| 1. |
- Blomberg, Staffan
(författare)
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Specialiserad biståndshandläggning inom den kommunala äldreomsorgen : Genomförandet av en organisationsreform och dess praktik
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The 1990s was a period characterized by a strong pressure for reform in the Swedish municipalities. The care manager reform, i.e. the initiation of a position within the administration - the care manager - whose work tasks are concentrated around needs-assessment practices only, was one of many reform proposals. Within a fairly short time span a great number of municipalities decided to implement this new model for organizing the care of the elderly. A central research question in this thesis is how the rapid diffusion of this organizational idea could be explained. The diffusion of new ideas of organizing doesn’t come about automatically and doesn’t take place in a social vacuum. Reform proposals encounter different actors and local traditions, opinions and understandings of desirable goals and appropriate means. Eight Swedish municipalities were studied, and the thesis shows that there were differences among them concerning the arguments used when the reform was launched and implemented. A key to understand the impact of the reform is that it over time was ascribed more and new problem solving qualities. Among the early adopters the model was justified by ideological arguments, and the reform was seen as a necessary element in the privatization of the old age care services. The other municipalities in the study were not inclined to adopt the model in connection with marketization rhetoric; in fact, some of them opposed it on precisely these grounds. However, in a discourse about the need for greater rättssäkerhet – legal security in the sense of the individual’s rights in the face of law – the reform eventually became a solution to a new problem. The third discourse that paved the way for the care manager reform is connected with cost-efficiency. In this discourse the reform was associated with the control function of costs and a more restrictive needs-assessment practice. In the last phase of adoption, the reform had reached the status of a fashion prescribing the modern way of organizing old age care. The second part of the dissertation studies care management as occupational practice. The thesis shows that managers supported the reform with arguments echoing the different problem solving functions that had been ascribed to the model over time, but it also shows that support were tied to hopes for increased professionalization. However, the core domain of the care manager’s work – need-assessment – is contested by other occupational groups, e.g. medical professions. As the thesis shows there are signs that indicate that the power of the care managers to protect their new domains is uncertain. The empirical material consists of strategic interviews and documents. Interviews were held with the social actors involved in the implementation such as politicians, public servants at different positions in the local administration, union representatives and care managers. The documents were basically of two kinds; official public documents produced on a yearly basis in the local administration and internal documents produced in the old age care organizations, and secondly, documents referred to in the interviews, such as directives from supervisory authority, local evaluations and reports from consultants.
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| 2. |
- Giertz, Anders
(författare)
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Making the Poor Work : Social Assistance and Activation in Sweden
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Management of poor relief and work demands have been controversial questions in social policy during the workhouse era of the nineteenth century as well as in current discussions on social assistance and activation of recipients. The first part contains a discussion on the concepts of poverty, marginalisation, and social exclusion, and continues with an overview of activation policies for recipients of social assistance. Social assistance in Sweden developed in the 1980s in the direction of an income guarantee for all citizens. During the 1990s, policies have changed towards activation and control. The growth of the recipient population is described. Occasional receipt of social assistance has been rather common and not limited to extremely disadvantaged groups. Long-term and permanent receipt of social assistance has increased considerably during the 1990s, often in combination with a marginal labour market position, and without eligibility for social insurance, which is strongly work-related. The main direction of the process is problems of entry to the labour market rather than exclusion of the already established. Results on scope, duration and patterns of social assistance are presented and analysed in relation to the labour market and immigration. The city of Malmö is described and analysed as an example of a development towards increasing labour market marginalisation and long-term receipt of social assistance, with special attention to the disadvantaged and segregated areas of the city. This development has to large extent been determined by external factors as global economic change and migration. Activation programs are often proposed as a solution to these problems. Evaluation methods and results from effect evaluations of such programs are discussed in the last part of the work. Results from an evaluation of activation programs in Malmö are presented. According to the available evidence, such programs have quite modest effects on work and income and structural change is necessary to reduce social exclusion.
