| 1. |
- Andersson, Ida, 1982-
(author)
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Geographies of Place Branding : Researching through small and medium sized cities
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Place branding is commonly conceptualized with a focus on big cities, such as London, New York and Singapore, building from concepts and models from mainstream branding theory. In contrast to such conceptualizations, this thesis focuses on place branding in small and medium-sized cities. The present thesis aims to study place branding from a geographical perspective. It starts with debates theoretical and empirical understandings of place branding; what it is and how it is affecting the places where it is introduced. The thesis develops and argues for a perspective of territoriality and relationality to place branding discussing concepts, methods and empirical approaches to carry out place branding research using geographical perspectives. Empirically, this thesis focuses on in-depth studies of place branding in small and medium-sized cities in Sweden. By analyzing the development of place branding over the course of time, nuances and aspects of both territorial and relational origin emerge, situating place branding practices within a wider spatial contextualization. Four individual papers are presented, which taken together contribute to the aim of the thesis. Paper 1 introduces the place branding research field in geography and how it has developed; Paper 2 investigates the phenomena of flagship buildings located in small cities and towns; Paper 3 discusses the relationship between policy tourism and place branding; and Paper 4 analyzes how local environmental policies are affected by green place branding. The thesis demonstrates the complex and continuously interchangeable spatial structures and place contexts that create and re-produce the geographies of place branding. Here, research models and methodological examples are presented to illustrate how place branding can be studied from a geographical perspective and thus improve theoretical understandings of place branding.
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| 2. |
- Balogh, Péter, 1982-
(author)
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Perpetual borders : German-Polish cross-border contacts in the Szczecin area
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Borderlands are often peripheral geographically, administratively, and economically. A particularly illustrative case is the Szczecin area at the border between Poland and Germany, where a large city on one side neighbours to a sparsely populated hinterland on the other. There is a number of similar cases throughout Europe, but studies on them point to a mixed level of linkages following the opening and removal of the physical border.At the project’s start there were few if any studies on the Szczecin area per se, which was here studied through various methods. On the one hand, different pre-EU enlargement plans and visions for the area’s development were compared with practices and realities of recent years. This shows that earlier imaginations on the development potentials have not quite materialised, although some of them were probably too optimistic and ambitious from the beginning. Some of the area’s potentials following EU-enlargement have been more successfully exploited than others, and disproportionately by actors coming from outside. On the other hand, cross-border contacts were studied in the discourses on and attitudes towards the other side among local and regional elites, and among local residents more generally. This revealed a polarised attitudinal landscape, not least when compared to country-wide opinion surveys in both Germany and Poland. This is in line with other studies showing that identities are particularly accentuated in border situations, where the Other is more frequently encountered.These results support recent investigations pointing to a continued relevance of the border even after the physical barriers are removed. At the same time, another contribution of this work to border studies is that the time and contingency of the importance of identities and of the border needs more attention. In the Szczecin area, awareness of national identities and of the boundary appeared to be particularly high just after changes in the border’s status occurred – i.e. in 1989–1991, and then around the years 2007–2010. But while its importance may be fluctuating over time, given the opportunities and resources the boundary provides it will always be maintained in some forms.
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| 3. |
- Laszlo Ambjörnsson, Emmeline, 1985-
(author)
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Gendered Performances in Swedish Forestry : Negotiating Subjectivities in Women-Only Networks
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Environmental resource use is intimately intertwined with gendered power relations. Overarching ideals, governance and management are shaped by the negotiation and performance of gendered subjectivities. This thesis identifies and analyses key features of such negotiations and performances in the context of contemporary Swedish forestry. More specifically, I examine the gendered performances of women forest owners engaged in women-only forestry networks. The study draws on qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and textual analysis. From the perspective of feminist geography, the study builds on a poststructural feminist understanding of gender as relational, spatial, intersectional, and performative processes that influence people’s relationships with the environment. The thesis consists of a comprehensive summary and three papers in which different aspects of women forest owners’ gendered performances are addressed. In Paper I, I show how the women forest owners perform both femininities and female masculinities in ways that both challenge and endorse hegemonic forestry masculinities. In Paper II, I analyse how Swedish forest policy and governance are realised in the social domain through the negotiations and performances of the masculinist policy construct ‘the active forest owner’. Being ‘active’ mainly entailed an orientation towards industrial timber production but was also challenged in the women-only network spaces to also include feminine-coded social and/or environmental values based on an ethics of care. In Paper III, I focus on the tension around the framing of women-only networks as feminist and/or gender equality projects. I argue that the women’s reluctance to politicise their collective action are gendered performances based on a postfeminist sensibility, articulated, and maintained through various discursive moves. Throughout the papers, I also show how the women’s performances are permeated by spatialities and spatial power relations in different ways. The findings contribute to the overlapping fields of feminist geography, gender studies, environmental (forest) governance, and rural studies.
