1.
Basic, Goran, 1972-
(author)
Samverkan blir kamp : En sociologisk analys av ett projekt i ungdomsvården
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In this dissertation a collaboration project in Swedish youth care is analysed. The aim of the project was to enhance coordination between the Social Services and the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care in order to make the efforts more efficient. The project also employed a number of coordinators. The overall purpose of this dissertation is to analyse conflicts, alliances and comparisons identifiable in interviews and observations. The analytic findings are put into an overall “collaboration context” represented by earlier research on the social phenomenon of “collaboration”. In this way the dissertation tries to contribute to a sociological understanding of a contemporary widespread phenomenon. The empirical materials of the study consist of recorded conversational interviews with 147 project participants (youngsters, parents and various professional categories) as well as observations of meetings, informal get-togethers and visits to institutions, Social Services offices, the head office of the National Board of Institutional Care and coordinators. The material was analysed using the analytic perspectives of Georg Simmel (1950/1964), Theodore Caplow (1968) and Erving Goffman (1959/2004). The analysis shows that the project manifested and led to struggles between organizations involving representatives from the Social Services, the National Board of Institutional Care and the project, as well as to several interpersonal conflicts between representatives from various categories of involved professionals, and the youngsters and their parents. The study also shows that the client, in such human service organizations, faces a significant risk of being marginalized. Professionals who appreciated the collaboration often drew their conclusions based on their interaction with other professionals, but the collaboration did not guarantee a successful treatment of the client. Conflicts concerning the roles of the coordinators and their written documents (“the agreements”) emerged and were actualized through the creation of the project. The coordinators and their “agreements” can be seen as the project’s most visible representatives and symbols, which during the project become both themes for conflict and actualize already established conflict patterns. The youngsters and their parents appreciated the projects’ coordinators who appeared as personally involved and able to make concrete changes. However, many of youngsters and their parents criticized the coordinators and even portrayed a victim identity in relation to the project. The coordinator’s relationship with the youngsters and their parents was mostly characterized by passivity. This is clearly apparent in the analysis of the administrative and/or passive coordinator. Different alliance constellations became visible in these presentations. When the coordinator roles were altered in the description, the alliance constellations change. It is a common strategy for clients in human service organizations to try to enter into alliances with professionals involved in their cases and, in so doing, try to alter the situation to their own advantage. The fact that these alliances are often sought by the client indicates, among other things, the client’s will to fight against the situation in which he/she finds him/herself. I believe that this can be seen as something productive rather than problematic.
2.
Anving, Terese
(author)
Måltidens paradoxer : Om klass och kön i vardagens familjepraktiker
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In this thesis the relation between the everyday meal, the doings of family and the reproduction of difference in Swedish everyday family life is explored. The thesis has a qualitative approach and interviews with parents from different class and ethnic backgrounds and family constellations, but all with children under the age of 8 years old, is the empirical basis. Using sociological and feminist theories that focus on peoples’ experiences and doings and how they are related to relations of ruling, the analysis aims to understand how family is done in Sweden. Taking the point of departure in questions such as how can the practice of feeding be understood as a central hub for how family is done? What does the work of feeding imply in relation to assumptions of the gender equal Sweden? How do the parents interviewed relate to norms about feeding and parenting and what importance do these attitudes have for how class is experienced and reproduced? In the thesis it is argued that the practice of feeding is fundamental for how family is established in today’s Sweden. It is also an important point of departure to understand how relations of class and gender are being reproduced in everyday life. It is also argued that children play a central part in what is considered as “family” in Sweden. The practice of feeding is at the same time a unifying and separating practice where communion between family members, generations, friends and others is established but also a practice where difference is recreated and manifested. Even though Sweden has a long history of approaching gender equality women still continues to have the main responsibility for housework and care of children and a significant relationship between gender and feeding work is identified. Here it is argued that there is a need of an expanded work-concept that also includes the emotional and caring work. The work is not only about performing certain tasks but also how (mainly) the women live with and keep the family and its needs “in their head”. It is also argued that certain types of food, products and ingredients (such as sugar) are fundamental for how a division of class is recreated on a level of everyday life in Swedish families and that there is a strong relationship between “good” meals and “good” and respectable parenting. By taking the point of departure in the practice of feeding the dissertation contributes to the understanding of how family is done in today’s Sweden and how unequal relationships are recreated in one of the most central practices of everyday life.
