1.
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studies show that the traditional practice of leaving the labor market at an early stage of family life has gradually been replaced by a pattern of staying at work until and during pregnancy.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.
2.
Alvinius, Aida, 1979-
(författare)
Bridging Boundaries in the Borderland of Bureaucracies : Individual Impact on Organisational Adaption to Demanding Situations in Civil and Military Contexts
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to reach a deeper understanding of how boundary spanners are bridging boundaries between uniformed bureaucratic organisations and their environment, characterised by demanding conditions.The main part of this thesis is based upon empirical data gathered through 71 interviews with Swedish civil and military informants from several uniformed organisations. Four articles have been included in this thesis in order to address the overarching aim.The results show that boundary spanners are crucial to the adaption of uniformed organisations to demanding conditions. A number of aspects that are included in the process of organisational adaption have been identified. One of the tasks is to balance between structuring and improvisation where much is at stake. The other task is to create confidence among the involved actors and contribute in different ways to create a sense of symmetry between partners. Finally, the third task for boundary spanners is to recognise improvised roles such as spontaneous links in order to maintain stressful conditions and bridge a gap in the bureaucratic organisation. The present thesis contributes to sociological theory of emotions, disaster management and military studies through a common denominator, namely the demanding context. Taken together, the findings increase awareness of how organisations act towards their environments and how individuals, especially boundary spanners, adapt the organisation to its environment. For leaders and managers, it is important to make decisions, provide mandates and authorisation, as well as invest confidence in boundary spanners. The hierarchical chain may remain in existence, but it can be made shorter and more transparent through this kind of knowledge.
3.
Bergh, Daniel, 1974-
(författare)
Social Relations and Health : How do the associations vary across contexts and subgroups of individuals?
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Objectives: The aim of this thesis is to study the association between social relations and health in different social spheres, and to examine possible interaction effects. Material and Methods: In Paper I, the link between measures of the psychosocial neighbourhood environment, the psychosocial working environment, and psychosomatic health is analyzed by using a subset of data from the survey Life and Health 2000. In Paper II, the association between adolescent social relationships in school and psychosomatic health was analyzed by using the survey Young in Värmland. In Paper III, the association between parental monitoring, peer activity frequency, and adolescent alcohol use was studied by using Young in Värmland as the data source. In Paper IV, the links between adolescent perceptions of the psychosocial school climate, activities with parents, and psychosomatic health, were analysed by using Young in Värmland as the data source. Results: The results from Paper I indicate that social relations in the neighbourhood environment, as well as the working environment, are independently related to psychosomatic health. The independent contributions imply that efforts to improve health can be successfully directed to the psychosocial neighbourhood environment, as well as to the psychosocial working environment. The results from Paper II show that the social relations adolescents have in school may differ between subgroups of adolescents. The health effects of teacher contacts were stronger for the theoretically oriented students compared to the non-theoretically oriented students, suggesting that adolescents should be considered a heterogeneous group rather than a homogeneous one with respect to their social relations in school. Efforts to improve equity in health should consider these differences in order to be successful. In Paper III the results imply that even though both parents and the peer group are important in order to understand the alcohol use patterns of adolescents, the importance of parents should not be underestimated. Parental monitoring had a protective effect on adolescent alcohol use, regardless of the frequency of peer activities. In Paper IV, both the psychosocial school climate, and the frequency of activities with parents were related to psychosomatic health. The positive health effects of the psychosocial school climate were, furthermore, reinforced as a function of the frequency of activities with parents. This suggests that efforts to improve health should be directed to the school environment as well as to the family environment in order to be successful. Conclusions: The importance and meaning of social relations differ between different social arenas as well as between sub-groups of individuals.
4.
