1.
Sarri Krantz, Anna
(författare)
Tredje generationens överlevande : En socialantropologisk studie om minne, antisemitism och identitet i spåret av Förintelsen
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The Holocaust is an event that lives on in societies’ consciousness in the form of memorial monuments and museums, and is processed by research institutions and authorities. My own journey began when meeting upper secondary students who denied the Holocaust, and I soon came in contact with a group who identify themselves as Third Generation Survivors; grandchildren of those who survived the Holocaust. The purpose of this study is to investigate the third generation´s identity and how it is shaped by the memory of the Holocaust, by contemporary antisemitism and by the influence of Jewish institutions.The ethnographic survey, focusing on interviews and observations, revealed that there is a pronounced will to remember the Holocaust. For some, it is important to remember in a private context while others consider that the more public commemoration ceremonies meet the need. At the same time, the grandchildren live in a time of both manifest and latent antisemitism, which influences the formation of their identity and their autobiography. However, their identity is not only shaped by past and present antisemitism but also by the Jewish institutions, the Jewish calendar as well as cultural and socialguidelines. In the conclusions of the study, it can be seen that the Third Generation´s remembrance of the Holocaust is largely based on a generational transfer of memory that has taken place during the participants’ lives through interaction with the survival generation. The results also show that they havestrategies to deal with contemporary alongside historical antisemitism experienced by the survivors. This together constitutes one of the fundaments of both their individual and their collective identity. The results also show that the third generation chooses to live a Jewish life, within the framework of the Jewish congregation in Stockholm, based on individual choices and decisions.
2.
Görtz, Daniel
(författare)
Etnifierade polispraktiker : Hur etnicitet görs i polisers vardag
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis analyzes how ethnicity is accomplished in the work of Swedish police officers. It draws on ethnographic data from participant observations and field interviews in Malmö and its theoretical framework is primarily based on ethnomethodology. Police officers – and others in their environment – are found to employ ethnicity and invoke it into interactions in a variety of ways: 1) redefining police-citizen interactions in friendly directions, 2) ethnic profiling, 3) strengthening police control over citizens, 4) questioning police legitimacy, 5) offering accounts for deviant behavior, 6) creating in-group solidarity among police officers by way of distancing oneself from norms of “anti-racist political correctness”. These and other uses of ethnicity vary between the ‘frontstage’, where police officers encounter other people, and the ‘backstage’, where police officers interact with their peers. Police officers treat ethnicity with a great deal of sensitivity in the frontstage region, but they speak more freely about it, and adopt an ironic attitude towards “political correctness”, in the back stage region. Ethnicity is found to hold a certain form of social tension that requires the participants of a police interaction to manage and respond to it, sometimes in a postponed fashion where events are discussed at a later time. The study also highlights ethnicity’s place within police culture and police organization in a more general sense. The police adopt a social code that the study calls “ironic knighthood”, where they maintain various heraldic, authoritative and militaristic aspects of their culture and organization but add a humorous and ironic twist. Actively using ethnicity is integral to the interests and incentives of this code. It is argued that ethnicity cannot be removed from the everyday practices of the police, and that a more viable goal of a critical sociology is to seek to carefully describe ethnified police practices so that they can be reflected upon, problematized and developed.
3.
Boethius, Susanne
(författare)
Män, våld och moralarbete : Rapporter från män som sökt behandling för våld i nära relationer
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Men, violence and moral work- Reports from help-seeking men at treatment centers working with violence in close relationships Men’s violence against women is an extensive social problem. In the 1970s, a new kind of centers were established in the US and UK, focusing on treating men who had been violent against their wives or girlfriends, the aim which is to end the men’s violent behavior. In the 1980s the first center where violent men could seek help was established in Sweden. Even though these treatment programs have been around for almost 30 years, they have received limited attention from researchers and evaluators. Research in the field on domestic violence is less frequently studied from the perspective of men rather than from the female perspective. This thesis explores how men, who voluntarily sought help at men´s centers report their experiences of violence and treatment. The study is based on two types of data; responses given on a questionnaire collected primarily for an evaluation study, and analyses of qualitative interviews conducted for this thesis only. The results from the questionnaire shows that, the men who seek help at a treatment center do not constitute a heterogeneous group. Some men report frequent unilateral psychological, physical and sexual violence use against their partners. Other men report no physical or sexual violence use at all. Many men report being exposed to their partner’s violence. The motives for seeking help are not always to end the violent behavior. The possibility to assert whether the treatment was effective is also discussed. There was no control group, meaning that there is no way to compare the results with those men who did not participate in the treatment. However, the men report less violence use one year after the first contact was made with the treatment center. The main part of the analysis explores how the interviewed men present themselves. In other words, the thesis highlights the men’s explanations and portrayals of their own retold experiences. The analysis shows that all the men construct a morally decent description of their selves. Inspired by Scott & Lyman’s (1968) sociological concept ‘accounts’ and Goffman’s (1971) ‘presentation of self’, the moral work, made by presenting the retold violent acts and their relationships, are identified. Furthermore, the men switch between denying and claiming responsibility. At times they deny responsibility for the violence used and place it with the women (“it’s her fault”), their background, or specific situations. At other times they claim responsibility, and do this on three different levels; 1) in the situation, 2) by explaining that they have been trying to end the relationship and 3) by arguing that they has been trying to seek help. The men also negotiate the concepts of ‘violence’ and ‘women abuser’, making efforts to make distinctions between themselves and “real” women abusers.
