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- Ehnhage, Anna Felicia, 1986-
(författare)
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Paradoxical consumer enjoyment : A cultural perspective on cigarette consumption
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In a time when health is seen as an important personal achievement, it is difficult to understand why people consume cigarettes. The explanations for cigarette consumption tend to be one-sided and the most common explanation are addiction and compulsive personality. Consumer culture theory (CCT) has similarly ended up in a one-sided portrayal when studying consumption seen as destructive or marginalising. This thesis argues that this one-sided view is a result of how dominant discourses within CCT views pleasure. The strive to attain pleasurable experiences is often described as a motivation for consumption in CCT, however, pleasure lacks nuance and is mainly portrayed as constructive and socially accepted. That is, consumption of the seemingly irrational, destructive, or repulsive products in today's marketplace cannot be understood as motivated by pleasure as defined in CCT, as a result, much of the consumption that occurs in the marketplace is excluded from the literature.The thesis argues that the one-sided view on pleasure in CCT is the result of a lack of frameworks encompassing ambiguous experiences. To this end, the present thesis builds a framework based on psychoanalytically informed discourse theories’ view of jouissance, a form of paradoxical enjoyment, and apply it on the study of cigarette consumption. This thesis suggests to move away from pleasures when studying destructive and marginalising consumption and instead suggests paradoxical enjoyment as an alternative.This thesis concludes that paradoxical enjoyment, in the case of smoking, further breaks with the assumptions of rationality and constructiveness often present in CCT. Smokers, on the other hand, experience enjoyment because of the regulations and social stigma that surrounds smoking. The thesis moreover shows how enjoyment of smoking is expressed as a disruption of pain experienced in crisis caused by e.g., separation or death, because the pain from crisis is out screamed with the pain felt from smoking. In addition, enjoyment of smoking is felt through the moving back-and-forth between self-imposed limits and limitlessness. Lastly, the thesis found that smoking is an isolated enjoyment, preferred away from non-smokers as well as from other smokers, because of the repulsion smokers sense towards their own consumption.
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| 2. |
- Oljemark, Markus, 1991-
(författare)
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Lonely in Company : A qualitative study of loneliness, belonging, and the passion for recognition at work
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Loneliness is a common experience in the workplace. Although one in two office workers reporting loneliness, the phenomenon has received little qualitative attention within management and organization theory. Previous research has sought to measure, predict, and control workplace loneliness, but how people experience and cope with loneliness at work is still relatively unexplored. While other emotional phenomena such as anger and stress have been scrutinized within qualitative workplace emotion literature, this body of research has yet to address loneliness specifically. Therefore, this thesis aims to generate new knowledge by investigating lived experiences of workplace loneliness. To this end, interview and survey materials have been collected from 45 Swedish knowledge workers who have personal experience of loneliness at work. A netnographic study of how people talk about workplace loneliness online complements the primary material. To understand how people experience and cope with workplace loneliness, I analyze the empirical material both narratively and thematically. This study suggests that workplace loneliness emerges as a paradoxical phenomenon with bilateral experiences and coping practices, which seem to derive from a tension between desired community and individuality at work. In particular, the empirical material indicates that workplace loneliness can manifest as both proximity-seeking behavior and social withdrawal. By drawing on recognition theories, this thesis seeks to advance a new perspective on workplace loneliness that makes sense of this tension. The proposed model suggests that workplace loneliness is not about being alone or feeling alone but about feeling unseen, unheard, and insignificant (i.e., unrecognized). Consequently, this thesis conceptualizes loneliness as a “passion for recognition” where “passion” is understood as a “strong desire” related to an individual’s self-esteem. Next, I discuss the potential role of loneliness in the workplace and theorize that loneliness may facilitate both social order and social conflict in organizations via people’s pursuit of recognition. This raises questions concerning the management and potential exploitation of loneliness in the workplace. However, more research is needed. Moreover, the findings of this thesis have implications for a set of current debates within workplace emotion literature. First, by approaching loneliness as an “abstract emotional phenomenon” (i.e., non-bodily expressed), this thesis contributes to the ongoing discussion on the interplay between expressed and experienced emotions at work. Second, the dichotomy between “positive” and “negative” workplace emotions is challenged by capturing loneliness as a nuanced and complex phenomenon. Third, the ethical dimension of belonging is brought to light by integrating workplace loneliness and workplace belonging research. Fourth, this thesis echoes and extends previously raised concerns about the consequences of unrealistic expectations in the workplace and how this may lead to feelings of meaninglessness, powerlessness, and loneliness in workers. Finally, this thesis aims to open new avenues for studying painful workplace experiences qualitatively, approaches that are not only helpful for advancing the academic debate but also relevant to the individual who lives through the experience.
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| 3. |
- Wandery, Oscar, 1990-
(författare)
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The Ecstasy of Tragedy : An Ethnography of Hospice
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Culture is a double-edged sword in organizational research. Certain researchers consider culture the key to understanding organizations while others see it as a pseudo-scientific and faddish term. Similarly in the private sector, some argue that it is an essential part of their company’s success while others treat it as a high-scoring word in corporate-speak-bingo. This dissertation lies somewhere in between these positions. This dissertation explores the organizational culture of hospice care based on three years of volunteering (bi-weekly), two months of non-participant observations, and 30 interviews (17 semi-structured and 13 unstructured). It makes the case that while some organizations are not subject to distinct or persistent cultures in an anthropological sense, other organizations display cultural continuity in ways that resemble clans, tribes, or communes. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the cultural reproduction of such an organization – hospice. Building on work within affective theory and new-wave organization culture, this dissertation discusses the role that ecstasy plays in the persistence of communal bonds in hospice, and it explores different social- and psychological processes within hospice that leads to the maintenance of its norms, symbols, and values.
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