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| 3. |
- Granér, Rolf
(författare)
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Patrullerande polisers yrkeskultur
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Using ethnographical methods, this thesis examines the prevalence and character of an occupational culture among patrolling police in terms of frames of reference, conduct and attitudes, a culture which overrides or is in opposition to the official mandate of the police force. It is suggested that the occupational culture of the patrolling police should not be regarded as a homogenous culture but be seen as describing a continuum from a legalistic to a more autonomous perspective. The legalistic perspective is founded on the official social mandate of the police. The autonomous approach on the other hand is regarded as an independent social power with a clearly partisan interest in defending an often idealised segment of society loosely termed ”the general public” by fighting alleged troublemakers and criminals. This partisanship legitimises what from the autonomous perspective is considered ”real police work”. This primarily involves dealing with crime within the patrolling officers’ area of competence, with clear boundaries between right and wrong. The ”real police work” can be linked to another term within the autonomous perspective:”practical police work”. This includes procedures where immediate results are emphasised at the cost of legally and/or institutionally imposed working practices, a special ”police eye” for what can be seen as different (deviant) and therefore threatening, a relative independence in relation to the code of laws, use of repressive powers to maintain respect for the police and finally a mutual code of silence among policemen. You can also discern three sets of opposing attitudes in the taxonomy. The first one is an alienated ”tired” attitude as opposed to a dedicated ”hungry” attitude. The second one concerns a repressive tough attitude that emphasises the police as a violent power versus a helpful soft attitude that lays more stress on co-operative structures. Finally there is a distinction between a reflective, intellectual approach open to change and an automatic intuitive response where the individual officer tends to generalise the cognitive patterns of the immediate situations so far that it dominates his whole outlook on the surrounding world. This also comprises a general distrust of the surrounding world combined with a view of other people based on simple (facile?) categorisation. The study suggests that when police officers speak about police work more generally the autonomous perspective often dominates. In practice however police on the whole follow a legalistic perspective in terms of following police regulations. Departures from this are nevertheless recurrent and the factors that decide whether an autonomous perspective will prevail are on the one hand the police officers’ level of commitment to their task and on the other an appraisal of the risks of being personally punished for their actions.
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| 4. |
- Hjort, Torbjörn
(författare)
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Nödvändighetens pris : Konsumtion och knapphet bland barnfamiljer
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The object of this thesis has been to study the relationship between consumption and economic scarcity from a theoretical perspective. I have used families with children as an empirical example to illustrate the theoretical framework. There are two main questions: The first focuses on the structures that create specific conditions for low-income consumers. The second relates to how the households cope with the fact that they live with scarce financial resources in comparison to other groups of households in a consumer society. My theoretical framework is mostly a combination of three theoretical fields. The first field deals with how low-income consumers in a structural meaning are discriminated against in different ways. I have adopted these research results, which have mainly come from the US, and used them in a Swedish context. The second field consists of theories that have been developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and cultural theory. These theories discuss consumption from several perspectives but I have mainly concentrated on two issues. The first issue deals with the increased significance of consumption in society. The second issue is that of the symbolic meaning of consumption. The third theoretical field is dealing with welfare which involves concepts such as exclusion, inclusion and marginalization. In my opinion, research into consumption has not paid enough attention to groups that tend to be marginalized in society and do not have the financial resources to be part of the consumer society to the same degree as others. The study has primarily been a contribution to the understanding of the relationships that link consumption and financial scarcity from a theoretical perspective. However I am also interested in the appearance of these mechanisms in the everyday life of the households. I have therefore chosen to examine the theoretical framework through the empirical material. The empirical material includes four qualitative studies. Three of the studies are based on interviews and one on questionnaires. The studies indicate that that the position which the households have in relation to the labour market and the welfare security system is crucial to the household’s possibilities as consumers. A marginalized or excluded position in these fields also tends to hinder and raise barriers in the consumer field. The mechanisms in the field of consumption can therefore be understood as interrelated to those which create processes of inclusion or exclusion in other fields. The consumer field has also its own mechanisms that create different possibilities for different groups. Households with scarce financial resources mainly face three different mechanisms that in different ways restrict their possibilities as consumers. The families in my studies developed different strategies or ways of managing the feeling of being trapped. In their struggle to meet the needs of basic necessities and at the same time attempting to keep up with social necessities they acted and reasoned for the most part in five different ways.
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| 5. |
- Ingvad, Bengt
(författare)
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Caring and relations : On emotional interaction in home help
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines the interaction between municipal home-helpers and care re-cipients from a social psychological perspective. One of the starting points is a critique of some classical works in the caring science inspired by women’s studies for not taking into consideration that care-giving work constitutes social interaction. The aim is to analyse how elderly people and the home-helpers perceive and interpret each other, what they expect of their mutual relationship, how they influence each other’s actions in their emotional interaction, and how the old person’s family and the home-helper’s work team influence their relationship. The empirical investigations, analysed with qualitative methodology, comprise thematically structured in-depth interviews with 48 home-helpers in six work groups, and 40 case studies of assistance cases, based on interviews with the old person (25 cases) and participant observation of the parties (15 cases). The home-helpers and the old people perceive their relationship as instrumental, friendly, emotional, insecure (recipients), laborious or charged with conflict (home-helpers). It is shown that what the old person and the home-helper expect of their emotional relationship is linked to social needs such as respect, acknowledgement, and appreciation from the other. These aims influence the experiences and actions of the two parties and, thereby, the care-giving work. Commonly, the home-helper subordinates herself to the old person or adapt to the recipient, e.g. by listening and “adjusting” to the old person. Psychological constructions play an important role in the home-helpers’ perceptions of the care situation in emotional conflicts. In escalated conflicts the home-helpers may act more impersonally and showing less care in the work. The old people may express confirmatory feelings for the home-helpers, deepen their dependence, and towards the home-helper they represent in various ways who they are and what they stand for. The old persons’ conflict actions can be understood as attempts to value themselves positively.