4.
Ennerberg, Elin
(författare)
Destination employment? : Contradictions and ambiguities in Swedish labour market policy for newly arrived migrants
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Sweden’s “establishment reform” was introduced in 2010 with the ambition to increase the labour market participation of newly arrived migrants. It was in line with other labour market policies of the centre-right Alliance government, elected in 2006, which aimed to increase work incentives particularly for groups seen as “vulnerable” in, or excluded from, the labour market.By considering the history of ALMP and policies of migration linked to the labour market, the establishment reform can be seen as building both on earlier initiatives targeting certain groups, as well as the investment ambitions of labour market training programmes. At the same time, the integration approach to migration, developed by successive Social Democratic governments, has also largely been integrated through this reform. Thus, the establishment reform combines both social and labour market goals, leading to contradictions and ambiguities at the policy level and in practice.In this thesis I consider how the establishment reform combined workfare and social investment elements, including social support ambitions, through a qualitative study of its policy ambitions, organisational challenges and practical consequences, using documentary analysis, interviews and close to 200 individual cases from the Public Employment Service.It is argued that the ambiguities of the policy are present in the twin goals of workfare and social investment: above all, how to combine the disciplinary elements of active participation – positive and negative economic incentives to enter the labour market quickly – with the long-term goals of upskilling to improve the quality of employment, particularly in combination with the ambition to provide “individualised” support and to empower individuals.At the organisational level, these contradictions are played out in practice through the interactions between the individual participants and employment officers at the Public Employment Service, as well as private sector “establishment guides”. Here, the social needs of the participants achieve prominence, making it more difficult to focus on the reform’s work-first principles. This prioritisation on the ground can be defended by the policy’s stated goal to focus on the individual.A closer analysis at how the measures fit the group of newly arrived migrants is achieved through the construction of five “types” within the group. The trajectories of each type are explored, showing the different opportunities and difficulties they encounter through the establishment period, and how the measures are more suitable to some types than others.
5.
Esholdt, Henriette frees
(författare)
Når humor, leg og lyst er på spil : Social interaktion på en multietnisk arbejdsplads
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
How can we understand the multi-ethnic workplace as a social meeting place? And what happens if we do not 'frame' in advance the social meeting in the widespread anti-racist frame of understanding? These are the questions that are central to this thesis. Starting from a phenomenological methodology, it is the ambition of the thesis to challenge our usual preconceptions and not pre-define how inter-ethnic relations are to be understood, which is why the thesis - expressed in Goffman's terms - asks: ”What is it that’s going on here?” (Goffman 1974), as a way of finding which framework of understanding should be applied. Based on the part of the lifeworld that unfolds in a multi-ethnic workplace, the thesis examines the social interaction in inter-ethnic collegial relationships as it spontaneously arises and develops in the inter-ethnic collegial relationships in everyday working life. The thesis is based on fieldwork (consisting of participant observation and interviews) at the Food Factory ("Madfabrikken"), a multi-ethnic workplace in the hospitality sector in Denmark. With an auto-ethnographic point of departure, the researcher brings herself into play in the relationships under study, and makes herself an object of observation, reflection and study. In addition to the life at the Food Factory, the thesis is also concerned with the research process, and experiments with different methods of grasping and conveying the life lived in the Food Factory in all its complexity and ambiguity. The thesis explores empirical observations of social interactions, where humour, play and pleasure are on the line. As much as the interplay in the collegial relationships at the Food Factory can be pleasurable and fun, it does, however, bring the risk of danger. It is this duality that is illuminated in this thesis. In the first instance, the humour, play and pleasure are continually on line in the collegial interaction and this contributes to a range of humour-based and sexualized forms of social interaction, where "ethnicity" is defused and enjoyed as an aesthetic and sexualised surface. Secondly, it is true in the sense that humour, play and pleasure risk being on the line or jeopardized, if the rules for the interaction are not mastered or respected. What was previously 'framed' as being pleasurable, sexualized play and teasing at work, or what was set in a humorous frame, is suddenly in danger of being replaced or overtaken by a new 'framing' of the situation as sexual harassment or racism. The thesis does not end up with definitive answers as to how social interaction in a multi-ethnic workplace should be understood and how we can understand it as a social meeting place, but contributes with the knowledge that social interaction in inter-ethnic collegial relationships is vulnerable, ambiguous, fragile, undecidable, manipulable and redefinable. With an object-sensitive eye, the thesis contributes to other, more nuanced narratives about the social meeting of the inter-ethnic relationships - namely the narratives about the life lived and its forms.
