The wolf is an endangered animal in Sweden and the issue of conserving the species is a polarizing one. Specific attention has been given to this issue in environmental social sciences with studies focusing on the divide between wolf support and opposition. These studies include looking at historical interactions with the wolf, contemporary attitudes about the issue, and the way the law shapes policy. Following this focus on the disputed nature of wolf conservation, this thesis addresses whether polarization over the issue occurs between several stakeholders in large carnivore management in Sweden. Using Actor Network Theory, this thesis examines the similarities and divergences in the stakeholders’ conservation practices and maps their interactions with one another. Emphasis is placed on how the European Union’s regulations and the Swedish State’s policies conflict and/or influence the stakeholders. Overall results show that despite a discourse of polarization surrounding wolf management in Sweden, the actors in this study cannot be easily positioned against each other, and despite some divergences, share many similarities in their large carnivore management practices.

När det offentliga väljer att upphandla välfärden och köpa in tjänsteutförandet från fristående vårdbolag följer ett behov av nya verktyg för att driva välfärden i önskad riktning. Den här uppsatsen söker beskriva hur kommunala tjänstemän bemöter konsekvenserna av trenden att omvandla de byråkratiska välfärdssystemen till marknader för välfärdstjänster och utvecklar nya verktyg för styrning. Utgångspunkten för undersökningen är de förfrågningsunderlag tjänstemännen formulerar och som utgör grunden för upphandlingsprocessen. Fördjupad kunskap om hur upphandlingsprocessen utformas i praktiken samlas genom intervjuer med ansvariga tjänstemän vid Uppsala Kommun samt marknadschefen vid ett av kommunens utförarbolag. Undersökningen visar att tjänstemännen lägger stor vikt vid formuleringen av obligatoriska krav som utförarna måste leva upp till för att maximera de boendes välmående. Dessa krav utformas för att stärka tydlighet, uppföljningsbarhet och standardisering. Detta görs genom att öka mängden krav, använda och skapa normer för hur verksamheten bör bedrivas och att stärka professionella yrkesgruppers roll.

Title: Collaboration in BoDa-units. A qualitative study about collaboration regarding people with disabilities. The purpose of this thesis was to internally examine the cooperation between different professions in municipal BoDa-units. By doing a qualitative study using focus-group-interviews in three municipalities, we were able to examine the personnel’s experience of cooperation issues and opportunities in BoDa-units. We have also examined why municipals have introduced BoDa-units and how they work. Those BoDa-units we have examined addresses persons who are severely mentally disabled and with multiple disabilities but also to persons with autism and disruptive behaviour. The personnel working with the users of these services works both at the home with special services and at the daily activity. The unit operations managers are responsible for the whole BoDa-unit. The results have been analysed through the theoretical starting points of actor network theory and system theory, but also via relevant literature and the LSS-legislation. The result showed that the creations of the BoDa-units are based on a comprehensive view on the individual users’ need of safety, environmental adaptation and a structured way of work. The conclusion of this study is that the co-operation benefits exceed the disadvantages and that the prospects for the BoDa-units are both positive and negative depending on which target group it addresses.    Keywords: BoDa, Co-operation, LSS, Actor Network Theory, System Theory / Syftet med uppsatsen var att studera intern samverkan mellan olika professioner i kommunala BoDa-enheter. Vi har med hjälp av kvalitativa fokusgruppintervjuer i tre kommuner undersökt personalens erfarenheter av samverkansproblem och -möjligheter i BoDa-enheterna Vi har också undersökt varför kommunerna infört BoDa-enheter och hur de fungerar. De BoDa-enheter där vi studerat intern samverkan riktar sig mot personer med svåra funktionsnedsättningar och mulithandikapp samt personer med autism och utagerande beteenden. De brukarnära medarbetarna arbetar både i brukarnas boende och deras dagliga verksamhet.  Enhetscheferna är ansvariga för hela BoDa-enheten. Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av de teoretiska utgångspunkterna aktörsnätverk och systemteori, relevant litteratur samt centrala begrepp och lagstiftning. Resultatet visade att BoDa-enheterna införts utifrån en helhetssyn på enskilda brukares behov av trygghet, miljöanpassning och strukturerat arbetssätt. Slutsatsen var att samverkansfördelarna i dessa enheter med gränsöverskridande arbete överväger samverkansproblemen samt att framtidsutsikterna för BoDa-enheterna är både positiva och negativa beroende på vilken målgrupp verksamheten vänder sig mot.  Nyckelord: BoDa, Samverkan, LSS, Aktörsnätverk, Systemteori

