1.
Liedgren Dobronravoff, Pernilla
(author)
Att bli, att vara och att ha varit : Om ingångar i och utgångar ur Jehovas vittnen
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation seeks to describe and investigate the entering and leaving of a highly structured and hierarchical religious community, exemplified in this case by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The respondents in this study were chosen from both active members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Sweden and those who have left the organisation for personal reasons. Repeated interviews with ten active members of the organisation have been conducted in the course of the study and compared to equal numbers of former members. The interviews have been semi-structured to deal with questions of how a person has come into contact with the organisation; how they retrospectively experienced the process of entry; the reasons for becoming a member. Questions have also been asked about life in the organisation. The group of "exiters" have also been asked about the experience of leaving, why they wanted to leave, and how this process was started and carried out. In addition to this I have analysed a four-year diary describing the time inside and the process of leaving the organisation. This has given me an extra psychological insight into the inner experience of someone who has gone through the whole process. The analysis has been done by categorising the content of the transcribed interviews. The analysis of the diary has involved thorough reading, resulting in a division of it into four different parts, where each part has been given a certain key-word, signifying the author's emotional state when writing it. A person converting as an adult has to pass six phases before being considered a Jehovah's Witness by the organisation. These are: Contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses, studying the bible with members of the organisation, questioning, accepting, being active as publisher (spreading the belief), being baptised. For a person brought up in the organisation, the process to full membership is much shorter: Upbringing in the organisation, taking a stand on the belief, being baptised. The exit process contains of seven phases: Different levels of doubts, testing of doubts, turning points, different kinds of decisions, different steps in executing the decisions, floating, a period of emotional and cognitive consideration of membership and its experiences, relative neutrality.
2.
Aytar, Osman, 1960-
(author)
Mångfaldens organisering : Om integration, organisationer och interetniska relationer i Sverige
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to examine inter-ethnic relations between organizationally active people with different ethnic backgrounds. I focus on relations that are based on a mutual interdependence between parties, mutual respect, common procedural rules, real opportunities that expressly approve or reject a proposal in a decision or deliberation situation free from compulsion, where people, who have different ethnic backgrounds, strive after insight and understanding in their relations.In this dissertation I present three empirical cases about cooperation, consultation and participation as forms of inter-ethnic relations from the organizational fields in the society. These cases are examples of what I characterize as “organizing inter-ethnicity”, or organizing people with different ethnic backgrounds around common concerns. Organizing inter-ethnicity is in turn a part of organizing and integrating diversity in society. Drawing on the results of three case studies, I distinguish between opportunities and barriers.My case studies clearly illustrate that the tensions that influence the patterns of and variation in opportunities and barriers have sources that reach well beyond ethnicity. Tensions between old and new organizations, between working immigrant organizations and refugee organizations, between organizations from same group or between organizations that have conflicts from their members’ countries of origin provide some examples of the difficulties that generate barriers to broad interest constellations between organizations.
3.
Karlsson, Lis Bodil
(author)
Berättelser om inre röster : Ett fenomenologiskt och kommunikativt perspektiv
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The phenomenon of hearing voices is examined in a communicative way and with a phenomenological perspective. Data consist of talks in focus groups and of written autobiographical texts. (I) The aim of the first article, “More real than the reality”- A study of voice hearing, is to describe and analyse how participants in focus groups account for and understand their voice hearing experiences. Voice hearing can be understood as a continuum of various experiences, including thoughts about the self and the inner and the outer world. Voice hearing can be experienced as ‘more real than the reality’. (II) The aim of the second article, Från rösthörarnas värld - en analys av självbiografiska brev om hörselhallucinationer [From the world of the voice hearers - en analysis of personal letters on auditory hallucinations], is to analyse how people can describe and interpret inner voices in texts. The terms monologue, dialogue, polyphony and cacophony characterise variations of voice hearing. (III) The aim of the third article, ‘Schizophrenic or occult harassed?’ A narrative study of an autobiographical text about auditory and visual hallucinations, is to show that important insight into voice hearing can be gained when one describes and analyses how a subject writes. The analysis showed how writing was a way of adapting to inner voices and to the psychiatric diagnosis the author had received. (IV) The aim of the fourth article, Leva med inre röster. Utforskande av röstupplevelsers mening [Living with inner voices. A quest for the meaning of voice experiences], is to describe and analyse some methods and attitudes that the subjects use in order to cope with inner voices. It was important that the participants accepted their voices as a part of life. The participants also must cope with being stigmatised.
