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- Knechtel, Maricel L, 1968-
(author)
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Categorization Work in the Swedish Welfare State : Doctors and social insurance officers on persons with mental ill-health
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation contributes to the debate on street-level bureaucracy, which highlights how the decisions made by workers in public bureaucracies effectively become public policy. This debate has paid relatively little attention to the study of how professionals carry out their work by means of institutional categorization, a knowledge gap that this study helps to close. Moreover, this study contributes to the understanding of how persons with mental ill-health are matched with institutional categories.The aim of this dissertation is to shed light on the institutional categorization process involving persons with mental ill-health in two interrelated areas of welfare settings: primary healthcare and sickness insurance. To pursue this aim, 27 in-depth interviews with 30 participants (18 doctors and 12 social insurance officers) were performed. The interviews, which were based on vignettes – short hypothetical scenarios – made it possible to get insight into how doctors and social insurance officers would reason in a situation similar to that depicted in the vignette.This study emphasizes how discretion is exercised when individuals are matched with the institutional categories that doctors in primary health settings and social insurance officers have at their disposal. Ideally, this process is a rational process through which clients’ objective traits are assessed against the criteria that define the various institutional categories. However, the process is not straightforward; thus, different kinds of social mechanisms are linked to the processes of institutional categorization, such as signaling, screening, the logic of appropriateness, moral work, and discrimination. On a more practical level, this study emphasizes the difficulties imbued in the process of institutional categorization. There are multiple reasons for these difficulties. Human complexity is one of them: the interviewed professionals often work with situations that require responses to human dimensions, which are oftentimes too complicated to reduce to standard formats. Another reason for these difficulties has to do with the ambiguity and/or complexity of institutional category schemes. Moreover, the process of institutional categorization takes place in a context of conflicting demands and professional logics, both within a single organization and across the organizations that work together with respect to the same patient/client.Future research concerned with institutional categorization should address how persons with mental ill-health are matched with the institutional categories in other areas of welfare, such as social services and employment services. A deeper knowledge about how the various organizations of the welfare state match individuals with institutional categories, could bring us closer to an understanding of the problems of multi-organizational collaboration.
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| 2. |
- Ginnerskov, Josef, 1989-
(author)
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Quest for Sociology : Revisiting Prevailing Understandings of a Discipline with Computational Text Analyses of Dissertations
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- What is sociology? For centuries sociologists have struggled to answer this question and repeatably proclaimed that their discipline is in crisis. The problem has generated a field of its own, the sociology of sociology, where sociologists of knowledge offer concepts for how the paradigmatic status of discipline and its crisis ought to be understood. Yet, the foundation of these understandings has often been limited to conceptual reasonings, historical exposes, and anecdotes from prominent scholars. Following the increasing availability of digitized texts and the development of computational techniques, new venues have been opened for investigating the empirical bearing of what sociology is. This dissertation offers a synthesis of, and a contribution to, this growing literature at the intersection of the sociology of knowledge and computational social science.The starting point is a review of literature in the sociology of sociology that has found that our discipline is believed to exist in a state of fragmentation, lacks a paradigm, and is conditioned by the context of its production. Akin to the supposed crisis, these conceptualizations are often taken for granted rather than being empirically put to test. This is why this dissertation aims to shed new light on the crisis of sociology by empirically scrutinizing prevailing disciplinary understandings with an interpretative and theory-driven methodological approach to computational text analysis (i.e., word correlation networks, topic modeling, stylometry, and shallow neural networks). To account for textual representations of sociological knowledge that are firmly institutionalized and exist across different local contexts, hundreds of dissertations in this discipline published in Sweden between 1980 and 2019 by five main universities have been digitized to form two corpora – 380 full-texts and 850 abstracts. Using these corpora, the conceptualizations are operationalized to be able to scrutinize, and trace, reoccurring instances where dissertations allude to certain images of sociology, which, drawing on the work of Margaret Masterman, can be regarded as crude replicas of paradigms. The study design allows us to problematize prevailing understandings of what sociology is.In contrast to the notion of fragmentation, the corpora are constituted by a core conditioned by local institutions attuned to different paradigmatic images of sociology. A discrepancy is also found between the two corpora where the abstracts appear to follow a divide between qualitative and quantitative research, and the full-texts are characterized by five paradigms with distinct methodological, epistemological, and ontological positions. These results suggest that the coexistence of multiple paradigms has been conflated with fragmentation and that sociologists tend to present their knowledge along the lines of simplified dichotomies. In response to the crisis, a more fruitful approach might be to embrace paradigm pluralism.As a contribution to the sociology of knowledge, this dissertation is an example of how the methodological divide can be overcome by merging insights from the conceptual strand with a hermeneutical take on computational methods to empirically explore taken-for-granted assumptions behind the production of disciplinary knowledge.
