1.
Pasquini, Mirko, 1991
(författare)
The Negotiation of Urgency: Economies of Attention in an Italian Emergency Room
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Urgency in a hospital Emergency Room (ER) is not a self-evident state. Urgency is made, by establishing priorities, distributing attention and material resources, and deciding who and what needs to be attended to first – and, simultaneously, who and what has to wait. The process of determining urgency is known as “triage” (from the French verb, trier, “to choose”). This thesis is about the vicissitudes of triage in an Italian ER. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when urgency is at stake; when it is contested and caught up between different, and frequently conflicting, perspectives. It explores how urgency is determined in practice, and shows how triage always is a vulnerable process of negotiation guided by economies of attention. How is urgency actually shaped in interactions between patients, their families and friends, and the ER staff? The different chapters explore how time in the ER is created through shifting registers of attention, and how attention in the ER is affected by widespread economic and social precarity, and neoliberal national policies of governance. It discusses how triage increasingly is structured by attitudes of mistrust; and also by potential or real outbreaks of violence. Addressing the particular positioning of the ER as a thick space of conjunction between neoliberal state politics and people's increasing need for care and recognition, the thesis aims to contribute to medical anthropology literature by analyzing triage not as a neutral medical way of sorting, but as a practice that actively creates difference. It explores both the limits of triage, and how those limits can spark improvisation and creative reinvention.
2.
Rosquist, Johan
(författare)
Moral i rätten. Utredningar av hedersrelaterat våld i Sverige 1997-2017
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This doctoral thesis investigates assumptions about honour that emerge in the Swedish justice system’s investigations of honour related violence and oppression during the period 1997 – 2017, and with what implications. The aim is to deepen the understanding of how the Swedish justice system manages crimes presumed to be honour related, and shed light on implications of current descriptions of these crimes as new in Swedish society. The thesis is rooted in a Sociology of Law tradition, and studies the confrontation between formal law (the Swedish Code of Justice) and living law (honour as a discursive and social practice assumed to be enacted amongst some immigrant groups and families in Sweden) at different levels of the justice system. The thesis includes two chronological studies of policy documents and court decisions respectively, and a micro study of speech and action in courtrooms and interrogation transcripts from police records. Critical discourse analysis is combined with the moral sociology of Émile Durkheim, and four discourses are delineated. The discourses are either gender or culture oriented, and depart from either a structural or a relational perspective. Additionally, two more overarching discourses are delineated and used analytically to shed light on talking and writing about honour as a supposedly new phenomenon in Sweden. Honour practice is a discourse concerned with routine activities aimed at maintaining social order and predictability in clan-based and gender segregated societies. Honour problematics are discourses that problematise the consequences of honour practice in Swedish society, from the perspective of Swedish authorities. Results from the thesis indicate that although they vary over time, discourses in Swedish policy documents primarily focus on assumptions about gender, whereas discourses in court records focus on assumptions about culture. In court observations and police interrogations, discourses depict families as honour practicing (expressed by court professionals as well as by suspects, victims and witnesses themselves), and position family members in different ways depending on both generation and gender. Furthermore, the cohesion of Swedish society is reflected through the identification of an ‘other’ group that it is assumed does not share Swedish values about gender equality. Conversely, within that identified group, assumptions that gender equality is a threat to the social order of honour practicing families are frequently present. This implies that proponents of the living law (honour practice) experience a threat towards moral values, while the legislative body calls for changes in the formal law as countermeasures against an experienced threat to Swedish moral values.
3.