This thesis seeks to answer the ‘key question’: ‘how is the border worked at an international airport?’ To answer this key question the author, who is employed as a Customs officer, uses participant observation to provide material for an anthropological analysis of this question. The primary anthropological focus that will permeate throughout this thesis is interconnectedness of human and non human actors. This focus on interconnectedness will be linked to the ability of the workers of the border to communicate about risk to one another. Risk at the border is highly political following the terrorist attacks of September 11 (9/11). The attacks are not a focus of this thesis but a study of the border network will shed some light on how the workers of the border make sense of external factors such as these attacks (9/11) in their work world. The thesis accounts for links between the border workers of different government agencies and uses the idea of an occupational community to do so. The thesis will attempt to account for technologies within the border network. The account of technologies will demonstrate through an actor network approach their hybrid nature, and their ability to negotiate and renegotiate the border network. Power is analysed at the border through the ideas of Foucault. Though the idea of occupational community, actor network theory and the ideas of Foucault on power are not linked outside of this thesis in any way, they provide an honest account of the border network as expressed through the case study of risk and interagency communication at an international airport.

This thesis discusses the increased amount of information available online, and how we use it in our daily lives to make decisions. It aims to open a discussion on the complexity of accessing and evaluating digital information. As the Internet has grown, the amount of information available to the public has exploded. Not only have we gained access to what seems to be an unlimited amount of sources, but also the number of producers has grown. By means of a case study, this thesis explores practices of trust assessment within the shared economy. Through the lens of Actor-Network-Theory as well as Modern Social Imaginaries, media practices are studied by using the example of Airbnb, an online, shared economy platform for accommodation. Airbnb users as well as other travelers are asked about their media practices through an online survey with 229 respondents as well as in-depth interviews with 7 users of Airbnb. Results show that practices of trust assessment differ within and outside of the platform. There is a strong dependency on social information, produced by fellow platform users, especially in the form of reviews. In addition the study finds support for a social imaginary, in which the platform defines the accepted behavior for the users of the platform, who within the economic constraint comply with the social norm set by the organization, in order to be able to use the services of Airbnb.

Organizational Networking is an eminently modern concept and has been more and more investigated by scholars in recent years. However, little research has focused on the impact of Organizational Culture on Organizational Networking. The reason of this is that there is a duality in the field of culture between culture within organizations and culture within organizational networks. We argue that none of those stances alone can provide a comprehensive view of cultural phenomena within networking organizations and that a new perspective should be taken. In order to investigate the subject, we bring in the concept of Interorganizational Culturing and investigate it from an Actor-Network Theory perspective, which leads us to the following research question: which are the actors of Interorganizational Culturing in a networking organization? To gain insight on the topic, we have searched for theories on cultures within both the scope of organizations and organizational networks to build upon. In order to illustrate our research, we have conducted unstructured interviews in accordance to Actor-Network Theory principles. Our investigation was led through the use of convenience sampling method and was performed with six large Swedish organizations which activities differ and size varies. Our findings suggest that there are both structural and cultural actors to Interorganizational Culturing, the latter being the ones that can be influenced by the organization. The Actor-Network Theory perspective enabled us to show that many of the dynamics are sparked by nonhuman entities such as components or Organizational Culture (values, beliefs, behaviours). Therefore managers should reflect upon the fact that the potential of improving interorganizational collaboration in their organization lies in their very hands and that they should ask themselves the following question: how ready are we to collaborate more in order to compete better?