3.
Apelmo, Elisabet
(author)
Som vem som helst : Kön, funktionalitet och idrottande kroppar
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The main aim of this thesis is to explore young women’s lived experience of the body, which, on one hand, is viewed as deviant – the disabled body – and, on the other hand, is viewed as accomplished – the sporting body. The questions posed in the thesis are the following: how do the young women handle the two subject positions that emerge as a result of the perception of them as respectively deviant and accomplished, which forms of femininity are available to them and what are the strategies of resistance they develop. Based on the work of philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, phenomenologies create in this thesis a sociological theoretical framework that includes the body. Participant observation was conducted at a disability sports camp for young disabled people and at four disability sports contests. The participants were recruited from both the sports camp and disability sports clubs. Ten semi-structured interviews were done with young women ages 15 to 28. Three of the participants were asked to keep video diaries: they were lent a small camcorder and a lightweight tripod for two months. In this study a polarization paradoxically is apparent between the weak, which is expressed through the expression of belonging as ”we”, and the strong individual. The subject position as capable and positive – as a reaction towards the weak, the negative – is one of the few positions that are available to them. With the positive and strong attitude, as with distancing from the victim position, the consequence is the difficulty, not only to complain but also to express pain, despair or discomfort in one’s everyday life. In this study many critical voices are raised. They also tell about stumbling and incontinence. At the same time the answer ”no, it’s fine” is given in many different forms. In this thesis this is interpreted as an unwillingness to express negative emotions. The phrase ”I am like everyone else” and the many variations on the same theme in the empirical material are interpreted as a wish for normality. Using the same logic – that attributed weakness leads to the expression of strength – the deviance that is attributed leads to a nearly extreme expression of normality. The lack of gender attributed to disabled people appears to imply that if functionality is not ”normal”, there is no room for another categorization. One interpretation of the material is that disability is seen in the family and in society as a different landscape, in which vulnerability needs to be compensated for by normality, which in turn results in the interview persons’ socialization into a compensatory normalcy.
4.
Ebsen, Frank
(author)
Udsat til børneforsorg : om etablering af familiepleje, børenanstalter og indsats i hjemmet for udsatte børn i Danmark
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation looks into the treatment of exposed children and young people. The background is a puzzlement as to how the discourse on treatment, during the latest twenty years, has concentrated on the same institutions and themes (Ebsen, 2007). The aim of the dissertation is to shed light on how the institutions of child saving, (family care, placement in residential care, intervention in the home) the specific social technologies and the understanding of children and adolescents, within the child saving system, were established. The first step in this research was to look back in time through the legislation and realize that the first stand-alone act on exposed children and adolescents was launched in 1905 (The Act of neglected and Criminal Children and Adolescents). The Act states that the institutions of child saving include family care, small and large institutions, special intervention in the homes of the neglected children, and an agency which was to make decisions on removing a child and, if necessary, on where the child should be placed. It appears as if the institutions had already been established at the time, and were just gathered in one act. The act gathered the many organizations into a public unity of child saving with the crucial point of securing a public financing by the state. There are good reasons for regarding the 1905 Act as a kind of constitution of the Danish child saving (Like e.g. Egelund, 1997; Bryderup, 2008). This led to research into the background of the 1905 Act More specifically, it led to the study of how the various institutions mentioned in the Act had come into being, and it was examined whether there existed some kind of special institutional “lock-up” which meant that one century later the same institutions were still crucial.
5.