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| 6. |
- Jarhag, Sven
(författare)
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Planering eller frigörelse? : En studie om bemyndigande
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The legislation on rights that was presented in the final report of the commission of inquiry into handicap (SOU 1991:46), the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments, showed that, from an ethical point of view, society´s welfare is something that concerns everyone. The demand for social solidarity, according to the inquiry, meant that public measures must be designed to meet quality requirements aiming at self-determination and influence, accessibility, participation, and continuity and holism. The focus is on the problematic concept of empowerment. The aim of the study was to acquire a deeper understanding of whether this phenomenon as a process was active at three levels of society: individual, group and municipality. The methods used were interviews, questionnaires, and participant observation. Written documents, such as minutes and memoranda, were also analysed and interpreted in order to understand empowerment at these three contextual levels. The dissertation is based on three empirical studies using this method of analysis. Although society´s rule system creates new administrative categories, which in turn generate administrative paradigms, it is in the relations between the actors at these three levels that the content is developed, that is, in interaction between them at the level of actor and structure. Alberto Melucci´s (1991) discussion of the irreconcilable tension between liberation and control/repression, between the opposites of empowerment and attitudes of paternalism/disempowerment, also provided an analytical model that is used throughout the dissertation. Julian Rappaport´s (1981) analysis of empowerment phases was likewise an important component when the empowerment theory was applied to the empirical studies. The dissertation also includes a description and analysis of Beth Mount´s (1987) study of planning processes, in order to compare some Anglo-Saxon planning models with the individual plan presented in the Act (prop. 1992/93:159). The results show that the paternalistic attitudes that dominate the planning processes aimed at empowerment are ideologically associated with individual and medical explanatory models of handicap. Four shared themes are presented, representing categories which answer the research questions posed, that is, whether empowerment processes could be observed at the different levels. Regardless of what empowerment functionally impaired persons can achieve through the attitudes of the public authorities, the Act cannot conceal the fact that nothing has changed yet since the law was passed in any respects that concerns people´s influence and empowerment. In this discursive development, cooperation between the research community and the functionally impaired persons is a cornerstone.
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| 7. |
- Johnsson, Eva
(författare)
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Självmordsförsök bland narkotikamissbrukare
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to describe suicide attempts in a group of drug abusers who previously had received treatment of their addiction. Another aim is to interpret and analyse the life situations that the individual associates with the suicide attempt. The dissertation is based on interviews conducted on two occasions with 92 drug abusers, 62 men and 30 women. The majority of the drug abusers were injection addicts with a complicated social situation going back many years. The theoretical tools focus on an interactive and an individual level and the analyses concern the relation between the suicide attempt and the drug abuse, social interaction, emotional experiences, and self perception. Results from the study shows that 39 percent of the drug abusers had attempted suicide during their period of active drug abuse, 60 percent were women. The suicide attempts took place at the start of their abuse career or /and after many years of abuse when they were deeply involved in the life of a drug addict. Five "keysituations" were identified and related to the suicide attempt. Theese reflected different lifesituations, which were related to the drug career. The keysituations were: suicide in the teens, mental pane which became unbearable, various coersive interventions linked to the abuse, the negative effects of the addiction such as an increasingly chaotic situation which could be described as "the rock bottom" and finally the fifth situation which reflected the processes of breaking out of addiction and the difficulty of living an "ordinary" social life. The analyses of the interviewees´narratives showed the relation between social, interactive, and individual factors and the significance of the abuse for the suicidal act. It was palpaple that the suicide attempt was explained on the basis of the specific stiuation in which it happened. This indicate that the suicide attempt is linked to specific social contexts, interactions with other people and the individual´s interpretation of this context. Whatever the context, the emotional experienes of the subjects were charged with feelings of shame and guilt and despair over their lifs situation.