Gäddman Johansson, Richard
(författare)
Managing Vulnerability : Everyday Interaction in Sheltered Accommodations
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to develop our understanding of the performance and management of vulnerability in social interaction. The term vulnerability is used frequently within a wide range of scholarly fields, however common conceptions of vulnerability have been criticized for containing normative assumptions about our propensities for being exposed to and capabilities for dealing with adverse events and experiences. Through ethnographic investigations carried out in sheltered accommodations for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Sweden, the dissertation seeks to challenge how scholarship on care and disability has approached matters of vulnerability. The analysis shows that vulnerability was performed in two distinct overarching forms: 1) vulnerability related to “situational uncertainty” perceived as a threat to individuals’ health and personal safety and 2) vulnerability related to “ritual automatization” perceived as a threat to individuals’ personal freedom and well-being. The study found that pervasive institutional demands for transparency, accountability, uniformity and self-monitoring were loudly echoed to be the formally sanctioned best course of action for managing vulnerability in the context of sheltered accommodations. However, the analysis suggests that these types of strategies only address vulnerabilities related to situational uncertainty, whereas they may do more to exaggerate vulnerabilities related to ritual automatization. By performing and managing vulnerability, service users and support workers participated in “interaction rituals” with socially stratifying effects based on the individuals’ perceived or assumed competences. By considering the positions, relationships, and encounters between service users and support workers who engage on an everyday basis in sheltered accommodations which are conceptualized as “vulnerability-based” and “chimeric” interventions for care and service provision, the dissertation opens new perspectives on the performance and management of vulnerability in social interaction.
4.
Lundholm, Mikael, 1975-
(författare)
The social contingency of law : Studies of social control during foreclosure in Sweden
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Summary: This thesis empirically investigates how law and other social control responses during foreclosure in Sweden are contingent upon differences in social status. The thesis draws upon American sociologist Donald Black’s theoretical framework on social control to explain this social contingency. According to Black, variations in social control responses are explained and predicted by variations in the social structure pertaining to, for example, differences in wealth and relational distance between the stakeholders.The thesis consists of an introductory framework and four papers. Paper 1 employs register micro data from the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA) about foreclosure sale, and from Statistics Sweden about the foreclosure debtors, to explore how the socio-economic status of the debtors has changed from 2000 to 2014. Papers 2 and 3 employ the same type of data to explore different aspects of the behaviour of law: the relationship between lender–borrower relational distance and the quantity of law, and between borrower socio-economic status and the compensatory style of law, respectively. Paper 4 employs expert interviews with debt collection officers and managers to explore the relationship between how Swedish mortgage lenders organize and conduct debt collection measures aimed at delinquent borrowers, and the quantity of negotiation. The results in Papers 2–4 indicate that social control responses during foreclosure in Sweden are contingent upon differences in social status between the lender and the borrower.The thesis’ main contribution is that it provides empirical evidence of the socially contingent nature of law and other social control responses. This addresses one of the foundational debates within the sociology of law regarding the relationship between the institutions of law and social control, on the one hand, and the organization of social relations and behaviour, on the other. Specifically, the thesis contributes with empirical applications of Donald Black’s theoretical framework using register and interview data, and an independent theory of negotiation during foreclosure in the Blackian paradigm. Furthermore,by demonstrating the relevance of Black for empirical studies of social control and for understanding the social contingency of law, the thesis aims to contribute to ongoing discussions within the sociology of law regarding the possibility of attaining positivistic yet critical knowledge about law-related phenomena. In conclusion, the implications of the social contingency of law for the SEA are discussed.
5.
Moberg Stephenson, Maria, 1978-
(författare)
From Young Migrants to "Good Swedes" : Belonging and the Manifestations of Borders and Boundaries in NGO Social Work
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Belonging is a contested concept, and for young people arriving unaccompanied by parents to seek asylum in Sweden, belonging is conditional. The aim of this thesis is thus to analyse belonging in the context of an NGO mentoring programme for young people defined as unaccompanied in Sweden. By intersecting different dimensions of belonging, this is studied both from the young people’s own perspective and within the work of the mentoring programme. The thesis builds on interviews, participant observations, and policy documents gathered from the NGO mentoring programme, which more specifically works with ‘unaccompanied’ young people placed in kinship care in a Swedish suburban neighbourhood to support their establishment in Sweden. Participating in the study are young people involved in the programme and the employed mentors. The results show that the young people create a sense of belonging through transnational and local migrant networks, while the NGO perceives the young people’s situations in kinship care and in the Swedish suburban neighbourhood as limited. The mentoring programme’s work to promote establishment is intended to help the young people to overcome possible boundaries, and to reach a belonging to Swedish society. As such, the work can be interpreted as a form of boundary work. However, this work risks producing new boundaries – those between a desired, but imagined, ‘Swedish community of value’, and the migrant ‘other’. Hierarchies of belonging are thus created, within which the young people must strive to become ‘good Swedes’ to be seen as established in society. The thesis also shows how these boundaries can be challenged within social work by acting against racial structures and imagined collective communities. It thus argues for the importance of acknowledging and actively working with young people’s transnational and local networks to avoid the reproduction of boundaries.
