| 1. |
- Bekkin, Renat, 1978-
(författare)
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People of reliable loyalty… : Muftiates and the State in Modern Russia
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation presents a full-fledged portrait of the muftiate (spiritual administration of Muslims) in modern Russia. Designed initially for the purpose of controlling religious activity, over time the institution of the muftiate was appropriated by Muslims and became a key factor in preserving national identity for different ethnic groups of Tatars. In modern Russia numerous muftiates play the controversial role of administrative bodies responsible for the enforcement of some aspects of domestic and foreign policy on behalf of the state.Bekkin’s research focuses on muftiates in the European part of Russia, examining both their historical development and their functioning in the modern context. The analysis draws on academic literature, written and oral texts produced by the ministers of the Islamic religion, and archival sources, as well as numerous interviews with current and former muftis and other Islamic bureaucrats. Following Douglass North’s theory of institutions, the author distinguishes between the muftiate as an institution and the muftiate as a religious organization. In the first case the muftiate encompasses a set of rules (restrictions) that are both formal (reflected in the laws, charters of spiritual administrations of Muslims) and informal (not reflected in the legislation). Individual Islamic religious organizations (muftiates in a narrow sense) function according to these rules. By analyzing both the formal and informal precepts which regulate the status and the activity of spiritual administrations of Muslims in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and continue to do so in modern Russia, the author makes an attempt to explain the viability of the institution of the muftiate.Basing himself in the theory of the economics of religion, the author treats Russian muftiates as firms competing in the Islamic segment of the religious market. He applies economic principles in analyzing how the muftiates interact with each other, with other religious organizations in Russia, and with the Russian state. The author provides his own classification of muftiates in Russia, depending on the role they play in the religious market.
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| 2. |
- Berggren Newton, Benny
(författare)
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Business Basics : A Grounded Theory for Managing Ethical Behavior in Sales Organizations
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Managing co-workers’ ethical behavior in sales organizations is a complex social process. To start, sales organizations incorporate several actors to manage, often simultaneously, all with their own agendas. Ethics as a topic is convoluted because it encompasses context-based scenarios which may not have clear-cut right and wrong answers. The management process is an ongoing task managers deal with on daily basis, where mismanagement can lead to severe consequences. The majority of existing research on this area tends to focus on single factors in the management process, not the whole process. While there are some research studies that presents models or integrated frameworks describing the management process, they are few in number.Aim: The aim of this study is to derive empirical concepts and thereby try to develop a theory to facilitate an understanding of the process of managing co-workers’ ethical behavior, where the purpose is to ultimately build an integrated framework. More specifically, this study aims to describe the involved actors’ main concerns and the process by which these are continuously resolved.Methodology: In order to achieve the aim, a method with an inductive approach was necessary. The orthodox Grounded Theory methodology was chosen as research approach since it can generate conceptualizations in an integrated framework which help explain the occurring social processes. Working from this approach means that the researcher develops a new theory that is grounded in empirical data, where the researcher inductively describes the social process. The empirical data was mainly derived from interviews with actors within the field. The data was collected, coded and conceptualized in an overlapping procedure until an empirically derived theory emerged After the emergence of the theory, the empirical data was validated with existing academic literature.Findings: The core category in this study is Business Basics and concerns the desire to continuously conduct business where the management of ethical behavior is a fundamental basis to achieve this. Five distinct categories, all related to the core category were revealed: Bureaucratization, Relationship Investing, Educationing, Monetary Managing and Intuiting. These categories are expressed in social and dynamic processes. They represent different activities, tools, influences and practices that managers can adopt in order to reach their main concern.Contribution: As a contribution, this dissertation provides an integrated framework based on the actors own subjective experiences, describing the dynamic and social processes of managing co-workers ethical behavior in sales organizations.
