1.
Bredvold, Randi, 1957-
(författare)
Entreprenørers fortellinger : en identitetsstudie i det opplevelsesbaserte reiselivet
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This is a narrative study in which five entrepreneurs in the experience-based tourist industry have told their life-stories in connection with their establishing and running their own enterprises. Over the last decades the number of adventure-based companies has markedly increased in tourist industry, but the knowledge gained through the research on the persons who establish these companies is scant. Through focusing on the constructions of identity of the entrepreneurs, this study gives nuanced pictures of the chain of events that had lead an individual to establish one`s own company. In addition, these pictures offer deeper understanding of how these individuals perceive themselves as the founder and manager of an experience-based company. Over the last decades research in entrepreneurship has criticized the imbalanced focus on the entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and it's use as an explanation of their entrepreneurial activities. In the same critical vein I question whether motivational studies are able to explain why certain individuals choose to establish their own business. Indeed, these five stories show that an entrepreneur is not something one is but something one becomes. Although the concept of an experiential economy appeared at the end of the 1990s, the production of experiences has a long tradition in the tourist industry. Norwegian tourism has faced an uphill struggle for several decades, which worries both the authorities and the industry itself. In recent decades the focus has been directed more and more on the dimension of experience. One hopes that the creation of new and attractive adventures will help to reverse the negative trend in the industry. Effecting this reversal places a heavy responsibility on the entrepreneurs since they are to be the driving force in this process. Tourist adventures have been one of several core themes within the field of research in tourism for decades, but this focus has mainly been on the perspective of the consumer. In contrast, this study concentrates on the producers, a group about whom we know much less. The five entrepreneurs who tell their story in this study give detailed descriptions of their life until the establishment of their businesses, and we see that each of them describes a number of causal chains that are interwoven and together create a meaningful picture of their choice. Through focusing on their reflexive identity-constructions and viewing these in light of the concrete situations they were in, before they established their enterprises, we gain a deeper understanding of this choice. Through the process of categorizing these reflexive identity-constructions, three distinct ontological positions emerge, that is, different ways in understanding reality. The study shows that there is a connection between these ontological positions and the ways that the entrepreneurs run their businesses, as well as their understanding of how they create and produce adventures for their guests.
2.
Falch, Wenche, 1952-
(författare)
Står til tjeneste : Emosjonelt arbeid i tjenestemøtet
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about personal assistants, and how they experience their work. The aim of this study is twofold: First to examine the experiences of personal assistants and their work. Second, to examine the assistant’s experiences of feelings at work and how these feelings are managed from an emotionsociological perspective.The empirical base of the research builds upon interviews with personal assistants with a focus on the individual and subjective experiences of the work. The data shows that the assistants concentrate on the emotional aspects of their job. When asked to describe their work situation, the interviewees were preoccupied with the regulation of their own feelings in the relation to the employer. The analysis has an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation and theory are combined.In terms of results, this study shows that the majority of assistants experience themselves as a friend to the client and they experience the job as meaningful. However, here lies the duplicity of the situation because being a friend to the client, who is also the supervisor, can lead to problems when setting the boundaries for intimacy.The study also shows relatively stable structures in relation to the dimensions of power and subordination, where the assistants’ experience themselves as subordinates and the client as superior. At the same time that the assistants finds purpose in their job there are also challenges connected to being subordinate in a face-to-face situation. It is important to the assistants to have control over feelings and outward expressions. Feelings of subordination seem to be linked to the status and power the assistants have in society at large. Thus, how vulnerable they are in the subordinate position depends on age, gender and education. Another effect described by the assistants is a kind of emotional dissonance, where their own feelings are in conflict with how they wish to act in the social interaction with the clients.In the final chapter the concepts of asymmetric and symmetric interaction are used to understand different types of feelings the assistants’ experience. The asymmetric interaction can trigger feelings of irritation, frustration and anger which are energy draining. Symmetric interaction often seems to lead to feelings of contentment, joy and purpose, which are uplifting and energy renewing.As a concluding remark emotional labour seems to be a significant part of the assistants work. By using an emotionsociological perspective it has been possible to gain knowledge about different aspects of the personal assistants’ emotional labour.
3.
