| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
- Carlsson, Ninni, 1962
(författare)
-
Avslöjandets tid. Kvinnors bearbetning av sexuella övergrepp
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis the aim is to explore how the phenomenon of working through child sexual abuse can be understood; its historical, discursive and social conditions and relations to gender and other power structures. The main study consists of 30 interviews conducted in 2003-2005 with eight women, 29 to 69 years old, representing three different social classes, all abused in childhood and all but one by their father. The study also includes other related materials such as letters and documents from social authorities, child psychiatry and courts of law. A second study was conducted in 2006, concerning the Swedish public debates about sexual violence between 1970−1996. The purpose was to understand the context of time, place and agency when first disclosing the experience of sexual abuse. The material is understood from the perspective of social constructionism, narrative, discourse, doing gender and doing difference. The result shows an overriding pattern concerning agency and change, related to the public debates about sexual violence. In the narratives, the Time of Silence is characterized by girls’ and women’s voices being controlled both through a continuum of violence exhibited by the father, and through different forms of rejections. In this context conscious thought about the sexual abuse and/or about disclosure becomes socially forbidden and impossible. With the Time of Telling, starting with the public debates about incest and child sexual abuse in the 1980’s, there follows a weakening of social control. In this context conscious thought, language, disclosure and talk about the abuse become legitimate. Through these changes, the working through of child sexual abuse can be seen as being linked to an historically specific agency situated in the late 20th century. It emerges in a Swedish socio-political development concerning issues of power, sexuality, gender, age and kinship, initiated by the 2nd women’s movement. Taking place in equal and gender equal relations it can be understood as an individual, collective and discursive equal rights project, and more specifically, as resistance against past social events. It involves an oppositional stance towards the abuse and the abuser with interpretation, emotion and action within a certain ethics related to women’s and children’s rights. When talking about their fathers, mothers and about working through the sexual abuse the women construct three different discourses. Resistance is situated within one political/feminist and one professional/psychopathological discourse about women’s and children’s subjection to sexual violence. The political/feminist discourse is also constructed when talking about significant relationships, together with a third discourse about care. Acts of caring are related to gender as sameness, equality and traditional notions about “femininity”. The discourses consist of both ideology and practice anchored within the women’s and men’s movements of the 1970’s. The resistance reaches out towards both media and social relationships, making comparisons, openness, solidarity and a sense of community possible. When others indirectly through debates, or directly in person, confirm past abuse they also confirm and attach importance and value to the women. This opens up a possibility to trust their perceptions and memories, and to personally confirm their past. In this way the women can, together with others, create both a personal history and themselves as an embodied, changeable being. Becoming valuable is the common theme, which can best be understood in relation to their experiences of depreciation during both historical periods. In the narratives, the same construction of gender, age and kinship as difference is accomplished, both before and since the sexual violence debates in Sweden, and by both the abusive father and other people. It is connected to depreciation, rejection and disciplinary social control over self, voice and actions, and is reinforced by the father’s physical and sexual violence. When gender, age and kinship are produced, a “bad” girl/women is produced: unreliable, seductive or in other ways deviant, less worthy, and responsible for “bad” behaviour such as the abuse itself or its disclosure. The construction is reproducing a historical pattern shown in earlier research and in the sexual violence debates. The women criticize this situation, in which their rights to be heard are still too limited and are indirectly or directly expressing demands for equal rights.