Bredvold, Randi, 1957-
(författare)
Entreprenørers fortellinger : en identitetsstudie i det opplevelsesbaserte reiselivet
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This is a narrative study in which five entrepreneurs in the experience-based tourist industry have told their life-stories in connection with their establishing and running their own enterprises. Over the last decades the number of adventure-based companies has markedly increased in tourist industry, but the knowledge gained through the research on the persons who establish these companies is scant. Through focusing on the constructions of identity of the entrepreneurs, this study gives nuanced pictures of the chain of events that had lead an individual to establish one`s own company. In addition, these pictures offer deeper understanding of how these individuals perceive themselves as the founder and manager of an experience-based company. Over the last decades research in entrepreneurship has criticized the imbalanced focus on the entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and it's use as an explanation of their entrepreneurial activities. In the same critical vein I question whether motivational studies are able to explain why certain individuals choose to establish their own business. Indeed, these five stories show that an entrepreneur is not something one is but something one becomes. Although the concept of an experiential economy appeared at the end of the 1990s, the production of experiences has a long tradition in the tourist industry. Norwegian tourism has faced an uphill struggle for several decades, which worries both the authorities and the industry itself. In recent decades the focus has been directed more and more on the dimension of experience. One hopes that the creation of new and attractive adventures will help to reverse the negative trend in the industry. Effecting this reversal places a heavy responsibility on the entrepreneurs since they are to be the driving force in this process. Tourist adventures have been one of several core themes within the field of research in tourism for decades, but this focus has mainly been on the perspective of the consumer. In contrast, this study concentrates on the producers, a group about whom we know much less. The five entrepreneurs who tell their story in this study give detailed descriptions of their life until the establishment of their businesses, and we see that each of them describes a number of causal chains that are interwoven and together create a meaningful picture of their choice. Through focusing on their reflexive identity-constructions and viewing these in light of the concrete situations they were in, before they established their enterprises, we gain a deeper understanding of this choice. Through the process of categorizing these reflexive identity-constructions, three distinct ontological positions emerge, that is, different ways in understanding reality. The study shows that there is a connection between these ontological positions and the ways that the entrepreneurs run their businesses, as well as their understanding of how they create and produce adventures for their guests.
5.
Falch, Wenche, 1952-
(författare)
Står til tjeneste : Emosjonelt arbeid i tjenestemøtet
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about personal assistants, and how they experience their work. The aim of this study is twofold: First to examine the experiences of personal assistants and their work. Second, to examine the assistant’s experiences of feelings at work and how these feelings are managed from an emotionsociological perspective.The empirical base of the research builds upon interviews with personal assistants with a focus on the individual and subjective experiences of the work. The data shows that the assistants concentrate on the emotional aspects of their job. When asked to describe their work situation, the interviewees were preoccupied with the regulation of their own feelings in the relation to the employer. The analysis has an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation and theory are combined.In terms of results, this study shows that the majority of assistants experience themselves as a friend to the client and they experience the job as meaningful. However, here lies the duplicity of the situation because being a friend to the client, who is also the supervisor, can lead to problems when setting the boundaries for intimacy.The study also shows relatively stable structures in relation to the dimensions of power and subordination, where the assistants’ experience themselves as subordinates and the client as superior. At the same time that the assistants finds purpose in their job there are also challenges connected to being subordinate in a face-to-face situation. It is important to the assistants to have control over feelings and outward expressions. Feelings of subordination seem to be linked to the status and power the assistants have in society at large. Thus, how vulnerable they are in the subordinate position depends on age, gender and education. Another effect described by the assistants is a kind of emotional dissonance, where their own feelings are in conflict with how they wish to act in the social interaction with the clients.In the final chapter the concepts of asymmetric and symmetric interaction are used to understand different types of feelings the assistants’ experience. The asymmetric interaction can trigger feelings of irritation, frustration and anger which are energy draining. Symmetric interaction often seems to lead to feelings of contentment, joy and purpose, which are uplifting and energy renewing.As a concluding remark emotional labour seems to be a significant part of the assistants work. By using an emotionsociological perspective it has been possible to gain knowledge about different aspects of the personal assistants’ emotional labour.
6.