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| 3. |
- Hamed, Sarah
(author)
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Healthcare Staff's Racialised talk : Examining Accounts of Racialisation in Healthcare
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis contributes to the literature on racism in healthcare and the scholarship on racism and racialisation by moving the current focus of healthcare literature from demonstrating the existence of racism to examining accounts of racialisation through analysing healthcare staff’s racialised talk. Drawing from critical ‘race’ and postcolonial theories, the thesis departs from the premise that racism is a structural phenomenon embedded in nation states and institutions, including healthcare across the globe. Through a scoping review ofstudies on racism in healthcare, this thesis maintains that the current literature does not conceptualise racism as structural, and does not attempt to uncover accounts of racialisation. The review argues that the trends uncovered are part of why racism continues to reproduce itself in healthcare, despite equality regulations and policy makers’ efforts to eradicate racism. The thesis posits racialisationas a process situated within the sociohistorical playing out of colonial domination, where in groups of people are stratified somatically and culturally within groups of subordination and supraordination. Societies, institutions, and interactions are viewed as racialised such that an analysis ofracialised talk captures the seemingly subtle racialisation intrinsic tohealthcare. Analytically, the excavation of racialised talk regards talk as reflective and constitutive of the dominant structures within which talk is situated. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 58 healthcare staff in Sweden, the thesis examines how healthcare staff’s racialised talk is used to devalue minority healthcare users and obfuscate racism. The findings of this thesis contradict previous characterisations of racism in today’s society as covert. Racialised talk against minority healthcare users is found to be overt and used to categorise minority users as ‘bad’ users and their health complaints as ‘unworthy’ by labeling symptoms as ‘ethnic’, ‘cultural’ or ‘functional’. The devaluingof minority healthcare users through talk further justifies differential and suboptimal care. Besides demonstrating that racialised talk in healthcare is overt, this thesis proposes that by emphasising healthcare neutrality and equality regulations, blaming minorities for racism, viewing racism as an individual aberration, locating racism outside both national and institutional contexts, healthcare staff manage (albeit inadvertently) to obfuscate racism. It is suggested that obfuscation of racism may serve to allow racism to be perpetuated, resulting in a culture of resignation, where resistance to racism isnegligible.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Olaison, Anna, 1974-, et al.
(author)
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Dokumentationens roll för klientskapande processer i äldreinriktat socialt arbete : Spelar utlandsfödd bakgrund, kön och ålder någon roll?
- 2021
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In: Sociologisk forskning. - Huddinge : Sociologisk Forskning, Swedish Sociological Association. - 0038-0342 .- 2002-066X. ; 58:3, s. 287-310
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Baserat på en explorativ studie behandlar denna artikel frågan om utrikesfödd bakgrund, kön och ålder har någon betydelse för behovsbedömningsdokumentation inom svensk äldreomsorg. Med hjälp av kvantitativ innehållsanalys och multipel logistisk regressionsanalys av akter (n=202) innehållande utredningar (n=489) av ansökningar om välfärdstjänster, undersöker denna studie om identifikationsgrunder för äldre har någon betydelse för dokumentationspraktiker. Innehållsanalysen visade att beskrivningar i akterna av utlandsfödda äldre är mer omfattande än beskrivningarna av svenskfödda. Den multipla logistiska regressionsanalysen tyder på att kön och bakgrund verkar vara relevant för hur beslut motiverades i akterna. Ålder är inte lika relevant som de andra kategorierna. Det väsentligaste fyndet är att utlandsfödda äldre i detta material beviljas hemvårdsbidrag i större utsträckning än svenskfödda. Resultaten stöder delvis den kritiska debatten om hur klienter konstrueras i dokumentation av socialt arbete eftersom de indikerar att bakgrund, kön och ålder kan spela roll för hur äldre människors ansökningar om omsorgsinsatser behandlas i akter.