This study focuses on the encounter between the academic librarian and the academic library user with a specific need for information. The aim of the study is to examine the process of mediation of information and to uncover any inherent problems or systemic inertia that may occur within that process. Special attention has been given to information-seeking behaviour in the digital age and the possibility of viewing information literacy as a meta-literacy. The difference between the surface web and the academic invis- ible web is also investigated. Empirical data was collected by the use of ethnographic fieldwork at the Karolin- ska Institutet University Library over a period of five weeks. The data is analysed using actor-network theory as a point of departure. Actors, networks, mediators and intermediaries involved in the process of mediation of information are identified and defined. By tracing techno-economic and socio-technic networks the actors’ in- centives are uncovered, as well as the various transactions in which they are engaged. The study sheds light upon a significant difference in participatory motivation between the face-to-face reference work and the information literacy course incorporated within curricula. The use of actor-network theory enables information to be seen as an actor among other actors and during the analysis of the empirical data the topic of the nature of information is discussed using the model of the DIKW-hierarchy. A shift in the academic library towards a hybrid institution engaged in both the dispersion of information and the production of information is uncovered and the possible consequences of this shift are also discussed. The further development of the academic librarian’s educational role might be a viable option in the develop- ment of information literacy education in higher education.

This in-depth exploratory case study examines the real estate decision-making processes in four small, charitable organizations through the lens of Actor Network Theory (ANT). While decision-makers in these cases followed logical pathways and criteria in searching for and evaluating alternatives, this investigation also found these processes were often lengthy, complex, bounded rational, and political. The analysis looked at the relative roles played by various internal and external actors (including influential non-human actors such as feasibility studies, renderings, budgets, and plans) and the resulting fragile, but acceptable outcomes. From the presented engaged scholarship, practical implications emerged that can aid nonprofit managers and their boards in their real estate decision-making processes. Lastly, in addition to helping understand the process of creating real estate decisions in the context of nonprofit organizations, the analysis demonstrates how ANT with its focus on how heterogeneous human and non-human actors interact and come together to act as a whole, can be a valuable framework in examining the socio-technical, political process of real estate decision-making.

Peak oil is the claimed moment in time when global oil production reaches its maximum rate and henceforth forever declines. It is highly controversial as to whether or not peak oil represents cause for serious concern. My thesis explores how this controversy unfolds but brackets the ontological status of the reality indexed by the peak-oil concept. I do not choose a side in the debate; I look at the debate itself. I examine the energy outlook documents of ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Total and the International Energy Agency (IEA) as well as academic articles and documentaries. Through an in-depth analysis of peak-oil controversy via tenets of actor-network theory (ANT), I show that what is at stake are competing framings of reality itself, which must be understood when engaging with the contentious idea of peak oil. / Graduate

This dissertation builds upon the existing body of criminological and socio-legal literature on Internet governance by looking at how this technology and its use are regulated in Canada. Rather than focusing on the regulation of specific web-based activities (e.g., illegal downloading, child luring, etc.) or the control of certain types of online content (e.g., hate speech, pornography, etc.), the dissertation considers the ways that regulatory bodies have responded to the emergence of this new medium. Three specific agencies involved in the governing of the Internet are studied in detail: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the Media Awareness Network (MNet) and the courts. Using a variety of theoretical and conceptual tools taken from both governmentality studies and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the dissertation empirically documents how these agencies imagine the Internet and make it governable. Instead of searching for global accounts that look to either Society or Technology as a source of explanation for why the technology is governed in a particular fashion, this project examines how certain knowledges about the Internet and its regulation get produced in the first place. Attention is paid here to how these agencies initially problematize the Internet, the kinds of regulatory strategies and practices that have emerged and the general impact this has had for our understanding of the Internet and the way in which it should be governed. In keeping with the constructivist tradition in the field of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS), the dissertation approaches the regulation of the Internet as a site where the very nature of this technology – in terms of what it does, how it can be used and whether or not it can or should be regulated – gets invented and reinvented. However, rather than bracketing the building of the Internet from its governance, these processes are seen as mutually constitutive whereby the technology must be made governable in order to be governed. Consequently, given the many different and often competing visions about the Internet, the version that gets accepted (at least, momentarily) is shown to be crucial for how the technology is eventually received.