Runquist, Weddig
(author)
Legitimering av tvångsvård : Klienter och deras socialsekreterare om LVM
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of this dissertation was to examine the legitimacy and the legitimizing of compulsory care for substance abusers according to LVM. For this purpose I have conducted, recorded and transcribed qualitative interviews with 80 clients – taken into such care in spring 2006 – and their social welfare officers when the clients were in compulsory care and then again about six months after its termination. Five research questions were posed: (1) How do the social welfare officers justify and explain their decisions to initiate or apply for compulsory care according to LVM? (2) Do the targeted clients consider the decision justified when it was made, when the care is implemented, and some time after its termination? (3) To what extent do social welfare officers and clients reach agreement about alternative placement during the care period (27 § LVM), and about measures to improve the social situation after its termination, which the social services are supposed to work actively for (30 § LVM)? (4) Which are the consequences of these agreements and measures in the clients’ own opinion – especially for their housing situation? (5) What overall conclusions can be drawn about the legitimacy of the act (LVM)? Theories on accounts, last resorts and discretion were used in the analysis, which was both quantitative and qualitative and refined through analytic induction. The social workers primarily justified their decisions as necessary to save their clients’ life; other accounts were to protect them or to discipline them. The clients’ attitude to coercion proved to be highly changeable over time. Some of them retained an unbroken negative attitude to their coercion and compulsory care, while others gradually accepted it. The crucial factor for the clients’ swing to a positive view of the compulsory care was the subjective benefit they ascribed to compulsory care, either during their stay in the LVM home or in the time after that, but the degree of participation in the planning and the decision also seems to have played a part. The question of the legitimacy of LVM should also be answered on the basis of the outcome of the measures that the clients actually receive or do not receive after discharge from compulsory care. At the follow-up at least six months later the housing situation was slightly better than in the time immediately before being taken into care, while five clients at this time were once again forcibly taken into care and a further five were in prison. But even though at least a year had passed since they were originally taken into an LVM home, the majority of the rest of the clients still lacked a home of their own or a sublet flat. LVM gives the possibility of taking measures against the individual’s express will, but the act is legitimated with the claim that compulsory care is nevertheless in the client’s interest since it is assumed to lead to an improvement in the client’s social situation. My dissertation shows, however, that this result is often not achieved. Although the clients often give some kind of retrospective consent, generally speaking their social situation is not improved. If the demand for evidence-based social work is to be taken seriously, this means that the legitimacy of LVM must be seriously questioned.
6.
Werner, Erika
(author)
Trygg, sviken eller osäker : Tankar och förberedelser inför pensioneringen
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation aims to investigate and analyze people's preparation for retirement. The study has been made through semi-structured interviews with 78 people born between the years 1931-1981 regarding their preparations for retirement. The analysis is based on the model Reflexive Planning for Later Life, coping, bounded rationality, behavioural finance and the concept of governmentality, and has been performed by categorising the content of the transcribed interviews. In doing this, three recurrent themes have emerged as key elements in a persons´ preparation for retirement: Life context, Adjustment and Choice. Sweden’s new pension system is still mainly a pay as you go-system, but among other changes, an enhanced lifetime earnings principle and an element of funding have made the individual responsible for how a part of their pension develops. The results suggest that people’s perceived knowledge about the rules of "their" pension schemes affects their view of their retirement preparations. The older respondents see themselves, even if they describe a lack of knowledge, as secure and confident with "their" pension system. Those in the middle group, often feel betrayed by the reform. The younger respondents are often confused and feel uncertain about the long-term durability of the system, but are to some degree more positive towards individual choice. People make retirement preparations in relation to their lives. The intentions behind the reform, to delay peoples´ retirement and make individuals responsible for their future pensions, have not been realised. Few individuals want to prolong their working lives based on their life situation. The intentions behind the new pension system are to put the risk and responsibility onto the individual. However, many interviewees express concern over the individualized responsibility. The information about the reform and the new pension system has been extensive, but people don’t easily adapt to the change. Few read the Orange envelope, few people make fund choices. Many people feel they have a lack of knowledge about the system, an ignorance that seems to strengthen their lack of trust in the system.
