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- Iversen, Clara, 1981-
(författare)
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Making Questions and Answers Work : Negotiating Participation in Interview Interaction
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The current thesis explores conditions for participation in interview interaction. Drawing on the ethnomethodological idea that knowledge is central to participation in social situations, it examines how interview participants navigate knowledge and competence claims and the institutional and moral implications of these claims. The data consists of, in total, 97 audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a national Swedish evaluation of support interventions for children exposed to violence. In three studies, I use discursive psychology and conversation analysis to explicate how interview participants in interaction (1) contribute to and negotiate institutional constraints and (2) manage rights and responsibilities related to knowledge.The findings of study I and study II show that child interviewees actively cooperate with as well as resist the constraints of interview questions. However, the children’s opportunities for participation in this institutional context are limited by two factors: (1) recordability; that is, the focus on generating recordable responses and (2) problematic assumptions underpinning questions and the interpretation of interview answers. Apart from restricting children’s rights to formulate their experiences, these factors can lead interviewers to miss opportunities to gain important information. Also related to institutional constraints, study III shows how the ideal of model consistency is prioritized over service-user participation. Thus, the three studies show how different practices relevant to institutional agendas may hinder participation.Moreover, the findings contribute to an understanding of how issues of knowledge are managed in the interviews. Study II suggests the importance of the concept of believability to refer to people’s rights and responsibilities to draw conclusions about others’ thoughts. And the findings of study III demonstrate how, in evaluation interviews with social workers, children’s access to their own thoughts and feelings are based on a notion of predetermined participation; that is, constructed as contingent on wanting what the institutional setting offers. Thus, child service users’ low epistemic status, compared to the social workers, trumps their epistemic access to their own minds. These conclusions, about recordability, believability, and predetermined participation, are based on interaction with or about children. However, I argue that the findings relate to interviewees and service users in general. By demonstrating the structuring power of interactive practices, the thesis extends our understanding of conditions for participation in the institutional setting of social research interviews.
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2. |
- Björkman, Maria, 1974-
(författare)
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Den anfrätta stammen : Nils von Hofsten, eugeniken och steriliseringarna 1909-1963
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Zoologen Nils von Hofsten (1881-1967) var en av de mest inflytelserika personerna i Sverige på områdena eugenik och steriliseringar. I denna avhandling belyses detta inflytande, som sträckte sig över närmare femtio år. von Hofstens eugenik och dess tillämpningar granskas med avseende på teman, förändringar och kontinuiteter, under en tid då synen på eugenik och steriliseringspraktik genomgick stora förändringar. Avhandlingen analyserar också von Hofstens nätverk av genetiskt intresserade forskare och de lobbykampanjer detta nätverk ägnade sig åt för att lansera eugeniken i Sverige under 1910-och 20-talen. Nätverket utgjorde en viktig "maktbas" genom vilken von Hofsten kunde nå inflytelserika positioner, inte minst den som vetenskapligt råd i Medicinalstyrelsen. Nätverket analyseras också ur ett maskulinitetsperspektiv och ur ett genuskontraktsperspektiv, vilket bidrar till att bredda förståelsen av varför steriliseringarna drabbade främst kvinnor. Slutligen diskuteras hur von Hofsten bidrog till att skapa en ny, eugenisk expertis. Diskussionen sker med hjälp av begreppen "biopolitik", "biomakt", "interventionsstrategier" och "subjektifiering".
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3. |
- Hannerz, Erik, 1978-
(författare)
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Performing Punk : Subcultural Authentications and the Positioning of the Mainstream
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about how and in opposition to what punk is defined and lived out by punks in Sweden and Indonesia. Arguing against the previous research’s presumption that subcultural meaning constitutes a single set of meaning, this study points to two patterned sets of meanings, each constructed out of several different definitions of the mainstream as well as the subcultural authentic. Consequently, a central research question concerns how to theoretically account for similarly structured and structuring heterogeneities across and between the Indonesian and Swedish cases. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in which a variety of interpretations of punk have been explored, six different definitions of the mainstream are outlined. Each of these refers in turn to a particular script through which subcultural styles and identities are performed and authenticated as set apart. These different definitions are then combined into two patterned sets of meaning through a consistency in terms of how the binary subcultural/mainstream is worked and extended: A convex pattern, involves a boundary work to what is defined as external to punk, bending outwards. A concave points instead bends inwards, a boundary work against mainstream internal to punk. By showing how these patterns are interrelated spatially and symbolically, it is argued that subcultural meaning as well as the authentic have to be approached from within the subcultural. The mainstream is thus released from having an inherent meaning as “the outside,” “the dominant,” or “the commercial,” and more so, so is the subcultural and the subcultural authentic. Consequently, the same object can be performed differently, drawing upon different binaries, or through working the same binaries differently, to extend the subcultural through the use of analogies and metaphors. The total similarity between how punk is performed in Sweden and Indonesia, as well as the consistent differences between the two patterns, point to a relative autonomy of the subcultural. Different definitions of the subcultural authentic and the mainstream are therefore not a matter of commitment, or degrees of authenticity, but rather different means to communicate, interpret, and act upon the subcultural.
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4. |
- Redmalm, David, 1981-
(författare)
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An animal without an animal within : investigating the identities of pet keeping
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- If the human is an animal without an animal within—a creature that has transcended the animal condition—what is a pet? This creature balancing on the border between nature and culture, simultaneously included in and excluded from a human “we”, is the focus of this thesis. The thesis analyzes the discourses and normative frameworks structuring the meaning of pets in people’s lives. By extension, it analyzes how the boundary between “human” and “animal” is produced, negotiated, and challenged in the relationship between pet and owner.Each of this thesis’ four constituent studies focuses on an aspect of personal relationships between humans and pets: pets as figures for philosophical thinking, the dual role of pets as commodities and companions, the grief for lost pets, and the power issues at play in the everyday life of pet and owner. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach, crossbred with Donna Haraway’s material-semiotic perspective, the analysis exposes the powers allowing pets to occupy these various positions.The thesis demonstrates that pets occupy a special position as boundary creatures in the lives of humans, allowing humans to play with and thus reproduce dichotomies inherent to the contemporary Western worldview, such as human/animal, person/nonperson, subject/object, and friend/commodity. However, pets’ conceptual transgressions may also challenge this worldview. On the one hand, pets are bought and sold as commodities, but on the other, they are widely included in the human sphere as friends or family members. This paradoxical position is accentuated in the construction of a more-than-human home, and it is also visible when pets pass away. This thesis argues that pets, these anomalous creatures, may help humans understand that there are no humans or animals within, only relations between them. Based on this argument, this thesis develops a sociological approach for analyzing the production of humanity and animality in relations between humans and other animals.
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