| 1. |
- Jurkane-Hobein, Iveta, 1984-
(författare)
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I Imagine You Here Now : Relationship Maintenance Strategies in Long-Distance Intimate Relationships
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Today, individuals can relatively easily meet and communicate with each other over great distances due to increased mobility and advances in communication technology. This also allows intimate relationships to be maintained over large geographical distances. Despite these developments, long-distance relationships (LDRs), i.e. intimate relationships maintained over geographical distance, remain understudied. The present thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap and investigates how intimate partners who live so far away from each other that they cannot meet every day make their relationship ongoing beyond face-to-face interaction.Theoretically, this study departs from a symbolic interactionist viewpoint that invites us to study phenomena from the actor’s perspective. Conceptually, the thesis builds on the recent development in sociology of intimate lives that sees intimacy as a relational quality that has to be worked on to be sustained, and that focuses on the practices that make a relationship a relationship. Empirically, the thesis is based upon 19 in-depth interviews with individuals from Latvia with long-distance relationship experience.The thesis consists of four articles. Article I studies the context in which LDRs in Latvia are maintained, focusing on the normative constraints that complicate LDR maintenance. Article II analyses how intimacy is practiced over geographical distance. Article III examines how long-distance partners manage the experience of the time they are together and the time they are geographically apart. Article IV explores the aspect of idealization in LDRs. Overall, the thesis argues for the critical role of imagination in relationship maintenance. The relationship maintenance strategies identified within the articles are imagination-based mediated communication (creating sensual/embodied intimacy, emotional intimacy, daily intimacy and imagined individual intimacy); time-work strategies that enable long-distance partners to deal with the spatiotemporal borders of the time together and the time apart; and creating bi-directional idealization. The thesis is also one of the few works in the field of intimate lives in Eastern Europe and analyses the normative complications that long-distance partners face in their relationship maintenance in Latvia.
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| 2. |
- Löfmarck, Erik, 1974-
(författare)
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Den hand som föder dig : En studie av risk, mat och moderskap i Sverige och Polen
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This is a study of how mothers of young children relate to risk in everyday life, with an emphasis on the invisible risks associated with modernity in general, and with food in particular. It explores variations and similarities in how mothers deal with risk in two cultural contexts: Sweden and Poland. The study is based on twenty qualitative interviews with university educated mothers of small children in Stockholm and Warsaw. While risks more generally challenge how we “get on” with our lives, mothers of young children in particular have a special relationship to risk. During pregnancy and breastfeeding they are subject to all kinds of risk minimization efforts, and mothers are ultimately held "infinitely responsible" for their children's welfare by society. Women's transition to parenthood then makes for a particularly interesting case as to how risks manifest in everyday life. The theoretical framework draws on modernization theory, combined with insights from cultural theory. In addition, various contributions from sociological and psychological risk research, family sociology and research on parenting and motherhood are used to highlight contextual aspects and to interpret the empirical results. Two aspects of the mothers’ relationship to risk and food are examined in this study: firstly, their risk constructs, i.e. what they perceive as ‘risky’ with regards to food; and, secondly, their risk management strategies, i.e. how they deal with identified risks on a practical and cognitive level. The overall risk management depicted in this study is characterized by reflexivity, critical thinking, information retrieval, attention to scientific evidence, purposely transferred trust, confidence and the ability to make fairly sophisticated tradeoffs between risks and other aspects of life. Neither the Swedish nor the Polish mothers then conform to popular notions of ‘security junkies’ or ‘paranoid parenting’. Nonetheless, the comparative approach demonstrates how contextual differences, such as general trust levels and family policy, influence both the risk constructs and the employment of different risk management strategies.
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| 3. |
- Odhnoff, Sissela
(författare)
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Mellan det förflutna och framtiden : En studie av hyresgästföreningen på 2000-talet
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present thesis is a study of the Swedish Union of Tenants, an organisation with a long popular movement history, working in an ever-changing environment.The Swedish Union of Tenants is one of the major popular movements and has strongly influenced Swedish housing policy development including the 1978 reform concerning tenants’ right to negotiate rents collectively. Although it is a powerful organisation it is repeatedly exposed to external pressures for change on an issue it considers highly important including the 1978 reform. The purpose of the thesis is to generate knowledge concerning how an old popular movement organisation is affected by its external environment and how it reacts when traditions and institutions are exposed to contemporary pressures for change. The thesis investigates the Swedish Union of Tenants’ strategies for safeguarding the interests of its members as well as other tenants. Thre einstitutions within the framework of the organisation’s operations are examined in the thesis: the collective model of negotiations, tenant participation in decision making and the membership. The empirical materials primarily consist of internal organisational documents and interviews. The theoretical starting point has been institutional logics, organisational logics, logics of action and path dependency. The results portray how the complex operations of the organisation spur conflicts of interest whilst, at the same time, the operations mutually reinforce each other. Furthermore, the results demonstrate how the organisation’s operations interact with its environment to safeguard the interests of members and other tenants. Using my theoretical concepts, I have developed a model for the analysis of a complex organisation and the interactions within the organisation’s operational functions as well as with the external environment.
