1. |
- Hughes Tidlund, Ida, 1977-
(author)
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Autonomous Åland : A hundred years of borderwork in the Baltic Sea
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation applies an ethnological and long-temporal view of borders. The region of Åland, being an autonomous and demilitarised island territory under Finnish sovereignty, serves as an illuminative case of the work that goes into keeping borders fixed for two reasons. The region being maritime is the first one, and it being in a betwixt position between a state and a province is the second. The study seeks to explore the borders as cultural entities composed by layers – legal, geographical, political and social – and the processes through which the borders have been anchored. As important are the ways in which the borders extend into everyday life by creating a local order that activities relate to. Borders are hence seen as both objects and sources of actions. Seeing borders as objects of action function as an entry into an exploration of how the borders have been objects of continuous work since their establishment in 1921. The idea of them being sources of actions serves as a window into how the borders in numerous ways have influenced everyday life for inhabitants. In order to analyse the work that goes into borders as well as the actions borders cause, the study explores both the authoritative borderwork and how the borders or their effects have been encountered and handled by individuals who live within. The multifaceted view is achieved through a broad material consisting of archived documents, archived ethnological interviews, participant observations and contemporary interviews, in combination with studies of law and publications. Through the use of the phenomenological concept of practico-inert, the study reveals both how borders are outcomes of incessant human actions, and how they create an undisputable structure for individuals to observe and relate to, but not necessarily obey. In summary, the study contributes with a detailed description of how bordered places are created, and how individuals navigate the structures that they live within.
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2. |
- Franzén, Elin, 1982-
(author)
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Radio : Vardagsliv tillsammans med ett massmedium
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis examines the radio medium as a phenomenon of experience. The perspective relates to phenomenological philosophy, dealing with human knowledge as an ongoing intentional relationship with the world: to experience is to grasp things such as they appear to the subjective consciousness. Radio is accordingly understood as a phenomenon that is given meaning through the individual user’s encounters with the medium in its constitutive forms. The research is based on a qualitative material of approximately 200 questionnaire responses and interviews with 17 persons, describing the presence of the medium in the current lives of the participants as well as through their lifetime, which, from a phenomenological viewpoint, makes radio appear both in terms of a present phenomenon and objects of recollection. The experiences that were documented in the late 2010s thus span almost the entire history of the radio medium in Sweden.The everyday embeddedness of radio is analyzed by focusing on three constitutive aspects that have emerged in the empirical data: technical equipment, mediated content, and temporal structures. By breaking down the phenomenon into these aspects, the thesis presents a detailed description of the ways in which radio is integrated into and constitutes everyday contexts. Encounters with technical equipment, mediated content, and temporal structures are analytically described in terms of biographical orientations toward shifting media environments throughout the history of the medium. How radio has been present in life shapes experiences of radio in the present. Likewise, today’s media use defines how radio appears as a phenomenon of the past. Throughout the thesis, participants navigate radio environments in the shape of smartphones, transistor radios, vacuum tube receivers, linear flows of broadcasting, and on demand-structures. Radio is shown to be one of many interlaced components in the complex making of the everyday.
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3. |
- Fröhlig, Florence, 1971-
(author)
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Painful legacy of World War II: Nazi forced enlistment : Alsatian/Mosellan Prisoners of War and the Soviet Prison Camp of Tambov
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns the legacy of the Nazi forced enlistment during World War II and focuses more precisely on the case of Alsace/Moselle. Many of these French men, enlisted by force from 1942 in the German army, were sent to the Eastern Front and experienced Soviet prison camps.The aim of this thesis is to examine how knowledge and memories about forced enlistment and Soviet captivity have been remembered, commemorated, communicated and passed on since the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs (Prisoners of War) carried the tokens of enemies or traitors when reintegrating their motherland, France.Four strategies dealing with the experiences of forced enlistment and of internment in Soviet prison camps are examined. I present how the first and most common strategy, i.e. avoidance, is contributing to an individual and collective construction of silence. Then I argue that a second strategy, the constitution of families of remembrance, is helping them to articulate and narrate their experiences (third strategy). The fourth strategy is the organisation of pilgrimages (emic term) to the former prison camp of Tambov, where the majority of the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs were gathered during the war. This last strategy actualises the issue of the transmission of the war experiences given that pilgrimages bring together three to four generations. Through fieldwork observations of the journeys I show how the pilgrims engage with a sense of the past. They remember and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of the social, cultural and political needs of the present. The importance of place and the aspect of self-in-place are thoughtfully analysed in order to highlight the process of passing on the memory of Tambov.I conclude by arguing that the agents of remembrance interviewed for the purpose of this thesis are engaged in turning the tangible and intangible legacies of World War II into heritage. This is done by releasing the legacy of forced enlistment and internment in Soviet prison camp from the private/familial sphere and inscribing it in the public sphere. Yet, the agency of the former POWs and their descendants shows how to let pass a past “that does not want to pass” in a contemporary European context.
