1.
Wolmesjö, Maria
(author)
Ledningsfunktion i omvandling : Om förändringar av yrkesrollen för första linjens chefer inom den kommunala äldre- och handikappomsorgen
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
During the 1990s many of the local authorities have been forced to reduce expenditure on the care of the elderly and people with disabilities, and many organisational changes have been carried out. New problems and their solutions are often related to leadership and management. This dissertation deals with three trends in the development of the organisation: The first trend is a market orientation, one example of which is the attempt to increase effectiveness and efficiency by utilising a purchaser/provider model in the organisation. Here the needs assessment model is studied. The second trend is the response to the pressed situation due to heavy workloads that staff members and their managers express, exemplified by self-managing work teams and a year-based working hour system. Here called flexible work organisations. The third trend focused in this dissertation is the decentralisation of social services. It is connected to increased demands on involvement in, and participation from those who use the services, i.e. the elderly and people with disabilities. The aim of this dissertation is to shed light on how politicians and managers view, experience and describe management and leadership in three types of local authority organisations. The focus is on the demands on managers and how the working conditions for managers are described in the different organisations. The material includes three different empirical methods. The first is a questionnaire to politicians and local authority officials, mainly managers at different levels in the care of the elderly and persons with disabilities. The second method consists of qualitative interviews with politicians and managers. The third method involved a document study of local authority documents, e.g. official guidelines, plans and evaluations. The method of analysis, a ?qualified content analysis? is inspired by discourse analysis and focuses on a comparison between the different local authorities, between politicians and managers and between women and men. This dissertation shows that the organisational changes brought about unexpected consequenses for management and that the demands differ between politicians and managers and between different organisations. Politicians and higher-level management expect the managers to manage the organisation, and employees expect them to lead. The solution seems to be a high level of competence, but which competence is needed? There are two different ideals for leadership. One is associated with focus on effectiveness and efficiency and the other associated with focus on communication. The dissertation highlights the conditions of a management, which is currently being pushed further down in the organisation. The dilemma of leadership ? being a manager or a leader will not disappear. Somewhere in the organisation the perspective of effectiveness and efficiency and the perspective of communication have to meet. It might be seen as a dilemma that will not go away ? only be placed in different levels in the organisation.
2.
Urban, Susanne, 1966-
(author)
Att ordna staden : Den nya storstadspolitiken växer fram
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The sociology of the city has two faces: one of threat and one of promises. Originally, the city was portrayed as a threat to social life and individual identity, while, in contrast, the neighbourhood was seen to include the promise of restoring basic social relations to the web of city life. Later, the neighbourhood itself came to be perceived as a threat, as it was seen to separate people from one another. The solution to this dilemma was that the neighbourhood should be an arena for meetings between different groups, supplying not strong ‘excluding’ bonds, but subtle ‘bridge-building’ ones.The aim of the first part in the thesis is to study the public view of the neighbourhood and its significance for social integration. The aim of the second part is to investigate the new metropolitan policy approach to attain the challenging goal of integration at the local municipal level. This is explored using the theoretical model of a democratic welfare society, as developed by Jürgen Habermas.Ethnic housing segregation, as a social problem, has evolved in several stages. In 1990 the promise became to combat ”problem areas” through various methods for integration, commitment, improved reputation, an increasing sense of community and environmental improvement. More recently, since 2000, the question of ethnic housing segregation appears to be being dealt with through a process of delegation of responsibility to various authorities with different areas of expertise and to local municipal authorities. This suggests a possible fragmentalization of approaches to ethnic housing segregation. In official discussion of ethnic housing segregation, an acknowledgement of the relational approach has been severely lacking. A review of the literature of neighbourhood effects shows that ethnic clustering can result in positive as well in negative effects. In a relational perspective, local networks are one of several other relations that, in combination with different structures and power distributions, effects integration between ethnic groups in the society.Principles from new metropolitan policy, referred to as ”bottom-up”, are similar to Habermas’ ideal. However, the concrete experiences highlight the difficulty in offering possibilities for rational communication, development of communicative knowledge, and even less communicative power. The new metropolitan policy has posed a new formulation of threat and promise. The dichotomy of segregation versus integration has developed into one of exclusion versus participation. The ideal has changed from formal to subjective integration, which includes civil participation in state business. The neighbourhood has served as one arena to start inclusive processes. The practice, on the contrary, is still dominated by measures aimed at making society work more efficiently through state intrusion into private matters i.e. governmentalization.