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| 3. |
- Ekblom, Birgitta
(författare)
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Härskarhyllning och påverkan : Panegyriken kring tronskiftet 1697 i det svenska Östersjöväldet
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Swedish-language printed panegyrics of Karl XI and Karl XII, written in connection with the 1697 royal succession, functioned as a channel for political communication in the Swedish Baltic empire. The material comprises 34 Swedish-language printed items from Sweden, Finland, and Swedish Pomerania. The analyses focus on features of both content and form in terms of commonly applied topics and characteristics typical of the genre. The analyses demonstrate how panegyrics surrounding the royal succession varied in regard to geographical origin, individual authors, choice of format, content, audience and presentational situation. To elucidate the variation within the genre, texts in octavo, folio and patent folio formats are analysed. The first analytical section of the thesis, chapter 3, contains analyses of texts in these formats as well as depictions of events in Stockholm in connection with the parliament and the funeral. Chapter 4 illuminates the components of the coronation tributes, and coronation homages to Karl XII are examined. Chapter 5 treats panegyrics from Sweden, outside the capital, and from Finland. Chapter 6 analyses some panegyric texts from the Baltic provinces and the German possessions, and the rhetorical staging of the royal succession is depicted in these areas as well. The texts analysed were part of the public sphere of the day, evincing propagandistic features, including similar topics and reasoning. Despite this, they differ in terms of implicit argumentation and other matters. Some promote the Carolingian empire, cast suspicion on and threaten opponents and defend Karl XII’s early accession. Others stress issues unrelated to royal power or express wishes regarding the new king’s future exercise of power. The analyses bring to light a number of symbolically significant places and buildings, as well as various horizontal and vertical positions that characterise the bards, any sponsors they might have had, and the intended audience. Thus, the dissertation can be said to deal with a rhetorical geography in which the Swedish Baltic empire constitutes a shared rhetorical space.
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| 4. |
- Gorgis, Mirey, 1982-
(författare)
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Allt är våld! : En undersökning av det moderna våldsbegreppet
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study critically examines the intense scholarly interest in violence of recent decades. Consequently, the thesis' main objective is to is to answer two questions in particular: why violence? and why now? First and foremost, this objective is pursued through three separate but interrelated studies. Prior to these, the thesis sets out to affirm the importance of Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault in thinking violence. First, it is in the literary works of the Marquis de Sade, rather than in Machiavelli or Hobbes, that we find the first traces of a conceptual understanding of violence. Second, drawing on de Sade, it is Foucault who provides the fertile ground from which the field of contemporary violence studies basically springs – in spite of the fact that he himself never devoted any special studies to violence, nor actually developed a specific concept of violence. Part 1, “Literature”, provides a brief overview of the contemporary study of violence as well as a discussion of two thoroughly influential texts in the field: Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) and Giorgio Agamben’s “On the Limits of Violence” (1970). This part surveys the questions of violence specifically posed within the field, with the further purpose of identifying and dissecting common tropes and recurring arguments important to its formation. I make the claim that two notions in particular are utilized to construct violence as a new field of knowledge: the notion of technology and the notion of history. Part 2, “Experience”, consists of a historical interlude in which one of the objectives is to put the hypothesis of the presumably transhistorical and immutable nature of human violence to the test. This is achieved by a close reading of the philosophical texts of Plato as well as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. In this part I argue that, in a strict sense, there is no true concept of violence as such in classical Greek antiquity. Instead, we find a multiplicity of embryonic “pre-concepts” that, unlike the various concepts of today, are thought entirely on the basis of relations, rather than on the basis of the objects of violence. The question of violence in classical Greece is, in short, approached in terms of who? rather than what? – pointing toward a promising possibility still open for exploration today. Part 3, “Concepts”, returns to the European discussions of the 1960s and 1970s investigated in part 1, but rather than examining the questions of immediate concern in the respective texts of the period, I approach today’s heightened interest in violence in light of a set of overarching problems, such as the risk of atomic annihilation, political unrest, the fear of propaganda, and brain washing. By way of these problems, I show that, running counter to the philosophical sources on which it draws, the contemporary concept of violence achieves a surreptitious re- institution of the substantial and autonomous subject otherwise believed to be dead. In conclusion, the paradoxical function of the contemporary concept of violence is thus to allow for the return of the kind of subject relentlessly attacked by the radical European thought of the 1960s and 1970s, the same thought which allowed for the invention of the concept in the first place. In this sense our age, in which, it would appear, “everything is violence”, is also an age where a kind of “bia-centrism” provides us, paradoxically, with the last conceptual stronghold for substantial subjects and stable identities.
