1.
Liedgren Dobronravoff, Pernilla
(författare)
Att bli, att vara och att ha varit : Om ingångar i och utgångar ur Jehovas vittnen
2007
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation seeks to describe and investigate the entering and leaving of a highly structured and hierarchical religious community, exemplified in this case by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The respondents in this study were chosen from both active members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Sweden and those who have left the organisation for personal reasons. Repeated interviews with ten active members of the organisation have been conducted in the course of the study and compared to equal numbers of former members. The interviews have been semi-structured to deal with questions of how a person has come into contact with the organisation; how they retrospectively experienced the process of entry; the reasons for becoming a member. Questions have also been asked about life in the organisation. The group of "exiters" have also been asked about the experience of leaving, why they wanted to leave, and how this process was started and carried out. In addition to this I have analysed a four-year diary describing the time inside and the process of leaving the organisation. This has given me an extra psychological insight into the inner experience of someone who has gone through the whole process. The analysis has been done by categorising the content of the transcribed interviews. The analysis of the diary has involved thorough reading, resulting in a division of it into four different parts, where each part has been given a certain key-word, signifying the author's emotional state when writing it. A person converting as an adult has to pass six phases before being considered a Jehovah's Witness by the organisation. These are: Contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses, studying the bible with members of the organisation, questioning, accepting, being active as publisher (spreading the belief), being baptised. For a person brought up in the organisation, the process to full membership is much shorter: Upbringing in the organisation, taking a stand on the belief, being baptised. The exit process contains of seven phases: Different levels of doubts, testing of doubts, turning points, different kinds of decisions, different steps in executing the decisions, floating, a period of emotional and cognitive consideration of membership and its experiences, relative neutrality.
2.
Rodéhn, Cecilia, 1977-
(författare)
Lost in Transformation : A critical study of two South African museums
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In this dissertation Transformation, as understood in South Africa, is investigated in the ‘Natal Museum’ and the ‘Msunduzi Museum Incorporating the Voortrekker Complex’ in terms of socio-political structures, the museum as a place, its collections and displays. I have emphasised the ethnographical perspective and analysed it by using key concepts such as new museology, time, space and place. My research focuses on the perception and mediation by museum staff-members of Transformation which is compared and positioned against South African and international museological theoretical discourses. I further explore the political backdrop to Transformation of South African museums and discuss related problems and aspects such as reconciliation, nation-building and the African Renaissance. Socio-political structures, acts, reports and policy documents are analysed over a long temporal sequence, but focus on the period 1980-2007. The long temporal sequence is a tool to capture the development connected to the museums in space and time and aims to compare and present previous developments in order to investigate how Transformation positioned itself as against the past. I hold that Transformation should be treated as an ongoing process connected to other transformation processes across time. I also propose that Transformation started earlier than previously suggested and that it is not a question of one Transformation but of many transformation processes. The urban landscape and the concept of place and name are explored. My research examines the urban landscape from the establishment of Pietermaritzburg to study how the museums were positioned in the landscape and how this has contributed to associated meanings. The museums are treated as demarcated places in the urban landscape which are named and infused with meaning and ownership. The museums are constituted and acted out within specific socio-political structures. The dissertation suggests that the objectives of Transformation reveal themselves through negotiation and alteration of place and name. My research explores the history of the museum collections – how objects were acquired, classified and used to materialise the museums´ institutionalisation of time and what this brought about for heritage production. I investigate what did and did not change when the museums transformed and I deconstruct the new and old objectives and socio-political ideas of collections. I analyse displays as socio-political spaces, the agent’s appropriation, and the discrepancies within dominant socio-political structures. When Transformation materialises in displays it becomes visible for the public to see. The negotiated displays show how the museum tries to visualise Transformation to the public. The discussion analyses the discussed concepts of Transformation, the structures, place, name, display and collection, and relates these to the concept of time, and to how agents create time and make it visual. I also discuss how museological writing and political speeches shape and negotiate Transformation through their articulation and how they sometimes constrain and form discrepancies to actual reality.
3.
Järlehed, Johan, 1968
(författare)
Euskaraz. Lengua e identidad en los textos multimodales de promoción del euskara, 1970-2001.