3.
Becevic, Zulmir
(author)
Utsatthetens röster
2015
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Den här avhandlingen handlar om ungdomar i samhäilsvård och deras livsberättelser, om erfarenheter av att växa upp under kaotiska livsvillkor som karaktäriseras av psykiska problem, trasiga relationer, och andra fotmer av social utsatthet. Syftet är att undersöka hur ungdomar som är placerade i samhällsvård använder sina erfarenheteter för att skapa mening och sammanhang kring sig själva och sina liv. Genom att fokusera på röster, interaktioner och emotioner synliggörs livsvillkor samtidigt som kunskapen om ungdomar i samhällsvård och deras livserfarenheter fördjupas. Ungdomarnas berättelser analyseras i relation till identitet, relationer och emotioner, och framtiden. Avhandlingen tar avstamp i en interaktionistisk och erfarenhetsorienterad ansats, som ger ontologiskt företräde åt den tolkande, meningsskapande, kännande och betiittande individen och individens upplevelse av den sociala verkligheten. Avhandlingen bygger på empiriskt material insamlat genom semistrukturerade livsberättelseintervjuer på fyra samhällsvårdande institutioner. Sammanlagt genomfördes 20 enskilda imervjuer med 13 deltagare, sex tjejer och sju killar i åldrarna 13-21. Analysen har fokuserat på tolkningar av interaktioner som berättelsernas grundläggande byggstenar, vilka på olika sätt spelat en viktig roll i berättarnas syn på sig själva i relation till en bredare social kontext. Analysen visar hur erfatenheter kopplade till problem och avvikelser görs till dominerande erfarenheter genom vilka berättarna förstår sig själva och sina liv. Dessa berättelsers övergripande funktion är att skapa ordning som väger upp mot den sociala oordning som berättarna på ett existentiellt plan upplever att de befinner sig i och behöver förklara och motivera. Resultaten tyder på att tillvaron i institutionell kontext tenderar all förstärka synen på en själv och ens liv som problematiskt och avvikande. Detta ses som en inbyggd motsättning i den problemhmterancle verksamhet vars övergripa nde syfte är att kompensera for och "arbeta bort" problem. Analysen visar att tillvaron i en institutionell kontext istället förstärker orinteringen mot erfarenheter av problematisk karaktär. Andra resultat är att berättelser om relationer får sin huvudsakliga karaktäristik från negativa, emotionella erfarenheter, vilket pekar på vikten av att etablera tillitsfulla relationer i utformningen av hjälpinsatser. Slutligen, berättelser om framtida planer och förväntningar handlar i huvudsak om anpassning till traditionella normer. Livet efter samhällsvården handlar om att passa in i vad som definierns som samtidens vedertagna syn på normalitet och ordning.
4.
Lundqvist, Catarina
(author)
Möjligheternas horisont : Etnicitet, utbildning och arbete i ungas berättelser om karriärer
2010
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Den här avhandlingen handlar om hur unga med utländsk bakgrund berättar om sina liv och om hur de föreställer sig sina karriärval avseende utbildning och arbete. Syftet med avhandlingen är att analysera hur möjlighetshorisonter i relation till karriärskapet – de processer som genererar olika typer av karriärval – framträder i individuella berättelser. Studiens empiriska material grundar sig på fältarbete i en gymnasieskola under ett års tid. I fokus står två klasser med elever som studerats genom deltagande observationer och intervjuer.Studien belyser hur familjens sociala position och föräldrarnas karriärer är en viktig hållpunkt mot vilken ungdomarna bedömer sina egna framtidsmöjligheter. Studien pekar på hur en av både social klass och etnicitet, strukturerad individualisering påverkar ungas karriärval och färgar deras möjlighetshorisonter. Dessutom belyser studien hur karriärval måste förstås i relation till en möjlighetshorisont som har både en temporal och en rumslig dimension. Ungdomarnas möjlighetshorisonter fördunklas dock av en uppfattad etnisk diskriminering på arbetsmarknaden men även av de etniska kategoriseringarnas påverkan på karriärskapet i skolan. När ungdomarna i narrativ mening positionerar sig i (föräldrarnas) hemlandssammanhang vidgas handlingsutrymmet i symbolisk men även i praktisk mening. Genom att ta hänsyn till en translokal position kan vi förstå hur positioneringar i skilda rumsliga sammanhang hänger samman med skiftningar i den möjlighetshorisont som karriärval relateras mot.
