1.
Baral, Anna, 1984-
(author)
Bad Guys, Good Life : An Ethnography of Morality and Change in Kisekka Market (Kampala, Uganda)
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Based on ethnographic data gathered over a period of almost three years, this dissertation scrutinizes the everyday lives of informal workers selling auto parts in Kisekka Market, central Kampala. Its ambition is to understand how the workers navigated a highly moralized environment in today’s Uganda, where the supposed moral deterioration of society is passionately discussed in public and in private.Analytically the dissertation focuses on three “moral landscapes,” or moral discourses of different geographical scales, that intersected in the workers’ lives: first, the Ugandan nation or the country; second, the Buganda kingdom with its cultural institutions to which the majority of the workers professed allegiance; and third, the capital city Kampala. Materializing in Kisekka Market, each landscape posed moral demands that the workers navigated daily as they struggled to balance norms with lived practices.The workers were perceived by external observers as morally ambiguous for their supposed instrumentality in riots and violent crimes in Kampala. Their notoriousness increased for the fact that they were men, often uneducated, and therefore, in public discourse, potentially threatening. Consequently, they were referred to as bayaaye, translated as hooligans or bad guys, and this label defined their relations with customers from all parts of Kampala and Uganda.In exploring the implications of the three moral landscapes, particular attention is paid to the in-between. Rather than focusing on mediatized events like riots and crimes, the dissertation investigates and locates the workers’ agency in the mundane processes of care and getting by and the tentative paths to a good life that unfolded daily in Kisekka Market, regardless of larger political tensions in Kampala and beyond. The city’s development plan to replace Kisekka Market with a fancy shopping mall rendered the workers’ situation increasingly exposed and their lives increasingly vulnerable. In the workers’ quest for some degree of control and self-worth, the label of bayaaye refracted into its multiple dimensions – proudly appropriated or painfully rejected by the workers themselves – attesting to the complexities of everyday ethics, in Kampala as elsewhere. Consequently, the ethnography of this dissertation problematizes the dominant yet fraught narrative around young men in urban Africa.
2.
Bååth, Jonas, 1985-
(author)
Production in a State of Abundance : Valuation and Practice in the Swedish Meat Supply Chain
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis is a sociological contribution to the study of abundance. It discusses the case of Swedish meat producers and how they persist in producing pork and beef despite a lack of demand and competitive disadvantages compared with foreign suppliers. In doing so, this study answers how abundance is perpetuated in the production of a foodstuff in over-supply. This monograph further adds new empirical and theoretical knowledge to the fields of food studies, economic sociology, and the social sciences studying problems of abundance.The study explores how Swedish meat producers deal with problems stemming from supplying more than demanded volumes of food. The inquiry into this topic combines pragmatism, economic sociology, and qualitative fieldwork. The empirical materials mainly consist of in-depth interviews with 41 informants and more than one month of participatory observations from the Swedish meat supply chain.The evidence supplied shows how farmers, meat processors, and retailers continue supplying an abundant foodstuff by studying the valuations used in their production practice. The conclusion is that meat is not supplied to meet the consumers’ demand for food. Instead, this foodstuff is supplied as a marketing tool to meet the producers’ demand for commerce as an aesthetic of market exchange, or sustained production in line with Swedish agrifood policy, distinguished by high animal welfare and low antibiotics use. It is further argued that abundance is perpetuated because these producers rely on valuations which distinguish certain qualities of a good, rather than sufficient quantity of supply. Without using a quantitative, commensurable measure, it is not possible to limit the supply. This study contrasts existing theories of abundance by stating that problems thereof depend on how sufficiency is valuated, not the existence of some excess. These findings further support the argument that supply chains must be granted more attention in food studies primarily preoccupied with consumers. They also suggest further investigations into the relationships between markets in supply chains, and the role of production sites in economic life, would benefit economic sociology.
3.
Sarri Krantz, Anna
(author)
Tredje generationens överlevande : En socialantropologisk studie om minne, antisemitism och identitet i spåret av Förintelsen
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) 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.
4.