2007
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Much research has been done on the complex and often conflictive relationship between language and identity in different geographical settings. But little attention has been paid to the – mainly visual – campaigns that language movements realize in order to defend and promote their language. The aim of this study is to examine the representation of language and national identity in the campaigns which have been realized in the seven territories of the Basque Country during the last decades. The main concern is with the social construction and reproduction of what it means to ‘speak Basque’ and ‘be Basque’, and of the relationship between these two features, through the multimodal texts of the campaigns and the discourse that they articulate. Drawing on social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology, the analysis is carried out on a corpus of 1211 multimodal texts – posters, stickers and murals – which were produced by more than 240 social actors within the Basque language movement 1970-2001. The principal findings suggest that both the language movement and its definition of the Basque identity have become more heterogenous. Since the beginning of the 1980’s there has been an ongoing struggle between the institutionalized part of the movement and the politiziced fraction on the goals and mediums of the revitalization process. This struggle is also related to the political and administrative status of the different territories of the Basque Country and their inhabitants. The texts of the institutionalized actors present a process of standardization which seems to respond to the political and linguistical normalization of the Basque Country. While they now reproduce a more open understanding of what it is to be Basque, the texts of the radical actors continue to relate euskara and the Basque identity in a quite narrow way. At the same time, the pro-euskara discourse that these texts articulate seems to be increasingly influenced by the current globalization and regionalization, and presents therefore an increasing incertainty as to what it means to be Basque and to speak Basque.
4.
Hofvendahl, Johan, 1970-
(författare)
Riskabla samtal : en analys av potentiella faror i skolans kvarts- och utvecklingssamtal
2006
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In this thesis, conversation analysis (CA) is applied to study “risk strategies” in parent-teacher-student conferences in the Swedish nine-year compulsory school. The material consists of 80 conferences collected at two different points in time: 45 from the period 1992–93 (at that time called kvartssamtal, lit. “quarter of an hour conference”) and another 35 collected in 2004 (at the present time, and since the latest curriculum from 1994, called utvecklingssamtal, lit. “development conference”). All conferences in the material concern students in the 5th grade, i.e. when students are 11–12 years old.Each year, approximately 2.6 million student conferences in total are held in the Swedish compulsory school and upper-secondary school, involving about 5.5 million participants. Yet, we have virtually no knowledge of what actually happens in these conferences, i.e. how they are conducted. Hence, this study contributes to “filling the gap” and to meeting this want, the how of the student conference as a practical achievement.The aim of the study is to analyze conversational strategies in use to handle “risk”, i.e. a moment whose outcome is uncertain and that could possibly lead to a problem. Here, strategy refers to recurrent line of action and does not necessarily comprise speaker awareness. Strategies are part (and the materialization) of everyday cultural norms, rules of social behavior and habitualized “ways of practice”. They are used “for self”, “for someone else” or “for all” and should be considered in the light of Goffman’s notion of “face-work”, i.e. what the speaker does in order to counteract possibly face-threatening acts. The study is aimed at three particular situations of considerable analytic value: (i) the opening of the conference, (ii) the initiation of talk about trouble (problem), and (iii) the closing of the conference, or more immediately, the possibility for students and parents to raise their own issues.The results show that the conference opening is a coordinated achievement and to a great extent oriented to meet the possibility of the student being nervous. The conference is an “ordinary conference” and the opening questions are “what I ask any student”. When a speaker initiates talk about possible trouble, the pace decreases and utterances very often comprise “perturbations of delivery”, i.e. filled and unfilled pauses, mitigating expressions, abandoned turn beginnings and restarts, “repairs”, etc. These and other circumstances make it possible to forecast the action as (possibly) a trouble-initiating action. At the closing of the conference, students and parents are commonly offered the opportunity to raise their own issues. However, when analyzing the different ways of offering a prolongation of the conference, the study shows that the opportunity is strongly restricted, e.g. due to the design of the question.
5.
Carlestål, Eva, 1951-
(författare)
La Famiglia : The Ideology of Sicilian Family Networks
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Anthropological data from fieldwork carried out among a fishing population in western Sicily show how related matrifocal nuclear families are tightly knit within larger, male-headed networks. The mother focus at the basic family level is thereby balanced and the system indicates that the mother-child unit does not function effectively on its own, as has often been argued for this type of family structure. As a result of dominating moral values which strongly emphasise the uniqueness of family and kin, people are brought up to depend heavily upon and to be loyal to their kin networks, to see themselves primarily as parts of these social units and less so as independent clearly bounded individuals, and to distinctly separate family members from non-family members. This dependence is further strengthened by matri- and/or patrivicinity being the dominant form of locality, by the traditional naming system as well as a continual use of kin terms, and by related people socialising and collaborating closely. The social and physical boundaries thus created around the family networks are further strengthened by local architecture that symbolically communicates the closed family unit; by the woman, who embodies her family as well as their house, having her outdoor movements restricted in order to shield both herself and her family; by self-mastery when it comes to skilfully calculating one's actions and words as a means of controlling the impression one makes on others; and by local patriotism that separates one's co-villagers from foreigners. Hospitality, which brings inclusion and exclusion into focus, is shown to be a means of ritually incorporating non-kin and thus containing the danger the stranger represents. The author aims to answer the question of whether the social and physical boundaries around the family network, together with the distrust towards non-family members referred to by the informants themselves, constitute a hindrance as regards collaboration with non-kin, or if collaboration beyond the family boundaries is possible and, if so, whether or not this has to lead to the family's losing its position.