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| 5. |
- Hägglund, Josefin
(författare)
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Demokratins stridslinjer : Carl Lindhagen och politikens omvandling, 1896–1923
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Carl Lindhagen was one of Sweden’s most well-known politicians at the beginning ofthe 20th century. He entered parliament as a Liberal in 1897 but joined the Social Democrats in 1909. In 1917 he became a key figure in forming the Left Socialist party,which became the Swedish Communist Party in 1921 – although it expelled him in that moment. He returned to the Social Democrats in 1923. During those years, Sweden gradually moved towards universal suffrage, including most men in 1909 and women in 1921. As an MP, Lindhagen was a central actor in debates concerning democracy, combining the roles of the visionary political thinker and the hands-on political practitioner, and doing so in ways that would spark both enthusiasm and controversy among his contemporaries. This dissertation examines how Lindhagen interpreted the transformation of politics 1896–1923, how he envisioned a future of “true” democracy and the steps he took to realize his ideals. In his perspective, the constitutional reforms of the 1910s and the 1920s only achieved “formal” democracy. From the early 1910s he preferred to label himself as a ”humanist”, seeing Liberalism and Socialism as temporary forces, contributing elements to a historical process approaching the universal values of “humanism”. In 1919 he also created a party transcending organization for “humanist politics”, gathering like-minded people among Left Socialists, Social Democrats, and Liberal leftists.This study concentrates on Lindhagen’s most active and influential years, finding its central sources in texts which he wrote, modified, used and reused, for many purposes within the parliament and in his party organizations, as well as in addressing a general public. Three chronological parts follow Lindhagen through his political affiliations, 1896–1909,1909–1917, and 1917–1923. The study shows a remarkable amount of continuity in Lindhagen’s attitudes and positions, although he elaborated them, as well as the language he used to express them, due to new experiences, situations, and political environments. This makes him a tellingly complex case in the historiography of Liberalism, Social Democracy, and Communism in Sweden. Adding to this telling complexity is also the way in which Lindhagen gradually focused more and more on political parties as a central political problem, stressing that a condition for “true democracy” was practical measures of democracy at alllevels in the political process, especially within the political parties which took theirmodern form during the era studied in the dissertation.
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| 6. |
- Höglund, Patrik, 1965-
(författare)
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Skeppssamhället : Rang, roller och status på örlogsskepp under 1600-talet
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this dissertation, all the categories of people that were on board fully manned warships are studied. The purpose of the study has been to describe life on board the large warships and to show how hierarchical power structures and social status were expressed and manifested in 17th century society. This has been achieved through an interdisciplinary method where historical and archaeological material, as well as imagery and ship models have been used. The roles of those on board at work, at rest and in battle have been analysed. In parallel, various hierarchical orders such as rank, estate, position and age, have been studied. Social status on board could be expressed through spaces, belongings, norms and practices. In the theoretical apparatus mainly used in this study, the concept of capital is central. Capital, i.e. various forms of assets, exist in several forms where symbolic capital is fundamental. This capital varies depending on the characteristics and abilities that are considered valuable in a specific social environment. Seamanship was a very important factor in obtaining status in the ship society. It formed the basis of the symbolic capital sought within the navy. However, there were differences between what seamanship meant and what the symbolic capital included for the different groups on board. Social status on warships was often expressed through rank and position, but this study also shows the number of other circumstances that could influence the social position of the people on the ships. Factors such as birth, age and experience played a major role.The ship society, with the many groups and individuals from different social strata on board, was characterized by the norms and practices that existed in its day. It was thus in many parts a 17th century society in concentrated form.
