lives
2021
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of the thesis has been a) to analyse how informal care influences the identity of carers and care recipients, their sense of couplehood and social health, and b) to explore the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of informal care and the everyday lives of older people. Study I focused on how older carers conceptualised their identity as carers on a Swedish online social forum, using a netnographic methodology. The findings indicated a change in self-perception as the carer role was acquired. Carers’ capacities were filtered through the needs of the care recipient, making their carer identities into invisible selves. The findings revealed that online communication had the potential to create a virtual space of social recognition. Study II aimed to reflect on carers’ experiences of participation in a co-design process consisting of user group sessions with carers and researchers. The goal was to develop a web-based support programme for carers. The findings emphasised a need to consider carers’ lifeworlds and to develop flexible human-centred design methodologies, that are able to balance carers’ needs and ideas with proposed research outcomes. Studies III and IV utilised an ethnographic methodology. In study III, the notion of couplehood in informal care was analysed. The findings showed that in the process of becoming a carer and a care recipient previous (often gendered) responsibilities were re- negotiated and new practicalities emerged. Although these changes were understood as a natural part of family life, they nevertheless led to changes in the (power) balance between spouses, expressed in terms of a professionalised relationship and a sense of social isolation. ICT was used as a means to get a respite from caring and uphold a social connection with others. In study IV, the social implications and consequences of spousal informal care and carers and care recipients’ experiences of illness and the ill body was explored. The findings showed that the participants experienced barriers to living life as before. Thoughts about or the presence of ill and “leaking” bodies thus lead to “self-chosen” social isolation or social distancing by others. The thesis highlights that informal care needs to be understood as an identity forming practice, having a significant impact on involved parties’ sense of couplehood, their social health and that ICT can contribute to ease carers’ and care recipients’ daily life.
10.
Gustafsson, Pär, 1971-
(author)
Commercial conflict : The case of Russia's contemporary economy
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This study has scrutinized the use of legal and extra-legal mechanisms for resolving commercial conflict. The case examined is the Russian economy after the Soviet collapse. The starting-point is the notion that rational economic actors would increasingly turn to the commercial courts if the courts were effective. These courts slowly became more effective in the 1990s if we are to judge by the growing number of civil cases submitted for review, but the low rate of enforcement of court decisions suggests the opposite. This leads to the primary research puzzle: why would supposedly rational economic actors use ineffective commercial courts, when a supply of legal and extra-legal alternatives for conflict resolution is present? The investigation draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence to unpack the puzzle. The qualitative evidence consists of 59 in-depth interviews with economic actors and legal specialists in Russia. The quantitative evidence includes official statistics and two surveys on enterprises in Russia. Secondary analyses have been carried out on court-case records, media reportings, and data published in research literature on the use of courts in Russia. The study suggests that economic actors were, in fact, avoiding the ineffective courts in the 1990s and a considerable proportion of the civil cases submitted to the courts were fabricated bogus conflicts. Economic actors fabricate and submit bogus conflicts in order to strategically manipulate the court, with the goal being to achieve a veil of legality for extra-legal business activities. A central piece of evidence is that economic actors who accept corruption outside the judiciary are more likely to trust the ineffective courts, than those who reject corruption outside the judiciary. The pattern of strategic manipulation of the courts tends to subvert the law and may, over time, erode the state’s legitimacy.
