| 1. |
- Lindenius, Erik, 1975-
(författare)
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Guldgruvan som försvann? : En mediestudie av konflikten kring UmanGenomics och Medicinska biobanken 2001-2006
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Between 2002 and 2006, an ongoing conflict surrounding Umeå-based biotech company UmanGenomics and the Medical Biobank at Umeå University played out in the media. The conflict involved researchers, business leaders, politicians, the university board, journalists and the general public. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the public media-mediated conflict surrounding UmanGenomics and Medical Biobank from a media and communication sciences perspective and thereby contribute to research into Science Journalism and media-mediated science-related conflicts. The questions examined by the study are as follows: how was the conflict portrayed in local and national newspapers, respectively, and how did these portrayals change over time? Were there any similarities, or was there any relationship between the media-mediated conflict and the »internal« debate, which are able to be traced via the events registered in Umeå University’s journal of daily events? Which parties elected to involve themselves in the conflict and did their descriptions of what happened differ? Were there any particular aspects of the conflict that were portrayed by the media as »failures«, and if so, what was it that was considered a failure? In total, 654 texts from the local and national media were analysed, as well as the university’s journal. The study has largely been carried out using quantitative content analysis, supplemented by general argumentation analysis. The study’s theoretical bases are taken from research on the relationship between science and the media, from rhetoric research, but also from Science and Technology Studies (STS) in a broader sense. This dissertation shows that the conflict was reported on differently depending on the newspaper’s proximity to the conflict itself, and on which arena the conflict was played out in. This also demonstrates that the conflict, most especially as played out in local news coverage, can be divided into different phases. While the media reports include many instances of those involved laying blame at each other’s feet, it is the market and the conflict that are considered to have been the primary factors in UmanGenomics’ ultimate demise. This study presents five suggestions as to what lessons can be learnt from this media-mediated conflict. The first is that the conflict provides an example of mutual exploitation: the media exploited the events surrounding the conflict in order to produce newsworthy, sensational and descriptive stories. Whereas within the university, the main figures embroiled in the conflict used the media as a front to either introduce or support their own points of view. The second is that the conflict should have given the »university world« an inducement to discuss media strategies and its transparency policies in greater depth. The third suggestion is that the media’s ability to make citizens’ opinions on science-related questions heard is problematic. Fourthly, many of those involved used the conflict to try to position themselves in relation to a rival counterpart, rather than to try to provide the general public with a clear and accurate picture of the conflict. Finally, it is suggested that the use of the »goldmine« metaphor, used to refer to both UmanGenomics and Medical Biobank, may have played a part in limiting media debate on the issue within the confines of a certain type of rhetoric.
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| 2. |
- Myrebøe, Synne, 1972-
(författare)
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Kultiveringens politik : Martha Nussbaum, antiken och filosofins praktik
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Politics of Cultivation is a study on how the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum actualizes Ancient political philosophy to re-negotiate core assumptions in her own contemporary ethical-political discussions. The aim is to explore the potentiality Nussbaum discerns in Ancient philosophy and how this potentiality is actualized in her thoughts on cultivation as a critique of what she sees as reductive cultures of knowledge. Also, I highlight what Nussbaum’s philosophical practice can contribute to a Swedish discourse on bildning as resistance. Following Nussbaum’s philosophy of cultivation from her first articles on Heraclitus in 1972 to her recent work, I focus on how she emphasizes the role of sensibility, sexuality and emotions for reason. The thesis is divided in six chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of cultivation as a recurrent theme throughout Nussbaum’s authorship. In the second chapter I explore her reading of Heraclitus and how this reading highlight her philosophy of cultivation. The third and fourth chapters study how Nussbaum mobilizes Plato and Aristotle to point at some of the problems she finds at the core of her contemporary political philosophy. The fifth chapter investigates how Nussbaum renegotiates Stoic and Epicurean philosophy in her defence of a therapeutic philosophical approach. The last chapter exposes how aesthetical, ethical and political dimensions are weaved into Nussbaum’s thoughts on cultivation. Here, I study her reading of two tragedies and one comedy, showing how Nussbaum’s philosophical practice can be understood as an art of memory.Set in a contemporary, Swedish discussion on bildning [Bildung], and the role of education for liberal democracy, I argue that Nussbaum lay bare the constructed division between education and self-formation where she calls for the urgency to scrutinize educational politics and educational practice. Hence, what Nussbaum emphasizes, is that everywhere people meet, we are already embedded in a process of cultivation of thoughts, emotions and perceptions. The central question on how we can live together in a pluralistic world will thus have different answers depending on what can be seen and heard within the epistemological and political regulation of the sensible. Nussbaum’s politics of cultivation insists not only on being a gadfly on the back of power, but also to change the political structures from a reductive masculinity to the dialectics of love.
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| 3. |
- Bommenel, Elin, 1970-
(författare)
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Sockerförsöket : kariesexperimenten 1943-1960 på Vipeholms sjukhus för sinnesslöa
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- År 1942 hade 99,99 procent av svenskarna karies. Den nyöppnade folktandvården dignade under arbetsbördan att laga och dra ut svenska folkets illa anfrätta tänder.I gränslandet mellan forskning, vård och politik genomförde Medicinalstyrelsen på regeringens uppdrag en utredning om hur folksjukdomen skulle kunna stoppas. Strax utanför Lund, på Vipeholms statliga sjukhus för obildbara sinnesslöa, undersökte ett mångvetenskapligt forskarlag mellan 1945 och 1955 vad som orsakade karies. Sjukhusets patienter blev föremål för de ömsom förebyggande och ömsom kariesprovocerande experimenten. Vitaminer, mineraler, kolor och choklad skänktes av en industri med krav på inflytande på forskningen.I denna doktorsavhandling undersöker Elin Bommenel forskningspraktiken som var en del av 1940- och 50-talens politisk-vetenskapliga folkhälsoforskning och som kunde producera politiskt användbara resultat. Hon följer forskningsprocessen på Vipeholm från planeringen 1943 till Medicinalstyrelsens stora upplysningskampanj 1957 och en statlig offentlig utredning som 1960 skulle omdefiniera folktandvårdens mål från det lagande till det förebyggande mål den har än i dag.