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| 4. |
- Edberg, Karin, 1984-
(författare)
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Energilandskap i förändring : Inramningar av kontroversiella lokaliseringar på norra Gotland
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Energisystemet omstruktureras. Nya energikällor tillkommer och andra fasas ut samtidigt som efterfrågan på energi kvarstår ur ett globalt perspektiv. Lokaliseringen av de fysiska strukturer som genererar och distribuerar energi innebär en högst praktisk påverkan i den fysiska omgivningen liksom i det sociala landskapet innan, under och efter en etablering, vilket gör det relevant att undersöka hur nya lokaliseringar av energiinfrastruktur tas emot. Det övergripande syftet med den här avhandlingen i sociologi är därför att bidra till en ökad förståelse av lokal hantering av globala energidilemman.I avhandlingen analyseras lokaliseringar av kontroversiella energiprojekt, eller mer specifikt hur två sådana fall förstås och tolkas av berörda aktörer. Det görs genom ett teoretiskt ramverk baserat på inramningsteori (frame analysis) och sociala praktiker. Studien erbjuder en sociologiskt grundad förståelse av plats och förståelsens betydelse för inställningen till lokaliseringar av energiinfrastruktur.Avhandlingens empiriska fall utgörs av lokaliseringen av logistiskt arbete kring byggandet av en storskalig naturgasledning och av en planerad men inte realiserad etablering av en vindkraftspark till nordöstra Gotland. Dessa studeras genom intervjuer, observationer och textanalyser.Studien visar hur olika aktörer kombinerar och väger olika aspekter mot varandra i sina inramningskonstruktioner. Resultaten visar att även komponenter bortom det lokala ingår i inramningarna och att de inkluderar relationer mellan olika aktörer liksom förändring över tid. Denna förståelse presenteras genom en analys av fyra centrala aspekter – platsrelaterade, platsöverskridande, position och process – vilka tillsammans fångar den multidimensionalitet och komplexitet som kännetecknar kontroversiella lokaliseringar. Ett resultat är att den mest framgångsrika inramningsstrategin visade sig vara att särkoppla olika aspekter, det vill säga att uppmärksamma flera olika aspekter men på olika sätt hålla dem isär. En av studiens styrkor är att den inkluderar såväl strategiska inramningar som görs av olika aktörer i syfte att exempelvis få en lokalisering till stånd eller förhindra densamma, som inramningar som görs av dem som inte tar aktiv del i den formella lokaliseringsprocessen. Det ger en komplex bild som sträcker sig bortom policynivån och som visar att det inte finns en enstämmig förståelse i ”lokalsamhället”. Avhandlingen bidrar därmed till att bredda förståelsen av inramningar av kontroversiella lokaliseringar.
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| 5. |
- Medina, Eduardo, 1957-
(författare)
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Från ”tyst vår” till ”hållbar utveckling” : En kritisk diskursanalys av miljöfrågans utveckling 1962–1987
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies the development of the environmental issue from a discursive perspective. Through an analysis of views on nature and the environment in several NGOs and main political organs, the dissertation tries to explain how a certain view became hegemonic. The analysis pertains to the period between the publication of Silent Spring in 1962 and the introduction of the concept sustainable development by the UN in 1987. From a realistic starting point and with critical discourse analysis (CDA) as its method, the dissertation aims to identify causal powers and mechanisms that have generated and institutionalized the environmental discourse. An analytical model is developed and applied on three levels; a sociolinguistic, institutional, and macrosocial level; which also reflect the methodological progression of the study from description to explanation.The result shows that the discursive practice was hegemonized by a Western view promoting economic growth. This discourse gradually gained ground at the expense of an anti-systemic discourse which posited structural societal changes as the answer to environmental problems. Mechanisms such as the exclusion of some views and actors from common discursive practices were crucial for the process of homogenizing the discourse and developing consensus. Through incorporating that part of the environmental movement which did not fight the dominant economic and political system, the UN turned it into support for its own project, which is part of the process of hegemony. At the same time the environmental objectives of the hegemonic discourse were established in the institutional spheres.The institutionalization of the environmental issue changed the focus from social critique to a question of development and technology, something which helped displace the original critical and partially anti-systemic character of environmental discourse. Through turning the critical and negative account of the situation into a more harmonious and hopeful vision, for instance in terms of sustainable development, a foundation was laid for the later development of ecological modernization. When the hegemonic discourse invested the concept of sustainable development with emphases on progress and economic growth, it encapsulated the environmental issue within the framework of the prevailing social system.