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4. |
- Göransson, Michelle, 1976-
(author)
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Materlialiserade sexualiteter : om hur normer framträder, förhandlas och ges hållbarhet
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to analyse how conceptions of sexuality are interlinked with and formed through connections with different types of matter, and also to study what significance matter (that is, bodies, space and things) has in shaping and actuating norms, particularly heteronorms.The study is based on transcribed semi-structured interviews and go-along interviews with persons who deviate from the societal norm of man and the societal norm heterosexual. In addition, the material consists of signposts, spaces, architecture, legal documents and texts found on websites.The dissertation is mainly dedicated to the study of processes wherein bodies, things and space are linked together or separated. Bodies materialise as non-heterosexual (or heterosexual) in processes that entangle movements, spaces, things and language. Apart from analysing bodies as morphous, I also emphasise that the boundaries between bodies and things must be understood as transient. Things can integrate into bodies and limbs can turn into things. I also cast light on the fact that heteronorms are imprinted into matter such as the built environment. Boundaries are materialised, but LGBTQ- defined safe spaces are concurrently being formed. Such spaces tend to be transient in character. This stands in contrast to such things that tie into societal norms, which tend to survive the passing of time whether they be buildings, monuments or urban planning. Thus, norms are both created by and imprinted into matter. The memories, experiences and assumed needs of certain bodies and their ways of living together are given solidity. Spatially organised differences are, on the other hand, primarily accepted when packaged into events, temporary and clearly marked, which inadvertently highlight Sweden’s (imaginary) openness and diversity.
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5. |
- Frihammar, Mattias, 1967-
(author)
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Ur svenska hjärtans djup : Reproduktion av samtida monarki
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to show how Swedish royalty is reproduced and gains its extraordinary status through interaction between people, institutions and artefacts in the beginning of the 21st century. The analysis is based on data collected between 2003 and 2009 in different contexts where royalty and the monarchy are brought to the fore. The data consists of field notes from a municipality’s preparations for a visit of the king and queen of Sweden and three official events where royals are present, transcribed interviews, answers to a museums questionnaire and media material. The main theoretical premise is Actor Network Theory (ANT). Additionally, the study draws upon theories about cynical reason, modernity, humor and ritual. The study shows how royal sovereignty is reproduced basically by acts that separate persons and artifacts, put them on display and evaluates them as extravagant. These processes are at hand both in people’s everyday lives and during official event that present royals as the center of attention. Monarchy is interpreted as a modern institution mirroring notions of rationality through notions of irrationality, and the analysis shows how royal charisma is produced through performances fully in accordance with late-modern thinking and acting. The attractive royal mystic is interpreted as a consequence of a general strives to bring together the contrasting concepts of royalty and ordinariness. By analyzing humorous as well as servile attitude towards the royal institution and its representatives, the study shows how monarchy and the concept of royalty interact in the re-production of Sweden as a nation and in the individual citizen’s project of self-identity. Through creating memories of royal ancestors, individually and collectively, and through preserving the relations to existing royals and imagining the future of the royal family, a collective immortality is formed. In the process structures of inequality and social differences are established and made reasonable.
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6. |
- Wollin Elhouar, Elisabeth, 1970-
(author)
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Tillhör vi Sveriges framtid? : En etnologisk studie av vardag och hållbarhet i norrländsk glesbygd
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns everyday life and sustainability in sparsely populated parts of Northern Sweden. The aim is to study how sustainability is constructed, experienced, practised and perceived in a field of tension between local everyday life and political discourses.Apart from written material, the study is based on interviews and observations performed in the municipalities Strömsund and Örnsköldsvik. Empirical themes include everyday life movements and means of transport, work and spare time practices, and experiences of time. The central theoretical concepts used are everyday life, provinces of meanings, typifications, community, place and policy. These concepts shape the analysis of processes pertaining to space and movement, work and leisure, time and tempo.The study shows gaps between sustainability policies and local experiences of sustainability. In order to highlight complications like the ones between the center and the periphery, polices and lived experiences, I have stressed the importance of the social dimension of sustainability. It is nevertheless important to nuance the concept of social sustainability since it carries an ambiguity, for example in terms of collisions with other dimensions of sustainability. Socially good life styles have a tendency to collide with the ecological definitions of sustainability. The emphasis on the social dimensions has been done in order to draw attention to unfair effects from a time-space perspective, and to point at the problem with urban norms in policies on sustainability.
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