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| 4. |
- Trygg, Kristina, 1979-
(author)
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Arbetets geografi : Kunskapsarbetets organisation och utförande i tidrummet
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This is a thesis about knowledge-intensive work and the organizational con-texts of such work. The specific objective is to analyze the geography of work. The geography of work may diverge from the geography of employ-ment when paid work is undertaken at the premises of client organizations, during commuting, on business trips, in external meetings, at home or in other places. The focus is on work practice and the perspective of everyday life. The study examines where knowledge workers are located and where knowledge work occurs. It is about what knowledge workers actually do. The everyday perspective is about the relationship between paid work and unpaid work. To understand the organization of knowledge-intensive work in a time–space context, different possibilities and constraints must be taken into con-sideration. This thesis has a time–geographical approach. The case study examines knowledge-intensive organizations located in central Stockholm. The organizations are in PR/communications, management consultancy, and research and development sectors. Both private and public sector organiza-tions are considered. The empirical study combines interviews, time diaries and questionnaires. The NVivo software program is employed to analyze the interview data. The main conclusion from the thesis is that in order to under-stand knowledge-intensive work, different factors such as relations, attitudes and norms need to be considered. These factors affect the organization of work, which in turn is affected by the choices, possibilities, constraints, ex-pectations and negotiations of different actors (i.e. employees, employers, family, clients and colleagues). The working time of the knowledge workers investigated in this study is mainly spent at the office of their employers. Social interaction with col-leagues and clients is an important part of their work. Work routines involve many meetings, both face-to-face and virtual. Face-to-face interactions play a crucial role in shaping the geography of work; teamwork is important. The knowledge workers in this study are “working long hours,” and the norm is to work more than what have been expected.
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| 5. |
- Wall Reinius, Sandra, 1974-
(author)
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Protected Attractions : Tourism and Wilderness in the Swedish Mountain Region
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Europe's first national parks were established in northern Sweden in 1909 and this region has thus functioned as a protected and aesthetic pleasure landscape for a century. In 1996, due to the combination of spectacular natural environment and ancient Sami traditions the Laponian World Heritage Area was established here. In spite of local cultural history and contempo-rary land use practices, the Swedish northern mountains are often described as remnants of the pristine and as wilderness - defined as the opposite to culture - and for many, wilderness is an unproblematic category of nature. With a focus on touristic use of protected areas, this thesis examines the role of different interests, including power relations, in shaping dominant descriptions of landscapes. Investigated themes include how landscape values are expressed, interpreted and explained by visitors, as well as the influence of different ideas underlying nature conservation. Results show that tourists visit the mountains to experience nature, wilderness, and scenery, and to feel mental relaxation. The existence of marked hiking trails and facilities at tourist cabins are also of importance. The attractiveness of the mountains includes the combination of comfortable conditions and a perceived untouched landscape. Tourists perceive the area as wilderness and - at the same time - filled with tourist facilities and Sami culture such as reindeer herding activities. It is found that the perception of the mountains as a wild and scenic natural landscape has not changed much during the last century. In this thesis, the concept of wilderness is problematized and contested since it produces images and values that have unrecognized effects on how we perceive and manage landscapes, including their cultural attributes. This thesis applies a critical realism approach to conceptualize landscapes.