Sarromaa, Sanna, 1979-
(författare)
DET NYE OG DEN UNGE NORSKE KVINNEN : diskurser, representasjoner og resepsjoner om ung kvinnelighet 1957-77 og i 2009
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Adolescent girlhood has been a marginalised field in twentieth- and twenty-first-century sociology, social history and women’s history. This dissertation is about feminine adolescence in Norway from 1957 to 1977 – and further in 2009. This study analyses discourses and representations of girlhood and proper girlhood, as well as the mediation and reception of such discourses and representations. More specifically, I examine adolescent girlhood from two intertwining perspectives. First, I analyze the textual representation of adolescent girlhood in Det Nye, the oldest young women’s magazine in Norway. Second, I explore the reception of the magazine’s discourses and representations of young femininity by interviewing girls and women about the magazine. The dissertation consists of four articles. Two of the articles are textual analyses of Det Nye’s regular columns and sections. In the first article, I analyze the question-and-answer column, “Beate.” For over 20 years, Norwegian girls asked Beate for advice about love, romance and sexuality. My focus is on the discursive change in her answers, and the way they moved from essentialist and rigid arguments in 1950s and 1960s to a more gender-equal perspective in the1970s. The second article addresses representations of proper girlhood in 1958 by way of an analysis of a series of so-called real-life stories in Det Nye in 1958. These stories are presented as if they are real stories written by the girls in the stories. In these stories, “proper girlhood” is defined by respectability, (sexual) innocence, cheerfulness, and the ability and willingness to be a good housewife. In the third article, the focus is on Norwegian women who came of age in the ideological landscape of the 1950s and 1960s and who tried to establish what they perceived to be good lives for themselves. The purpose of the article is to examine how these women experienced sexuality and housewifery, especially in relation to how they perceived their possibilities for shaping their own lives. In other words, I confronted today’s elder women, most of them previous housewives, with the discourses and representations that came up in the textual analysis of old issues of Det Nye. The oral history interviews showed that most of these women adjusted to the housewife landscape that was characteristic of Norway in those years. Most of them chose the life path they were “supposed to” choose, and they naturalised their choices. With the exception of one woman in my material, these women were no strong agents of change, at least in relation the division of labour. They married in their early twenties, after which they generally retreated from the labour market to become full-time mothers and housewives for many years. The rising discourse of feminism seems to have played a very small role in the lives of these women in 1950s and 1960s. In the last article, I ask today’s girls about ideal girlhood as portrayed in girls’ magazines, the girls’ own ideas about ideal girlhood, and about the practice of reading magazines for young women. I interviewed 18 girls between 13 and 17 years of age in focus groups, and the results show that girls’ magazines function as an arena for learning and education, providing guidelines about make-up, fashion, education, jobs and labour marked. Magazines are not read, however, only because of the information they offer. They are also read for their own sake – for the “brainless enjoyment” as one of my informants put it. Finally, the magazines also have a trait that appeals to girls with a hectic lifestyle – namely, their “putdownability.”
4.
5.
Solheim, Inger Helen, 1970-
(författare)
Identitet, kropp og hverdagsliv i et folkelig perspektiv : og erfaringskunnskapens plass innen folkehelsetenkningen
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Over the last decades the weight has increased in the Norwegian population. Report no 16 to the Storting, “Prescription for a healthier Norway”, expresses concern for this development and defines important areas of commitment to prevent a further increase in health problems like diabetes 2 and other lifestyle related diseases. The foci described above are all justified by figures and statistical surveys. The dominant approach towards lifestyle related diseases is closely connected with Western medicine. The main tendency in the recommendations is primarily presenting overweight and obesity as something negative and problematic. This study focuses on self-assessment and self-perception of people that are overweight as well as those of normal weight. The aim is to reveal the collective understanding in a local community that struggles to avoid a further weight-gain in its population. This thesis seeks to, shed light on how the weight- evolvement in the Norwegian society influence peoples individual self-image and body perception. A local community in Norway (“Libygda”) defined by media, some years ago, as the most overweight local community in the country, constitutes the basis for this thesis.Methods like fieldwork, multistage focus group interviews and individual interviews (all carried out in “Libygda”) were used. The main focus in all the approaches is the bottom up strategy gained through the research approach Co-operative Inquiry which implies that both researcher and participants together search to gain insight and new experiential knowledge. In this case about individual health perception, body and identity. The data material is analyzed mainly through Life Mode-Theory, and theories of social capital (and other theories from the Social Science field).Methodological and theoretical approaches within Public Health Work are mainly based in Health Science, whereas this thesis has Social Science (Sociology and Social Anthropology) as its point of departure. The thesis will by its perspective aim to complement the traditional Health Science and offer a supplemental approach to the Science of Public Health.This thesis describes how experience-based perspectives on health and body exist side by side with the medical and Public Health Science perspective. This implies that there exists a parallel understanding of reality, which is rarely focused on by health professionals. If Public Health Work should gain a greater impact on peoples’ everyday life, these experience based and folk perspectives must be taken into consideration and accepted by professionals as relevant.
6.
Øygarden, Geir Angell
(författare)
Den brukne neses estetikk. En bok om boksing.
2000
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about boxing. More precisely it is about the meaning of boxing. And since it is about the question of meaning, it is also about the question of culture. This thesis aims to identify the system of meaning produced in the inside of the culture of boxing. Put differently, the objective has been the laying bare of the internal construction of the cultural form that boxing is. The empirical data has been gathered through participant observation or, as it is termed in the thesis: full-contact sociology. The field studies alluded to hereby have been conducted over a period of three years in two different boxing clubs in Södermalm, Stockholm. One of these clubs was for amateurs, the other for both amateurs and professional boxers.The thesis consists of three sections: one empirical, one theoretical and one existential. In the first section, a detailed account of the empirical material is presented. The second section is a multidimensional reconstruction of the culture of boxing. These sections make up the thesis in an argumentative sense. In the third section, three specific aspects of the culture studied are discussed - solitude, pain and death. This is done in order to criticize the practice of interpretation meaning in sociology.