Wesolowski, Katharina
(author)
Maybe Baby? : Reproductive Behaviour, Fertility Intentions, and Family Policies in Post-communist Countries, with a Special Focus on Ukraine
2015
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis studies different aspects of reproductive behaviour on the international, national, and local levels in post-communist countries. The main focus is Ukraine, where fertility rates are very low and the population is in severe decline. The studies contribute new knowledge about the applicability of a family policy typology developed on the basis of Western countries’ experience for post-communist countries, and about the influence of family policies on fertility levels in these countries. Moreover, the studies investigate whether and how macro-level influences impact on individuals’ reproductive behaviour. Four articles are included in the thesis:Family policies in Ukraine and Russia in comparative perspective analyses the institutional set-up of family policies in both countries and compares the findings to 31 other countries. The results show that Ukrainian family policies support a male-breadwinner type of family, while the benefit levels of Russian family policies are low, compelling families to rely on relatives or the childcare market.Family policies and fertility - Examining the link between family policy institutions and fertility rates in 33 countries 1995-2010 comparatively explores whether family policies have an effect on fertility rates across the case-countries. Pooled time-series regression analysis demonstrates that gender-egalitarian family policies are connected to higher fertility rates, but that this effect is smaller at higher rates of female labour force participation.To have or not to have a child? Perceived constraints on childbearing in a lowest-low fertility context investigates the influence of the perception of postmodern values, childcare availability and environmental pollution on individuals’ fertility intentions in a city in Eastern Ukraine. It is shown that women who already have a child perceive environmental pollution as a constraint on their fertility intentions.Prevalence and correlates of the use of contraceptive methods by women in Ukraine in 1999 and 2007 examines changes in the prevalence and the correlates of the use of contraceptive methods. The use of modern contraceptive methods increased during the period and the use of traditional methods decreased, while the overall prevalence did not change. Higher exposure to messages about family planning in the media is correlated with the use of modern contraceptive methods.
5.
Flinkfeldt, Marie, 1982-
(author)
Legitimacy Work : Managing Sick Leave Legitimacy in Interaction
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis studies how sick leave legitimacy is managed in interaction and develops an empirically driven conceptualization of ‘legitimacy work’. The thesis applies an ethnomethodological framework that draws on conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis. Naturally occurring interaction is examined in two settings: (1) multi-party meetings at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, in which participants assess and discuss the ‘status’ of the sick leave and plan for work rehabilitation; (2) peer-based online text-in-interaction in a Swedish forum thread that gathers people on sick leave.The thesis shows how mental states, activities and alternative categories function as resources for legitimacy work. However, such invocations are no straight-forward matter, but impose additional contingencies. It is thus crucial how they are invoked. By detailed analyses of the interaction, with attention to aspects such as lexicality and delivery, the thesis identifies a range of discursive features that manage sick leave legitimacy. Deployed resources are also subtle enough to be deniable as legitimacy work, that is, they also manage the risk of an utterance being seen as invested or biased.While legitimate sick leave is a core concern for Swedish policy-making, administration, and public debate on sick leave, previous research has for the most part been explanatory in orientation, minding legitimacy rather than studying it in its own right. By providing detailed knowledge about the legitimacy work that people on long-term sick leave do as part of both institutional and mundane encounters, the thesis contributes not only new empirical knowledge, but a new kind of empirical knowledge, shedding light on how the complexities of sick leave play out in real-life situations.Traditional sociological approaches have to a significant extent treated legitimacy as an entity with beginnings and ends that in more or less direct ways relate to external norms and cognitive states, or that focus on institutions, authority or government. By contrast, the herein emerging concept ‘legitimacy work’ understands legitimacy as a locally contingent practicality – a collaborative categorially oriented accomplishment that is integral to the interactional situation.
6.
