1.
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.
2.
Lassinantti, Kitty, 1968-
(författare)
Diagnosens dilemman : Identitet, anpassning och motstånd hos kvinnor med ADHD
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis explores the increasing medicalization of society, the process whereby social phenomenon are transformed into medical problems. Alike the general tendency of neu- ropsychiatric diagnoses, the number of people with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactiv- ity Disorder) has increased and expanded from a boys’ diagnosis to include both adult men and women. Studies on the latter category is however scarce. The objective of the thesis is to contribute with a micro sociological and critical perspective on the effects of the biomedicalization process, by focusing women's experience of getting and living with ADHD. The empirical material consists of narrative interviews with sixteen women, diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. The participants, age 20 to 50, were enrolled via Swedish NGO:s in 2010 and 2013.The thesis resides on four analytical themes: biomedicalization, pharmaceuticalizaton, functionality and gender. It shows how diagnostics evokes processes that involve learning and using a biomedical terminology to describe and understand oneself. ADHD is, in general, depicted as diffuse, expansionary, masculine and deviant sociability and cognitiv- ity. Unlike depression and anxiety, described as temporary and unwanted illnesses, the ADHD-diagnosis embraces the whole personality. Hence, the women find it difficult to identifying and separating ADHD from the self. Furthermore, categorizations of oneself as a ‘woman with ADHD’ imply constructions of individual and collective identity that has ideological implications, i.e. the individual narratives are related to grand narratives. These contradictory grand narratives bring about ideological dilemmas that are handled rhetorically in the women's everyday life. The masculine connotation of ADHD, for ex- ample, render the women experiencing themselves as transgressing not only femininity but also ADHD-personhood. Additionally, as social actions are attributed to the ‘ADHD brain’, the brain is portrayed as a pathological deviant and dysfunctional object for phar- maceutical intervention. Nevertheless, this discourse is also contested by the women by pointing to 1) positive aspects of the ‘ADHD-brain’ in everyday life, or 2) gender inequal- ities and demands of the late-modern society. Concluding, the women in this study are not only victims of their bodies or societal norms, but also agents negotiating– adapting and opposing to – expectations of how to be an ideal citizen or woman.
3.
Ma, Li, 1970-
(författare)
Female Employment and Fertility Change in South Korea
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A large amount of literature has addressed the relationship between women’s employment and fertility in the Western context. We have less relevant knowledge about the context of East Asia. This thesis addresses this situation by providing insight into how women’s employment is interrelated with their fertility in South Korea. I investigate women’s life-course transitions to motherhood, labor force return after childbearing, and second childbearing, respectively. Data used for my analyses come from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS).My studies show that the traditional practice of leaving the labor market at an early stage of family life has gradually been replaced by a pattern of staying at work until and during pregnancy. Among wage earners, women with stable employment positions are more likely than others to become a mother. Further, women with a good labor market standing are more likely to return to the labor force immediately after childbirth without any career interruption. Still, a considerable number of women shift to homemaking after childbirth. The outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 pushed mothers to hold tighter to the labor market than before. Labor force participation after first birth depresses women’s likelihood of having a second child.These studies suggest that a good labor market standing facilitates both motherhood entry and job continuity after childbirth in South Korea. However, the considerable number of women that shift to homemaking during motherhood and the depressed second birth rates of mothers in the labor force reveal that Korean women still face hardships when trying to combine work and family responsibilities.
4.
Sandberg, Carl, 1979-
(författare)
On Board the Global Workplace : Coordination and Uncertainty on Merchant Ships
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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.