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| 6. |
- Webster, Natasha Alexandra, 1978-
(author)
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Gender and Social Practices in Migration : A case study of Thai women in rural Sweden
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Set within discussions of gender, migration and social practices, this thesis explores the ways in which Thai women migrants to Sweden build connections between rural areas through their daily activities. Arriving in Sweden primarily through marriage ties, Thai women migrants are more likely to live in Swedish rural areas than in urban areas. Rural areas are typically not seen as a site of globalization or as receivers of international migrants. In contrast to these perceptions, the case of Thai women migrants in the Swedish countryside reveals a complex and vigorous set of social practices that connect rural Sweden across spatial and temporal scales.The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which Thai migrant women construct and implement social practices spatially and temporally. Drawing on the life stories of 16 Thai women living in Sweden, along with other sources of empirical data analysed within feminist epistemologies, this thesis discusses: In what ways does gender shape migrant social practices? How are social practices constructed within individual migrant micro-geographies? By what means are migrant social practices contextualized by spaces and places?Thai women migrants are gendered agents of these social practices and are utilizing specific resources, objects and networks to bridge the distances found in their daily lives. The empirical material examined in this thesis points to the importance of women’s everyday social practices in connecting and linking rural areas globally at different spatial and temporal scales.The results highlight the importance of a translocalism perspective to understanding gendered social practices. This study adds to the translocal discussion by demonstrating that social practices are embedded in multiple geographic sites and scales. Thai women migrants, in this study, emerge as significant actors in global countrysides and do the functional work of bringing spaces and places together daily and through their life course.This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and five papers. The introductory chapter outlines the context and theoretical approaches to understanding Thai migration flows to Sweden. The papers share an emphasis on local sites: homes, workplaces and community. They examine different ways that women construct and build social practices – for example, through food, community projects and in developing their businesses.
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| 7. |
- Forsberg, Camilla, 1983-
(author)
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Students’ Perspectives on Bullying
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis was to listen to, examine and conceptualise students’ perspectives on bullying. Students’ perspectives have not been commonly heard in research and less qualitative research has been conducted. This study contributes with students’ perspectives on bullying using semi-structured interviews with students from fourth-to eighth grade.This thesis includes four studies. The aim with paper I was to investigate how bystander actions in bullying situations and reasons behind these actions were articulated. Paper II was a comparison study between Sweden and US, focused on how students articulate and discuss what factors influence students’ decisions to defend or not defend victims when witnessing bullying. The aim in Paper III was to study how students themselves discuss, reason and make sense of how and why bullying processes emerges in their social worlds. In paper IV the aim was to study how junior high school girls discuss and understand bullying. Findings reveal that students’ reactions as bystanders to bullying depend on how they define the situation. Explanations to the emergence of bullying were understood through a complex social ordering of belonging process. Students position themselves and others in striving to belong, and when defining victims as responsible for bullying. Social norms and negotiation of identities were also discussed among the students. Students discussed how gender and a normative peer structure, where a pressure to fit in, interlinked with how they understood bullying.
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| 8. |
- Grip, Lena, 1978-
(author)
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Likhetens rum - olikhetens praktik : om produktion av integration i fyra svenska kommuner
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- What is integration? How is integration achieved and to whom is it directed? And how is integration implemented in respect to immigrant women? This thesis examines ideas concerning integration and the policy and practice of integration on the basis of a set of policies which include Swedish society as “multicultural”, with the focus on immigrant women. Integration as a political project exists at a national level in Sweden but also in most of Sweden’s municipalities. This study concentrates mainly on the local level. Four medium-sized Swedish municipalities with differing conditions, political governance, geographical location and immigration history have been selected for a study of how integration is implemented and how ideas about integration also produce and reproduce both local and national space. Various political documents on integration and interviews with politicians, officials and immigrant women form the basis of a study of how integration is achieved as seen from the positions of different actors at the municipal level and how similarities and differences are constructed and expressed in the example of integration. Conceptions regarding similarities and differences on the basis of gender and ethnicity in an imagined Swedish space, but also in more local spaces, have been central to an understanding of the phenomena studied in the thesis, given that at the core of a policy of integration lie differences that need to be integrated. The theoretical points of departure in the thesis are the ideas of Henri Lefebvre regarding the production of space, which are combined with theories inspired by gender theory and phenomenology to illustrate the individual and physical aspects of the process. A model of the complexity of creating spatiality is devised from this theoretical basis and is used throughout the thesis both as an analytical tool and as an instrument for creating structure. On the basis of the study it is concluded that integration may be likened to a space of similarity, as integration is construed by means of different metaphors as a move from something “outside” to Sweden, as a room to be entered. The policy and practice of integration, as it has so far functioned, is shown to be based on a (dis)similarity paradox in that integration is constructed on a discourse of similarity at the same time as assumptions and constructions of difference are a fundamental point of departure for the policy objectives.