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| 6. |
- Sépulchre, Marie, 1987-
(author)
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This is not citizenship. Analysing the claims of disability activists in Sweden
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation aims to contribute to sociology, citizenship studies and disability studies by responding to T.H. Marshall’s ([1950]1992) invitation to examine the development of equal citizenship in a context of structural inequality, and Jenkins’ (1991) call to consider disability as a dimension of social stratification. Based on the analysis of blog posts and debate articles published in daily newspapers and written by Swedish disability activists (n=474), this dissertation argues that disability activism can be considered as a citizenship struggle claiming equal membership and rejecting the structural inequalities caused by disability. The analysis highlights a number of tensions and contradictions between and within the various components of citizenship as well as between and within the claims of the disability activists. These observations correspond to T.H. Marshall’s insight that citizenship is a developing institution full of contradictions, and to the observations of some citizenship scholars, arguing that citizenship claims-making features tensions and dilemmas. Moreover, the dissertation is in line with T.H. Marshall’s insight that the inclusion of previously excluded individuals – in this case, disabled people – as equal citizens brings forward important challenges, with respect to social (in)equality. In particular, challenges regarding recognition (who do we consider and value as full citizens?) and redistribution (how do we redistribute socio-material resources?). Based on the empirical analysis, this dissertation argues that the disability activists’ claims are defensive and proactive because the activists engage in both defending existing social rights and proposing new ways to construct citizenship for disabled people in Sweden. Finally, this dissertation points at different strategies used by the disability activists and at the dilemmas that some of these strategies imply. Among others, the Swedish disability activists highlight the importance of equal rights, while recognising the reality of costs; demand that disabled people be considered as ordinary citizens while asking for the accommodation of their specific needs; and view the state as the protector of equal citizenship while criticising it as a cause of the structural inequalities faced by disabled people. Thus, this dissertation opens new perspectives on citizenship and disability, and encourages future research to continue the analysis of citizenship in relation to structural inequalities.
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| 7. |
- Vieira, Magdalena, 1975-
(author)
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Moments on a City Bus : Micro-sociology of Non-verbal Interaction in Urban Bus-riding
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis seeks to contribute to research on social interaction in public (and semi-public) places in general, and research on non-verbal mundane interaction in these places in particular. By paying empirical attention to the non-verbal interaction that takes place in the context of riding a city bus – which is a contained and time-limited form of social activity – this thesis explores the theoretically rich source of information about mundane interaction that this specific social activity offers. By systematically applying a Goffmanian-informed conceptual framework to the analysis of data collected through participant observation, this thesis examines what this framework can offer to micro-sociological understandings of mundane non-verbal interaction. Moreover, this thesis investigates whether bodily cues for race, gender and age (and the sense of similarity and difference that they convey), play a role in the non-verbal mundane interaction that takes place in city busses. The assumption that mundane non-verbal interaction in a time- and space-constrained setting such as a city bus could be influenced by obvious phenotypical similarities and differences between the bodies of the people that engage in this interaction, is also hereby explored.The empirical material utilized in this thesis has been generated through a carefully designed study of city bus riding that relies on participant observation (over a period of 10 months), and is based on the operationalization of an array of parameters to study non-verbal interaction in a theoretically-informed and systematic manner. The analyses performed allowed for the methodical study of what time, space and phenotypical variations mean to the non-verbal mundane interaction that takes place in city busses (a total 200 hours of observations were recorded in systematized field notes resulting in 136 interaction moments, which were coded along 307 parameters using ATLAS.ti).The results suggest that while previous research on urban bus riding alludes to three dimensions of social interaction that are worthy of our attention – time, space, and (travelling) bodies – there is also a fourth dimension that scholars of social interaction (both verbal and non-verbal) ought to take into account (i.e. codes for interaction). The results indicate also that it is through the systematic attention to interaction moments (by acknowledging their dimensions, by taking into account features of gestures, and through detailed comparisons with other interaction moments) that we can achieve a deeper and detailed understanding of mundane non-verbal interaction in everyday life. Thus, by exposing new aspects of social interaction that future research can explore, as well as offering an array of new angles that it ought to consider (such as different aspects of intensity of involvement and types of territorial orientation to name but a few), this thesis expands the micro-sociological imagination of what mundane non-verbal interaction entails.This thesis proposes that there is nothing inconsequential or fleeting about mundane non-verbal interaction in everyday life. This thesis shows namely that in the mundane non-verbal interaction that takes place in the public spaces that are city busses, the socially coded bodies of the riders, and therefore also the phenotypical similarities and differences between them, may be a part of the interaction space created and reshaped in each interaction moment. Thus, not only is mundane non-verbal interaction full of events, rhythms, and nuances in intensity, this interaction seems also to be heavily mediated by the phenotypical cues that are imprinted in our bodies, which is why labeling this interaction ‘mundane’ is deceiving.
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| 9. |
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Critical Gerontology for Social Workers
- 2022
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This original collection explores how critical gerontology can make sense of old age inequalities to inform and improve social work research, policy and practice and empower older people. With examples of practice-facing research, this book engages with key debates on age-related human rights and social justice issues. The critical and conceptual focus will expand the horizons of those who work with older people, addressing the current challenges, issues and opportunities that they face.
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| 10. |
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