|
|
| 3. |
- Daneback, Kristian, 1974
(författare)
-
Love and sexuality on the internet
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to comprehensively study love and sexuality on the internet, for example user demographics, usage patterns, and descriptions of the arenas that constitute the sexual landscape on the internet. Instead of using more traditional ways of data collection, quantitative and qualitative data were collected through the internet. A review of prior research in the field shows that the studies conducted are fragmented, specialized, and clustered around specific topics. In addition, prior studies are predominantly empirical with little connection to social theory. In this thesis, empirical findings are related to both prior research and theory. The theoretical starting points are Bauman and his concept of liquid modernity, Goffman and his dramaturgical perspective, and Gagnon and Simons theory of sexual scripts. This thesis consists of four quantitative articles and one qualitative report, each with its own demarcated purpose. The first article examines online sexual activities and how these are influenced by gender and age. Two major dimensions were found among the sexual activities and were labelled accessing erotica and partner seeking. The results show that men prefer to view online erotica while women prefer to flirt. More men than women use the internet to find partners, to visit dating sites and to reply to sex ads. Women, on the other hand, use the internet to stay in contact with their partners and to seek education/information about sex. Respondents older than 50 years use the internet less for sexual purposes. In the second article, those who dropped out from the online questionnaire are examined. Approximately half of those who start to fill out the questionnaire drop out before completion. Dropouts can be identified by gender, sexual orientation, and internet connection speed. Men, heterosexuals, and those with modem connections tend to drop out earlier than others. The third article focuses on those who engage in cybersex, which is defined as two or more persons engaging in mutual sexual talk while online for sexual pleasure. Approximately one third of both men and women engage in cybersex. A multivariate analysis shows that men over 50 are less likely to engage in cybersex. Furthermore, homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to have cybersex. Those who engage in cybersex spend more time online for sexual purposes and have more offline sex partners in comparison to those without this experience. The fourth article examines those who are sexually compulsive according to a 10-item sexual compulsivity scale. Almost 6 percent are categorized as sexual compulsives. A multivariate analysis shows sexual compulsives more likely to be men than women, to be bisexual rather than heterosexual, and to be in a relationship rather than single. Contrary to prior research, the time spent online seems to indicate the activities they engage in. A bivariate analysis shows sexual compulsives to have consumed pornography before starting to use the internet for sexual purposes and to increase their offline pornography consumption more than non-sexual compulsives. In the qualitative report the sexual landscape, the actors, and the online sexual activities are examined. The report shows that generational differences influence which arenas are used and how they are used. Younger users spend much time online and integrate the internet in their everyday lives of which love and sexuality is part. Older users log on to the internet to engage in activities specifically related to love and sexuality. The results show that online experiences influence the informants behaviors offline and vice versa. Finally, this study emphasizes the changing nature of the internet and how this influences arenas and actors which in turn influence behaviors. This thesis emphasizes anonymity as an important aspect for understanding love and sexuality on the internet. In addition, it shows how love and sexuality on the internet can be explained and understood in relation to prior theory.
|
|
| 4. |
- Dunér, Anna, 1962
(författare)
-
To maintain control: Negotiations in everyday life of older people who can no longer manage on their own.
- 2007
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to reach a more insightful understanding of how help is actually worked out in the everyday life of older people when they can no longer manage on their own. The overall research question is how individuals, representing different perspectives in the help arrangement process, think and act in order to organise needed help as well as how they may themselves apprehend the functions of the help. It is a qualitative study, containing four papers looking at this issue from different perspectives: the older persons themselves, their next of kin who provide help and the municipal care managers who make decisions on formal help. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews and participant observations with care managers, qualitative interviews with older people applying for formal eldercare, follow-up interviews with some of them and qualitative interviews with next of kin who provide help. The analysis of the material adopts an empirically oriented approach, involving several steps from open to focused coding. Earlier research and theory guided the analysis. The results show that older people strive to maintain control over their everyday life (Paper I). When they can no longer manage unaided, they use various strategies to maintain control and the feeling of autonomy. Well-functioning formal and informal networks (Paper III) allow individuals to sustain autonomy and control in old age even when they have to depend on help from others. The care managers endeavour to make both ends meet in the decision process (Paper II). They develop various techniques and struck a balance between diverse demands and expectations. Helping an older relative is connected with a multiplicity of motives and experiences (Paper IV). The next of kin act both as bridges and buffers between their older relative and formal eldercare. This thesis emphasises the important functions of both formal and informal help to older people. To outline the working forms and methods of collaboration between older people and their informal and formal support networks is an important challenge that needs further attention.
