| 1. |
- Danielsson, Jonas, 1973-
(författare)
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Skräckskönt : en etnologisk studie
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the present study is to explore how horror movie fans use the films to gain access to certain emotions, and the discussions to which the movies give rise. Through this, I hope to attain a deeper understanding of how the horror movie fan chooses to view the genre. While horror movie fans experience a raft of emotions as they watch, this is not the whole story; they also reflect upon these emotions and question certain responses, eg. why laugh at one form of violence but not the next, or how can one killer elicit empathy in the viewer while others do not. In order to understand this popular genre I have based my thesis mainly on interviews with the actual horror film fan, here represented by 9 women and 11 men. Special emphasis in the theoretical body is placed on Bakhtin’s notion of the grotesque, a ”world turned upside-down”, and dialogical truth. The horror movie fan might be described in the same fashion – as someone who through the films he watches sees and acknowledges an alternative cultural system which is otherwise suppressed. They can experiment with ideas of other kinds of rules, norms and hierarchies than those already in place in society. The horror movie fans talk about special themes as more important than others, and these “key symbols” have helped in constructing the thesis. I have for that reason formed the analysis in the region of emotions like fear, disgust and desires, but also more intellectual discussions on film violence and evil. It is clear that a controlled sense of fear is one of the main forces sparking the initial interest the informants felt for horror and urging them forward in their quest for more. It is also clear that feelings of disgust the horror movies evoke are a part of the fans’ discussions about the world and the evil therein. The horror movie fans speak about evil as something inherent in everyone, and something which must be acknowledged in order to live a “full” life. Despite of all this I consider pure enjoyment and entertainment to be the very foundation of their shared interest, and that the horror movie fans try to make strong distinctions between “fact” and “fiction”. These conscious distinctions could also be one of the reasons that the fans find these types of movies entertaining. Those who are incapable to make these clear distinctions are therefore, more or less, unable to see the purpose of the fascination with horror narratives.
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| 2. |
- Jacobsson, Roger, 1947-
(författare)
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Typographic Man : Medielandskap i förändring - Studier i provinsens tryckkultur
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis is to study how the media landscape of northern Sweden was shaped and transformed in the final years of the 18th century and first half of the nineteenth. This slowly-emerging new landscape brought with it new thoughts and new voices. Which individuals and institutions were involved in this process? Proceeding from a number of hypotheses and a variety of perspectives, the intention has been to study the type of printed matter being physically disseminated,how it came to be used and in what context by what people. The questions are in many ways interwoven and can be followed from chapter to chapter. The title of the dissertation underlines the fact that the media landscape under investigation is in fact populated. Through gradual changes in the media landscape, the people of the province became ”typographic”, i.e. dependent onprinted matter. The interdisciplinary nature of this dissertation, embracing media history,book history, ethnology, communications and cultural history, leaves ample room for aspects and inspiration culled from a broad variety of sources. By embarking from concepts including mediascape, province, print culture, networks,voluntary associations and various manifestations of reading culture, it has been possible to sketch the outlines of the development and dynamism of the media landscape during the period under investigation. A region long considered to be a remote outpost was in fact at the begin-ning of the nineteenth century well on its way to making its voice heard more clearly in the national conversation. Contacts and connection within the province also changed character as new forms of conversation emerged. Those which previously had been conducted in church, at the barbershop, in the market square or in the reading societies were now being conducted in locally-produced newspapers and pamphlets. The means of communication had changed. A new age needed to be dealt with and discussed, and that discussion could now take place in print.
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| 3. |
- Snellman, Fredrik, 1975-
(författare)
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Det beror på hur man tar det. : Kollektiva livsuttryck, individuella livslopp och meningskonstruerande processer i äldres livsberättelser
- 2005
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I avhandlingen avvänds livsberättelser som materialinsamlingsmetod för att fånga äldre människors levda erfarenheter. Frågorna som ställs i avhandlingen är: Vilka kollektivt konstruerade livsuttryck uppvisar respondenterna? På vilket sätt förhåller sig det individuellt konstruerade livsloppet till det kollektiva livsuttrycket och hur kan det individuella livsloppet lämpligast representeras? Finns det - och i så fall vilka är de - meningskonstruerande element som respondenterna använt i sina livsberättelser samt vilken betydelse har dessa för respondenternas upplevda välbefinnande? I studien presenteras de socialgerontologiska teorierna övergripande för att positionera avhandlingsarbetet. I studien har totalt sexton individer, nio finländska kvinnor och sju män i den kustnära Kvarkenregionen, deltagit och delgivit sina fritt formulerade livsberättelser. Baserat på det gemensamma mönster som framträder i alla livsberättelser beskrivs detta som livsfaser och olika livsyttryck under respektive livsfaser. De framträdande livsfaserna är: a) barndoms, ungdoms- och skoltiden, b) krigstiden, c) förvärvsarbetstiden och d) pensionärtiden. För respektive livsfas presenteras vilka liknande och åtskiljande mönster -eller livsuttryck - informanterna delger. De tolkade livsuttrycken baseras på vad och hur informanterna berättar om sina liv. Livsfaserna och livsuttrycken utgör grunden för presentationen av en övergripande typologi av hur livsberättelsernas innehåll kan beskrivas kollektivt. Ett mycket vanligt förekommande livsuttryck under pensiontiden är bland annat det som författaren valt att beskriva som ett "rikt liv". I ett avseende bryter detta livsuttryck mot den homogena bilden av, och i viss mån förekommande eländesbilder av, äldre människor. Samtidigt påvisas uttryckligen att den kollektiva bilden - eller typologin - som åskådliggörs alltid förvränger den enskilde individens berättelse. Detta används som ett reflexivt sätt att kritiskt problematisera - och etiskt förhålla sig - till den bild av informanternas livsberättelser som konstrueras i forskningsprocessen.