6.
Hansson, Niklas, 1977
(författare)
Nätverkspolitik - Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003 - 2005
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Abstract Ph.D Dissertation at Göteborg University, Sweden, 2008 Title: Nätverkspolitik. Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003 – 2005. Title: Network Politics. Organizing, openness and control in Gothenburg Social Forumprocess 2003 – 2005. Author: Niklas Hansson Language: Swedish, with an English Summary Department: Department of Ethnology, Göteborg University, Box 200, SE-405 30 Göteborg The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the production of network politics, using the Gothenburg Social Forumprocess as an example. Concepts collected from theories of social movements; the resource mobilization theory and the new social movements-theory, are brought together within the conceptual framework of assemblage theory. Assemblage theory is a theory of society reconstructed by distinguished philosopher Manuel DeLanda’s from out of late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concept of assemblage, a concept describing social entities as the non-stable result of historical processes. The analysis highlights the internal dynamics of network politics, with a focus on process before stable product, putting an extra effort into explaining everyday political organizing as something highly un-predictable, as organized outcomes (network organization) cannot start with a notion of networks as a collective or community acting in unison. The study rests on solid ethnological and ethnographic ground, and is based on a long-term participant observation within the local Gothenburg Social Forumprocess, e-mailing list material, interviews with social forum-organizers, websites, and alternative media press. The empirical focus of the study is mainly on the period 2003 – 2005. Throughout the empirical chapters the local social forumprocess is analyzed via its links to other levels within the World Social Forumprocess. The World Social Forumprocess is described as a self-organizing system with constantly interacting local, regional, national, and global levels, and as an emerging network of social forum-organizations interacting via feedback processes resonating through the system. The empirical chapters highlights different parts of the production of network politics and the local social forumprocess: diffusion of the forum-model as a successful organizing format within the global justice movement, decision-making and consensus building, ground rules for interaction between political organizations, forum-organizers, individual activists and groups, the role of the Internet within network politics, selection of social categories as temporary points of convergence between different political actors (organizations), the method called merger process which reflects the forum-organization as a broker-device between organizations, power-relations within network politics, and finally, a résumé-like chapter presenting glimpses from within a local social forum-event. In the conclusion I state how the social forums could be examined as political meeting-places within a “leaderless social movement”. Keywords: social forum, networks, assemblage, territorialization, coding, social movements
7.
Widholm, Christian
(författare)
Iscensättandet av Solskensolympiaden. Dagspressens konstruktion av föreställda gemenskaper vid Stockholmsolympiaden 1912
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis analyses the renegotiation of Swedish national identity in newspapers’ coverage of the Olympics of 1912. The “sun-shine Olympics”, as Swedes have come to term the event, idealises early twentieth-century Sweden and early sports events. Researchers have shown that this era was far from idyllic in Sweden: it was characterised by various battles concerning the proper national community. Not much has, however, been said about the impact of “apolitical” events and the role played by newspapers in defining this community. Using constructionist theories of identity and linguistic theories on media texts I analyze how three journalistic genres co-created national collectives. The first analysis deals with how the press represented two inaugurations. The genre was a semi-sacral idiom, utilized by newspapers reporting on both right- and left-wing public events around the last turn-of-the century. This genre included a number of apolitical elements, which functioned to legitimise that which was described: for instance romantic references to nature and descriptions of lovely women. This genre, I conclude, demands that its readers conform to certain norms; it tends to silence alternative perspectives. The reports on the inaugurations constructed a patriarchal order’s self-image. They constructed a male collective through a theatrical display which involved, while implicitly “othering”, foreigners, women and children. The second analysis deals with a physical genre, sports journalism. The bodies represented in this genre loaded the imagined community with substance, and gave the texts an “authentic” aura. Those outside the readers’ imagined community were given another sort of body – a body appropriate to ethnic others. Sports journalism also included articles describing the audience. These confirmed the readers’ middle-class identity through clichéd stories about working-class public and an over-aestheticized elite. I conclude that the authentic aura around sports journalism became a way of defending the genre against the accusation that the imagined community that it generated was a mere cultural construction. The visual language is the last genre examined. Pictures representing the male athletes were different from those which usually represented public men. A new masculinity, I conclude, was launched. Action pictures supposedly represented reality. The bodies represented were no longer simply “our boys”, but our heroes. The middle-class male heroes gained a new body, replacing more traditional heroic bodies. Women athletes were also pictured, and the new masculinity was in implicit contrast to the femininities portrayed. The pictures of women, however, present no easily-decipherable pattern, but a series of ambiguities. The pictures also established the national male collective as “white”. Visualisations of foreigners, presented an ”appetizing otherness”, implicitly fixed that which was particularly Swedish.