6.
Sunnercrantz, Liv
(författare)
Hegemony and the Intellectual Function : Medialised Public Discourse on Privatisation in Sweden 1988-1993
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation offers a theorisation of the ways in which the intellectual function is performed through various subject positions. In the thesis, a post-Marxist approach to discourse theory is used to address questions of discursive shifts, hegemony and the intellectual function. It is supplemented by a rhetorical political analysis in order to examine how practices and strategies involved in hegemonic struggles take place on a more fine-grained level of analysis. The theoretical argument is complemented through empirical work that analyses the medialised debate on privatisation in Sweden from 1988 to 1993. As a step in the theorisation process this empirical analysis applies elements of both post-Marxist discourse theory and rhetorical political analysis to shed new light on the intricacies of the intellectual function and the hegemonic processes in which it plays a key part. Using a post-Marxist terminology, the intellectual function is conceived broadly as the articulation and mediation of ideology, and analysed with the aid of conceptual devices derived from the rhetorical political analysis approach. Empirical analysis thus plays an active, constitutive role in the production of theory. This also implies that empirical analysis is not undertaken primarily as an end in itself, but rather because it is needed to support the theorisation process. Nevertheless, the analysis of the privatisation debate in Sweden elucidates important discursive changes that took place in this decisive period of recent Swedish history. The focus of the study is directed towards the shifts in ways of defining and speaking about the concept under contention (in this case, privatisation) in a relational setting of concepts and political positionings; the formation and performance of an intellectual function and the types of subject positions made available in the debate, and the rhetorical practices used to inhabit such positions; and the rhetorical and political strategies employed to achieve (relative) fixation of a particular definition of privatisation by making it (appear to be) commonsensical. The analysis shows how a common sense centred on the right to private ownership, is established in the privatisation discourse. By disentangling moral and efficiency-based arguments, the empirical analysis provides novel insights that contradict existing economistic assumptions about neoliberal politics and ideologies. By fleshing out the post-Marxist notion of an intellectual function, the study offers a way of conceptualising a post-foundationalist theory of intellectuals. Moreover, performances of the intellectual function are typologised into three ideal types: “experts”, “spokespersons”, and “public intellectuals”. The dissertation also points to processual changes in the representation of these ideal types in mainstream and alternative media. By analysing discursive practices of coalitions building and the articulation of political frontiers in the privatisation discourse, the empirical analysis elucidates constructions of unity and division among political subjects. What emerges from these processes is a new hegemonic order which supplants the previous hegemonic formation – which became the common enemy across political lines – the social democratic welfare state.
7.