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| 4. |
- Stenberg, Peder, 1978-
(författare)
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Den allvarsamma leken : Om World of Warcraft och läckaget
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Through more than five years of extensive, participatory research the writer became a fully integrated member of the World of Warcraft community he set out to study. By actually living the grounded practices that constitute the everyday life he concludes that the mundane, often repetitive practice has very little to do with the cyber-utopian claim that one can flee the body and become who they want on the Internet. Instead this doctoral thesis argues that the constant transitions of the borders between offline and online, virtual and real, body and avatar, play and work, player and producer are best described with the concept of leakage. Using leakage to describe the perforated borders that surrounds the game not only allows an understanding of World of Warcraft as a powerful site for production of meaning and culture but also places it far from the traditional understandings of separated fun, play and games. Play as an activity has traditionally been described with three intrinsic features: it is separable from everyday life, in particular from work; it is safe, meaning that it isn’t productive nor does it carry consequence and finally that play is pleasurable or fun. World of Warcraft doesn’t easily admit to these features and should not be understood as neither innocent utopia nor as a devoured mimesis, but rather as an expansion of the life space where players repeatedly and deliberately stretch beyond the producer’s intentions and create a world consisting of work, unwritten social norms, creativity and friendship. Players are social laborers that produce the core of what makes World of Warcraft what it is: a serious game.
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| 5. |
- Carlström, Ann Kristin, 1954-
(författare)
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På spaning i Stockholm : En etnologisk studie av polisarbete
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis forms a study of the work of an investigative intelligence group within the Stockholm police during the 1990s. The aim is to research how a group of detectives worked out their assignments and created a meaningful work situation given the conditions and scope of the police organisation. On an overall level the study examines the social construction of the group, and the way its members saw themselves and each other.The study is mainly based on fieldwork carried out in the group. Reflexive consciousness was a phenomenon characteristic of those studied and of their environment: the ethnologist researched the investigators who were investigating the suspected criminals, who in their turn wheeled round and observed these investigative police.An organisation like the police structures its employees’ thinking on certain fundamental practices. The material design of the police station corresponded with the divisions the police made into the categories police employees, the public, and suspect criminals. But within the framework of the organisation there was freedom to develop other ways of thinking and scope for shaping the work. The professional work of the detectives was paradoxical in several ways. These investigators developed strategies for concealing their work, sometimes they appeared to find themselves in a liminal situation between the public and the suspects and it was their duty to watch over others but they themselves tried at the same time to evade the control of superiors. Egalitarian relations between work colleagues were an ideal, while at the same time female colleagues were relatively subordinate to the males. Gender inequality seemed thereby not to exist and legitimated male dominance. The first three factors can be understood in the context of a certain type of competence developed by the detectives in their work. This was there ability to grasp distinctions and thereby differentiate and maintain boundaries. It was through such processes that meaning was created and some conflicting elements in their work were balanced out.
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| 6. |
- Egeland, Helene, 1973-
(författare)
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Det ekte, det gode og det coole : Södra teatern og den dialogiske formasjonen av mangfoldsdiskursen
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis analyses the continuously changing discourse of cultural diversity. The focus of this study is the ways in which this discourse is shaped within contemporary Swedish cultural politics in general, and how it unfolds and further changes through the specific activities performed by a cultural institution in Stockholm – Södra teatern.Where as the cultural diversity inspired cultural politics seems to be caught in the tension between defending the autonomous position of culture in society and arguing for the supposed positive integrative consequences of such a perspective the Södra teatern mirrors a similar complexity in their ways of performing cultural diversity. This complexity is expressed through the three aspects of cultural diversity the thesis analyses – the real, the good and the cool cultural diversity. Each of the three aspects expresses a search for authenticity as well as a resistance towards the very same notion; a belief in the enlightenment of knowledge at the same time as the content of the very same knowledge is questioned; and finally that ethnic differences some times is enforced through utterances that stresses tradition where as the supposed hybrid forms in other situations is celebrated.The three aspects of cultural diversity analysed here all express how cultural diversity works as a hyper complex concept within cultural policy where no single possible meaning erases other potential meanings. On the contrary: different and even contradictory meanings of the concept exist side by side. Thus the thesis argues that the discourse of cultural diversity expresses a hyper complex problem.