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| 8. |
- Jönson, Håkan
(författare)
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Det moderna åldrandet : Pensionärsorganisationernas bilder av åldrandet 1941-1995
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the dissertation is to describe images of old age in the magazines of Sweden’s two largest pensioner organizations, and explain the character of those images in relation to the temporal contexts of the organizations and their aim to act as the representatives of pensioners. The study is based on the 329 and 330 magazines (1941–1995) that the organizations have submitted to attract members and spread political messages. As an analytical tool, interpretive frames are used to highlight and compare the organizations’ characteristic ways of describing old people and their position in society. These frames have constituted coherent perspectives that has made it possible for the two organizations to reach different conclusions on how to act in the best interest of old people. The characteristics of the three periods – the poverty period, the welfare-state period and the re-evaluation period – are used to put interpretive frames and old-age images into a context of conditions, reflecting development and change in the society surrounding the organizations. It is concluded that the interpretive frames of the organizations have been linked to competing ideological beliefs about the development of society, as well as scientific discourses on health and aging. As a common trait, the organizations have produced and used two problem-oriented discourses. A discourse of risk-resource has juxtaposed images of old age by focusing on risks of old people becoming burdens to society, in opposition to the possibilities of their contributions as resources. A discourse of victim-resistance has highlighted victimization and injustices, which the organizations and old people themselves have provided resistance against. In the final analysis, the organizations are understood as social movements that have to produce images of risk and injustice in order to mobilize members for collective action and make claims for social change. Without a problem-oriented perspective the ability to create a shared identity of old people would be obstructed, and the organizations’ legitimacy as representatives of old people could be questioned.
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| 9. |
- Jönsson, Leif Roland
(författare)
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Arbetslöshet ekonomi och skam : Om att vara arbetslös i dagens Sverige
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study has been to investigate the social consequences of unemployment and to give a possible interpretation of unemployment experiences through the application of the economy-shame model. It intends to put forward and show the significance of economic stress in combination with the feeling of shame as a factor important for the understanding of differences in unemploy-ment experiences. A significant feature for the appreciation of variations in unemployment experiences is the study of how the unemployed themselves experience and interpret their relation to others. In the study’s different articles, data from two questionnaire surveys and one based on interviews with 26 long-term unemployed persons has been used. In total, 2143 unemployed persons have been included in the data material. The results in the articles show that there seems to be a strong relationship between the combination of a high degree of economic stress with that of more experiences of shame and the incidence of serious (self-reported) ill-health when being unemployed. Unemployment related health problems were especially salient among those who during their unemployment had been exposed to a higher degree of economic stress and had more experiences of shame. Under the circumstances where economic stress was small or insignificant and the treatment from others was supportive, the occurrence of unemployment related health problems was low. Major economic difficulties seem to be a strong contributing factor to the emergence of controversies leading to deteriorating atmosphere in the family between adults (wife/husband) as well as the relation to teenage children. Experiences of shame affected the relation with the children more than the relation between the adults in the family. What seemed to overshadow the economic difficulties for several of the interviewees was the worry about not being able to cope on their own, to become dependent on social welfare benefits. The intensive feeling, which many expressed when talking about how important it was to be able to cope by themselves and to be independent, was something that did not come through in the quanti-tative studies. The stories seem to indicate a will to be free of dependence on the social authorities and from living on benefits – that it is shameful to be dependent.
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| 10. |
- Laanemets, Leili
(författare)
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Skapande av femininitet : Om kvinnor i missbrukarbehandling
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about women in drug abuse treatment and their descriptions of themselves as women - their process of becoming feminine. The aim of the thesis is describing and trying to understand the meaning of the treatment in the women's femininity processes and what significance drugs, alcohol, men, the own body, motherhood, and sexuality have and have had in the process. The emphasis is on the empirical material, which consists of several interviews with 29 female clients and treatment personnel at four different treatment programmes as well as observations, primarily of the physical environment. The programmes are a solution-focused open-care unit, a Minnesota Model treatment centre, an all-female institution, and a compulsory-treatment institution. At the all-female institution, all clients and the entire staff are women. At the compulsory-treatment institution, the clients are all women, while the staff consists of men as well as women. The other two programmes are directed towards male as well as female drug abusers. In the women's descriptions of themselves as women, it appeared that they in various ways invested in femininity. They used their femininity and style to demonstrate femininity and to demonstrate to the surrounding world what kind of a woman they were. The drugs and alcohol were closely associated with how the women presented their femininity. However, both drugs and alcohol had several functions, which also have varied over time. The same means that initially had given strength were later used to endure. Relationships to men were central, and the women said that a relationship with a man proved that you were a real woman. The children, too, were of great importance to them as women. By being a mother you were unquestionably a woman. Some pointed out that their children were the drive behind their seeking treatment. The women said that they were discontented with their lives and wanted a change. They "opened up" to the treatment and accepted their position as a client. As clients, they dissociated themselves from their use of drugs and alcohol and the femininity they had previously presented. Their previous life was not regarded as a "real life". The client position also meant that the women recognised and subordinated themselves to the image of femininity found in the treatment. The interviews revealed that the women, during their treatment, learned and acquired a femininity that at the same time was described as coming "from within" and being an expression of themselves. Through the treatment, they were disciplined to become a (real) "woman".
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