Sarromaa, Sanna, 1979-
(författare)
DET NYE OG DEN UNGE NORSKE KVINNEN : diskurser, representasjoner og resepsjoner om ung kvinnelighet 1957-77 og i 2009
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Adolescent girlhood has been a marginalised field in twentieth- and twenty-first-century sociology, social history and women’s history. This dissertation is about feminine adolescence in Norway from 1957 to 1977 – and further in 2009. This study analyses discourses and representations of girlhood and proper girlhood, as well as the mediation and reception of such discourses and representations. More specifically, I examine adolescent girlhood from two intertwining perspectives. First, I analyze the textual representation of adolescent girlhood in Det Nye, the oldest young women’s magazine in Norway. Second, I explore the reception of the magazine’s discourses and representations of young femininity by interviewing girls and women about the magazine. The dissertation consists of four articles. Two of the articles are textual analyses of Det Nye’s regular columns and sections. In the first article, I analyze the question-and-answer column, “Beate.” For over 20 years, Norwegian girls asked Beate for advice about love, romance and sexuality. My focus is on the discursive change in her answers, and the way they moved from essentialist and rigid arguments in 1950s and 1960s to a more gender-equal perspective in the1970s. The second article addresses representations of proper girlhood in 1958 by way of an analysis of a series of so-called real-life stories in Det Nye in 1958. These stories are presented as if they are real stories written by the girls in the stories. In these stories, “proper girlhood” is defined by respectability, (sexual) innocence, cheerfulness, and the ability and willingness to be a good housewife. In the third article, the focus is on Norwegian women who came of age in the ideological landscape of the 1950s and 1960s and who tried to establish what they perceived to be good lives for themselves. The purpose of the article is to examine how these women experienced sexuality and housewifery, especially in relation to how they perceived their possibilities for shaping their own lives. In other words, I confronted today’s elder women, most of them previous housewives, with the discourses and representations that came up in the textual analysis of old issues of Det Nye. The oral history interviews showed that most of these women adjusted to the housewife landscape that was characteristic of Norway in those years. Most of them chose the life path they were “supposed to” choose, and they naturalised their choices. With the exception of one woman in my material, these women were no strong agents of change, at least in relation the division of labour. They married in their early twenties, after which they generally retreated from the labour market to become full-time mothers and housewives for many years. The rising discourse of feminism seems to have played a very small role in the lives of these women in 1950s and 1960s. In the last article, I ask today’s girls about ideal girlhood as portrayed in girls’ magazines, the girls’ own ideas about ideal girlhood, and about the practice of reading magazines for young women. I interviewed 18 girls between 13 and 17 years of age in focus groups, and the results show that girls’ magazines function as an arena for learning and education, providing guidelines about make-up, fashion, education, jobs and labour marked. Magazines are not read, however, only because of the information they offer. They are also read for their own sake – for the “brainless enjoyment” as one of my informants put it. Finally, the magazines also have a trait that appeals to girls with a hectic lifestyle – namely, their “putdownability.”
7.