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| 9. |
- Hedfeldt, Mona, 1979-
(author)
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Företagande kvinnor i bruksort : arbetsliv och vardagsliv i samspel
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Bergslagen region in Sweden has a history of iron and steel production, and in the small industrial towns in the region, one large employer has often held a strong position. Although the region has gone through structural change since the 1970’s, in previous research, becoming self-employed is perceived of as difficult, since it implies going against a strong working culture. The image of Bergslagen is that of a non-entrepreneurial region. Furthermore, in previous research, the gender contract in the region is characterized as traditional. In this thesis light is shed on women in the region who are self-employed. Topics that are focused on are work experience, role models, family situation and networks. The study builds on qualitative interviews and longitudinal registry based statistics (1993-2003). The interviews were carried out in the municipalities of Norberg and Fagersta with self-employed women in the fields of health and business services. Conclusions drawn concern both the region Bergslagen as an entrepreneurial region and the lives of self-employed women. The situations and conditions under which women become and remain self-employed displays a complex interaction between different areas of life, both in relation to the start-up phase and the subsequent running of their businesses. The idea of the region as non-entrepreneurial is scrutinized. For one, the share of self-employed in the Bergslagen municipalities only differs among men, compared to the national average. The share of self-employed women in the region, however, is similar to the national average. Furthermore, the share of self-employed men and women varies among the municipalities within the region. Thus, it is problematic to speak of the region as non-entrepreneurial and as homogenous when it comes to self-employment and entrepreneurship. These findings indicate that the idea of the region as non-entrepreneurial is an expression of both the region being male coded and women entrepreneurs being subordinated.
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| 10. |
- Tornberg, Patrik, 1974-
(author)
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Trafik- och stadsplanering som en integrerad process? : Om perspektiv och kommunikativa processer i stadsutvecklingen
- 2009
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Urban planning and transportation planning through an integrated process? On perspectives and communicative processes in urban development During the last couple of years the need for a better coordination of urban and transportation planning in Sweden has been highlighted at several occasions. In response to this need, the project “The Attractive City” (Den Goda Staden) has been initiated, emphasizing collaboration and communicative processes between actors involved in urban and transportation planning as a means to enhance the potential for an integrated planning. In this study the discussions taking place under the umbrella of The Attractive City are examined in order to illuminate the circumstances enhancing or obstructing the potential for integrated planning processes. The aim is to contribute to the knowledge of the conditions for an integrated planning of transportation systems and cities based on dialogue and collaboration. Through three case studies central challenges for cross-sectoral coordination are identified and used as a basis for a discussion on the potential for consensus based planning processes. It is concluded that much of the discussions in The Attractive City take a starting point in the ambition for planning to be holistic, an ambition associated with the risk of shadowing a range of underlying tensions between different perspectives among actors involved in the planning processes. The influence of these differences in perspectives on the potential for coordination of parallel planning activities is discussed. With reference to communicative planning theory and the experiences from The Attractive City, it is argued that communicative processes can play a role in sharpening the awareness about the procedural problems that need to be addressed in a planning process. Although consensus, in terms of agreement on solutions, may well be the result of communicative processes, increased understanding of different actors’ motives and conditions to act is seen as the main benefit from this kind of communicative processes, creating a resource to draw upon in future situations.
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