5.
Andersson, Kjerstin, 1975-
(author)
Talking violence, constructing identities : young men in institutional care
2008
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of the study is to investigate how young men constructing identities in talk about their own use of violence. The study is based on a fieldwork at a youth detention home in Sweden. The data consists of individual interviews and video recordings of the treatment programme Aggression Replacement Training (ART). Detailed analyses have been made of conversations between the young men, between the young men and the trainers, and of the narratives generated in the individual interviews. The study has a social constructionist approach to identity, which is seen as constructed in a joint achievement in social interaction. An important analytical perspective in the study is how social categories and subcategories are constructed. The study has a particular focus on gender, primarily masculinity, but age and ethnicity are also being emphasised.The analysis draws on four empirical studies. It is shown how the young men construct a preferred self-presentation when talking about violent events. The narratives on violence are either based on experiences or talked about as a hypothetical use of violence. Violence based on personal experience is problematized and legitimized in terms of self-defence, defending friends, restraint and justified violence. Narratives of violence are shown to be interactional resources available to the young men. When talking about violence, the young men can be seen to regulate social relations, and to position themselves in relation to particular discourses of masculinity. The specific understanding of what it entails to be a man enables the use of violence with respect to social categorizations such as age, ethnicity or criminal identity. It is also argued that the treatment programme ART may, at times, facilitate maintaining a criminal identity.
6.
Andréasson, Frida
(author)
Doing informal care : Identity, couplehood, social health and information and communication technologies in older people’s everyday lives
2021
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The aim of the thesis has been a) to analyse how informal care influences the identity of carers and care recipients, their sense of couplehood and social health, and b) to explore the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of informal care and the everyday lives of older people. Study I focused on how older carers conceptualised their identity as carers on a Swedish online social forum, using a netnographic methodology. The findings indicated a change in self-perception as the carer role was acquired. Carers’ capacities were filtered through the needs of the care recipient, making their carer identities into invisible selves. The findings revealed that online communication had the potential to create a virtual space of social recognition. Study II aimed to reflect on carers’ experiences of participation in a co-design process consisting of user group sessions with carers and researchers. The goal was to develop a web-based support programme for carers. The findings emphasised a need to consider carers’ lifeworlds and to develop flexible human-centred design methodologies, that are able to balance carers’ needs and ideas with proposed research outcomes. Studies III and IV utilised an ethnographic methodology. In study III, the notion of couplehood in informal care was analysed. The findings showed that in the process of becoming a carer and a care recipient previous (often gendered) responsibilities were re- negotiated and new practicalities emerged. Although these changes were understood as a natural part of family life, they nevertheless led to changes in the (power) balance between spouses, expressed in terms of a professionalised relationship and a sense of social isolation. ICT was used as a means to get a respite from caring and uphold a social connection with others. In study IV, the social implications and consequences of spousal informal care and carers and care recipients’ experiences of illness and the ill body was explored. The findings showed that the participants experienced barriers to living life as before. Thoughts about or the presence of ill and “leaking” bodies thus lead to “self-chosen” social isolation or social distancing by others. The thesis highlights that informal care needs to be understood as an identity forming practice, having a significant impact on involved parties’ sense of couplehood, their social health and that ICT can contribute to ease carers’ and care recipients’ daily life.
7.
