1.
Baral, Anna, 1984-
(författare)
Bad Guys, Good Life : An Ethnography of Morality and Change in Kisekka Market (Kampala, Uganda)
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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-
(författare)
Production in a State of Abundance : Valuation and Practice in the Swedish Meat Supply Chain
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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
(författare)
Tredje generationens överlevande : En socialantropologisk studie om minne, antisemitism och identitet i spåret av Förintelsen
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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.
Gröndal, Hedvig, 1983-
(författare)
Unpacking Rational Use of Antibiotics : Policy in Medical Practice and the Medical Debate
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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.
5.
Larsson, Magnus, 1983-
(författare)
National environmental evaluation systems : guiding towards sustainability?
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Background: Dealing with environmental threats is one of the largest, if not the largest, challenge contemporary societies face. One way to better deal with this challenge would be to produce knowledge that can be used to improve environmental work and environmental policy and thus ultimately contribute to sustainable development. National environmental evaluations, which this thesis explores, could potentially fill this function because they are supposed to generate applicable and useful knowledge for improving environmental policy and practice for a sustainable transition. However, what different environmental actors view as useful knowledge varies, and needs to be empirically investigated. Against this background, the aim of this thesis is to investigate whether, and how, national environmental evaluation systems contribute to key actors’ environmental work and sustainable development. The thesis explores two national environmental evaluation systems in Sweden.Method: A mixed methods approach is applied that combines three methods. Firstly, a narrative synthesis is developed and applied to compile a list of sustainable development effects from national environmental evaluations. Secondly, a critical program theory is used to investigate the evaluation system’s underlying logic and to assess the likelihood of it achieving its intended effects. Thirdly, a directed content analysis is used to explore the usability and use of environmental evaluations and evaluation systems. The methods are applied to various documents, interviews with key actors, and observations at two environmental seminars.Results: The results show that, to contribute to sustainable development in the context of evaluation systems and network governance, environmental evaluations need to be of sufficient quality and meet different stakeholders’ knowledge needs. However, only some evaluations meet this demand. The main value of national environmental evaluations and evaluation systems is that they reinforce the national objectives, provide a recurrent report on achievement of objectives, and push actors to take responsibility to improve their environmental work.
6.
Nordén, Per
(författare)
Regnbågsungar: Familj, utbildning, fritid
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In this thesis, rainbow children’s experience in private, institutional and public spaces is examined. More specifically, the aim is to explore if and how social conflict arises on the basis on their queer kinship structure. 28 interviews were conducted with informants that share the experience of growing up in Sweden with one or more homosexual, bisexual or transgender parents. Their age varied from 15 to 37 years of age. The theoretical starting point is taken in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2008) discourse theory along with the Essex colleagues Glynos and Howarth (2007). Glynos and Howarth break down Laclau and Mouffe’s articulation concepts into three elements, which they define as social, political and fantasmatic logics. In order to analyze these logics in empirical data, Glynos and Howarth state that a moment of “Theoretical and critical interventions” (s. 38) is needed. The intervention in this thesis comes from poststructuralism, feminism and queer theoretical perspectives. I specifically draw on Butler (1990; 1993; etc.), Ahmed (2006), Halberstam (2005) and Stockton (2009) in exploring how queer family structures come to matter in everyday life. The first (1) result chapter, Komma ut som regnbågsfamilj, explores the rainbow children’s stories of their parent’s coming-out process. In this chapter I show how coming-out processes affect family life and how everyday life changes through these processes. Broadly speaking, this chapter deals with negotiations that concern nonnormative positions, but also how this relates to family and kinship structures. The second (2) result chapter, Att framträda i utbildningsmiljön, concerns the experience of rainbow children in the different institutions that organize education, such as pre-school, elementary school and high school. In this chapter I show situations where heteronormativity has social implications for the rainbow children’s right to education. The third (3) and final result chapter, Skiftande fritidssammanhang, shows a span but also specific social communities the rainbow children takes part in during their leisure time activities. In this result chapter I show how the informants are stopped or appear unwanted to participate in certain environments. The conflict areas that appear show, like in the previous chapter, that rainbow children experience heterosexism and transnegativity. The interview touches on occasions and situations when the informants are separated from their previous leisure time contexts. This show that rainbow children, even in the most different contexts, always needs to relate to their queer family structure.
7.
