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- Grinell, Klas, 1969
(författare)
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Att sälja världen: Omvärldsbilder i svensk utlandsturism
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to analyse how the Swedish tourism industry has marketed the world outside Sweden. What images of the people who populate tourist destinations has the tourism industry used to lure customers abroad? Answers to this question are drawn from a body data comprised of prospecti and brochures put out by Swedish tourism agencies in the period between 1930 and 1990. One of the central themes of this enquiry is that the world constitutes a coherent entity. Edward Said’s insistence on the worldliness of all texts is the driving force behind this enquiry. To uncover those frames of reference (a phrase developed in relation to Said’s structures of attitude and reference) regarding the world outside Sweden that are implicit in the idea of Swedish modernity, I make use of a contrapuntal reading that highlights connections that the texts only hint at. The most important phenomena that are analysed are the use of stereotypes and the denial of coevalness. The thesis provides a comprehensive historical overview of Swedish tourism abroad, but its primary goal is to ascertain how tourism and the Swedish self-image it caters is related to the modern/colonial era’s ideologies and power structures. The Swedish self-image is juxtaposed to the Swedish attitude towards foreigners and it is made clear how Swedish modernity has been created through comparisons with people who are not regarded as modern: primitive Africans, exotic Orientals, mañana Spaniards, peasants in colourful folk-costumes and so on. Thereby it becomes clear that these portrayals of blissful vacation spots are neither objective nor harmless. On the contrary, they are pivotal to the construction of the modern Swedish self-image as well as the confinement of other people to marginal roles. The dissertation ends with an in-depth discussion on the denial of coevalness, and the connections between the denial of coevalness and the metaphysics of presence discussed by Jacques Derrida is explored.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson, Rangnar, 1974
(författare)
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God vetenskap. Hur forskares vetenskapsuppfattningar uttryckta i sakkunnigutlåtanden förändras i tre skilda discipliner.
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Rangnar Nilsson: Good science: How researchers’ conceptions of science expressed in peer review documents change in three different disciplines (God vetenskap: Hur forskares vetenskapsuppfattningar uttryckta i sakkunnigutlåtanden förändras i tre skilda discipliner). Ph.D. Dissertation in Swedish, with a summary in English. Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg, 2009. ISBN: 978-91-7346-638-7. This dissertation examines the variety in perceptions of science and research in the academic communities of political science, literature studies and physics in Sweden 1950-1995 as expressed in expert evaluations of professorship candidates. The study relates commonalities as well as differences in these perceptions to internal conditions of the research field, and to the extramural settings and conditions of Swedish academia. Research is thus considered as a historically situated, socially entangled and contingent societal activity that produces knowledge in close concurrence with the surrounding society. The analysis of quality assessments for each discipline examines which of the following aspects of the works reviewed by expert panels are focused in their evaluation reports: problem, method, theory, object, results, writing, the totality of the work or the researcher him- or herself. Based on the panelists’ treatment of these aspects the thesis highlights the concomitant internal perceptions of science and research in each case. It is found that early on in expert evaluations, political science tends to be depicted as a research field largely focused on the research methods. The methods frequently define areas of research, and credibility is typically attained through proper use of reliable methods. Towards the end of the 1900s, political scientists took a new interest in theory, while the knowledge produced was described in less definitive or absolute words. Expert panels reviewing literature studies were traditionally more inclined to focus on the object of research or its material, whereas the methods used were rarely diagnosed. With time, however, one finds a theoretical turn, in as much as theory gained a new appreciation in this discipline as well, and it is, moreover, clearly considered as an active ingredient in knowledge production in the 1990s. As in political science, the descriptions of results - as depicted in evaluations - change from rather final pronouncements to ones that are more tentative. Such a trend may also be seen in the physicists’ evaluations. In that case evaluation reports largely home in on the results in general, but they also - when actual results are described - make explicit references to linkages with external actors or industry. The respective differences identified are analyzed as products of the history of each discipline, inherent requirements and differential relationships to the society outside of the academia.
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| 4. |
- Sager, Morten, 1972
(författare)
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Pluripotent Circulations: Putting Actor-Network Theory to Work on Stem Cells in the USA, prior to 2001
- 2006
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When researchers in 1998 presented stem cells produced from embryos this led to heated debates in the US. Should taxpayers’ money fund this research or should it remain within the private sector? While most studies have focused on the disputes, Morten Sager’s study starts off in the usually neglected common ground between the proponents and the opponents of federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells. Inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) Sager presents an analytic model where the crucial question concerns – not the disputes about embryos – but how a particular public representation of human embryonic stem cells came about. It is a representation that includes the possibility and necessity of transplantation therapies, the existence of thousands of ”spare embryos”, and ultimately the taxonomic definition and hierarchization of various stem cells’ biological capacities. Going backwards along the historical traces of reproductive technologies and practices, experiments and debates on aborted fetal tissue, and earlier non-embryonic stem cell research Sager finds excluded altenatives and hidden uncertainties. For this purpose he uses a wide range of empirical material from Congressional hearings, official panels and reports, media surveillance, scientific journals, personal conference attendance and meetings with key persons in the stem cell field. It is the first book-length study of how the mutual reinforcement and intertwinement of several developments – dating at least as far back as Roe vs. Wade – helped shape the public and political ”realities” of human embryonic stem cells in the 1998-2001 debates. In addition, Sager uses the case as an opportunity to invite the reader to reflect on the possible uses and problems of the ANT approach.
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