Dobeson, Alexander, 1985-
(author)
Hooked on Markets : Revaluing Coastal Fisheries in Liberal Rural Capitalism
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Natural resource–based economies are typically embedded in rural networks of production. In recent years, however, the privatisation of access rights and the organisation of markets have substantially transformed some of these rural economies.By using the case of the Icelandic coastal fisheries, this ethnographic study shows, on one hand, how property rights–based management regimes and markets have reconfigured rural economies by disentangling fishers from their community ties, leading to increasing investment and technological development in the industry. On the other hand, the case shows how daily economic ‘coping’ has re-entangled fishers in a web of money-mediated relations that have economised economic expectations from cost-awareness to increasing profit-making in the industry.This economisation of the fisheries’ economy, however, not only reconfigures forms of coordination and network ties, but also changes the social practices that lie at the heart of economic value itself: fishing and processing. Hence, the study shows how artisanal and labour-intensive industries cope with the ‘primacy of the economy’ not only by rationalising their operations towards economic efficiency, but also by recontextualising traditional forms of knowledge and technology for the collective construction of a new 'quality'-oriented market-niche.The consequences of this coping, however, are twofold: while on one hand this development has led to the valorisation of line-caught fish, coastal fisheries have become objects of financial speculation, leading to a paradoxical cycle of investment and technological problem-solving that is pushing the temporal and spatial boundaries of coastal fisheries in local networks of production. As a consequence, the meaning of ‘small boats’ as social backbone and symbol of rural independence is being contested.This study is not only of interest to scholars dealing with processes of economisation and marketisation of rural networks of production and natural resources, but also for those interested more generally in the role of markets, technology and changing economic practices of evaluation and valuation in contemporary capitalism.
7.
Ekelund, Alexander, 1979-
(author)
Kampen om vetenskapen : Politisk och vetenskaplig formering under den svenska vänsterradikaliseringens era
2017
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis examines the relation between politics and science in Sweden during the era of political radicalization in the sixties and seventies. Rooted in the Bourdieuan tradition of cultural sociology the main analysis focuses on relations between different cultural fields. Studying social movements and the political debate as well as the scientific fields makes it possible to identify habitus and strategies that formed the radical student generation. In addition to efforts to understand the historical background of the radicalisation, like the changes within the Education system and the general tendencies of the political debate, certain parts of the Swedish student movement are studied in-depth, like Unga filosofer in Stockholm and other autonomous groups organizing students and young teachers at the university departments. Of particular interest are the collective struggles to gain influence within the academic structures and the alternative forms of education that were initiated in the late sixties and early seventies.Since the young generation of radical academics were not prone to follow the traditional paths – the established order of succession – they had to find ways to compensate for the academic capital that they renounced by challenging their professors or other influential actors. To understand how this came to effect the Social Sciences and Humanities – or in this case more precisely the fields of philosophy, sociology and literary criticism – the other studies focus on analysing three politically motivated projects that were formed at intersections between a movement-context and academia: the first centred on the critique of positivism, the second engaged in the development of the ideas of scientific socialism – inspired by the reception of the philosophy of Louis Althusser – and the third a later feminist project that evolved in the field of literary criticism with the reception of Julia Kristeva’s theories. One thing the three projects had in common was that they created opportunities to channel political engagement in academic strategies by occupying homological positions in the political-intellectual field and the scientific fields – in some cases confronting the same antagonists in the different arenas. Some of the preconditions that made these strategies possible, which are discussed on the basis of the studies of the different fields, are the intellectual infrastructure that enabled conversion of symbolical assets, like magazines and other arenas for theoretical debate, the creation of social networks and the fact that the political radicalization encouraged transnational theoretical investments.
8.
Gröndal, Hedvig, 1983-
(author)
Unpacking Rational Use of Antibiotics : Policy in Medical Practice and the Medical Debate
2018
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Rational use of antibiotics–using antibiotics only when needed and in the right way–is a prioritized goal in policy aimed at preventing antimicrobial resistance. A vast body of research is devoted to understanding why unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed. However, this research tends to treat the definition of rational prescribing as an unproblematic fact, which is given by evidence.The thesis aims to sociologically unpack rational use of antibiotics as medical knowledge and a policy goal. One study examines how rational use of antibiotics in health care was established as a crucial part of AMR prevention in Sweden, and three studies, drawing on different materials, look at how rational antibiotic use for everyday infections is negotiated and performed in medical practice and the medical debate in Sweden. The thesis makes theoretic use of material semiotics and critical policy studies, which enables examination of how medical knowledge, medical objects and policy are performed in webs of relations between human and non-human actors.The studies show that rational use of antibiotics for everyday infections is characterized by uncertainties and tensions. These cannot be reduced to medical professionals’ ignorance, or to how non-medical factors influence medical practice. This implies that social factors are not enough to explain why medical professionals dismiss specific policy definitions of medically appropriate prescribing. Instead, the uncertainties and tensions characterizing rational antibiotic prescribing can be traced to the complex and contingent nature of medical knowledge and medical objects, as well as to the potentially conflicting risks that antibiotic prescribing involves. As a consequence, deviance from, or critique of, a specific definition of rational use of antibiotics may constitute a performance of rational use of antibiotics as a policy goal. In medical practice and the medical debate, rational use of antibiotics as a policy goal can draw on and work with mutable medical knowledge and objects, as well as conflicting medical risks. It is concluded that sociologists need to continue entering the seemingly pure medical sphere to critically investigate policy and policy goals that draw on medical knowledge and that, as such, appear to be neutral and undisputable.