4.
Panican, Alexandru
(author)
Rättighet och Rättvisa : Användbarhet av rättighet och rättvisa i sociala projekt
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In the references invoked by a large number of social projects to achieve their goals, one can find rights and justice as central discursive units in a frequently recurring thought model. In several of these projects the result, time after time, is lack of success. But the same right thought model continues to be taken for granted as a point of departure. The repeated wars on poverty in the USA exemplify this kind of project. There may be several factors that render these projects unable to achieve the goal: obstructive bureaucracy, incompetence, unfavourable economic circumstances, and the complexity of political processes. But these factors belong to the realization phase, which ignores the repeated use of the same right thought model in which I am interested. I have studied a conceivable implementation problem which can be found before the application starts. The aim of this dissertation has been to analyse what rights and justice, as central discursive units in a repeated thought model, can entail for the potential to achieve the goal/the improved state in social projects. The dissertation is characterized by exposition of concepts and problematization of different ways of thinking. I have used a philosophical and a social-science perspective. The methodological design is textual analysis. My analysis shows that rights and justice have a structure made up of two components: a supra-individual meaning which comprises transhistorical basic assumptions and a negotiable meaning which is established through normative discussions. It is the unit's own built-in basic assumptions that I have pinpointed in order to find out what these can bring out in social projects. I have analysed the type of rights and justice that occur in the projects to which I refer: civil rights and social justice. The conclusion is that rights and justice bring effective opportunities but can also impede and even counteract the reformer's aim even before the project starts. Rights and justice rest on basic assumptions which generate precisely the kind of problems that social projects are intended to overcome. One can happen to bring out what one wants to get rid of, regardless of one's own working method and irrespective of organizational, political, and economic circumstances. The practical usefulness of the results have been discussed primarily in relation to the practice of social work.
5.
Ulmestig, Rickard
(author)
På gränsen till fattigvård? : En studie om arbetsmarknadspolitik och socialbidrag
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation focuses on changes in labour market policies that were provided for unemployed recipients of social assistance between 1989 and 2002 in Sweden. This change is described as a process where the municipalities gradually take greater responsibility for the labour market policies. This group of unemployed is categorized as a particularly problematic group and has been referred to the municipalities. This takes place without any noticeable legislative change or policy decisions and is contrary to the appropriation directions that the government has given to the Labour Market Board. In this process responsibility has ?trickled? through to the municipalities. The process that is described and analyzed in this dissertation is a process that shows how unemployed recipients of social assistance gradually become a municipal responsibility. This entails amongst other things that the unemployed will continue to live off social assistance. The boundary between the government and the municipalities has changed between 1989 and 2002. Categories of unemployed who are adjudged to have great problems in establishing themselves in the labour market are referred to the municipalities. For those unemployed who are established within the unemployment insurance system and who do not need social assistance, there are no major institutional changes. This is ultimately a question of power. While the labour movement safeguards the interests of the unemployed within the unemployment insurance system the recipients of social assistance have few or none who safeguard their interests. Unemployed recipients of social assistance are referred to the municipal system that still has distinctive features from the poor relief period. They are provided with a labour market policy that differs in several essential aspects from the labour market policies that are part of the Swedish welfare state. They are provided with a labour market policy that is bordering on poor relief.
6.