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| 7. |
- Forsberg, Anette, 1966-
(författare)
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Kamp för bygden : En etnologisk studie av lokalt utvecklingsarbete
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When collective action for community is defined as local development or as a struggle for survival different understandings are in focus. Politically, this kind of community action is defined as local development and understood in terms of growth and economics. An economic approach to community action is also emphasised in the EU-programmes that support local development groups and projects. On the other hand local groups describe their activities as a struggle for community and community survival. Inspired by feministic research approaches and with an interest in human aspects and values this study investigates meanings of community action as experienced and expressed by rural inhabitants and activists. The study is based on fieldwork that was carried out in a small rural community in the northern inlands of Sweden: Trehörningsjö. Since the middle of the 1990s, the women in Trehörningsjö have driven collective action to uphold the community. With its point of departure in the community and expanding into the arenas of reserach and politics, the study takes on the form of a reflexive research process in which the researcher's former knowledge and new understandings are made visible and discussed parallel with the interpretations made. The main focus of the study is the activist's demand of voice, visibility and worth. The first chapter presents the local community and provides a background to the study. The chapter includes an account of the reflexive approach that widened the field of research from a local to a translocal study of community action. In chapters two, three, four and five the struggle for community is reflected through fieldwork experiences in Trehörningsjö and other arenas beyond the village. Situated events and instances of collective action such as the fight for the local health care centre, are analysed as symbolic expressions of community values and rural importance. From chapter two and onwards, the study follows the footsteps of the leading female activist in and beyond the community itself; that is, the day-to-day work, meetings, conferences and other places where community action is acted out. The struggle for community is proven to focus on translocal rather than local action. In chapter six the fieldwork experiences - that tell about resistance and a struggle for community values and perspectives - are placed in the wider context of the rural development movement, local development research and governmental rural policy in Sweden. On all these arenas community action tend to be interpreted as local development in line with a growth perspective, rather than as community protests and struggles that expresses other meanings. Chapter seven takes the analyses and discussion further, and relates community struggle to concepts such as civil society and social economy. Anthony Giddens concept of life politics and Alberto Meluccis concept of collective action are used to deepen the analysis on how humane meanings and relation based aspects of community action are made invisible on the political "growht and development" agenda. Community struggle presents a possibility for rural inhabitants to (re)define and reclaim their community and themselves as important and valuable. However, to be able to understand what the concept of community struggle expresses, and demands, it needs to be acknowledged as a form of action that has the potential to challenge established bureaucratic and political defintions, which, in practice, proves to be difficult.
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| 8. |
- Johansson, Anna, 1980-
(författare)
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Självskada : En etnologisk studie av mening och identitet i berättelser om skärande
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis is about people who write about their self-harm on Internet message boards. The aim of the study is to understand how meaning is produced in relation to self-harm, and how this involves particular constructions of self-harmer identity. The empirical material consists of written dialogues from seven Swedish message boards, as well as interviews with their members and a selection of published texts. This body of material is analysed using a poststructuralist discourse theoretical approach. In order to outline a context for the study, the thesis traces the constitution of self-harm in Swedish public debate since the 1990s. It is suggested that several discourses interact when cutting is represented in media, literature and governmental reports. Most noticeable, a psychiatric discourse, a dystopian discourse of contemporary society, a discourse of alternative youth culture, and a discourse of vulnerable girls are drawn on here. These discourses are regarded as resources for the production of meaning and the acts of identification in message board discussions and interviews. The analysis of this material is concerned with four empirical themes: the practice of cutting; the importance of talking as cure; distinctions between authentic and inauthentic cutters; and the paradoxical and antagonistic relationship between self-harming patients and psychiatry. Issues of normality/deviance and victimhood/agency are of great importance throughout the thesis, as the informants constantly negotiate these dichotomies. The thesis demonstrates that cutting is framed on the one hand as a deliberate strategy for managing emotions and demonstrating self-control, and on the other hand as the ultimate sign of helplessness, self-hatred and lack of control. Although the informants have different reasons for cutting, their diverse accounts and approaches are linked together on the message boards through their shared identification with the position of ‘feeling bad’. The thesis further argues that cutter identity in this empirical material is defined through the construction of different constitutive outsides or ‘enemies’. On the one hand, cutters who ‘feel bad’ are posited against less ‘real’ or authentic ones. On the other hand, cutters are also posited against psychiatry and psychiatric care staff. Psychiatry is constituted in particularly contradictory ways and the informants tend to vacillate between the positions of autonomous, rebellious patient and docile victim of disease. I argue that this can be seen as ways of dealing with certain problematics inherent in the asymmetrical power relationship between patient and psychiatry, at the same time as the construction of psychiatry as an antagonist is also essential for the assertion of solidarity and mutual support on the message boards.