Al Khalidi, Marwa
(författare)
Influential Moments in City Planning Meetings : A Study of Decision-Making Situations in a Jordanian Municipality
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The shaping of a city and its future relates to official decisions made in city planning meetings, where daily planning matters and decision-making processes adapt to changing societal circumstances. The interest of this research lies in how planning is officially established, managed and practiced in the setting of a Jordanian city, and its local districts. This interest leads the research to observational studies of the mechanisms of municipal council meetings and of the institutional setting of official city planning. One important backdrop for this research are the conditions of the study context tied to rapid changes that have been made to planning objectives due to changing geo-political circumstances and large numbers of migrants. More directly, the research has the basic purpose of improving the understanding of the manifold aspects that surround and make up a decision process, by including actors or relations of various kinds that can have an influence on the procedures.Through participant observations and drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), this research looks closely into how decision-making agency can be both formally and informally delegated to human actions, to material objects, to technologies, and to the rules and modes of institutional ordering. These heterogeneous aspects are studied in relation to, but also derivedfrom, empirical investigations of the planning culture that, as I see it here, encompasses the norms, values, and historical significance that may influence and define how planning is practiced. I investigate the conditions on which the meeting – as the most common decision-making body – depends to proceed in normal and destabilised situations. The observations are presented as narratives that convey situations of destabilization that were observed and selected through applying a ‘lens of controversy’ as a methodological tool. The analytical discussions that follow these narratives bring new insights by reflecting on the observed meetings, actions, and institutional environments with the help of architecture- and design-oriented actor-network-theory and relational planning theory, as well as organisation theory, decision-making studies and meeting studies. The detailed and situated studies in this thesis focus on the important role of the material and spatial components of the planning setting. They also highlight the importance of the setting as a flexible network that supports decision-making processes with various types of delegation from inside and outside the meeting room. This has for instance led to views on the temporal territorial productions that are created in interaction with the setting of the planning institution. The results also highlight the heterogeneity of actors with influence, and how time-related features such as timeliness and durabilization in meetings can influence the decision-making process. The research concludes in elevating several networked mechanisms and principles of influence. Principles like ‘redundancy delegation’, ‘transistor tactics’ and ‘recovering destabilizations’, and concepts such as ‘temporal institutional territorialisation’, and ‘state of predisposition’ represent such significant figures of thought that are found to be of interest, and that could be given further attention in the theoretical as well as practical analysis of planning and planning settings. This research hopes also to contribute to discussions regarding how to cope with emergent situations using long- and short-term planning in the development of policies and means for future modes of planning.
8.
Björquist, Elisabet, 1959-
(författare)
Mind the gap : transition to adulthood – youths' with disabilities and their caregivers' perspectives
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Transition to adulthood, referring to the process of moving from childhood to adulthood, can be a complex period for youths with disabilities who might need special support transitioning into an independent life as adults. Caregivers are significant persons for the youths, which is why their own health and wellbeing is important. Therefore the overall aim of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding of health and wellbeing, challenges, preferences and needs during the transition from childhood to adulthood in youths with disabilities and their caregivers. The thesis is comprised of two studies, study A focusing on the perspectives of youths with CP (Paper I) and of their caregivers (Paper II) and Study B focusing on the perspectives of immigrant youths with disabilities and caregivers from Middle Eastern countries residing in Sweden (Paper III and IV). Study A had a qualitative approach and involved focus groups and individual interviews with 12 male and female youths, 17-18 years of age, with CP and various physical and cognitive levels of disabilities (Paper I), as well as 15 mothers and fathers (Paper II). The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. In Study B, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Based on structured and semi-structured questionnaires in combination with open ended questions interviews were conducted in Swedish or Arabic with 17 male and female youths, 13-24 years of age with various disabilities and 10 mothers, five fathers and one sibling. The families were all immigrants with Middle Eastern origin and most of them had lived in Sweden for more than five years. The questionnaires Family Need Survey (FNS), Rotterdam Transition Profile (RTP) and Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) were all translated and adapted to Swedish except for COPM where there already was a Swedish version. The results were analysed using mainly descriptive statistics and based on the framework of International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health – Children & Youth Version (ICF-CY). The findings from study A showed that the experiences of youths and caregivers mostly concerned mental health and wellbeing described as both positive and negative experiences. Their family life was experienced as important, secure and convenient, which made the youths feel safe and gave parents a sense of meaningfulness. Youths described participation, socialising and love as being important, but also challenging and worrying. Caregivers experienced sorrow and anger and together with demanding logistics, planning and worrying, their health was affected negatively during their children's transition to adulthood. The findings from study B showed that youths were dependent on their caregivers for transportations, participating in leisure activities and socialising with friends. They were also dependent on their caregivers for the demanding of support and health care. The youths had few or no experiences of intimate relationships but felt that they were expected to get married in the future which worried them and their caregivers. Caregivers were uncomfortable with using the term intellectual disability. Caregivers needed help to understand their child's condition and to explain the child's condition to their wives/husbands. A significant difference was found in what problems youths identified with and what their caregivers identified as their youth's problems. The youths experienced problems with handling finances, transportations and seeking employment or daily activities whilst their caregiver thought their youth's primary problems involved self-care. The overall finding showed that to strengthen health and wellbeing in youths with disabilities and their caregivers and to meet challenges, preferences and needs during transition from childhood to adulthood both youths and caregivers need information and support. Both youths and caregivers expressed a desire for individualised support given by one person who could facilitate the transition period by coordinating information and give support based on individual preferences and needs. During the recruiting process in both studies, great challenges were experienced in finding participants. Collaboration with professionals in schools and leisure activities was found to be the most effective way to get in contact with immigrant youths and thereby also their caregivers. The findings from this thesis may enable professionals to develop and improve best practice guidelines for support, habilitation and health care in youths' transition. To facilitate for the youth to transfer from services with a family-centred approach to person-centred adult services, their autonomy must be strengthened by involving them in their own transition planning early on. Immigrant youths need special information and support about love and the freedom of choice to get married. The COPM and RTP are suggested to be used as tools in person-centred transition planning given they are used customized and applied with cultural sensibility. To enable those with communication limitations to give their independent voice the use of communication tools is necessary. Furthermore, the transition to person-centred adult support and health care should be flexible and not determined by biological age. However, youths need support by their caregivers who in turn might both need, and want, support for themselves and occasionally hands-on support. Guidance by a specially designated navigator aimed to support the whole family would be an option to meet individual needs. The information and support should be culturally sensitive with respect to various linguistic and cultural experiences. To close the gaps between systems of care collaboration was discussed to be necessary to facilitate the transition between support and health care for children and youths as well as services for adults. The use of ICF-CY as a framework for understanding needs and the standardised terminology in ICF-CY in documentation can facilitate this collaboration.