Schmitz, Eva
(author)
Systerskap som politisk handling : Kvinnors organisering i Sverige 1968 till 1982
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The second-wave women's movement emerged in Sweden with Group 8 in 1968, at the height of the anti-war struggle against the US war in Vietnam. A new generation of women took to the streets to demand free abortion, and free childcare, and to campaign against women's low pay and sexual exploitation. This thesis focuses on a number of women's groups? collective action and organising during a political period of different movements. With this thesis I have tried to show what characterised the new women's movement in Sweden from 1968 to the beginning of the 1980's and what happens when women decide to go out and fight against injustices from a gender and class perspective. Secondly, I hope this thesis will provide a better understanding of the social forces for a change in gender relations that existed in Sweden during the 1970's during a period of parallel gender equality work. It was a movement that shook the foundations of women's role in society. Both the women's group activists and the women employed by ASAB and Algots contributed to this. I argue that the collective actions of the women collectives and their experiences of organising cannot be marginalised. I also hope that this study will provide a broader perspective on studies of social movements and collective actions. The social landscape during the 1960's and beginning of the 1970's facilitated the emergence of the new women's movement. For a radicalisation to deepen it also requires political opportunities and openings. For Group 8 it was the international context ? both the anti-war movement and the Women's liberation movement in the US. Another opening was the class politics of the social democrats, where Group 8 saw an opportunity to make visible the situation for especially low salaried women in capitalist society. Group 8 politics were directed against capitalism and the government, the patriarchal relations were exposed on all levels of society. The possibility to free themselves from the expected role of first and foremost being a wife and mother became the trigger for many women to join the movement. The overall focus in my thesis is women's collective actions and social protests. By doing empirical research on some women's groups in different places in Sweden and some women's struggles at work, I focus on the collective strategies that the movement used to challenge women's situation in production as well as reproduction. The women's movement as an important political force was due to the women's creative and active commitment and their ability to mobilise. It was the possibility to create a collective identity in the small women's groups that led to a feeling of power that in turn inspired to political action. The principle was an anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritative organisation and that the small group should be independent. This organisational structure facilitated the creation of a women's solidarity but also deepened the women's consciousness. The Swedish women's movement was a political force active outside the parliamentary institutions and should be assessed in that context. Women activists pushed for a politics that lay in the interests and needs of the majority of women. I believe the new women's movement will be remembered by its extensive collective actions in the form of demonstrations and meetings combined with the sale of newspapers and petitions to municipal councils. The collective actions were characterised by making women aware of oppression and discrimination. This was done with sensational slogans and catchwords at demonstrations. I believe it was these extrovert activities by women activists in different places around Sweden that led to the reception of the ideas and demands of the women's movement reaching far beyond the members themselves and sympathisers.
7.
Wikström, Hanna, 1970
(author)
(O)möjliga positioner. Familjer från Iran & postkoloniala reflektioner.
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The thesis is based on narratives by families originating from Iran, now residing in Sweden, Göteborg. The focus is the accounts of family, gender, relations, belongings (and class).Point of departure is a representation of “immigrant families” as problematic in the media and public debate. The overall aim is to deconstruct this image through the narratives of the families, and to suggest and present other and more complex accounts of families from Iran in Sweden. To reach the objectives of the study postcolonial theory, feminist post structuralism, deconstruction and discourse analysis are used as theoretical and methodological tools. Analytical focus are on doing family, gender, belongings and place. The empirical material consists of 31 interviews with 19 parents and young adults in seven families. The parents all have grown up in Iran before migrating to Sweden. The narratives are looked upon as accounts of discursive experience. The use of discourse in the narratives, in order to do oneself, family, gender, belongings and place, is presented as positions of the subjects. To inhabit a position is to “do identity”. Each family member uses a number of positions depending on theme, and how the narrative is situated. This is related to the theoretical notion of multiple subjects. The findings show that possibilities of differentiated positions and complex expressions, accounted for as an immigrant family, are severely restrained. However the narratives also show a large amount of creative, opposing, and radical expressions. The latter are considered as counter histories and becomes subversive manifestations. The positions occupied by the family members arrived at in accordance with a hegemonic discursive formation containing, on the one hand, “Swedishness”, modernity and democracy, and, on the other, “Iranianess”, tradition and oppression. This suggests that the family members position themselves and their families in relation to a notion of the Swedish, heterosexual, nuclear family as considered normal – and/or a notion of the Iranian, troubled family as subordinated. In a first position the family members do themselves and their families as “Swedish”, modern and democratic, while “Iranianess” is considered undesirable. This suggests being forced to choose either “Swedishness” or “Iranianess”. A second position implies that the family members position themselves and their families as both “Swedish”, democratic and modern and Iranian. The third position suggests rejecting the hegemonic discourse and placing oneself and ones family, as well as generalized notions of family, as neither “Swedish” nor “Iranian” and thus joining the struggle of defining discursive reality. The findings distorts the conception of “immigrant families” as victims of “cultural conflicts”. And thus, refutes the representation of families from Iran as “different” in comparison to “Swedish families” on the basis of national and “cultural” origins. In this discussion the perception of Iran is crucial. That is, if the concept of modernity is restricted to Western societies/practices, the notion of families from Iran in Sweden (or in Iran) will continue to be excluding and exclusive. This in turn implies being able to comprehend Iranian society, and families from Iran, as complex, and as a ground of differentiated expressions.