6.
Alfonsson, Johan, 1985
(författare)
Alienation och Arbete. Unga behovsanställdas villkor i den flexibla kapitalismen
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how flexible capitalism, drawing from the case of on-call employees, influences the ability to control life and work and affects relationships with other people, both inside and outside work; and to investigate how this can be understood in terms of alienation. A subsidiary aim that emerges from this investigation is to develop existing alienation theories in a way that enables them to be used to understand human existence under flexible capitalism. Alienation is understood as a process in which something that should be connected has lost its connection: it is a relation of relationlessness. This raises three questions: How can we decide what a relation “ought” to be? What relations are being alienated and what is causing these relations to become relationless? In the thesis I use an immanent perspective to identify the “ought” in the studied context: the capitalist mode of production. For value to exist it is required that man is, as Marx puts it in Capital, “the free proprietor of his own labour-capacity, hence of his own person”. Thus, there is a premise of self-determination in capitalism. A premise which, because of man’s need to create value and the fact that her activity must be subordinated to the value logic, cannot be realized. This applies to everyone in our society, capitalists and labourers alike, and alienates man from her activity, herself, others and her product. This is understood as abstract alienation. On a concrete and specific level the control of how to reach this value-goal and to what extent this affects the individual’s life may differ depending on how value production takes place and the individual’s position in production. I call this concrete alienation and it can be understood as the concrete expression of the abstract alienation. In this way, alienation is neither a purely structural nor a purely subjective phenomenon. It can be both. Following changes in the accumulation regime the concrete alienation has transformed during the last decades, which is expressed in the on-call employees’ situation. Based on an analysis of 17 in-depth interviews I conclude that that their subjective motifs of being in the employment differ and their employment is objectively shaped differently. The objective and subjective dimensions are the basis for understanding on-call employees’ alienation at a concrete level. Drawing from Jaeggi’s qualified subjectivism I argue that since a premise of capitalism is self-determination, the individual must have a say in their situation and experience. If an individual feels that she can’t control her life she is thus alienated from the premise of self-determination. If she feels that she can control her life but this feeling is not realised, meaning that there is no objective possibility to control or steer her life, there is no self-determination and thus alienation persists even though it is not perceived. The result tells us that on-call employment can be used both as a way to increase the freedom and self-determination over one’s life and hinder it, it can instrumentalise life and work in a specific way, and it can hinder the control over social relations, both in and outside of work. As a result, even though they all experience abstract alienation, their level of concrete alienation differs.
7.
