| 1. |
- Eriksson, Kerstin, et al.
(författare)
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Forest fires and landscape identity : values, meanings and engagement in local communities
- 2021
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the summer of 2018, Sweden faced one of the greatest national disasters in modern times. In total, about 60 forest fires ravaged around the country. In this paper, we draw on the concept of landscape identity (see e.g., Butler et al., 2018) with the purpose to investigate how local citizens were affected by these forest fires. The concept of landscape identity refers to the way that our identity is tied to how we engage with the landscapes in which we find ourselves. As such it can be utilized as a way to gain deeper knowledge of social aspects related to climate related events such as forest fires (Butler et al., 2018; Stobbelaar & Pedroli, 2011). This makes it possible to understand landscape as a social product, as something that rests upon processes, practices and cultural discourses (Eiter, 2010). On an individual level, on the other hand, landscape is internalized through values, meanings and engagement (Butler et al., 2018). When a landscape drastically changes, as in the case with forest fires, both practices and meanings associated with this landscape are likely to be affected. This paper rests on interviews with people that had to evacuate their homes due to the forest fires in 2018. The result indicates that values, meanings and engagement associated with the landscape played a significant role in how people made sense of the situation they found themselves in.
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| 2. |
- Heidenstrøm, Nina, et al.
(författare)
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Coping with blackouts : A practice theory approach to household preparedness
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. - : Wiley. - 0966-0879 .- 1468-5973. ; 26:2, s. 272-282
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article focuses on how rural households cope with blackouts caused by winter storms. We approach household preparedness using a practice theory perspective, and argue that preparedness is mundanely preformed as part of everyday practices. The data material consists of at home visits to 14 households from Norway and Sweden. The results demonstrate that households cope with blackouts by activating and mobilising competences, meanings and materials belonging to different practices, and that this is an ongoing process to ensure the continuation of everyday life during disruption. The article concludes by arguing for the need to bring forward studies on informal preparedness activities, in a research field where household preparedness tends to be framed using a top-down perspective on crisis management.
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| 3. |
- Johansson, Roine, 1955-, et al.
(författare)
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At the external boundary of a disaster response operation : The dynamics of volunteer inclusion
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. - : Wiley. - 0966-0879 .- 1468-5973. ; 26:4, s. 519-529
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present article, practices of inclusion of different types of volunteers in the response to a large-scale forest fire in Sweden are studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three types of voluntary actors. The volunteers were organized to different degrees, from members of organizations and participants in emergent groups to organizationally unaffiliated individuals. Organized volunteers were the most easily included, particularly if they were members of voluntary emergency organizations. It was difficult for volunteers lacking relevant organizational affiliation to be included. Disaster response operations are dynamic, conditions change over time, and tensions between different modes, degrees, and levels of inclusion may arise. However, irrespective of changing conditions, practices of inclusion of highly organized volunteers work best.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Kolmodin, Sophie, et al.
(författare)
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Beyond Choice? : The Structural Conditions of (in)Voluntary Work in Civil Society
- 2024
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The significance of civil society has long been recognized in crisis and disaster research (Solnit, 2010). Nevertheless, characterizing volunteers merely as "good Samaritans" responding to specific needs oversimplifies the multifaceted nature of their engagement. While volunteers often frame their actions as a "way of living", exclusively emphasizing positive aspects neglects the complexities surrounding voluntary work within civil society. To emphasize the compelxity surrounding voluntary crisis work, this article aims to analyze how civil society actors make sense of spatial-political structures in order to motivate their ” choice” to perform voluntary work. Consequently, we consider voluntary work, in both voluntary and involuntary terms, and argue that we need to view volunteerism as a result of structural conditions such as financial cuts in official service, changing political ideology, and the changed organizing of society. Drawing on interviews with individuals active in Swedish civil society, both affiliated and unaffiliated with Civil Society Organizations, various types of voluntary and involuntary work emerge, often intertwined with political ideology and societal critique. Therefore, the article demonstrates that voluntary work extends beyond altruism, encompassing internal and external struggles marked by politicization, power dynamics, positioning, and the collective pursuit of societal improvement.
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| 6. |
- Kvarnlöf, Linda, 1982-
(författare)
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A need to help : stories of emergent behaviour from the scene of accident
- 2018
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Ingår i: International Journal of Emergency Services. - 2047-0894 .- 2047-0908. ; 7:3, s. 203-213
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how spontaneous volunteers make sense of their actions at the scene of accident. More specifically, this paper focusses on the moral aspects of this sense-making process in terms of how spontaneous volunteers justify their own and others actions at the scene of accident through moral positioning. Design/methodology/approach: This is done through a narrative analysis of volunteers’ retrospective stories from the scene of accident. The empirical material consists of interviews with 12 witnesses to traffic accidents. Findings: The narrative analysis identifies two central storylines: the interviewees frame their own and others’ actions through norms of how one should act, and the interviewees frame their own actions by presenting themselves as a person of a certain type, sometimes positioned against an real or imaginative “other”. Originality/value: Disaster sociologists have long argued that emergent behaviours and norms are one of the phenomena distinguishing disasters from everyday emergencies. However, as this paper shows, emergent behaviours and norms are also present at everyday emergencies such as traffic accidents where spontaneous volunteers can play an important role by filling the void before the arrival of emergency services.
