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Deutschmann, Mats, 1964-
(författare)
Apologising in British English
2003
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis.Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined.In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions.Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa.The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.
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Jakobsson, Mats, et al.
(författare)
'Att blifva sin egen' : ungdomars väg in i vuxenlivet i 1700- och 1800-talens övre Norrland
2000
Ingår i: Sociologisk forskning. - Umeå : Umeå universitet. ; 37:3-4, s. 134-141
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The background to this study is that there is no studies on youth and their transition to adulthood in preindustrial Sweden. The main objective of this thesis has therefore been to analyze young peoples transition to adulthood during the late 18th and 19th centuries in a region of the northern part of Sweden. The social context of the region was mainly agrarian during the investigated period despite the fact that in the later part of the 19th and beginning of 20th century, a development of a growing forest industry had started. The main questions is: How and when in life did different social categories of young people establish an independent and adult life? Where there any changes in transitional patterns and was the establishment smoother or more troublesome at different times during the investigated period ? Where there any changes regarding social norms related to the establishment of adult life?The transition to adult life is studied from a life-course approach and four key-transitions; The First Holy communion, leaving home, marriage and parenthood are regarded as significant steps within the process to a independent social position. Individual data related to keytransitions is mainly collected from cathectical examination records and comprised 2206 individuals born in six different cohorts between 1770 and 1900. The selected cohorts represents individuals that had to deal with different social conditions during their youth and transition to adult life.The main results regarding the transition to adult life can be summarized in two words, complexity and variance. Usually it was a "long" transition but the number of accomplished keytransitions and the order between them varied, as well as ages when taking the first Holy Communion, leaving home, marriage and entering parenthood varied. Transitional patterns varied between different categories of youth. A dividing line existed between the sexes, those from households strongly rooted in the agricultural structure and those with background in social categories that didn't own or was in possession of land. Social norms related to keytransitons changed along this dividing line during the investigated period of time, and became less permissive within landowning or land-possessing categories and less prescriptive in other categories.Transitional patterns were also influenced by the social situation at different historical times. The need for labor, war and years of famine directly intervened in timing and sequencing of keytransitions. A long term development was that the transition to adult life became more problematic in the later part of the 19th century, especially among young people who were less integrated in the social context and among socially stigmatized youth. Finally, young people were active and reflexive in seeking social space to make the transition to adult life, actions that sometimes caused tensions and conflicts between generations.
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Sjölander-Lindqvist, Annelie
(författare)
Local Environment at Stake : The Hallandsås Railway Tunnel in a Social and Cultural Context
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A major trend in facility siting research focuses on economic and psychological aspects of land-use regarding the location of potentially hazardous technological facilities including storage for high-level radioactive waste, landfills, chemical plants, large-scale dams, or waste incinerators. Such facilities frequently have profound environmental impact and are often understood by local citizens as intrusions on their environment that threaten landscape, place, and community. This investigation of local responses to facility siting is grounded in social anthropological theories of landscape and place. The study addresses the social and cultural impacts of the building of a railway tunnel through the Hallandsås ridge in an agricultural area in the southwest of Sweden. This tunnel project has met with technological difficulties and environmental problems such as a lowered groundwater table and toxic contamination of groundwater, soil, and surface water. A principal concern in this dissertation is how homeowners’ perceptions and views of the landscape, place, and locality—that is, their local environment—has been affected by the building of a tunnel beneath their farms and homesteads. The four articles on which the thesis build are derived from anthropological fieldwork carried out among local residents affected by the Hallandsås tunnel project. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, collaborative photography, nature walks, and participant observation at public meetings, between the years 1999 and 2003. The main findings of the study suggest that the construction of the tunnel and the subsequent environmental consequences have given rise to an increased sense among affected residents of the fragility and uncertainty of life systems and people’s livelihoods. Feelings of uncertainty regarding the future of the community and the landscape have stimulated a discourse about local history and collective memories bearing on the local environment. Shared responsibility for nature and the local environment is another theme. The building of the Hallandsås railway tunnel has both reinforced local identity within the rural community of affected residents and incited conflict as to how the natural resources of the area should be understood and interpreted. Groundwater issues play a central role in land-use disputes generated by the tunnel project. Groundwater serves as a ‘boundary object’ bordering the domains of the concerned parties: the local community and the Swedish National Rail Administration.
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Alkvist, Lars-Erik
(författare)
Max Weber och kroppens sociologi
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about the social body in sociology, represented by the classical sociologist Max Weber. Traditional sociology has not taken the body into account. The body has been considered to belong to the realm of the natural sciences. Sociology has seen the body merely as an instrument or a tool for social action. The mind/body dichotomy, homo duplex, prevails in sociology. The purpose of this investigation is to show that Weber does not totally neglect the social body. I claim that the body is “absent but present” in Weber’s texts. The above-mentioned view that the body is ignored by sociology must, in other words, be modified. I claim that Weber’s texts imply a conception, although rudimentary, of the social body. This conception co-exists, however, with Weber’s tendency to see the body as a natural object. This is in accordance with the general picture of the way sociology treats the body. To examine the question of the social body I turn to philosophy. I believe that some philosophers have been interested in viewing the body as a social rather than a natural object. Plato, René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and finally Maurice Merleau-Ponty have all tried to come to terms with the relationship between the mind and the body. The above-mentioned philosophers, with the exception of Kant, are all therefore concerned with the body as more than simply a biological organism. They try to reconcile the dualistic difference between body and mind. They are, however, mainly concerned with finding a philosophical answer to how mankind can attain knowledge about the object. They are concerned with epistemology and ontology. Sociology, on the other hand, is more concrete and its corresponding concepts are “subject” and “structure”. Sociology fills these concepts with a more non-epistemological and ontological content. He has been described as a subjective sociologist or a micro sociologist, but I claim that this does not give the whole picture. Weber also sees individual intentions and purposes as determined by objective and structural constraints. I divide the works of Weber into two parts. I have named the subjectivist approach “the empowered individual”. Here Weber works at the level of the individual subject. He focuses on the subject’s own experience. The ethically shaped, and therefore systematically self-controlled, body becomes a vehicle for being in the world. The body is subjected to the governing ascetic ethic. The feelings and desires of the body become rationalised into a method and a system. In this way a far-reaching rational discipline is created, a so called “ethical conduct of life is created”. In the writings of Weber the “conduct in life” is described by the concept “habitus”. However, Weber is classical in the sense that he considers habitus as a mental attitude. Other works by Weber include a discussion of the constraining structural surroundings, but Weber prefers to use the concept “life orders” rather than “structures”. Weber describes a number of different life orders which he says form the specific cultural habits adopted by individuals in society.