O’Hagan, Lauren Alex, 1991-
(författare)
Class, Culture, and Conflict in the Edwardian Book Inscription : A Multimodal Ethnohistorical Approach
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This study draws on theories and methodologies from the fields of multimodality, ethnography and book history studiesto explore class conflict and social mobility in Edwardian Britain (1901-1914). Using a dataset of 2,998 book inscriptions, this work investigates the types of inscriptions present in books bought and exchanged in Edwardian Britain; the ways in which inscriptive practices varied according to location, gender, age, social class and occupation; the material and semiotic features of inscriptions; and their communicative and performative purposes. The findingsr eveal that inscriptive choices were primarily influenced by ‘class-based affordances’ that centred on the social status and wealth of book owners, as well as Edwardian social conventions and the specific, well-established norms of each inscription genre or sub-genre. For the working classes, inscriptions represented pride at owning a book for the first time, while the lower-middle classes primarily used inscriptions as symbolic gestures of social mobility to gain social capital and respect from peers .In contrast, the upper classes, who feared the collapse of hierarchical society, saw inscriptions as a way of advertising their wealth and high social status. However, there is some indication that the upper-middle classes were slightly more willing to embrace lower-class inscriptive practices. These findings suggest that we must reframe current conceptions of hegemony as the transmission of values from a dominant social group to a subordinate one, and view it, instead, as a continuous two-way process between different groups .Overall, the study demonstrates how blending multimodal analysis with ethnohistorical methodologies can uncover the important role of the inscription as a material microcosm of the social tensions that existed between class groupsin early twentieth-century Britain.
8.
Shahbazian, Roujman, 1982-
(författare)
Sibling Configuration and Adulthood Outcomes : The Case of Two-Child Families
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis includes three empirical studies, analyzing how sibling configuration (i.e. birth order, birth spacing and sex-composition) influences siblings’ long-run income and educational choice. This is done by utilizing the unique linkage opportunities of administrative registers covering the entire population of Sweden.Study I: This paper focuses on how different birth spacing intervals are associated with income rank from ages 33 to 42 years, for siblings in two-child families. The results show clear differences between first- and second-born siblings. At the more common spacing intervals (less than 5 years), spacing has a negligible association to second-born children’s long-term income rank. However, first-born children have lower income rank when a younger sibling is born when they are very young. Having relatively high spacing intervals (over 5 years) is associated with somewhat lower long-term income-rank than having mid-length intervals for both first- and second-born siblings.Study II: This study focuses on the association between combinations of sibling configuration (i.e. birth order, birth spacing and sex composition) and long-run income rank of siblings. The results show that the significance of different family factors in two-child families vary by sibling sex-composition. The findings suggest that both birth order and birth spacing are important factors for first born boys independent of the younger sibling’s sex. First-born girls, however, only have an advantage if they have a younger sister. More surprisingly is that this advantage does not seem to vary by birth spacing.Study III: This study examines how sibling gender configuration in Swedish two-child families influences the choice of so-called STEM educational fields (i.e. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The results show that younger siblings, net of parental characteristics, are more likely to choose a STEM field if their older sibling already has attended a STEM program. The findings indicate that boys’ choice of STEM fields is independent of having an older brother or sister who has attended a STEM program. However, girls seem to be more likely to choose a STEM-field if they have a sister who has attended a STEM program, than if they have a brother with a similar program. Given that STEM-fields are markedly male dominated, this indicate the importance of having a same-sex role model for making gender atypical educational choices.
9.