Bankel, Robin, 1983
(författare)
Responsibilisering - en studie av assistanssektorns kvasimarknad
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
De senaste decenniernas valfrihetsreformer i välfärden har föregåtts av argument om att valfrihet frigör brukare genom att kontrollen över välfärdstjänster överlåts åt de som utnyttjar dem. Denna avhandling behandlar en relaterad fråga som ofta har förbisetts i såväl forskning som den allmänna debatten, nämligen vilket ansvarsförhållande som har åtföljt dessa reformer. Under termen ”responsibilisering” har utvecklingen mot en alltmer marknadsanpassad välfärd tidigare konceptualiserats som en process där ansvar överförs från staten till individen. I litteraturen är denna form av responsibilisering intimt förknippad med idén om regerandekomplex (governmentality). Avhandlingen gör gällande att detta har begränsat förståelsen för hur brukare förmås att ta ansvar genom en marknadsanpassad välfärd. Som ett alternativ till responsibilisering som regerandekomplex introduceras konceptet inbäddad responsibilisering. Detta bidrag till responsibiliseringsteori betonar å ena sidan att institutionella (marknads)förhållanden ställer konsumenter inför såväl upplevda som faktiska krav som stimulerar självansvar. Å andra sidan betonas de begränsningar som individuella handlingars kognitiva, sociala och institutionella inbäddning innebär för möjligheten till sådant ansvarstagande. Utifrån vad som sannolikt är en av världens mest marknadsanpassade välfärdssektorer––den svenska kvasimarknaden för personlig assistans––undersöker avhandlingen frågan om hur marknadsanpassning av välfärden kan förstås som en process av inbäddad responsibilisering. 29 informanter på brukarsidan deltog i semi-strukturerade intervjuer med uppföljande korrespondens. Grundad teorimetod (GTM) tillämpades med Strauss och Corbins axiala och selektiva kodning, huvudsakligen i kodningsprogrammet NVivo. Resultatet av intervjustudien visade att brukare och deras proxys i assistanssektorn ofta ställs inför överväldigande, om inte oöverstigliga, krav för att uppfylla en assistans av god kvalitet. Baserat på kravbilden identifierades tre övergripande ansvarstyper som brukarna måste förhålla sig till på olika sätt: kvalifikationsansvar, valansvar och utföraransvar. Informanternas hantering av de tre ansvarstyperna belyser bristande institutionella möjligheter att leva upp till de förväntningar som valfrihetssystemet ställer på konsumenter, framför allt att uppfylla sina behov genom att internalisera en valfrihetslogik och välja rätt anordnare. Avhandlingen visar hur detta tillkortakommande, som leder välfärdskonsumenter inom sektorn mot att ta ansvar genom att själva arbeta och vi investera kraft, tid och pengar, kan förklaras av responsibiliseringens institutionella, sociala och kognitiva inbäddning. Implikationer för responsibiliseringsteori och konceptet ”arbetande konsumenter” i marknadsföringsteori diskuteras. Likaså tentativa policyimplikationer för assistanssektorn och andra valfrihetssystem.
8.
Björkenfeldt, Oscar
(författare)
Online Harassment Against Journalists : A Socio-Legal and Working-Life Study of the Challenges and Impacts in Swedish Journalism
2024
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Integrating socio-legal analysis and working life science, this compilation thesis aims to enhance the understanding of how the evolving digital landscape—particularly the rise of online harassment—influences journalism and its potential to foster healthy public discourse. Additionally, the thesis seeks to advance the field of socio-legal studies by examining the interplay between digital transformation, shifting norms, and the intersection of informal and formal social controls. Utilizing a triangulated mixed-method approach—comprised of a survey, Twitter data mining, and interviews with media managers—the empirical focus is on exploring the interplay between perceptions of legal conditions, manifestations of online harassment, the consequences of such harassment for journalists, and workplace dynamics in relation to increased external pressure on journalists and news organizations.The first paper assesses journalists' perspectives on the legal framework's effectiveness against unlawful online harassment, identifying a gap in protection and underscoring the need for enhanced legal resources. However, the empirical data also reveal that online harassment frequently occurs within the realm of the work environment rather than remaining solely a matter for criminal law. The second paper, through a sociopragmatic lens, examines online harassment on Twitter (X), revealing strategies that merge impoliteness, moral discourse, and anti-press rhetoric to negatively influence journalists and challenge professional credibility while also highlighting the paradoxical use of freedom of speech to suppress journalistic expression. The third paper, informed by institutional theory, analyzes how Swedish news organizations manage the psychosocial effects of online harassment, noting a focus on physical safety over mental strain and the need for a more holistic approach to harassment management. This paper aims to achieve a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to resilience against self-censorship induced by online harassment, as well as the factors that exacerbate it, leading to withdrawal and reluctance among journalists.Overall, this thesis emphasizes the challenges facing the legal system and news organizations in addressing systematic efforts to undermine journalism's autonomy through online harassment disguised as free speech. It shows that such disorientation is intertwined with the emergence of new communication norms and the absence of effective (formal and informal) mechanisms for fostering healthy public discourse. It demonstrates that efforts to safeguard these public values—journalists' free speech and, in turn, freedom of information—are largely misdirected, with a heavy focus on criminal law rather than on building a resilient work environment within journalism. Accordingly, the thesis cements online harassment as a work environment issue, illustrating the importance of acknowledging this problem at the intersection of digital transformation, working life, and democratic values.