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Elsrud, Torun
(författare)
Taking Time and Making Journeys : Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This work addresses the phenomenon of long-term, so-called ‘independent’ travelling, or backpacking, often to destinations described as the ‘third world’. It regards backpacker journeys as arenas for identity work, for expressing individuality and a ‘strong character’. Rather than merely being a parenthetic detour in time and space a backpacker’s trip to the tropics can be understood as a creative effort by the individual to regain the control over time and space thought to be lost in places travellers call home. Yet, at the same time, backpacking reproduces structures of power, through (re)constructing the image of a ‘primitive other’ upon which much of a successful ‘western identity’ rests. The success is, however, not only dependent upon inventing and encountering ‘primitive’ others but also upon the gender of the traveller as well as the competence in mastering manifestations of adventure and risk. The work argues, for instance, that stereotype expectations of femininity (and masculinity) make female ‘adventurism’ into a challenge beyond the actual (or faked) ordeals encountered on the road. Adventurous women are forced to negotiate and balance between expectations placed upon them as (non-adventurous) females and as adventurous travellers. The arguments rest upon the ontological and epistemological conviction that individuals are creative, making the most out of the tools for identity work which society supplies them with. However, in the process of individual self-articulation, structures are both maintained and altered. Consequently, it is through studying individuals and their products/expressions (such as media texts or choice of clothing, food or ‘proper’ transport) that information can be gathered concerning individual thoughts and actions and the structures within which these are manifested. Such an undertaking has been accomplished within this project by means of a qualitative, ethnographically influenced approach, including interviews with backpackers, observations in backpacker areas and analysis of travel media.
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Åkerström, Bengt
(författare)
Adults with Autism and Mental Retardation. A Life-Span Perspective
2001
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A review of the literature with a life-span perspective on autism gave rise to the formulation of a general research problem: Can demographic factors, individual factors, and social factors (i.e., education, residential facilities, treatment and other services) explain some of the variance in autistic behaviour and social adaptation in adult life? Historic influences, such as the Acts on services for people with mental retardation, reflected in social factors were emphasised. In a retrospective design two groups of adults with autism (DSM-III-R criteria) and mental retardation were studied, the RFA group, sampled through Riksföreningen Autism (n = 48, mean age 35 years) and the County group, a treated population group (n =39, mean age 37 years). The results showed that the RFA group functioned on a higher intellectual level and had better adult social adaptation (measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales) than the County group. There were no differences in autistic behaviour (measured by the Childhood Autism Rating Scale) either in childhood or in adulthood. Concerning social factors, the Acts for mentally retarded had had major practical consequences. From the common situation with confinement in large institutions, better opportunities for education, more normal residence (group homes), and for occupation (day-centres) had emerged. Regarding treatment, the most persistent trend was the high use of psychoactive medication. After merging the two groups, analyses showed that the major predictive factors of adult autistic behaviour and social adaptation were intellectual level, speech ability and, with regard to social adaptation, epilepsy. The main conclusion is that intellectual level and speech ability are relatively more important than other factors for functioning of adults with autism and mental retardation. The results are discussed with reference to the adequacy of the measures used to capture effects of the social factors and the importance of also investigating samples with higher intellectual levels.
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Bildtgård, Torbjörn, 1970-
(författare)
Hur maten blev en risk: Medicinens bidrag till regleringen av det svenska ätandet
2002
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to historically study the medical and political regulation of swedish eating, with a special focus on the contribution of medicine to such a regulation. In a first theoretical part the study is placed within a "sociology of food" tradition. It is argued that in order to understand modern eating a historical approach needs to be taken. It is also argued that the role of medicine and politics in shaping modern eating is often overlooked in sociology. For this purpose a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis is choosen to look at how food and eating has been problematised in medical and political documents over the last two centuries and what strategies, techniques and apparatuses have been developed to solve these problems.The empirical part consists of three interrelated studies. In the first study three qualitatively different historical medico/political approaches to food and eating are identified: an economising approach, a "hygienic nourishment" approach and finally a risk-management approach. It is argued that nutritional science has been been closely involved in setting the agenda for as well as legitimising a number of political concerns for more than a century. The second empirical study looks closer at how medicine has been involved in the regulation of eating at a micro-level. This is done through a study of how overeating/obesity has been problematised within medicine and how disciplinary background effects the way in which overeating is constructed as well as the techniques developed to treat it. Finally, the third study looks closer at how risk became a central category in the medical discourse. This is done by looking closer at the hypothesis that dietary fat was an important risk factor behind atherosclerotic heart-disease and the process it had to go through in order to reach medical concensus or near-concensus.Finally it is argued that we have to understand the modern concern with food risks not as a reaction to an essential state of the modern world but as a discursive effect to a large extent generated by the medical discouse around food.
