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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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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.
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Carstensen, Gunilla, 1964-
(författare)
Sexuella trakasserier finns nog i en annan värld : Konstruktioner av ett (o)giltigt problem
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The focus of this dissertation is how gender, heterosexuality and sexual harassment are constructed in an academic setting, based on in-depth interviews with 15 female PhD-students on how they talk about, understand and interpret experiences of gender and sexual harassment in academia. In the first part of the analysis, the informants’ own descriptions of their academic contexts are studied. The second part of the analysis addresses the question of how gender is produced, constructed, created through meanings of being a researcher. The analysis shows that an individualising perspective reproduces two sets of assumptions simultaneously: the assumption of equality between women and men, and the assumption of gender difference. The third part of the analysis focuses on sexual harassment. At a level of principle, sexual harassment is constructed as both defined by subjective standards, and on the other hand objective standards, just like the Swedish official definition on sexual harassment. When the women are talking about their own experiences of sexualization in academia, sexual harassment as a frame of reference is made invalid through following frames of interpretation: for example, notions of the female harassed victim, notions of the male harasser, alcohol, the level of violence/coercion, frequency and notions of the legitimate victim. When all these frames for interpretation are considered together, the space for drawing a boundary and naming something as sexual harassment seems to be minimal. The informants’ use of sexual harassment as a concept is partly informed by the assumed gender neutrality of the professional order and partly by what are culturally expected interactions between women and men. Finally, the contextual analysis shows that due to a double meaning of the Swedish gender equality discourse, sexual harassment tends to become “everything” and “nothing” at the same time. This opens up for invalidations of sexual harassment as a valid problem in the academic setting.
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Eriksson, Maria, 1969-
(författare)
I skuggan av Pappa : familjerätten och hanteringen av fäders våld
2003
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aims of this thesis are to shed light on the handling of fathers’ violence in the context of separation and divorce in Sweden today; and to analytically and empirically relate age, gender and kinship to each other. The aims are fulfilled by three interlinked studies of what constructions and the constructing of age, gender and kinship mean for the handling of fathers’ violence against mothers/co-parents and children: in social policy; by separated mothers; and finally by family law secretaries. Each study builds upon a separate set of qualitative material: public documents from three policy areas; thematically structured interviews with abused, separated mothers and family law secretaries. The empirical results make visible some unintended consequences of current attempts in Sweden to create gender equality, shared parenting, a “new father” and to promote children’s interests. Study one demonstrates that when the politics and policy regarding parenthood, separation and divorce are taken as the point of departure, the contemporary age-, gender-, and kinship-order stands out as patriarchal: as marked by father-power based upon ties of blood to not yet adult children. Furthermore, violent fathers neither exist as a concept nor as a policy problem. The interviewed mothers narrate how they have tried to deal with the co-parent’s/ex-partners’ behaviour as violence but have encountered hindrances; the interviewed family law secretaries’ handling fathers’ violence stands out as more of a non-handling, especially in the case of violence against children. When the everyday constructions and constructing of age, gender and kinship discussed in study two and three are taken together, the contours of the patriarchal order seen through the lens of policy are also made visible: fathers’ space for action is vast; children’ and mothers’ more limited. The analysis shows how political and professional handling of fathers’ violence through a non-handling is made possible by well-established notions of heterosexual relationships, fatherhood, motherhood, age- and kinship-relations, as well as family law secretary-professionalism. However, the two studies based upon interviews demonstrate not just how the everyday constructions and constructing mentioned above can be used to reproduce father-power, but also how this power can be challenged.
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Moksnes, Heidi
(författare)
Mayan suffering, Mayan rights: Faith and citizenship among Catholic Tzotziles in Highland Chiapas, Mexico
2003
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the construction of citizenship by a group of highland Mayas in Mexico. The ethnographic focus is on liberation theological Catholics in the Tzotzil-speaking municipality of San Pedro Chenalhó in highland Chiapas. Through their religious affiliation and their political association Las Abejas, the Pedrano Catholics form one of the important blocs of what is today a deeply factionalized municipality. Fieldwork was carried out in two periods for a total of fourteen months in 1995 and 1996. Complementary work was conducted during a month-long visit in 1998. The fieldwork focused on the daily life, Sunday services and meetings of Pedrano Catholics. Informal interviews were also made with church members, catechists and other leaders. The study shows how Pedrano Catholics are reinterpreting the signification of the poverty and suffering that all Pedranos hold is characteristic of their lives as indigenous peasants. The converts are creating a collective identity that transcends the ethnic group and defines them as part of a universal humanity. Simultaneously, through a "moral theology of suffering," their poverty is defined as a distinguishing experience that is contrary to the will of God, and which brings them and other indigenous peasants closer to God and his grace. Evoking Christian ethics and international human rights regulations, the converts denounce their predicament and demand rights in a discourse directed at Mexican authorities as well as national and internatonal civil society. Thereby, Pedrano Catholics have developed a form for exercising active citizenship in the Mexican nation-state. This endeavor is found to be shaped by an ongoing concern among Pedranos: the construction of cohesive social collectivities that uphold alliances with patron deities for protection. The Catholic church groups and their confederate-like coordination on municipal level are structured similarly to the earlier calpul community in Chenalhó. Both levels of the Catholic community are also constituted as the entities by which the converts uphold an alliance with God that assres his guardian protection. Thus, while the Pedrano Catholic community is part onf an escalating factionalization and disintergration of Chenalhó, it provides a space where Pedrano society can be reconstituted, offering a sense of coherence and unity. At the same time, the Catholic group is constituted as part of a broader community of Catholics, and recognizes clergy of the Catholic Church as religious and political authorities. Thus, it is argued that the Catholic group exemplifies a broad change in the Maya highlands, from "closed" corporate communities to translocal, moral communities.
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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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Ahn, Sang-Hoon
(författare)
Pro-welfare politics : A model for changes in European welfare states
2000
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation explores the changing conditions of European welfare states and the underlying driving forces behind these changes. It is broadly based on the recently emphasized notions of dynamic structuring and internal structure of welfare programs, taking into account the new environment of the welfare state. More specifically, it seeks to uncover the political mechanisms behind the changes in public welfare program structure by examining important driving forces at a macro level, then by relating this to political processes at the micro level. Thus, this dissertation is composed of two parts, i.e., a macro- and a microanalysis of pro-welfare politics.In the macro analysis, the relative explanatory power of core driving forcesbehind welfare efforts is examined using a pooled time series analysis of 12 European countries for the period between 1960 and 1989. In addition to drawing on traditional approaches that emphasize the importance of political driving forces, differences in the roles played by Left party power and Christian party power are examined. The meaning of intergenerational conflict is also examined in the context of welfare program changes.The microanalysis is devoted to uncovering mechanisms of pro-welfare politics by analyzing the complex internal relationships of those pro-welfare politics.This is approached using a theoretical framework of "welfare statuses of rights and duties" as an alternative to the class-based cleavage framework. Also in this second part, Swedish survey data collected in 1995 is analyzed using the LISREL method to check the empirical validity of the suggested framework.The dissertation concludes by suggesting the new notion of welfare rights alliance as a conceptual tool for linking the macro-micro-macro relationships of pro-welfare politics. Building on this, a multi-dimensional model of public welfare change is presented, along with examples of how the preceding discussions and analyses can be understood in the context of the model.