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| 6. |
- Polanska Vergara, Dominika, 1980-
(författare)
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The emergence of enclaves of wealth and poverty : A sociological study of residential differentiation in post-communist Poland
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since the fall of communism, some crucial political, economic and social changes have been taking place in the former communist societies. The objective of the thesis is to examine the processes of residential differentiation taking place in the urban landscape of the Polish city of Gdańsk after the introduction of the capitalist system. The focus is on different forms of residential differentiation and the social, economic and historical factors behind these forms. The empirical material that forms the basis of the thesis consists of interviews, newspaper articles, a questionnaire, official (national and local) reports and documents.Study I examines the way in which different social, economic, historical and physical conditions coincide in the formation of space and the processes of decline in the period of transformation in Poland. The focus lies on a specific residential area in the center of Gdańsk and the lack of improvements in this particular area, which would stop its successive decline.Study II explains the emergence of gated communities in the post-communist urban context and discusses the reasons for their increasing numbers and popularity. The main argument is that the popularity of gated communities is tightly intertwined with the communist past, emerging in reaction to the housing conditions that prevailed under communism.Study III investigates how social class markers are constructed in the discourse on gated communities in post-socialist Poland. The “new” capitalistic system, with its inherent social divisions, is described in the discourse as creating demands for “new” forms of housing, where gates function as separators, protectors and class identifiers.Study IV concentrates on the support for the formation of gated communities in the legal and regulatory framework in Poland since 1989. The paper asserts that the outcome of liberal politics and legal regulation in the country is the neglect of spatial planning and imprecise urban policies.
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| 7. |
- Törnqvist, Maria, 1975-
(författare)
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Könspolitik på gränsen : Debatterna om varannan damernas och Thamprofessurerna
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines the struggle over concepts and categories in Swedish gender politics. The provocative issue of quotas for women is used to explore these processes and the boundaries of the gender equality project. The study employs a discourse analysis of two intense media debates: gender quotas in the political sphere whereby every other seat in parliament is reserved for a woman (‘varannan damernas’) and a proposal to create 30 professorships and use positive action principles in the hiring process (‘Thamprofessurerna’). The design of the study is comparative, analysing two debates on seemingly similar policies that were put forward as a remedy for gender inequality and under-representation, but with very different outcomes. The central questions posed are: what are the conditions under which gender politics can be justified in different arenas of social life? When and why do certain visions, problem definitions and solutions succeed or fail to get recognized?This study argues that the discursive terrain of competing ideas and visions, partly embedded in the two fields, open or limit the possibilities for contested gender policies to gain acceptance. The analysis shows that whereas the policy of ‘every other seat’ is accepted and integrated into the political field in a way that creates new political possibilities for women, the attempts to increase the number of women with the help of positive action is met with resistance in the debate over the academy. Notions of democracy as representation pave the way for gender quotas in the political system, whereas ideas of meritocracy and individual creativity hinder the reception of positive action measures within the academy.
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| 8. |
- Windell, Karolina, 1976-
(författare)
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Corporate Social Responsibility under Construction : Ideas, Translations, and Institutional Change
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although ideas about the social responsibility of business have a long history, the debate over corporate social responsibility (CSR) has escalated worldwide during the past decade under the label of CSR. This thesis contributes to new-institutional organizational approaches by exploring how and why CSR has been constructed into a widespread idea and by introducing a discussion on the interrelationship between ideas and institutional change. Using interviews, documents, and participant observation, the thesis explores actors and activities that contributed to the formation and circulation of CSR. In particular, the study examines actor groups mobilizing CSR, the expansion and presentation of CSR in the media, the development of CSR consulting, and CSR conferences. The findings demonstrate that CSR was translated in field-wide processes involving multisectoral actor groups. CSR was collectively mobilized in interplay and contestations among actor groups that translated it in accordance with their disparate interests. In this way ambiguous forms and meanings for CSR were created, resulting in non-clarification over time. The findings suggest that translation processes are set in motion through contestations that draw attention to an idea. It appears from these results that CSR developed from criticism advanced by various actor groups in the corporate environment into a management idea developed by corporations. The idea embodied new assumptions about the scope of corporate responsibilities that both reinforced and challenged the institutional model of the corporation. The results suggest that management ideas that appear to be short-lived fads may have long-term consequences, partly because they are historically rooted and partly because of their potential to elicit fundamental debates that challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about corporate behavior. The thesis concludes that management ideas should be taken seriously, as they can be part of long-term processes of incremental and consequential change.