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| 7. |
- Magnusson, Simon
(författare)
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Boosting young citizens’ deontic status : Interactional allocation of rights-to-decide in participatory democracy meetings
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores the social organization of rights-to-decide in participatory democracy meetings where adolescents are invited. In such meetings, young citizens are given the opportunity to influence decision-makers and participate in determining future political action. Specifically, this thesis focuses on how social inclusion in decision-making is accomplished in adolescent-politician interaction as well as youth-peer interaction. Employing a Conversation Analytic perspective, naturally occurring participatory democracy meetings are analyzed to explore how adolescents are offered possibilities to influence decisions. The data investigated consists of a popup democracy workshop and a yearlong participatory democracy project (approx. 81 h), where adolescents are invited to contribute to decision-making. Three papers comprise the current thesis and examine 1) how adolescents are encouraged to participate in decision-making, 2) how a youth participatory role is delimited, and 3) how jointness is accomplished in decision-making. These questions are approached with a social deontic framework where human powerplay is investigated through participants’ interactional negotiations of rights to determine action. The analysis reveals that the participating adults’ pep talks and instructions offer a narrow adolescent role of influence. Inclusion therefore ultimately becomes alignment to adults' conceptions of who the adolescents are and how they should contribute to decision-making. Furthermore, the analysis shows how adult community representatives elicit adolescents’ negative emotional experiences and transform these into deontic building blocks in the impending decision-making. Community representatives’ superior deontic rights permeate the initiatives of inclusion directed at adolescents. Regarding jointness, the analysis reveals that, in adolescent-politician interaction, jointness is not accomplished, rather asymmetries of power are re-established by participants. However, in adolescent peer interaction joint decision-making is accomplished through verbal, embodied and material resources. By studying interactional efforts of inclusion, this thesis tackles critical aspects of the practices that facilitate and constrain political participation. The thesis extends our understanding of youth inclusion in decision-making by illuminating complex challenges inherent in the practice of inviting adolescents to participatory democracy meetings. By tackling these issues, this thesis also contributes theoretically and analytically to central notions within social deontics and research on joint decision-making and points out crucial future directions for research on inclusion and political action.
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| 8. |
- Nemeth, Ulrika, 1968-
(författare)
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Det kritiska uppdraget : Diskurser och praktiker i gymnasieskolans svenskundervisning
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to investigate constructions and discourses of criticality, and how these are related to teachers’ conceived subject of Swedish concerning the development of students’ critical consciousness. The study is qualitative, and is based on three different materials: focus talks between teachers, international and national policy documents and frameworks, and classroom observations. The theoretical framework combines Bernstein’s code theory (classification framing, elaborated and restricted code, knowledge structures) and critical literacy as outlined by Freire, particularly the concept of critical transitivity. The analytical framework combines tools from systemic functional linguistics (transitivity, modality) and van Leeuwen’s discourse analysis (actors, activities and legitimations), where discourses are seen as recontextualizations of social practices. The research questions posed are:How are educational, critical practices constructed as discourses in international policy documents and frameworks and in the national curriculum for the subject of Swedish, and how do they relate to the critical task of the subject of Swedish?How do teachers of Swedish construct the critical task in relation to their conceptions of the nucleus and boundaries of the subject, and of its knowledge practices?Which critical textual practices are or could be shaped within the subject of Swedish?Analyses of policy documents show that high-status actors (OECD and EU) and the Swedish national curriculum constructions of the critical are legitimated by unquestionable reality claims, and are associated with clusters of discourses as aspects of competences and skills. The analysis of the focus talks and the classroom instruction shows that some of these discourses are included in conceptions and legitimations of the critical. Some of these are also included in teachers’ discourses of the critical tasks. These tasks are mostly seen as external and are mainly realized by unreflected doing, and are therefore not part of teachers’ intrinsic conceptions of what criticality in the subject of Swedish should embrace. Teachers’ intrinsic critical task is only enacted as an exception, turning the critical task into a wished one. The exceptions, however, seem to be realized in generally strongly framed practices, where students “see” things based on Swedish subject knowledge. The results indicate that the subject of Swedish might provide specific ways to move towards critical transitivity, and a fruitful encounter of such a transitivity and Bernstein’s vertical discourse.