Bennich, Maria, 1959-
(author)
Kompetens och kompetensutveckling i omsorgsarbete : Synen på kompetens och lärande – i spänningsfältet mellan samhälleliga förutsättningar och organisatoriska villkor
2012
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Avhandlingen är en sammanläggningsavhandling med syfte att studera om synen på kompetens är relaterad till lärmiljön och strategier för kompetensutveckling. Parallellt med syftet har jag analyserat och diskuterat kompetensutveckling ur ett samhälleligt och interorganisatoriskt perspektiv. Fokus ligger här på styrprinciper, brukarinflytande och nationella utvecklingsprogram. Avhandlingen utgörs av en lokal studie som bygger på 22 intervjuer och 74 enkäter, en forskningsöversikt samt en studie som bygger på utvärderingar av det nationella utvecklingsprogrammet Kompetensstegen.Resultatet från den lokala studien – två vårdboenden och två hemtjänstverksamheter – visar att förutsättningarna för lärmiljön skiljer sig åt beroende på verksamhetstypen. Inom hemtjänstverksamheterna var stöd och engagemang från ledningen mer central för kompetensutveckling än inom vårdboendena. Samtidigt visar resultatet att i de verksamheter där det fanns en mer utvecklad lärmiljö och en integrerad strategi – dvs. en kombination av icke‐formella och formella läraktiviteter – för kompetensutveckling, var uppfattningarna om omsorgspersonalens kompetens mer utvecklade. Fokus låg här på att utveckla både kompetens och verksamhet. Det som förenade samtliga verksamheter var uppfattningen att personalen behöver en förmåga att utveckla relationer till brukaren.Analysen av Kompetensstegen – en stor nationell satsning – visar på en brist i samspel och jämlika relationer mellan arbetsplatserna och utbildningsanordnare. Denna brist hade implikationer för hur väl satsningen på kompetensutveckling lyckades. Inom de verksamheter där arbetsplats‐ och utbildningssystem samverkat, ledde detta samspel till att arbetsplatslärandet blev mer flexibelt, effektivt och användbart för deltagarna. Exemplet visar att kompetensfrågor behöver analyseras ur ett samhälleligt perspektiv.Den samhälleliga analysen visar att kompetensfrågor lätt kommer bort eftersom dessa inte är integrerade i styrprinciper som konkurrensutsättning, upphandlingsförfaranden och kundval. Kompetensutveckling inom äldreomsorgen är en komplex, svårbestämbar och krävande process som behöver synkroniseras på olika nivåer. De nationella satsningar, där formell utbildning dominerar, har sällan fått något genomslag i verksamheten. Perspektivet har oftast varit kortsiktigt och individinriktat. Tillfälliga resursförstärkningar och projektsatsningar leder inte heller till att frågan om kompetensutveckling prioriteras och att nödvändiga resurser avsätts lokalt. Nyckelord: omsorgspersonal, kompetens, kompetensutveckling, äldreomsorgen, interaktiv forskning, interorganisatorisk samverkan
8.
Hofvendahl, Johan, 1970-
(author)
Riskabla samtal : en analys av potentiella faror i skolans kvarts- och utvecklingssamtal
2006
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In this thesis, conversation analysis (CA) is applied to study “risk strategies” in parent-teacher-student conferences in the Swedish nine-year compulsory school. The material consists of 80 conferences collected at two different points in time: 45 from the period 1992–93 (at that time called kvartssamtal, lit. “quarter of an hour conference”) and another 35 collected in 2004 (at the present time, and since the latest curriculum from 1994, called utvecklingssamtal, lit. “development conference”). All conferences in the material concern students in the 5th grade, i.e. when students are 11–12 years old.Each year, approximately 2.6 million student conferences in total are held in the Swedish compulsory school and upper-secondary school, involving about 5.5 million participants. Yet, we have virtually no knowledge of what actually happens in these conferences, i.e. how they are conducted. Hence, this study contributes to “filling the gap” and to meeting this want, the how of the student conference as a practical achievement.The aim of the study is to analyze conversational strategies in use to handle “risk”, i.e. a moment whose outcome is uncertain and that could possibly lead to a problem. Here, strategy refers to recurrent line of action and does not necessarily comprise speaker awareness. Strategies are part (and the materialization) of everyday cultural norms, rules of social behavior and habitualized “ways of practice”. They are used “for self”, “for someone else” or “for all” and should be considered in the light of Goffman’s notion of “face-work”, i.e. what the speaker does in order to counteract possibly face-threatening acts. The study is aimed at three particular situations of considerable analytic value: (i) the opening of the conference, (ii) the initiation of talk about trouble (problem), and (iii) the closing of the conference, or more immediately, the possibility for students and parents to raise their own issues.The results show that the conference opening is a coordinated achievement and to a great extent oriented to meet the possibility of the student being nervous. The conference is an “ordinary conference” and the opening questions are “what I ask any student”. When a speaker initiates talk about possible trouble, the pace decreases and utterances very often comprise “perturbations of delivery”, i.e. filled and unfilled pauses, mitigating expressions, abandoned turn beginnings and restarts, “repairs”, etc. These and other circumstances make it possible to forecast the action as (possibly) a trouble-initiating action. At the closing of the conference, students and parents are commonly offered the opportunity to raise their own issues. However, when analyzing the different ways of offering a prolongation of the conference, the study shows that the opportunity is strongly restricted, e.g. due to the design of the question.
