| 1. |
- Iversen, Clara, 1981-
(author)
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Making Questions and Answers Work : Negotiating Participation in Interview Interaction
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The current thesis explores conditions for participation in interview interaction. Drawing on the ethnomethodological idea that knowledge is central to participation in social situations, it examines how interview participants navigate knowledge and competence claims and the institutional and moral implications of these claims. The data consists of, in total, 97 audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a national Swedish evaluation of support interventions for children exposed to violence. In three studies, I use discursive psychology and conversation analysis to explicate how interview participants in interaction (1) contribute to and negotiate institutional constraints and (2) manage rights and responsibilities related to knowledge.The findings of study I and study II show that child interviewees actively cooperate with as well as resist the constraints of interview questions. However, the children’s opportunities for participation in this institutional context are limited by two factors: (1) recordability; that is, the focus on generating recordable responses and (2) problematic assumptions underpinning questions and the interpretation of interview answers. Apart from restricting children’s rights to formulate their experiences, these factors can lead interviewers to miss opportunities to gain important information. Also related to institutional constraints, study III shows how the ideal of model consistency is prioritized over service-user participation. Thus, the three studies show how different practices relevant to institutional agendas may hinder participation.Moreover, the findings contribute to an understanding of how issues of knowledge are managed in the interviews. Study II suggests the importance of the concept of believability to refer to people’s rights and responsibilities to draw conclusions about others’ thoughts. And the findings of study III demonstrate how, in evaluation interviews with social workers, children’s access to their own thoughts and feelings are based on a notion of predetermined participation; that is, constructed as contingent on wanting what the institutional setting offers. Thus, child service users’ low epistemic status, compared to the social workers, trumps their epistemic access to their own minds. These conclusions, about recordability, believability, and predetermined participation, are based on interaction with or about children. However, I argue that the findings relate to interviewees and service users in general. By demonstrating the structuring power of interactive practices, the thesis extends our understanding of conditions for participation in the institutional setting of social research interviews.
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| 2. |
- Peuravaara, Kamilla, 1978-
(author)
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"Som en vanlig tjej" : Föreställningar om kropp, funktionalitet och femininitet
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis explores how the body and femininity are constructed by starting from the subjective experiences of 12 young women labelled with an intellectual impairment. The methodological approach is inspired by so-called participatory research. The study combines the concepts of (dis)ability and gender from a sociological perspective. It shows how the young women negotiate norms regarding the body and femininity to pursue the coveted body and femininity ideals, but also to do the opposite: resist these ideals. The thesis is based on the following four articles:Theorizing the Body: Conceptions of Disability, Gender and Normality addresses different perspectives on the body in relation to conceptions of disability, gender and normality. The article highlights the importance of integrating disability and gender when exploring an understanding of conceptions and constructions of the body.Negotiating Normality: The Complexity of Showing (off) Bodies identifies four different strategies the young women use to make themselves visible as fashionable young women of today, e.g. as non-disabled. It shows that these strategies comply with conceptions of fashion, and that they are at the same time expressions of different marks of resistance. Risky Transitions in an Ableist Environment: The Experience of Frequent Critical Looks presents an exemplification of social construction of the body by focusing on critical looks. The concept of critical looks is analysed from an intersectional perspective, specifically in relation to how (dis)ability, gender and, to some extent, age interact. It shows how the body is made visible by being stared at, both to oneself and to others depending on place and interactions.Reflections on Collaborative Research: to What Extent, and on Whose Terms? discusses the possible methodological and ethical dilemmas found in different research phases, and in relation to the participants, in collaborative research within disability research. It shows that collaborative research can benefit from being problematized and discussed further regarding the categorization of disability as well as participation.
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| 3. |
- Björkman, Maria, 1974-
(author)
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Den anfrätta stammen : Nils von Hofsten, eugeniken och steriliseringarna 1909-1963
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Zoologen Nils von Hofsten (1881-1967) var en av de mest inflytelserika personerna i Sverige på områdena eugenik och steriliseringar. I denna avhandling belyses detta inflytande, som sträckte sig över närmare femtio år. von Hofstens eugenik och dess tillämpningar granskas med avseende på teman, förändringar och kontinuiteter, under en tid då synen på eugenik och steriliseringspraktik genomgick stora förändringar. Avhandlingen analyserar också von Hofstens nätverk av genetiskt intresserade forskare och de lobbykampanjer detta nätverk ägnade sig åt för att lansera eugeniken i Sverige under 1910-och 20-talen. Nätverket utgjorde en viktig "maktbas" genom vilken von Hofsten kunde nå inflytelserika positioner, inte minst den som vetenskapligt råd i Medicinalstyrelsen. Nätverket analyseras också ur ett maskulinitetsperspektiv och ur ett genuskontraktsperspektiv, vilket bidrar till att bredda förståelsen av varför steriliseringarna drabbade främst kvinnor. Slutligen diskuteras hur von Hofsten bidrog till att skapa en ny, eugenisk expertis. Diskussionen sker med hjälp av begreppen "biopolitik", "biomakt", "interventionsstrategier" och "subjektifiering".