Sivertsson, Fredrik, 1984-
(författare)
Criminal Careers in the Long Run : Patterns and Predictions of Criminal Convictions across Age, Time, and Gender
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Why is it that a small proportion of the population accounts for the majority of crime? This question has stimulated a great deal of theoretical and methodological controversy in criminology. In essence, the debate is rooted in different theoretical underpinnings of continuity and change in crime, and the extent to which it is possible to foresee a life of crime by zeroing in on at-risk juvenile offenders. The current thesis explores four contentious empirical issues that may move this debate forward: the long-term predictability of persistent offending in adulthood on the basis of childhood risk factors (Study I); the magnitude of adult-onset offending (Study II); the predictive value of gender for criminal recidivism (Study III); and the association between birth cohort membership and criminal career parameters (Study IV). All four studies employ longitudinal Swedish administrative data, based on cohorts of individuals born between the early 1940s and the mid-1980s, and followed on the basis of detailed conviction data. The thesis also utilizes qualitative life-history narratives with former at-risk juvenile delinquents. The results suggest that theories aiming to explain crime beyond the transition to adulthood should incorporate factors presumed to cause within-individual change, even among high-risk juvenile offenders. Although childhood cumulative risk, including a wide range of individual, family, school, and peer measures, were clearly associated with adult crime, they had limited value for predicting those persistent offenders who eventually ended up in the tail of the crime distribution. Furthermore, although gender is generally one of the main demographic predictors of criminal convictions, the results indicate that it is important to include females for the purpose of understanding continuity and change in adulthood. This is in part because adult-onset offending is more prevalent within the female offending population than within the male offending population and in part because the risk for criminal recidivism among female offenders becomes increasingly similar to that found among male offenders as convictions accumulate over the life span. Finally, the results suggest that the typical criminal career has undergone significant changes both within and across gender groups during the period since the mid-1970s, a period which has witnessed a historical decline in the aggregate conviction rate in Sweden. Taking this into consideration, the employment and extensive analysis of longitudinal multiple cohort data ought to provide a basis for furthering our knowledge on the inherent complexity of crime trends, while at the same time also locating the study of criminal careers in its historical context.
10.
Wallinder, Ylva, 1983
(författare)
Imagined Independence. Institutional Conditions and Individual Opportunities in European Labour Markets
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The studies presented in this thesis examine perceived labour market opportunities and conditions for labour market mobility for European employees. The European labour market strategy has created an opportunity-oriented employability-logic that emphasises individual characteristics and individual responsibility for employment. Within this logic, individuals are active job seekers and should continuously develop their employability skills, a one-dimensional focus on employability. In contrast, this thesis argues that the current employability discourse fails to account for two further relevant and interdependent dimensions of employability, namely the institutional context and the local recognition of employees’ resources at the workplace. Thus, individual characteristics, institutional conditions and local recognition for resources are vital for employment. The institutional context influences individuals’ access to education and employment, as well as employers’ mode of recruiting employees. The resources held by individuals are also relational in the sense that they are influenced by everyday practices of recognition and workplace situations. The thesis draws on both survey data and interview data. The first part of the thesis (Paper I-II) combines individual-level data from European Social Survey (ESS 2004 and 2010) with country-level data measuring national variations in terms of employment protection legislation, labour market policies and education systems. The second part of the thesis (Paper III-IV) analyses conditions for intra-European labour market mobility by examining a rather privileged group of labour migrants, namely highly skilled Swedish migrants with a university degree from Sweden and employment in Germany or the United Kingdom, with who in-depth interviews were conducted 2014-2015. Paper I examines the influence of European countries’ specific institutional contexts, such as labour market policies, education systems and employment protection legislations, on employees’ perceived labour market opportunities. The results show that employability is a multifaceted concept. The detected inter-dependence between individual characteristics and the institutional context is further investigated in Paper II, which focuses on the effect of economic conditions on perceived employability amongst native-born and foreign-born individuals by comparing data prior to and during the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008/09. The findings show a potential mismatch between employees’ opportunity-perceptions and their expected de facto labour market possibilities, as foreign-born employees perceive better labour market prospects than native-born employees. These patterns, however, vary depending on the applicable institutional context. The interdependence of individual characteristics and the institutional context is further examined in the final two papers, which focus on the relationship between national and transnational labour markets. Paper III and IV show that highly skilled Swedish labour migrants encounter difficulties during employment abroad, despite their high levels of recognized resources regarding their level of education and country of birth. However, the papers show that the migrants experience an inability to achieve a transnational recognition of their resources which causes a feeling of vulnerability abroad. Paper III conceptualises the collision between the self-image and the actual experiences of the migrants as imagined independence, depicturing a tension between their specific experiences and their self-image; none withstanding the experienced vulnerability, their self-image as independent employee remains unchanged. Moreover, as Paper IV shows, the privileged position given education and country of birth is an important part of their self-image and enables them to challenge norms in the society/workplace. Overall, these two papers show that local workplace conditions and recognition of resources may be decisive for the individuals’ potential labour market opportunities in the country of employment. The theoretical argument of the thesis is that labour market opportunities are primarily socially framed, which challenge the current European opportunity-oriented policy approach. The process of social framing is a consequence of the dominant institutional conditions and the local social settings which provide or limit access to important labour market resources. As such, the thesis acknowledges that employability requires recognition of individuals’ resources, and that this recognition is context-dependent.