|
|
| 5. |
- Enander, Viveka, 1967
(författare)
-
Women Leaving Violent Men: Crossroads of Emotion, Cognition and Action
- 2008
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses battered women’s leaving processes. Leaving is conceptualised in a wider sense, i.e. as disentanglement from violent relationships beyond the physical break-up. The general aim of the thesis is to study how emotion and cognition are shaped around the act of leaving. Feminist theory on violence against women and the sociology of emotions are the main theoretical frameworks used to enhance understanding of women’s exiting from violence. The thesis is built on two sets of qualitative interview material with women who have left abusive heterosexual relationships. The material consists of a total of 49 interviews. In Paper I, Why Does She Leave? The Leaving Process(es) of Battered Women, three overlapping leaving processes are described: Breaking Up, Becoming Free and Understanding. Breaking Up covers action, i.e. the physical breakup. Becoming Free covers emotion and involves release from the strong emotional bond that battered women may develop to their batterers. Understanding covers cognition and is a process that entails women defining the relationships they have lived in as abusive and themselves as victimised. In Paper II, A Fool to Keep Staying” – Battered Women Labelling Themselves “Stupid” as an Expression of Gendered Shame, the informants labelling themselves “stupid” is investigated. Feeling stupid for staying in the abusive relationship and “allowing” oneself to be mistreated are the main themes. It is proposed that feeling–and labelling oneself –stupid is an expression of gendered shame and reflects unfinished Understanding processes. In Paper III, Leaving Jekyll and Hyde – Emotion Work in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence, battered women’s emotion work is investigated. The results suggest a process in which victims initially conceptualised abusers as good, but subjection to violence led to a cognitive-emotive dissonance responded to by emotion work. Over time, conceptualisations of abusers shifted from good to bad and efforts were made to change emotions from warm to cold. In Paper IV, Jekyll and Hyde or “Who is this Guy?” – Battered Women’s Interpretations of their Abusive Partners as a Mirror of Opposite Discourses, the informants’ interpretations of their abusers as “Jekyll and Hyde” are analysed against the background of two opposite discourses: the pathology/deviance discourse and the feminist/normality discourse. Complex mixes and combinations of understandings were found in the informants’ interpretations which were, however, dominated by the pathology/deviance discourse. During analysis of the material, a third image emerged, beyond Jekyll and Hyde, i.e. the abusers as “hurt boys”; it was argued this image might prolong the Becoming Free process and serve as a direct impediment to leaving. The results of the thesis indicate that emotion and cognition are interconnected and in process around the act of leaving.
|
|
| 6. |
- Forkby, Torbjörn, 1965
(författare)
-
Ungdomsvård på hemmaplan. Idéerna - Framväxten - Praktiken
- 2005
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Juveniles who are rowdy, who commit crime, abuse drugs, have difficulty functioning in school or in the home are the subject of constant attention: from indignant voices in newspaper reports, to demands in parliament for action, all the way to the informal conversations at the lunch table and in the home in front of the television. This dissertation is about societys attempts to normalize them, in a time when institutional care has gained a bad reputation. All over the western world there are attempts to replace institutions with qualified non-institutional measures. In Sweden a rather broad range of activities has emerged under designations such as home-based solutions, intermediary care or simply alternatives to institutional care. Among these we can find both all-embracing and innovative endeavours and more limited expansions of established patterns of thought. Although there are numerous studies of individual ventures, often in the form of project evaluations, there are no approaches with an overall perspective on the field. This dissertation seeks to remedy this by studying ideas articulated when activities are planned and how daily life between juveniles and employees is formed in a typical home-based solution. These studies are conceptualized through a description of the development of juvenile care during the 20th century. The study is based on the methods of discourse analysis and focuses on how communication is shaped and given a specific function in an institutional order. The first study shows how the social worker as a rescuing subject is linked with the juvenile as an object needing rescue through the technology involved in the home-based solution. Four main forms of home-based care are identified in accordance with the way they relate to the mother organization (integrated free-standing), and the way they handle problems that arise (ad hoc a priori). The study of the special school Pilen analyses in detail how everyday life is shaped and maintained. Therapeutic work is perceived in the dissertation as actions accompanied by power with the intention of achieving dominance within a social space. In the special school it becomes evident how the employees claims for power encounter the juveniles counter-power, and how this is expressed in a reciprocal positioning game. The juveniles often have great potential to neutralize the employees direct interventions. At the same time, they have little opportunity to change the social and cultural framework which dictates why they are there and hence also little opportunity to avoid being captured in the category of problem children. In this way the special school was simultaneously a sanctuary from the excessive pressures of ordinary school and a place of banishment from it, and from what is perceived as the reference of normality.
