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- Danielsson, Jonas, 1973-
(author)
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Skräckskönt : en etnologisk studie
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the present study is to explore how horror movie fans use the films to gain access to certain emotions, and the discussions to which the movies give rise. Through this, I hope to attain a deeper understanding of how the horror movie fan chooses to view the genre. While horror movie fans experience a raft of emotions as they watch, this is not the whole story; they also reflect upon these emotions and question certain responses, eg. why laugh at one form of violence but not the next, or how can one killer elicit empathy in the viewer while others do not. In order to understand this popular genre I have based my thesis mainly on interviews with the actual horror film fan, here represented by 9 women and 11 men. Special emphasis in the theoretical body is placed on Bakhtin’s notion of the grotesque, a ”world turned upside-down”, and dialogical truth. The horror movie fan might be described in the same fashion – as someone who through the films he watches sees and acknowledges an alternative cultural system which is otherwise suppressed. They can experiment with ideas of other kinds of rules, norms and hierarchies than those already in place in society. The horror movie fans talk about special themes as more important than others, and these “key symbols” have helped in constructing the thesis. I have for that reason formed the analysis in the region of emotions like fear, disgust and desires, but also more intellectual discussions on film violence and evil. It is clear that a controlled sense of fear is one of the main forces sparking the initial interest the informants felt for horror and urging them forward in their quest for more. It is also clear that feelings of disgust the horror movies evoke are a part of the fans’ discussions about the world and the evil therein. The horror movie fans speak about evil as something inherent in everyone, and something which must be acknowledged in order to live a “full” life. Despite of all this I consider pure enjoyment and entertainment to be the very foundation of their shared interest, and that the horror movie fans try to make strong distinctions between “fact” and “fiction”. These conscious distinctions could also be one of the reasons that the fans find these types of movies entertaining. Those who are incapable to make these clear distinctions are therefore, more or less, unable to see the purpose of the fascination with horror narratives.
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| 2. |
- Jacobsson, Roger, 1947-
(author)
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Typographic Man : Medielandskap i förändring - Studier i provinsens tryckkultur
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis is to study how the media landscape of northern Sweden was shaped and transformed in the final years of the 18th century and first half of the nineteenth. This slowly-emerging new landscape brought with it new thoughts and new voices. Which individuals and institutions were involved in this process? Proceeding from a number of hypotheses and a variety of perspectives, the intention has been to study the type of printed matter being physically disseminated,how it came to be used and in what context by what people. The questions are in many ways interwoven and can be followed from chapter to chapter. The title of the dissertation underlines the fact that the media landscape under investigation is in fact populated. Through gradual changes in the media landscape, the people of the province became ”typographic”, i.e. dependent onprinted matter. The interdisciplinary nature of this dissertation, embracing media history,book history, ethnology, communications and cultural history, leaves ample room for aspects and inspiration culled from a broad variety of sources. By embarking from concepts including mediascape, province, print culture, networks,voluntary associations and various manifestations of reading culture, it has been possible to sketch the outlines of the development and dynamism of the media landscape during the period under investigation. A region long considered to be a remote outpost was in fact at the begin-ning of the nineteenth century well on its way to making its voice heard more clearly in the national conversation. Contacts and connection within the province also changed character as new forms of conversation emerged. Those which previously had been conducted in church, at the barbershop, in the market square or in the reading societies were now being conducted in locally-produced newspapers and pamphlets. The means of communication had changed. A new age needed to be dealt with and discussed, and that discussion could now take place in print.
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| 3. |
- Snellman, Fredrik, 1975-
(author)
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Det beror på hur man tar det. : Kollektiva livsuttryck, individuella livslopp och meningskonstruerande processer i äldres livsberättelser
- 2005
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I avhandlingen avvänds livsberättelser som materialinsamlingsmetod för att fånga äldre människors levda erfarenheter. Frågorna som ställs i avhandlingen är: Vilka kollektivt konstruerade livsuttryck uppvisar respondenterna? På vilket sätt förhåller sig det individuellt konstruerade livsloppet till det kollektiva livsuttrycket och hur kan det individuella livsloppet lämpligast representeras? Finns det - och i så fall vilka är de - meningskonstruerande element som respondenterna använt i sina livsberättelser samt vilken betydelse har dessa för respondenternas upplevda välbefinnande? I studien presenteras de socialgerontologiska teorierna övergripande för att positionera avhandlingsarbetet. I studien har totalt sexton individer, nio finländska kvinnor och sju män i den kustnära Kvarkenregionen, deltagit och delgivit sina fritt formulerade livsberättelser. Baserat på det gemensamma mönster som framträder i alla livsberättelser beskrivs detta som livsfaser och olika livsyttryck under respektive livsfaser. De framträdande livsfaserna är: a) barndoms, ungdoms- och skoltiden, b) krigstiden, c) förvärvsarbetstiden och d) pensionärtiden. För respektive livsfas presenteras vilka liknande och åtskiljande mönster -eller livsuttryck - informanterna delger. De tolkade livsuttrycken baseras på vad och hur informanterna berättar om sina liv. Livsfaserna och livsuttrycken utgör grunden för presentationen av en övergripande typologi av hur livsberättelsernas innehåll kan beskrivas kollektivt. Ett mycket vanligt förekommande livsuttryck under pensiontiden är bland annat det som författaren valt att beskriva som ett "rikt liv". I ett avseende bryter detta livsuttryck mot den homogena bilden av, och i viss mån förekommande eländesbilder av, äldre människor. Samtidigt påvisas uttryckligen att den kollektiva bilden - eller typologin - som åskådliggörs alltid förvränger den enskilde individens berättelse. Detta används som ett reflexivt sätt att kritiskt problematisera - och etiskt förhålla sig - till den bild av informanternas livsberättelser som konstrueras i forskningsprocessen.
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| 4. |
- Egeland, Helene, 1973-
(author)
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Det ekte, det gode og det coole : Södra teatern og den dialogiske formasjonen av mangfoldsdiskursen
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis analyses the continuously changing discourse of cultural diversity. The focus of this study is the ways in which this discourse is shaped within contemporary Swedish cultural politics in general, and how it unfolds and further changes through the specific activities performed by a cultural institution in Stockholm – Södra teatern.Where as the cultural diversity inspired cultural politics seems to be caught in the tension between defending the autonomous position of culture in society and arguing for the supposed positive integrative consequences of such a perspective the Södra teatern mirrors a similar complexity in their ways of performing cultural diversity. This complexity is expressed through the three aspects of cultural diversity the thesis analyses – the real, the good and the cool cultural diversity. Each of the three aspects expresses a search for authenticity as well as a resistance towards the very same notion; a belief in the enlightenment of knowledge at the same time as the content of the very same knowledge is questioned; and finally that ethnic differences some times is enforced through utterances that stresses tradition where as the supposed hybrid forms in other situations is celebrated.The three aspects of cultural diversity analysed here all express how cultural diversity works as a hyper complex concept within cultural policy where no single possible meaning erases other potential meanings. On the contrary: different and even contradictory meanings of the concept exist side by side. Thus the thesis argues that the discourse of cultural diversity expresses a hyper complex problem.
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