Solheim, Inger Helen, 1970-
(författare)
Identitet, kropp og hverdagsliv i et folkelig perspektiv : og erfaringskunnskapens plass innen folkehelsetenkningen
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Over the last decades the weight has increased in the Norwegian population. Report no 16 to the Storting, “Prescription for a healthier Norway”, expresses concern for this development and defines important areas of commitment to prevent a further increase in health problems like diabetes 2 and other lifestyle related diseases. The foci described above are all justified by figures and statistical surveys. The dominant approach towards lifestyle related diseases is closely connected with Western medicine. The main tendency in the recommendations is primarily presenting overweight and obesity as something negative and problematic. This study focuses on self-assessment and self-perception of people that are overweight as well as those of normal weight. The aim is to reveal the collective understanding in a local community that struggles to avoid a further weight-gain in its population. This thesis seeks to, shed light on how the weight- evolvement in the Norwegian society influence peoples individual self-image and body perception. A local community in Norway (“Libygda”) defined by media, some years ago, as the most overweight local community in the country, constitutes the basis for this thesis.Methods like fieldwork, multistage focus group interviews and individual interviews (all carried out in “Libygda”) were used. The main focus in all the approaches is the bottom up strategy gained through the research approach Co-operative Inquiry which implies that both researcher and participants together search to gain insight and new experiential knowledge. In this case about individual health perception, body and identity. The data material is analyzed mainly through Life Mode-Theory, and theories of social capital (and other theories from the Social Science field).Methodological and theoretical approaches within Public Health Work are mainly based in Health Science, whereas this thesis has Social Science (Sociology and Social Anthropology) as its point of departure. The thesis will by its perspective aim to complement the traditional Health Science and offer a supplemental approach to the Science of Public Health.This thesis describes how experience-based perspectives on health and body exist side by side with the medical and Public Health Science perspective. This implies that there exists a parallel understanding of reality, which is rarely focused on by health professionals. If Public Health Work should gain a greater impact on peoples’ everyday life, these experience based and folk perspectives must be taken into consideration and accepted by professionals as relevant.
8.
Grönberg Eskel, Marit, 1971-
(författare)
Från slutna institutioner till institutionaliserat omhändertagande
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In recent years, a number of reforms have been made regarding the provision of care to people experiencing psychiatric disabilities. The aim of these reforms was to enable these people to participate in society and to ”live as others”. This political ambition, as well as research on recovery, stands to a certain extent in contrast to the message conveyed in the media, where the mentally ill/disabled to a great extent are represented as dangerous and incurable. The aim of the thesis is to analyse if, and how a group of people experiencing psychiatric disabilities create a sense of being like others, and to relate the analysis to the historical emergence of the contemporary conception of mental illness/psychiatric disability. This thesis employs the method of interviews.I highlight the informants encounter with the historically based stereotype that defines the persons as unreasonable, irrational and incapable of taking care of themselves. When the informants face the stereotype, they act to reduce the negative consequences. The informants’ actions can be interpreted in terms of approaches and in this perspective the informants appear as strong actors, who, contrary to the stereotype, are capable of take care of themselves. Three approaches are described: expertise, adaptation, and distancing. In situations where the stereotype is not present, the informants can create a feeling of being like anyone else. Their stories show that the feeling of being like others is individual. The development taking place in the field is “path-dependent”, meaning that the initial activity, the differentiation of persons with mental illness and the subsequent events is a development following a pattern which could explain the failure of the good political intentions. It has progressed from closed institutions to an institutionalized care service.
9.
Henriksson, Andreas, 1980-
(författare)
Organising Intimacy : Exploring Heterosexual Singledoms at Swedish Singles Activities
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Single activities have long been places where single people can come to meet friends, build community or look for partners. The activities have relevance for studies of heterosexuality, intimacy, personal life and space. This dissertation discusses a conference, a cruise, an online site and an association for heterosexual singles in contemporary Sweden. It shows how these activities, analysed as organising people and spaces, offer participants different versions of intimacy, relationships, personal life and ultimately singledom itself. The concept non-relationality is coined to describe how people understand and enact what it means to lack a certain kind of relationship.Multi-sited ethnographic observations are combined with interviews and a survey (n=416). The chosen methods allow insight into both the heterogeneous character of the contemporary single activity scene, as well as existing tendencies to form communities. The group whose single activities are examined is deemed fairly typical of the single population at large. Nevertheless, most conclusions centre on the specific set of activities described in the book and relate them to historical examples and theory.The single activities examined can be interpreted to enact different practices entailed in a relationship without necessarily demanding commitment to a whole relationship or a specific person. In that way, the activities accommodate the inflexible personal lives that some singles report having. This challenges strict boundaries between coupledom and singledom. Such transgressive or “hetero-doxical” potential in single activities is nevertheless circumscribed by organisers’ notion that the activities provide therapeutic community in a phase before singles take the step (back) into coupledom.