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| 4. |
- Hannerz, Erik, 1978-
(author)
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Performing Punk : Subcultural Authentications and the Positioning of the Mainstream
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is about how and in opposition to what punk is defined and lived out by punks in Sweden and Indonesia. Arguing against the previous research’s presumption that subcultural meaning constitutes a single set of meaning, this study points to two patterned sets of meanings, each constructed out of several different definitions of the mainstream as well as the subcultural authentic. Consequently, a central research question concerns how to theoretically account for similarly structured and structuring heterogeneities across and between the Indonesian and Swedish cases. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in which a variety of interpretations of punk have been explored, six different definitions of the mainstream are outlined. Each of these refers in turn to a particular script through which subcultural styles and identities are performed and authenticated as set apart. These different definitions are then combined into two patterned sets of meaning through a consistency in terms of how the binary subcultural/mainstream is worked and extended: A convex pattern, involves a boundary work to what is defined as external to punk, bending outwards. A concave points instead bends inwards, a boundary work against mainstream internal to punk. By showing how these patterns are interrelated spatially and symbolically, it is argued that subcultural meaning as well as the authentic have to be approached from within the subcultural. The mainstream is thus released from having an inherent meaning as “the outside,” “the dominant,” or “the commercial,” and more so, so is the subcultural and the subcultural authentic. Consequently, the same object can be performed differently, drawing upon different binaries, or through working the same binaries differently, to extend the subcultural through the use of analogies and metaphors. The total similarity between how punk is performed in Sweden and Indonesia, as well as the consistent differences between the two patterns, point to a relative autonomy of the subcultural. Different definitions of the subcultural authentic and the mainstream are therefore not a matter of commitment, or degrees of authenticity, but rather different means to communicate, interpret, and act upon the subcultural.
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| 5. |
- Redmalm, David, 1981-
(author)
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An animal without an animal within : investigating the identities of pet keeping
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- If the human is an animal without an animal within—a creature that has transcended the animal condition—what is a pet? This creature balancing on the border between nature and culture, simultaneously included in and excluded from a human “we”, is the focus of this thesis. The thesis analyzes the discourses and normative frameworks structuring the meaning of pets in people’s lives. By extension, it analyzes how the boundary between “human” and “animal” is produced, negotiated, and challenged in the relationship between pet and owner.Each of this thesis’ four constituent studies focuses on an aspect of personal relationships between humans and pets: pets as figures for philosophical thinking, the dual role of pets as commodities and companions, the grief for lost pets, and the power issues at play in the everyday life of pet and owner. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach, crossbred with Donna Haraway’s material-semiotic perspective, the analysis exposes the powers allowing pets to occupy these various positions.The thesis demonstrates that pets occupy a special position as boundary creatures in the lives of humans, allowing humans to play with and thus reproduce dichotomies inherent to the contemporary Western worldview, such as human/animal, person/nonperson, subject/object, and friend/commodity. However, pets’ conceptual transgressions may also challenge this worldview. On the one hand, pets are bought and sold as commodities, but on the other, they are widely included in the human sphere as friends or family members. This paradoxical position is accentuated in the construction of a more-than-human home, and it is also visible when pets pass away. This thesis argues that pets, these anomalous creatures, may help humans understand that there are no humans or animals within, only relations between them. Based on this argument, this thesis develops a sociological approach for analyzing the production of humanity and animality in relations between humans and other animals.
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| 6. |
- Schuurman, Nora, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Interspecies care, knowledge and ownership : Children’s equestrian cultures in Sweden and Finland
- 2023
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Riding became a widespread leisure activity for children in Sweden and Finland during the post-war decades through the emergence of riding schools. Horse yards, especially riding schools, provide a unique context for the analysis of children’s relations to animals and their care in the Nordic countries. Drawing on books and comics published in Sweden and Finland from the 1960s to the present, together with interviews and observations at contemporary Swedish riding schools, we approach this development with a geographical, historical and sociological focus. We ask how children’s equestrian cultures were formed within the spaces of horse yards, especially riding schools, and how caring well was understood and negotiated through different types of knowledge and the idea and practice of horse ownership. As we show in the analysis, despite the increase of written knowledge about horses and their care, situated and relational knowledges based on interspecies interaction prevailed in children’s equestrian cultures. Mutual agencies, guided by knowledges of different types, defined a cultural sphere for children, situated in specific human– animal spaces in which children had a chance to interact with animals and care for them outside the everyday spaces of family and school. In these cultures of interspecies care, ideas of horse ownership carried expectations of continuity where the child–horse relationship was secured and had a chance to develop. The entry to these spatial cultures was through rites of passage characterised by embodied interaction and hands-on care, where children learned to care for animals well.
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| 7. |
- Schuurman, Nora, et al.
(author)
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Interspecies care, knowledge and ownership : Children’s equestrian cultures in Sweden and Finland
- 2023
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In: Children's Geographies. - : Routledge. - 1473-3285 .- 1473-3277. ; , s. 1-14
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Riding became a widespread leisure activity for children in Sweden and Finland during the post-war decades through the emergence of riding schools. Drawing on books and comics published in Sweden and Finland from the 1960s to the present, together with interviews and observations at contemporary Swedish riding schools, we approach this development with a geographical, historical and sociological focus. We ask how children’s equestrian cultures were formed within the spaces of horse yards, especially riding schools, and how caring well was understood and negotiated through different types of knowledge and the idea and practice of horse ownership. As we show in the analysis, despite the increase of written knowledge about horses and their care, situated and relational knowledges based on interspecies interaction prevailed in children’s equestrian cultural spheres in which children had a chance to interact with animals and care for them outside the everyday spaces of family and school. In these cultures of interspecies care, ideas of horse ownership carried expectations of continuity where the child–horse relationship was secured and could develop. The entry to these spatial cultures was through rites of passage characterised by embodied interaction and hands-on care, where children learned to care for animals well
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