9.
Kings, Lisa
(author)
Till det lokalas försvar : Civilsamhället i den urbana periferin
2011
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The current global restructuring processes are usually described in terms of increased integration and, concurrently, greater fragmentation among different regions and scales. How these parallel outcomes are reflected in the civic sphere, largely for those mostly affected, i.e. the urban grassroots, is the focus of this study. The theoretical objective is to develop an alternative way of conceptualizing engagement in the civil sphere in marginalized urban neighborhoods; this is presented in the form of a complementary analytical model named: the three pillars of simultaneousness. The empirical objective is to analyze the organization of civil society in two neighborhoods: Rinkeby and Tensta, both categorized as being on the lowest rung of the urban hierarchy in Stockholm, Sweden. The empirical analysis is based on three types of data: interviews, documentation and participant observation. The analysis reveals that these neighborhoods are well-organized and that it is the small, localized self-help organizations, conceptualized as the organizations of everyday life, which engage the urban grassroots. The configuration of the associations and the close face-to-face interactions, combined with traditional membership, imply that this form of activism cannot be understood without taking into account the specific national historic context. In the Swedish urban periphery, the reinvention of the Swedish social mass movement tradition is central when discussing both the constraints to and opportunities for suburban organizing. The strong movement tradition, together with political and financial incentives, has facilitated the development of a vigorous community life. At the same time, these prerequisites have undermined the political and critical potential of the urban grassroots.
10.
Lundström, Catrin, 1970-
(author)
Svenska latinas : Ras, klass och kön i svenskhetens geografi
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation examines diasporic narratives of Swedish national belonging among a group of young women of Latin American descent, born and/or raised in Sweden, and adoptees. Based on individual interviews, pair interviews, and focus group discussions with twenty-nine high school girls in the Stockholm region, the study aims to understand how mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion operate through intersecting power structures of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age, in the increasingly multi-ethnic Sweden. The analysis suggests that the imagined community of Sweden was constructed mainly around boundaries of whiteness, with non-whiteness becoming the main marker for non-Swedishness, meaning "foreign". The borders of whiteness appeared most salient for the adopted girls who identified themselves as culturally Swedish, yet experienced exclusion from national belonging on racial grounds. Swedishness and the sense of national belonging further operated through notions of space and place. In multi-ethnic contexts, the young women could identify themselves as Swedes in relation to other ethnicities, while they encountered scrutinity and a sense of being "out of place" in Swedish-dominated settings. The girls raised in middle-class environments in the "white" inner-city area, however, could use this background and transform it into an ethnic symbolic marker of Swedishness. Thus, race, class, and place were for them intimately intertwined as markers of difference and social stratification in the Swedish society. Another arena for identification was found in the emerging popularity of Latina artists in Sweden. While the Latin music boom had the ability to evolve transnational diasporic links, it was nonetheless fused with projections of exoticism and contrasted to Swedish white subjectivity in ways that contributed to a sense of otherness. Appearing Swedish thus required distancing themselves from Latin American cultural arenas, pointing to the need to critically approach the role of stereotyping discourses in the process of subject formation.