9.
Capelan Köhler, Annika
(författare)
Fibre Formations : Wool as an anthropological site
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Contemporary debates on sustainability usually relies on standardised and normative categories, such as ‘social’ and ‘nature’, and on linear notions of time. This study explores a more complex perspective on the delicate borderlands between the ‘un-sustainable’ and the ‘sustainable’. A particular material and a particular place stand at the centre of attention: woollen Merino fibre on the South American grasslands. Being alert to activities around woollen fibre implies efforts to understand how the fibre forms part of larger wholes as it generates collective relations and communities. This focus foregrounds aspects of people’s careful balancing between sustainable and un-sustainable conditions. By drawing on fieldwork among sheep farmers, laboratory technicians, manufacturers, textile traders, artisans, artists and art collectors, the study shows that the idiosyncrasies of how people classify Merino wool include different kinds of interferences, here referred to as processes of displacements, dissonances, dissociations, and distortions. The classifications and their interferences also include the handling of coexisting and contradictory temporalities: rhythms, paces, cycles and intervals. These are vital and imperative yet often overlooked parts of holding together artefacts and worlds. The study demonstrates that the South American grasslands’ multispecies collectives and the wool, their qualities or how they sustain, can be better understood after attention has been paid to people’s practices of classification. To classify is not only to sort and order what is already there but a way to both make sense of and to generate worlds. Fibre formations thus refers to both the transformations that the wool undergoes, and the impact it has upon lives in its surroundings. By letting Merino fibre be the stable point – the site – and the smallest common denominator of each description, the study shows how variations of categorization morph and add to normative categories and to linear notions of time. Woollen fibre is found to be part of several larger wholes and, in a sense, to be larger than itself. This, in turn, contributes to recent reflections on the capacity of anthropological research and is intended as a tentative move towards an anthropology of un-sustainability.
10.
Eriksson, Erik
(författare)
Sanktionerat motstånd : Brukarinflytande som fenomen och praktik
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The roots of the idea of user involvement within social services can be found in the efforts of the rising service user movement in the 1960s and 70s. Today the concept of “service user involvement” has been adopted by the state and is widespread within political rhetoric’s as well as in human service practices. However, user involvement is known to be an imprecise phenomenon that can take on different meanings (cf. Cornwall 2008; Patterson et al. 2008), opening for potential conflicts between service users and organisation representatives concerning goals, intentions and activities. The aim of the thesis is to investigate how service user involvement is constructed within contemporary human service organisations, and how the construction is affected by, as well as affects, the prevailing power structures characterizing the relationship between service users and welfare workers (see Hasenfeld 2010). The study has an ethnographic and constructionist base. During three years I conducted fieldwork in two welfare organisations – a county based psychiatric hospital and a municipal social service administration – following such activities that the organisations defined as working with “service user involvement”. The concept of co-optation (Selznick 1949) is used to analyse how power structures and institutional logic within the welfare organisations are maintained as well as questioned through the everyday interactions taking place when service user involvement is carried out. At the same time as the institutionalized service user involvement control and constrain the way service user representatives act and pursue their goals, it gives them a possibility to challenge the welfare organisations from within. Hence, service user involvement can be understood as a “sanctioned resistance”. The study suggests that no radical change in power positions is achieved through the service user involvement. The influence that users have can commonly be understood as adjustments within a prevailing institutional logic, rather than changes that transform the organisations in a more profound way. Moreover, the surrounding socio-political context plays a vital role in determining what service user involvement becomes. What employees can do when it comes to meeting service users’ demands is conditioned by the overarching welfare politics and resource allocation.