9.
Melldahl, Andreas, 1982-
(author)
Utbildningens värde : Fördelning, avkastning och social reproduktion under 1900-talet
2015
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis focuses on changes in the value of educational capital over time. Taking as a point of departure Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of a multidimensional social space, the thesis examines how this value is affected when educational assets—through the democratization of education—are becoming more widespread across this space (i.e. the population).The studies are based on datasets from Statistics Sweden, comprising the complete censuses of 1960 to 1990, LISA-registers, and registers of wealth and income. Different approaches are employed: the use of the Gini-coefficient to catch changes in the distribution of education; comparative models to investigate cohorts at different points in time; and specific multiple correspondence analysis to study the distribution of several assets simultaneously. Three aspects are explored: the distributions, returns, and uses of education. Firstly, while there is a steady increase in the average number of years of schooling, there is a different pattern in the development of the distribution of education. Three phases were distinguished: one of increasing levels of inequality, one of decreasing inequality, and one in which the inequality levelled out. Secondly, the returns of education have diminished as far as economic gains are concerned, causing a fracture between different social generations, at the same time as the returns in a wider social sense have remained relatively stable. However, the relative stability hides crucial discrepancies. Groups with the lowest level of education are further marginalized and distances between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ groups are growing. Thirdly, in their modes of using the educational system, there are glaring differences between the economic elite and the cultural elite, although both utilize prestigious educational institutions as sites of social reproduction. The fundamental difference consists in that exclusive educational strategies are not as necessary to the dominant fraction of the economic elite. Their children are able to choose more freely among the offers of higher education. The paradoxical development of the value of education is that while the absolute value of educational capital has decreased in general, the differences in relative value persist.
10.
Ekstam, Helen
(author)
Trångboddhet : Mellan bostadsstandard och boendemoral
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Residential crowding is frequently associated with impoverished segments of the population, often living in distressed neighbourhoods, and with detrimental consequences for crowded households. The aim of this thesis is to apply a sociological and historical perspective on residential crowding by analyzing Swedish governmental texts and quantitative survey data. Politically defined welfare standards, as well as the subjective experience of crowding are analyzed and interpreted through sociological welfare and governmentality theory.The arguments justifying the official governmental standards on residential crowding – first formulated in the mid-1930s – are explored in a discourse analysis. The analysis shows that there is a strong link between what is regarded to be appropriate dwelling space and what is regarded to be morally good housing conditions. In the 1930s and 1940s experts’ decided on what was adequate dwelling space, however in the mid- 1980s experts’ ability to decide on dwelling space was highly questioned. Instead it became an individual responsibility to decide on how to reside. Hence, what constitutes morally good and morally bad dwelling conditions is debated and dispersed on many actors.Two parallel discourses on crowding, a ”gentrified” and a “distressed” are further explored by analyzing the data from a survey study. Subjective as well as objective elements are analyzed by relating socio-economic profiles of the crowded residents in a distressed and a gentrified neighbourhood. Despite income differences within the crowded population, depending on what neighbourhood you live in, the crowded residents in all neighbourhoods experience less freedom regarding their dwelling situation than do non-crowded residents. The least amount of freedom is experienced by those who are crowded both according to the Swedish housing standard and according to a subjective measure of crowding.