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| 9. |
- Nehls, Eddy, 1965-
(författare)
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Vägval : lastbilsförare i fjärrtrafik - perspektiv på yrkeskultur och genus
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is an ethnological study of the truck-driver profession and an examination of the prerequisites for sexual equality and diversity in the haulage branch. The aim is to: from a cultural perspective, with a special focus on gender and masculinity, study truck-drivers as an occupational group. A main question deals with male dominance within the haulage business. What supports this dominance and what possibilities exist for change?The cultural phenomena within the trucking business are analysed with a particular focus on class. The collective idea, that I found among truck-drivers and haulage firm owners, of a kind of self-imposed “underdog identity’* is important to my analyses. Within the group, however, disloyal competition is widespread. The employment process for drivers is built on responsibility. The driver must prove himself sufficiently reliable before the employer will hand over responsibility for truck, cargo and the assignment itself. Since those who lack the collectively accepted indicators of competence/responsibility have difficulty gaining employment, a kind of “catch 22” situation is created, which is reinforced by the truck-drivers’ “underdog identity”. Those who share the values and outer features with the majority receive considerable advantages in the employment process,which adds to what is already a widespread male dominance and strengthens the cultural homogeneity.The truck-drivers* relationship to freedom forms a “key symbol” in the analysis. The Swedish haulage branch is investigated using Yvonne Hirdman’s gender contract, which makes visible how perceptions of masculinity have been given normative status within the haulage business. Another theme in the analysis is the “masculine manuscript” — embodied by a wellbehaved and reliable, middle-aged, white (Swedish), heterosexual man with a working class upbringing. The manuscript functions as a kind of ideal with which drivers are compared. Those who fit the manuscript are afforded considerable advantages, above all in the recruitment process.In order to draw attention to different types of power within the haulage business, Robert W. Connels’ term hegemonic masculinity is used. With some reservations one can express the long-distance truck-driver as an ideal with hegemonic status within the context of haulage. This category of driver has considerable influence on the definition of how a “real” driver should be and on ideas of how transport work is best organised. This group of drivers is relatively small, but its symbolic influence is large.From a gender perspective, the aim is to “grapple” with the images of truck-drivers, both within and outside of the business. The attitude to the trucker myths is critical. The masculinity ideal of the trucker myth is about the right to seek personal freedom and to live exclusively in and for the truck. Possible explanations for the interest in truck-drivers are discussed with the help of the concept of “masculinity crisis” and George L. Mosses* figure of thought: “the male stereotype”.
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| 10. |
- Parszyk, Ing-Marie, 1945-
(författare)
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En skola för andra : Minoritetselevers upplevelser av arbets- och livsvillkor i grundskolan
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The possibilities and problems of minority children and adolescents in a multicultural school are subjects of growing interest today. In this dissertation a new perspective on the subject is founded on the basis of the minority students' existential conditions in their school life. The idea and method of the dissertation is based on the experiences of a preschool study which led me to the purpose of illustrating social and pedagogical living conditions, as they are expressed in the minority students' narratives on how they experience their situation in the compulsory school [7-16 age group] and how they are treated and judged by their teachers.In three studies of the work and living conditions of minority students, I examine how minority students in the compulsory school experience and handle the pedagogical attitudes they encounter. Students in grades 2, 5 and 9 relate frankly about their experiences of the attitudes of parents, teachers and schoolmates and about their own linguistic qualifications. Based on the material of a national evaluation of the teaching of mathematics, I also study how the students experience the acquisition of skills. The complete set of data is interpreted with the aim and direction of reaching an understanding of the students' situation, i.e. in a hermeneutic perspective.The contents of the students' narratives and the results of the questionnaire from the national evaluation are the themes of the empirical section of the dissertation, and these main themes are summarized in the final chapter. An expressed ideal of a democratic school contrasts with another and more subtle message, which is transferred through a covert "immanent pedagogics." The idea is that the minority students stand outside democracy at school, i.e. their situations and identities are not recognized. The discussion deals with how "a school for everyone" rather functions as "a school for others" from the minority students' perspectives. My ambition is to spread knowledge on these fundamental existential conditions, which characterize the school environment of the minority students.
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