Wahlgren, Paula, 1976-
(författare)
De laglydiga : Om skolans brottsförebyggande fostran
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Politicians and scholars often frame schooling as one of society’s most important crime preventive measures. The object of the study is to examine and problematize the hopes and ambitions that have evolved around what the study conceptualizes as the crime preventive educational task of public schooling and its historical trajectory as articulated in government publications. Drawing on governmentality theory, the study focuses on the liberal conception of the autonomous and self-regulating subject, and how the liberal mode of government works through the governing of freedom. The study identifies three discourses on crime preventive education: The emancipatory (1970s onwards), the deterrence (late 1980s onwards) and the safety/security discourse (21st century). The discursive shifts identified are further analysed in respect to how i) the explanation of crime, and the relationship between the deviant and the law-abiding subject, ii) control and iii) freedom and responsibility, are conceptualized over time. The conceptualization of criminal behaviour goes from being caused by social deprivation, becoming instead a calculated rational act. Subsequently, the deviant is altered from a person in need of reintegration to a deterrent example and a risk. The problematization of control has a trajectory from being a matter of social control and integration, ending instead as a matter of risk control and prudentialism. The conceptualization of the kind of freedom and responsibility the crime preventive education should foster is also reframed, from a strategy to counter a lack of democracy and influence, to a way of making prudent citizens. In this, the notion of a collective responsibility has been superseded by a belief in individual responsibility. The key problematization vindicating the process has gone from how to integrate youths into a society in constant flux, to how to restore control if lost and how to protect a pre-given social order.
6.
Willander, Erika, 1978-
(författare)
What Counts as Religion in Sociology? : The Problem of Religiosity in Sociological Methodology
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis aims to contribute to the ongoing critical discussion within the sociology of religion by focusing on the seldom considered perspective of methodology. As such, it consists of a theoretical part that problematizes the ways in which religion has been analyzed, and an empirical part that develops how religiosity can be approached in sociological studies. The thesis seeks, in other words, to contribute to how sociologists analyze religion, and addresses a research problem that has gained new relevance in the aftermath of criticism of the secularization paradigm. In the theoretical part, the assumptions underlying the ways in which religion is studied are revisited, as is the impact that these have had as faras the empirical study of religion is concerned in one of the countries often assumed to be secularized – i.e. Sweden. The empirical part of the thesis is comprised of three studies based on the latest European Value Survey, qualitative interviews and the Blogosphere on religion-related content (n=220000 blog posts). The results from these studies are used to reconsider the religiousmainstream, the “package”-like assumptions often made about affiliation, belief and practice, as well as the fact that the study of religiosity tends to be relegated to the periphery of the imagination of sociologists of religion. The thesis proposes that if we want to study religion in a lay people sensitive way we cannot continue to overlook their understandings of the sacred, the ways in which they regard their own religiosity, and the fact that their affiliation,belief and practice do not necessarily fit the expectations of established ways of analyzing religion.
7.
Jönsson, Jessica H., 1981-
(författare)
Localised Globalities and Social Work : Contemporary Challenges
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Recent global and structural transformations, a West-centric development agenda and the triumph of neoliberal politics have led to destructive consequences for many local communities and individual life chances. The global dominance of the West-centric development agenda, with its roots in the colonial past, has created uneven developments and an unjust world in which Western countries continue to gain advantages and increase their prosperity. Although a minority elite in many non-Western countries share the same interests as Western countries and their global organs, the majority of people in these countries are suffering from increasing socioeconomic inequalities. As a result of the dogmatic belief in a singular and West-centric modernity and its practices, many problems are considered to be the result of non-Western countries’ inabilities to complete the project of modernity in accordance with Western blueprints. This has also influenced social work as a global and modern profession. Social problems are often individualised and the reasons behind many inequalities are increasingly related to non-Western people’s individual shortcomings and traditional cultural backgrounds. In Western and non-Western countries equally are the neoliberal structural and institutional transformations ignored and social problems of individuals and families defined as a matter of wrong and deviant actions and choices.The main objective of the dissertation, which is constituted of four articles and an overall introduction and summary, is to examine the consequences of recent neoliberal globalisation based on the belief in a single and West-centric modernity and development agenda and their consequences for social work facing increasing global inequalities. The following research questions have guided the work: ‘How can social work play an effective role in combating social problems and otherisation, marginalisation and increasing inequalities in a globalised world?’, ‘How does the global development agenda function within the local arenas of social work?’, ‘Are development projects improving people’s life chances in local communities in non-Western countries?’, ‘How informed and responsive are social workers towards the global context of local problems?’The work is based on a qualitative design using qualitative content analysis for analysing data collected through interviews, participant observations and official documents. The results show that irrespective of where and in which context social problems are appearing, since local problems often have global roots, a global perspective to local problems should be included in every practices of social work in order to develop new methods of practices in an increasingly globalised field of work. Destruction of local communities, forced migration from non-Western countries, and marginalisation of people with immigrant background in Western countries should not be considered only as local problems, but also as problems with their roots in global structural inequalities which reproduces global social problems with local consequences.It is argued that social work should consider the dilemmas and problems connected to the taken for granted West-centric theories, understandings and practices of social work in order to develop new methods of practices for combating social problems, marginalisation and increasing inequalities in a globalised world. Such a position includes practicing multilevel social work, social work in global alliances beyond the division of East and West, and mobilisation against neoliberalism and the retreat of the welfare state. This requires critical standpoints against the relationship between the global context of the neoliberal ideology and practices in a Western-dominated and postcolonial world and the daily practices of social work.