7.
Madsbu, Jens Petter
(författare)
Samordning, effektivisering og forenkling : En sosiologisk analyse av begrunnelser for digitaliseringsprosesser i moderniseringen av norsk offentlig forvaltning
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis examines the arguments used by politicians and civil servants to justify the implementation of digitalisation processes to modernise and reform the Norwegian public sector. The research questions are “What arguments are used within the Norwegian public administration to justify the implementation of digitalisation processes?” and “How can these arguments be understood in relation to ideas about modernisation and ongoing reforms within the administration more generally?”.Three studies of digitalisation and reform processes within the Norwegian public administration have been carried out to answer the research questions. The first study is of the Minside public electronic communications service from its inception in 2004 until the service was discontinued in 2012. The second study is an analysis of governmental documents on the role and importance of digitalisation reforms in the Norwegian public sector from the mid-1980’s to today. The third outlines how digitalisation is related to a reform process within the public sector, widely referred to as New Public Management (NPM).The analysis shows that justifications for the implementation of Minside and for digitalisation in the Norwegian public administration are generally focused on the simplification, coordination and rationalisation of the public sector. These justifications are closely connected to key normative ideas of NPM on how and why modernisation and reform processes should be carried out within the public sector in general.Despite high expectations, many digitalisation and electronic service implementations aimed at the population do not achieve the effects expected. This does not, however, appear to have had any impact upon these seemingly deeply entrenched expectations. They continue to be as widely held and as high as they have always been, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
8.
Seim, Sissel, 1950
(författare)
Egenorgansiering blant fattige. En studie av initiativ, mobilisering og betydning av Fattighuset
2006
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The overall objective of this study is to examine conditions for self-organization processes among poor people and claimants. The Poor House, an action group, an organization and a centre for poor people and claimants was established in Oslo in 1994. The study is conducted as an action research project in cooperation with the Poor House. The study focuses on three dimensions of self-organization: The formation process, mobilization and outcome. In following the origin process I have had the possibility to describe the way the Poor House was established. The first research question is therefore: Which factors were important in the emerging process. The challenge of recruiting and of keeping up continuing commitment among the activists lead up to the next set of research questions: How did the Poor House manage to mobilize members and participants, what has promoted and what has hampered mobilization of members and active participants? Which challenges and problems have they faced in attempting to mobilize poor people and claimant groups in Oslo? Did they succeed in their objectives? The Poor House have had easy access to media to get their voice heard. Poverty had not been recognized as a social problem in Norway in public discourse until the middle of the 1990es. From 1996, two years after the Poor House started, there has been increasing public debate about poverty in the affluent Norwegian society, and poverty was set on the political agenda from the election campaign in 1997. The public and political recognition of poverty as a social problem cannot be seen as the result of campaigning from the Poor House and other organizations, but there are reasons to believe that they have their stake in this development. The Poor House has to a certain degree obtained public recognition, but so far they have not seen collective advantages in ways of better living conditions for their constituency, but twelve years may be a short period to expect changes. Two topics are addressed in the final part: 1.The dilemmas of inclusion, cooperation or co-optation when relating to an opponent that is also the source for financial support. 2. The difficulties that arise from fighting for respect and citizenship for the public identity of poor people, and at the same time fighting to abolish poverty.
9.
Winsvold, Aina
(författare)
Når arbeidende barn mobiliserer seg : En studie av tre unioner i Karnataka, India
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A number of working children in several regions over the world are mobilising to fight for better working conditions and to gain their rights according to how they interpret the Child Rights Convention (UNCRC) from 1989. Despite the increasing focus on child participation, their approaches and their demands are in many aspects controversial and they are often met with suspicion among diverse actors involved in the discourse of child labour. This dissertation is about three different child worker unions in the state Karnataka, in south India. The overall aim is to explore the impact of mobilisation and to investigate what possibilities the children have for changing their situation within the existing norms, traditions and structures, both in the local society and on higher administrative levels. Further aims are to identify factors influencing both child participation and child labour. The methodological strategies involve interviews and observations, which have been continually shaped to suit the varied contexts. This is an explorative study and the empirical findings are discussed within several theoretical approaches. There are two main focuses in this study. One is child participation and its implications. This includes influencing internal factors, such as the development of a collective identity within a group, and the sensitive interaction among children and between children and adults. The other focus is on the political space these unions act within, their possibilities to operate and make an impact on their environment. This includes the underlying structures, the attitudes, resources and knowledge among the authorities and the public. To conclude, despite several limitations, most of the involved children are highly influenced by the mobilisation, especially on a personal level. Norms, bureaucracy and traditional top-down approaches both in the Indian society and on the international level obstruct their influence in many political issues. However, with active lobbying by allied adults and carefully prepared strategies they are able to put pressure on certain issues. Decisive factors for the children and their self-esteem are increased interaction with several actors, access to information, and experience of respect. Collective gatherings, critical discussions and expressed demands lead to a change in how the children perceive themselves. Their roles are also changed which often leads to a changed interaction within their community. Further, in a long-term perspective they have had an impact on the discourse of child labour.