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| 9. |
- Poikolainen Rosén, Anton, 1992-
(författare)
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Noticing nature : exploring more-than-human-centred design in urban farming
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis articulates, theorises and furthers the concept of “more-than-human-centred design” by studying the use and design of technology for noticing nature and caring for nature. The emerging field of more-than-human-centred design focuses on the mutual interdependence between humans and non-humans (e.g. organisms such as animals, plants and microbes, as well as autonomous technologies). It is a step away from seeing other organisms as inferior to humans or valuable only as resources. This implies that design research frameworks and methods need to be remade. How can we design for and with other organisms? What needs to be accommodated in a paradigm that allows for more-than-human-centred design? What are concrete design examples and implications of this kind of thinking? In short, there is a need to investigate what it means to design for more-than-human worlds.This is investigated in the thesis through a series of studies and design experiments, including ethnography (participant observation, interviews, surveys and workshops), design projects (design ideation, development and analysis of prototypes) and design critique of existing artefacts. Most of these studies are conducted within a four-year ethnography of a regenerative urban farming community in Stockholm, Sweden.The thesis draws on posthuman theory. This theory examines the implications of expanding concern and subjectivities beyond the human, and aims to understand the human subject and its relationship to the world in a non-anthropocentric light. Phenomenological analysis is further applied to articulate and understand the human-technology-nature relationship as it is experienced first-person.The thesis contributes an articulation of a more-than-human-centred design programme. Here, two design implications are suggested, “expanding the sensible” and “design for sensory-rich experiences”. Methods for noticing the more-than-human world are suggested, along with principles for designing for and with other organisms, such as finding leverage points in systems and providing a scaffold for naturally occurring processes. The meaning of “design”, “the designer” and “the user” is discussed. Lastly, a manifesto for more-than-human-centred design is proposed.
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| 10. |
- Porsani, Juliana
(författare)
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Livelihood Implications of Large-Scale Land Concessions in Mozambique : A case of family farmers’ endurance
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the process and the implications of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) for local livelihoods, especially the livelihoods of those who make a living from farming. These individuals were historically known as peasants and are now more commonly referred to as smallholders, small-scale farmers or family farmers. What happens to their livelihoods as land under their control is allocated to investors?Promoters of LSLAs stress that when land acquisitions are preceded by community consultations, there may be synergism between investors’ activities and local livelihoods. Accordingly, local farmers are expected to gain from, for example, closer ties to the market and new livelihood alternatives such as formal employment. Differently, critical voices contend that despite sound legislation on the matter, in practice LSLAs constitute drivers of dispossession, being therefore disguised land grabs. This research seeks to fill a knowledge gap on the immediate local livelihood implications of LSLAs. By employing a case study design in Mozambique (one of the countries targeted by recent LSLAs), this thesis adds empirical evidence that is crucial to the above-named theoretical debate involving LSLAs.The analyzed case is pivoted by a Chinese company that in 2012 was granted 20,000 hectares in the lower Limpopo region. Despite legislation that asserts the legality of customary land occupation, in practice, land was seized without adequate consultation and compensation. Consequently, local farmers lost the most fertile areas. Nonetheless, farmers were able to regain or maintain access to farmland that was more peripheral and of worse quality. Concomitantly, the company generated a small number of jobs and created a contract farming scheme that, despite bottlenecks, benefited farmers who were able to handle risk. In general, families who lost land and those who entered the contract farming scheme strive to keep a foothold on farmland – a strategy that is partly explained by the economic rationale of seeking to meet the consumption needs of current and future generations. Additionally, family land is embedded with symbolic value (illustrated, for example, by individuals’ relations with ancestors buried in family land). The existence of symbolic and thus immaterial values that land embodies poses insurmountable challenges to the idea that it is possible to achieve fair compensation for the loss of land and the environment in general.This study shows the renewed pressure (now through the hands of private actors backed by public efforts) placed on family farmers, derived livelihood trends (i.e., the overall precarization of family farming, the widening of economic inequality, and the feminization of poverty), and family farmers’ continuous endurance. Ultimately, this study illustrates local processes and livelihood implications of LSLAs in Mozambique, and likely also in contexts marked by similar democratic deficits and renewed incursions over valuable land that is intensively used.
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