9.
Sunnerfjell, Jon, 1986
(författare)
Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In the aftermath of automation and globalisation of production, the Western welfare states have come to leave industrial society behind in favour of an increasingly competitive and service-oriented economy. Nevertheless, there are many environments whose inhabitants still identify with the culture that developed in typical industrial communities. In addition to high unemployment rates, these environments are often burdened by a situated lack of study tradition whereby unemployed people still aspire to occupy manual labour despite a lack of such jobs. This thesis examines the attempts to break with the reproduction of a manual working-class culture in a former industrial community in Sweden. Using ethnographic methods, it explores how so-called activation policy intending to reduce public expenditures on economic benefits in favour of fostering responsible and employable individuals, is translated locally given the community’s situated rationality. With theoretical inspiration from the governmentality perspective, literature on social class, as well as Boltanski and Thévenot’s economicsociological pragmatism, the analysis shows how the municipality’s translation of activation policy tended to incorporate rather than transform a manual working-class culture in the activation of unemployed. The thesis argues that this hindered the market imperatives and logic of self-realisation pervading activation policy to take root in the activation schemes. Furthermore, the thesis points to how concepts such as inclusion and exclusion, which are central to the active society orientation, appeared ambiguous in light of unemployed who already nurtured a sense of belonging and social attachment. By deepening our understanding of situated rationalities and how they may compete with the logic imbuing supranational policy recommendations on activation and active inclusion, these are conclusions of interest to both policy makers and actors involved in the activation of unemployed locally.
10.
Bäckström, Hanna, 1986-
(författare)
Att hjälpa andra : gåvans, rättvisans och medkänslans aporier i frivilligarbete
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis addresses the issue of social work in Swedish civil society, focusing on the ambition and practice of helping others as an existential as well as a social, political and cultural phenomenon. The aim is to study the ambiguities and aporetic conflicts that imbue helping activities and the desire to help others, using ethnographic as well as philosophical method. An interview study comprising of 12 volunteers and activists, all working with begging EU-citizens in Sweden, was carried out between 2015 and 2016. The interviews aimed to gather context specific experiences of helping others from a vulnerable group, especially concerning questions of power asymmetry and moral and political dilemmas. Subsequently, a reading of the participants’ narratives informed by Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction was performed. Following Derrida’s understanding of deconstruction as a bipartite process, focusing on genealogy and representation as well as the logico-formal paradoxes, aporias or ‘undecidables’, that characterise certain phenomena, two strands of research questions guided the analysis: Firstly, how do the participants understand and create meaning regarding their helping activities? And secondly, what seemingly impossible paradoxes, aporias, emerge in the constituting ideas and practices of helping, as they are expressed in the participants' narratives?Resulting from this reading and a parallel literature study, three main areas of conflict were identified: altruistic gift-giving vs. reciprocity and exchange, objective and structural justice vs. personal relations and exceptions, and lastly, the meaning of empathy as well as the difficulty of representing the suffering of others. The main theoretical sources are Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Hélène Cixous and Jessica Benjamin, whose writings on economy, gifts, responsibility, desire and intersubjectivity respectively, are employed to understand and theoretically develop the participants' experiences.Connecting the difficulty of doing a good deed to feminist ethical elaborations on care and justice, I conclusively argue for a deconstructive ethics of care, that takes the aporetic character of helping others into account, while not relinquishing the responsibility towards the other and the possibility of solidarity.