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| 4. |
- Eklöf, Jenny, 1973-
(författare)
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Gene technology at stake : Swedish governmental commissions on the border of science and politics
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the Swedish political response to the challenges posed by gene technology, seen through the prism of governmental commissions. It discerns and analyses continuities and changes in the Swedish political conception of gene technology, over the course of two decades, 1980–2000. This is done by thematically following ideas of “risks” and “ethics” as they are represented in the inner workings and reception of three governmental commissions. The Gene-Ethics Commission (1981–1984), the Gene Technology Commission (1990–1992) and the Biotechnology Commission (1997–2000) form the empirical focal points of this analysis. The first two provided preparatory policy proposals that preceded the implementation of the Swedish gene technology laws of 1991 and 1994. The last one aimed at presenting a comprehensive Swedish biotechnology policy for the new millennium.The study takes into account the role of governmental commissions as arenas where science and politics intersect in Swedish political life, and illuminates how this type of “boundary organisation”, placed on the border of science and politics, impinges on the understanding of the gene technology issue. The commissions have looked into the limits, dangers, possibilities and future applications of gene technology. They have been appointed to deal with the problematic task of distinguishing between what is routine and untested practices, realistic prediction and “science fiction”, what are unique problems and what are problems substantially similar to older ones, what constitutes a responsible approach as opposed to misconduct and what it means to let things “get out of hand” in contrast to being “in control”. Throughout a period of twenty years, media reports have continued to frame the challenges posed by gene technology as a task of balancing risks and benefits, walking the fine line between “frankenfoods” and “miracle drugs”.One salient problem for the commissions to solve was that science and industry seemed to promote a technology the public opposed and resisted, at least in parts. For both politics and science to gain, or regain, public trust it needed to demonstrate that risks – be it environmental, ethical or health related ones – were under control. Under the surface, it was much more complicated than “science helping politics” to make informed and rational decisions on how to formulate a regulatory policy. Could experts be trusted to participate in policy-making in a neutral way and was it not important, in accordance with democratic norms, to involve the public?
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| 5. |
- Hedqvist, Eric, 1937-
(författare)
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Varats och utvecklingens kedja : en naturhistorisk museiutställning i Göteborg 1923-1968
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is a museological study of the coming into being of a natural history museum, its building and its adherent zoological exhibition during the years around the First World War. The main problem of the dissertation is the opposition between the curator´s program 1903 for the exhibit and its realization twenty years later. The theoretical perspective is that in its synchronic aspect science, in accordance with the views of swedish sociologist, Thomas Brante, is divided into three levels interdependent upon one another in varying degrees – theoretical, sociological and psychological level. In the present study, the main issue is the weighing of the relative significance of each of these levels. The exhibit was structured as along a scale, or chain, from lesser to greater animals. In this and in other respects it belonged to the legacy of Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnæus. Interest in maintaining this tradition was powerful in the Swedish society during the years before the First World War. Not until around 1950 was the modern theory of evolution explicitly announced to the visitor of the exhibit, still however without the representation of the forces behind it By an investigation of the milieu to which the museum belonged is shed light upon the scientific and other ideals which are represented in its exhibit. The result of an assess of the significance of the theoretical, the sociological ant the psychological level is that contemporay theory does not stand out as a driving force behind the creation of the exhibit in 1923. Nor does the curator of the exhibition emerge as an innovator. Most dominant is however the sociological level.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Samuelsson, Jonatan, 1985-
(författare)
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Kunskap, kontrovers och kvicksilver : debatten om amalgamförgiftning i det sena 1900-talets Sverige
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation in the history of science and ideas studies the Swedish dental amalgam controversy in the late 20th century. Erupting in the early 1980s, the controversy concerned the issue of whether mercury containing dental amalgams could poison those who had had their teeth filled, or whether the many patients making such claims were in fact suffering from stress, unresolved trauma, or other illnesses. Combining a contextualizing medical history approach with analytical concepts from STS and media studies, the dissertation examines how the controversy challenged and redrew cultural boundaries between science and other forms of knowledge, between science and politics, and between medicine and society more broadly.The notion of co-production of science and social order guides the overall analysis, whereas concepts of boundary-work and biocommunicability help direct the analysis towards contexts where claims of legitimate medical knowledge are made and communicated.One main finding of the dissertation is that the controversy was highly significant in channelling the epistemic practises and the social credos of the new social and environmental movements into organised medicine. The study also indicates that the amalgam controversy functioned as a blueprint for the way that subsequent controversies were handled publicly and discussed in the media. Furthermore, the media did not just function as platforms for actors involved, but were key actors in their own right, as news reports co-produced some of the controversy´s most salient epistemological arguments. Lastly, the dissertation concludes that these processes paved the way for altered understandings of amalgam, dentistry, health, knowledge, and patienthood.The results point toward a need for further research into the rise of the Swedish patient-consumer in the late modern period, particularly with regards to the active role of patients themselves, and to new ways of connecting the historical study of contested illnesses, diffuse symptoms and mediated scientific controversies.
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