8.
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.
9.
Stretmo, Live, 1977
(författare)
Governing the Unaccompanied Child - Media, Policy and Practice
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Through three different case studies, this thesis analyzes how unaccompanied minors are constructed and governed as a specific group of refugees in Norway and Sweden. The first study investigates the Norwegian and Swedish media debate from 2000-2008 by examining how incidences of so-called “missing unaccompanied children” were highlighted on the media agenda. Part of this has also been to analyze the specific official actions taken by Norwegian and Swedish authorities. The second study analyzes how unaccompanied minors were framed in a more broad selection of Norwegian and Swedish official policy between 2000-2010 by looking at how unaccompanied children and youngsters were singled out as subjects of knowledge, and the actions and practices that legitimized these constructions. These two case studies demonstrate that unaccompanied minors have been similarly problematized in Norway and Sweden, hence making similar changes in mode of conduct legitimate. They were sometimes singled out as vulnerable children or child victims, but concurrently also as possible strategic migrants (adults trying to pass as children, problematic youngsters, etc.). This poses different types of threats to the asylum system, thus justifying care-oriented amid control-oriented strategies in their regard. The third case study analyzes how a selection of caregivers (i.e., officials and support staff) talk about their work with unaccompanied youngsters and children, and describes how 10 youngsters give meaning to their experiences of being categorized as unaccompanied. The caregivers held a repertoire of various constructions that clearly connect to many of the official or public narrations. Sometimes unaccompanied minors are framed as respectable exceptions to other problem categories, and at other times as problematic youngsters in need of compensatory pedagogics in order to overcome specific shortcomings. These caregivers, plus the media and national policy, further frame unaccompanied minors as specific rights holders due to their position-ing as “any other child”, therefore legitimizing softer and more care-oriented strategies. The interviews with the 10 youngsters illustrate how they try to re-position themselves as positive exceptions to the official images of strategic or problematic youngsters highlighted in the media, policy and practice. This study identifies a discourse where a lot of consensus and agreement on problematizations coexist in Norwegian and Swedish policy, public narratives, and in how people in the micro context talk and make sense of unaccompanied minors.
10.
Bengtsen, Peter
(författare)
The Street Art World
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In recent years, street art has become embedded in popular culture and received growing attention from the art market and art institutions. Work by street artists has entered galleries, auction houses and museums, and some artists have been given the opportunity to create large-scale sanctioned public art projects. Simultaneously, widespread photographic documentation of street artworks and the circulation of images online have provided artists with a potentially global audience. The Street Art World investigates street art as a relatively newly established field within contemporary art. With the American sociologist Howard S. Becker’s notion of “art worlds” as a central point of departure, the book seeks to characterise street art by studying and participating in the everyday interaction among the artists, gallerists, collectors, critics, curators, bloggers and street art enthusiasts that make up the social environment (the street art world) in which the term street art is continuously given its meaning. Major themes addressed in the book include: (1) The social construction of the meaning of the term street art and the resulting difficulties in formally defining what street art is. (2) The often contradictory attitudes within the street art world towards art history and the institutions of art. (3) The relationship between street art, the art market and the institutional art world. (4) The relationship between street art and public art. (5) Street art’s potential to affect the viewer’s perception of public space, and the possible challenges the increasing digital mediation of street art may pose to bringing this potential to fruition. While the book presents central characteristics of the street art movement, it also acknowledges that it is not feasible to pin down the nature of street art once and for all, since street art is a product of complex social processes.