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| 7. |
- Kvarnlöf, Linda, 1982-
(författare)
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"Bara framtiden kan visa om vi gör det här rätt" : Att göra vardag av den svenska strategin
- 2021
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Ingår i: Sociologisk forskning. - Huddinge : Sociologisk Forskning, Swedish Sociological Association. - 0038-0342 .- 2002-066X. ; 58:1-2, s. 133-152
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Syftet med den här artikeln är att studera hur människor skapar mening av den svenska coronastrategin samt hur de implementerar denna strategi i sina vardagsliv. Artikeln bygger på en intervjustudie med åtta personer boendes i Stockholm. Samtliga intervjuer genomfördes under pandemins initiala fas (april–maj 2020). Artikeln tar sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i ett risksociologiskt intresse för hur människor skapar mening kring osäkerheter, här exemplifierat genom en vardag präglad av coronapandemin och den svenska strategin för att hantera denna. Resultaten visar att intervjupersonerna stödjer den svenska strategin och dess vetenskapliga grund samtidigt som de upplever en stor osäkerhet inför hur strategin ska omsättas i vardagliga praktiker. Denna ambivalens kan förstås i relation till Becks risksamhälle och hans antaganden om människans paradoxala inställning till vetenskap och riskexperter samt mot bakgrund av Tulloch och Luptons sociokulturella perspektiv på vardag och risk.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Kvarnlöf, Linda, 1982-
(författare)
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Everyday Life During Covid-19 in Stockholm : A biographical approach
- 2022
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Ingår i: Covid-19 and the Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783030951672 ; , s. 147-166
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While the majority of European citizens have experienced periods of full lock-down during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Swedish strategy has emphasised individual responsibility by posing recommendations and restrictions rather than pure prohibitions upon its citizens. This study investigates how Swedish citizens navigated and made sense of everyday life during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, using empirical material in the form of eight narrative interviews. The analysis focuses on three of these narratives by emphasising the interviewees’ past experiences of risk, present understanding of COVID-19 in everyday life, and expectations for a post-COVID-19 future. From a biographical perspective, I argue that the interviewees made sense of the new behavioural guidelines that characterised everyday life during COVID-19 by applying the recommendations and restrictions provided by the government and authorities. Thus, these recommendations could be understood as biographical structures that temporarily re-structured the citizens’ everyday lives. Moreover, the analysis reveals some difficulties with ‘soft’ governance from a subjective perspective. While the interviewees supported the Swedish strategy and adjusted their everyday lives in accordance with its recommendations, they sometimes found it hard to transform them into practice. These difficulties in managing the ‘soft’ Swedish strategy emphasises the subjective side of being governed and thus makes an interesting contribution to critical studies on risk and uncertainty.
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| 10. |
- Kvarnlöf, Linda, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Filling the void : Rural disaster volunteerism during the Swedish wildfires of 2018
- 2024
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Ingår i: International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. - : Elsevier BV. - 2212-4209. ; 105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the summer of 2018, both fire and rescue services and volunteers fought against the extensive wildfires that spread over the northern parts of Sweden. The challenges were many and one of the most obvious was the lack of resources provided by the state, both material and human. This lack of official resources, together with the long distances that characterize the rural northern parts of Sweden, have been highlighted in subsequent evaluations as one of the main reasons for the widely spread fires. The lack of official resources in itself can be understood as a consequence of several years of dismantling and centralization of the Swedish fire and rescue service. However, the responses from the local community were enormous. Local volunteers, spontaneous as well as organized, assisted in firefighting; in providing food and services; in offering shelter for evacuated, and many other things. In disaster research, volunteer activities have often been described as something that “fills the void” when official resources are scarce. This seems to be particularly true in rural contexts. This paper applies a critical perspective on rural disaster volunteerism by framing it as an expression of rural vulnerability and peripheralization: as something that is performed as a compensatory act in rural communities affected by social dismantling. In other words, both place and politics are central in understanding rural voluntary activity. Inspired by the theoretical concept geographies of voluntarism, this paper argues that people make sense of volunteer initiatives in relation to both the place where these activities take place and in relation to the power relations associated with this place. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how rural disaster volunteerism intersects with structural conditions of rurality.
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