|
|
| 7. |
- Forsberg, Margareta, 1958
(författare)
-
Brunetter och blondiner: om ungdom och sexualitet i det mångkulturella Sverige
- 2005
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about adolescents and sexuality and has a special focus on girls living in multicultural contexts in Sweden. The study has two overall aims. The first is to explore eventual changes in young people's attitudes towards sexuality and relationships during the latter part of the 20th century. The second is to study how norms, values and patterns of activity, appear in a situation where youths with different cultural backgrounds, live together in a Swedish context. The study combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Overall patterns and indications of change were studied through a review of earlier research about youth and sexuality in Sweden, and through a questionnaire answered by 1331 adolescents in the 9th grade of the comprehensive school's senior level (approx. 15 years old) and the 3rd year of upper secondary school (approx. 18 years old). Observations and interviews were made with three groups of girls in the 8th grade and four groups of older girls (approx. 16 - 18 years old). The study concludes that a main change in Swedish sexual life occurred in the 1960s and shows that on an overall level the theory of a weakening of the romantic love complex is strengthened. A closer analysis modifies the overall picture and shows that gender is a determinative factor for freedom of movement regarding sexuality, exemplified with girls responding to questions related to the ideology of love in a more restrictive way than boys. The most probable explanation of this result is the strong position respectability holds in the girls lives. The gender difference is strongly accentuated among adolescents with an immigrant background, putting girls with an immigrant background in a particularly restrictive position. The third parameter of significance, (after gender and background), influencing the respondent's attitudes, is age. Among the older respondents the gender differences are strongly diminished, the largest change between younger and older respondents being found among girls with immigrant backgrounds. Observations and interviews show that on the youth arena, the girls are striving to place themselves in the position of "the good and respectable". By referring to others as dis-respectable, they can reach higher positions in the youth hierarchy of respectability. By referring to "blondes" and "brunettes" they charge their discussions with ethnicity. The meaning of a "brunette" being a girl with an immigrant background, and, on a second level, a girl who is presupposed to be respectable. Correspondingly, "blonde" stands for a girl with a Swedish background, but could also refer to a girl who behaves in a dis-respectable way. The strongest instrument of control seems to be the rumour, which is used to get and to guard positions in the hierarchy of respectability. A girl can become the subject of a bad rumour, regardless of how she behaves, if this suites the interest of somebody else. Also boys can become subjects of bad rumours, if they have many different (sexual) relationships with girls, i. e. act as "players". Among girls, a rumour about a "player" functions as a system of warning, but might, contradictory, lead to admiration among the boys. A boy, who is her friend, could warn a girl should she risk getting involved with a boy without knowing that he his known as a "player". If she does get involved, though, she would probably acquire a bad reputation. The explicit sexuality of the "player", would "infect" her. The girls refer to parents who communicate many regulations concerning sexual behaviour. These systems of regulation appear to be impossible to negotiate but in every day life there seem to be different ways around them for both girls and parents. Lust and desire are strikingly invisible in the girl's discussions but are heard of through the systems of regulation and control that enclose them. When talking about liberal sexual relations or same-sex sexuality the girls show great tolerance although they are eager to mark their own respectability. Nevertheless, they exemplify a tolerance significant for (late) modern society's individualization. A tolerance that could intensify the development, already in progress, of more liberal sexual patterns. In the girls´ ways of thinking, it is possible to trace elements from modernity, pre-modernity and late modernity in a miscellaneous mix. A consequence of this hybridity, is larger tensions between different attitudes within the (young) population. Tensions, that lead to clashes, reinterpretations, reconsiderations and disharmonies in an unpredictable social development.
|
|
| 8. |
- Grundvall, Stig, 1953
(författare)
-
Vagabond MC. Gemenskap, manlighet och marginalitet. En studie av en västsvensk bikerklubb.