8.
Arvidson, Markus
(author)
Den fabricerande människan : Om bedrägeri som vardaglig interaktionsform
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The present dissertation takes the multi-faceted phenomenon of deception as its point of departure. The aim is to make a case for deception as a social phenomenon, and to frame theoretically and define the skills and abilities that make deception possible.A theoretical model based on a number of ideal types is constructed. The purpose of the model is to differentiate particular aspects of deception, and the model is illustrated with examples of actions of more or less well-known impostors. The examples were collected from a variety of sources, such as autobiographies and television programs.As a first step, the legal definition of deception, i.e. fraud, and statistics on crimes of deception in Sweden are presented. Different theoretical approaches are also discussed; deception as a personality trait, and deception as communication and interaction.In order to illuminate the social dimensions, it is emphasized that deception constitutes a particular type of relationship between deceiver and deceivee. This particular form of interaction exploits elementary forms, and it is also asymmetrical in terms of the intentions of the parties involved.The concept of social competence is used to describe the skills and abilities required for successful acts of deception. It is argued that the social competence of deceivers consists of three types: strategic, normative, and dramaturgic competencies. The strategic competency involves being goal-rational and strategic, for example, the ability to predict the actions of the potential addressee. In the normative competency, norms and reference to norms are used strategically. The dramaturgic competency represents an operationalization and enactment of the two other competencies, and resembles the preparation and performance of an actor.The different contexts in which deception can occur are also discussed. A preliminary typology is presented, with the aim of demonstrating the difficulties in drawing clear lines between various types of deception. The extended approach to deception also means that it can be viewed as a part of everyday social interaction.Finally, some thoughts on deception in the light of societal changes are presented. It is argued that the increasing demands on people to promote themselves in various ways in today’s society can be perceived as an invitation to deception and fabrication. These demands can generate feelings of inferiority and a fear of eventually being unmasked as an impostor, or a phony.
9.
10.
Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Hanna, 1976-
(author)
Lagom lika, lagom olika : en diskussion om makt, retorik och bi-teoretiska/sexuella subjektiviteter
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of the dissertation is to discuss the use of various notions of bisexuality – focusing on notions of male bisexuality and openness – in a material from interviews and media. The discussion is set in the perspective rhetoric discursive psychology in relation to bi research as a rhetorical context. The dissertation is intended to be a contribution to both a scientific and a social discussion of bisexuality and bi research, as well as of ideals of openness, moderation and subjectivity. The interview material consists of interviews with men aged between 21 and 31 years who identify as bisexual or have bisexual experiences. The media material consist of articles from Swedish daily newspapers from 1995–2005 where talk of bisexuality is used. I use two different materials in order to demonstrate the rhetorical context’s importance for constructions of subjectivity. Constructions of bisexual subjectivity and the use of talk about bisexuality look different, depending on the rhetorical context in which an individual rhetorician speaks. Definitions play a part in the possibility of talking about oneself as bisexual. In both the media and the interview material, the use of different definitions creates distinctions between different subjects. In the interview material, the creation of distinctions occurs both as regards differences between bisexual subjects and various types of monosexual Other and as regards different sorts of bisexual subject. The use of different definitions serves to bi-normalise certain types of bisexual subject positions and bi-alienate others. In a number of instances, different definitions are used side by side, as they are in the media material. The instances show how a definition or a type of bisexual subjectivity that is bi-alienated in relation to one rhetorical context can equally well be bi-normalised in relation to another. In both the media and the interview material an ideal of moderation is repeatedly used to construct an ideal and an anti-ideal, where the latter is characterised by too little or too much. Moderation serves to express authentic subjectivity, while too little and too much express inauthentic subjectivity. The importance of this lies in its implications for the legitimacy of talk, by which I mean the possibility of claiming to talk from the position of a particular subjectivity and the power to define this subjectivity. Briefly, it is a matter of interpretative privilege – the right to interpret and define experience and to be recognised as a legitimate subject. Subject positions that are constructed as authentic constitute legitimate subjects, while those that are constructed as inauthentic become illegitimate subjects.