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| 9. |
- Edvall Malm, Disa, 1965-
(författare)
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Det socio-polisiära handlingsnätet : om kopplingar mellan polis och socialtjänst kring ungdomars kriminalitet och missbuk
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Övergripande diskuterar avhandlingen olika aspekter av att samhällets system av stöd och kontroll för barn och unga knyts närmare samman. Det handlar om hur samverkan framställs och uppfattas på olika nivåer och hur den konkretiseras i polisens och socialtjänstens arbete kring unga som utvecklat eller bedöms riskera att utveckla kriminalitet och/eller missbruk. Studieobjektet inbegriper övergripande ideologisknivå, lokal/praktisknivå och individuell nivå. Syftet med avhandlingen är att identifiera, beskriva och analysera polisens och socialtjänstens samverkan kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Utgångspunkten är hur; samverkan mellan myndigheterna framställs i offentliga dokument, hur lokala aktörer uppfattar behovet av men också möjligheter, svårigheter och hinder kring samverkan, hur myndigheterna lokalt är organiserade för att aktualisera, handlägga, behandla och avsluta barn och unga, och slutligen vilka barn och unga som denna samverkan kan omfatta. Avsikten är att få en bild av vad denna samverkan på policynivå innebär och sätta detta i relation till hur polis och socialtjänst förstår och skapar sina respektive och gemensamma uppdrag i förhållande till varandra lokalt. I avhandlingen används tre olika empiriska material och olika metoder för analys: Analys av statliga offentliga dokument, kvalitativa intervjuer med poliser, socialarbetare och deras chefer i en kommun och en kvantitativ kartläggning av aktuella ungdomar i kommunen. Handlingsnät som teoretisk grund används för att studera kopplingar mellan de båda myndigheterna och de tre olika nivåerna av studien. Genom att använda handlingsnät blir det möjligt att se hur polisens och socialtjänstens olika uppdrag kopplas samman kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk.Resultaten av studien visar att det pågår en ettablering av ett socio-polisiärt handlingsnät på den övergripande ideologiska nivån och den lokala kommunala nivån. I policydokumenten förspråkas ett kontrollerande förhållningsätt gentemot ungas kriminalitet. På den lokala nivån handlade det om ett kontrollstödjande förhållningsätt för att motverka både ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Resultaten av studien visar att socialtjänsten fått ta ett större ansvar för att utreda och verkställa påföljder för ungas kriminella handlingar, samtidigt som det inom socialtjänsten riskerar att utvecklas en logik mera baserad på straffvärdet av den brottsliga handlingen än den unges individuella behov av hjälp och stöd. Studien visar att i polisens och sociatjänstens arbete med enskilda barn och unga finns få möjligheter till samarbete. Dessutom var det få unga personer som samtidigt var aktuella för både polis och socialtjänst, vilket gör det svårt att uppnå något djupare längre samarbete kring enskilda ungdomar under längre tid. Det kan i bästa fall mera handla om en form av remissförfarande från polis till socialtjänst.
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| 10. |
- Ek, Arne, 1950-
(författare)
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Att konstruera en uppslutning kring den enda vägen : Om folkrörelsers modernisering i skuggan av det östeuropeiska systemskiftet
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about some Swedish organizations that are connected to the labour movement and their actions to cope with the new hegemony around market liberalism. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90-ties, the liberal order, meaning market economy and democracy reduced to the election of elites, has become totally domineering both in the western and in the former communist world. Even left wing oriented organizations have adopted their operations and activities accordingly, especially in their internal governing structure. The organizations that I have studied, mainly the Swedish Tenants organization at its local level of Stockholm, developed during the 70-ties and the 80-ties a participatorier member structure. The “Swedish model” of consensus/corporative decision-making and agreement, used by them on the national level for decades, was during that period introduced also on local and regional levels. In the 90-ties these organizations, according to earlier studies, have instead adapted a more costumer-oriented and elite-democratic way of operating and governing. These later changes could be seen as contradicting both the development of the 80-ties and the basic values of those organizations. My questions are therefore how these changes became possible and my aim is to study how the active members have contributed to this development. Using a constructionist theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, I am showing how this potential conflict between a participatory and an elite-democratic model can be reconciled by a discursive construction. The active members have in fact been able see these changes just as a modernization of their organization. From their point-of-view their organization still works in a participatory democratic way. My analysis shows how this ambiguousness and potential paradox became possible thru internal discourses and under influence from the liberal hegemony.
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