- 2005
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The global objective with this ethnographic (culture) study is to examine the social patterns and significant structures in a local (West Swedish) biker club. A newly formed club, Vagabond MC, constitutes my primary research object and is at the same time my entrance into the biker culture, generally speaking. I have used a qualitative method consisting of two years´ participatory observations in said biker club and 21 interviews with bikers and other people with great cultural insights. A historical retrospect international as well as national and local constitutes a context for the newly formed biker club Vagabond MC. The empirical part is composed of fragments from the club activities, including descriptions of biker outings, garage activities, parties, meetings, birthdays, construction work on a new club house etc. The significant structures of the biker culture are discussed based on the social order that forms both the club community and the contact with the other biker clubs. However, the bikers´ construction of meaning and ethos must also be considered through an interpretation of the symbolic patterns that compose the mainstay of the bikers´ world of symbols. My interpretation of the signs and symbols in the biker culture indicate that they constitute a mythological web which reinforces the social order both within the biker culture and outside in its relation to the surrounding society. All-pervading themes in the study are: Community, masculinity and marginality. The community in the biker club expresses a need for protection and support and constitutes a basis from which they orient themselves in the surrounding world. The masculinity is characterized by a legitimacy and possibility to give full expression to the sides of their own personality which are not always vented in other contexts. A marginal existence is in some aspects a result from social processes leading to exclusion through social shortcomings, however, it is also an arena that in a sense is chosen and which may be charged and turned exciting. This study is balancing two opposite perspectives. The first is a structural perspective, where changes in society, unemployment, marginal positions etc. have turned people into bikers and made them (often) end up in exposed situation. The second perspective is more intention and action oriented. It is based on the assumption that bikers are both reflecting and creative (persons).
|
|
| 9. |
- Hedin, Ulla-Carin, 1945, et al.
(författare)
-
Exitprocesses and empowerment - a study of social cooperatives in the Vägen ut project
- 2006
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- "The project Exit - From prison to social cooperative" within the Equal partnership was carried out over the course of three years, and shows that important conditions for breaking away from a career of crime include freedom from drugs, work/employment and new relationships within a working community. Other important conditions include emphasising empowerment and opportunities to manage and determine for oneself the terms of the project work. The project was monitored by three researchers from Göteborg University who in this report describe and analyse the process of building social cooperatives from a number of different perspectives.
|
|
| 10. |
- Johansson, Helena, 1962
(författare)
-
Brist på manliga förebilder. Dekonstruktion av en föreställning och dess praktik.
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis takes its starting point in the conception that teenage boys living with a single mother lack male role models and that this lack is related to some of the boys social problems. The overall aim of the thesis is to analyse and deconstruct the conception lack of male role models within the field of social work. Further to explicitly study how this conception and closely rela-ted discourses are reproduced and/or reshaped in the social work services for sons of single mothers. Social constructionism, a doing gender-approach on how masculinities are constructed combined with discourse analysis and genealogy forms the theoretical and methodological fra-mework for the thesis. It combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach and uses three empirical data sets to fulfil the aim. The first is an interview study with 11 informants working directly with teenage boys in open forms of social treatment. The second is a survey using ques-tionnaires directed to key social workers and containing questions both on number of assess-ments, gendered differences, measures taken etc. and positions in relation to assertions concern-ing single mothers, their sons and the importance (or not) of male role models. 52 out of 98 social workers selected answered the questionnaire. The third is an analysis of texts published in Socionomen, the most influential journal for social workers in Sweden. The 217 texts studied span over a period of 42 years (1958 to 2000). The thesis concludes that the conception lack of male role models has a strong hold on social workers both in assessing and in carrying out care for teenage boys. The conception is under-stood as closely linked to a number of discourses that, in their turn, cooperate with social prac-tice. Within a gender equality discourse with a strong political rhetoric two different discourses on gender can be seen: both gender as difference and gender as sameness. This ambivalence raises ques-tions on the role of men in female dominated work places and as role models. Are they sup-posed to be models in a stereotypical and traditional masculinity construction or models for transgressing stereotypes? The constructions of masculinity are multiple and complex. A man of the body is constructed from components such as courage, discipline, physical activity and a trimmed body. A man of the head is also constructed, consisting of verbality, sensitivity and care. In the constructions of fathers two main discourses can be identified: fatherhood defined as biological kinship and as child oriented presence and care. The construction of the lone mothers shows similar complexities and ambivalences. She is both strong and capable but at the same time morally disreputable and burdened under a dominating mother centred discourse influenced, in its turn, by psychoanalytical thinking. She is seen as lacking in relation to the son. Mothers and fathers are further measured as parents by different gauges. The father is often good enough by being the biological father whilst the mother is judged harder. The discourses presented are interrelated, not least with a discourse where society is viewed as fatherless and where childhood is seen dominated by women. A fear of the wild teenage boy can be seen that leads to demands for discipline and a traditional form of masculinity within practical social work. But alternatives can also be seen and the ambivalences, competition and movements between discourses open a dynamic field. The thesis analyses these movements, different posi-tions and competitions, within both discourses and social practice.
|
|
