This thesis, titled A for Effort, examines how three organizations that are granted state funding by the Swedish Gender Equality Agency understand the concept of intersectionality. The understandings are put in relation to previous understandings of the concept, for example the feminist debate of its advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the analysis is conducted through discourse theory and Carol Bacchi's WPR-approach that together are applied as a critical eye to how intersectionality is represented in the texts of the organizations. The study finds that while intersectionality is understood as a way to inclusion, the understandings are also constructing divisions.

Denna uppsats, ”Vilket utrymme för nyandlighet finns inom Svenska kyrkan – En kvalitativ diskursiv läsning av debatten rörande nyandlighet i Kyrkans tidning”, har som syfte att synliggöra den eller de diskurser som är framträdande rörande nyandlighet inom Svenska kyrkan samt hur bilden av nyandlighet konstrueras av Svenska kyrkan. Detta görs genom en närläsning av artiklar vilka berör ämnet nyandlighet i Kyrkans tidning under åren 2014–2015. Materialet analyseras med en diskursteoretisk ansats utifrån ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv. Resultatet påvisar tre stycken framträdande diskurser rörande nyandlighet inom Svenska kyrkan. Analysen av materialet belyser även hur den antagonism, som uppsatsen hävdar råder inom den svensk-kyrkliga diskursen, påverkar Svenska kyrkans framtid som samfund. Detta genom jämförelse med annan forskning inom fältet. / This essay, “What space is there for alternative spirituality in the Church of Sweden?” has as its purpose to discover the discourse or discourses that is to be found regarding spirituality within the Church of Sweden. Also to analyse how the picture of spirituality is created within the Church of Sweden. This will be done through a qualitative reading of articles published during the years 2014–2015 with connection to the topic spirituality in the magazine Kyrkans tidning (The church’s newspaper). The material will be analysed using discourse theory with a social constructivism perspective. The result of the analysis points out three main discourses regarding spirituality within the Church of Sweden. The analysis also puts light on how the apparent antagonism affects the future of the congregation. This through comparing the essays result with other studies in the field.

This study aims to address the longstanding questions surrounding the consistently low levels of support articulated towards the European Union (EU)by British citizens. Existing studies highlight that political identities are closely related to the levels of support citizens across the EU express for the process of European integration. Citizens who define their identity in exclusively national terms tend also to oppose the process of European integration and their country’s participation in this process. Present studies, however, fail to provide an adequate account of the emergence of exclusively national identities and their prevalence in member-states such as the UK. The citizens of the UK have expressed consistently low levels of support for the process of European integration and for British membership of what is now the EU, since Britain’s accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) over 30 years ago. Similarly, the UK has one of the highest proportions of citizens who define their identity in exclusively national terms of any EU memberstate. The argument presented in this thesis is that the low levels of support for the EU and the prevalence of exclusively national identity constructions amongst UK citizens must be understood in the context of British discourses about the EU. I employ the conception of subjectivity developed by post-structuralist discourse theory in order to examine the emergence of an exclusively national form of British identity within media debates on the EU treaty reform process. Discourse theory offers a set of concepts and logics through which it is possible to investigate the structure of eurosceptic discourses. Furthermore, drawing on the insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is able to account also for the strength and longevity of these constructions of national identity. This thesis identifies a eurosceptic discourse of British national identity characterised by an underlying logic of nationalism, according to which nations are seen as natural political communities and the nation-state the most logical unit of political organisation. This is evident not only in debates about the powers of the EU, but also in the relationship constructed between the UK and other member-states in the EU. In addition, the EU is itself constructed as a quasi-state and functions in these discourses as the ‘other’ against which Britain is defined. The former is seen as a hostile, foreign power bent on assuming ever greater control over the UK. These constructions of Britain and the EU feed into fantasmatic constructions of subjugation and oppression, which help account for the strength and resilience of eurosceptic discourses. The final part of the thesis examines the pro-European voices in the British media. However, it is not possible to discern a coherent pro-European discourse in the same way in which it is possible to identify the eurosceptic discourse. I outline the extent to which these pro-European voices challenge the predominant eurosceptic discourse, and offer alternative constructions of Britain’s relationship with the EU which may form the basis of more inclusive identity constructions.

This thesis explores the political struggles that followed after the appearance of irregular migrants in Sweden. The analysis starts from the assumption that the group’s precarious circumstances of living disrupted the understanding of Sweden as an inclusive society and shed light on the limits of the welfare state’s inclusionary ambitions. The overarching analytical point of entry is accordingly that the appearance of irregular migrants constitutes an opening for contestation of the demarcation of the welfare state. The analysis draws on two strands of theory to explore this opening. Citizenship theory, first, provides insights about the contradictory logics of the welfare state, i.e. the fact that it rests on norms of equality and inclusion at the same time as it is premised on a fundamental exclusion of non-members. Discourse theory, furthermore, is brought in to make sense of the potential for contestation. The study approaches these struggles over demarcation through an analysis of the debates and claims-making that took place in the Swedish parliament between 1999 and 2014. The focal point of the analysis is the efforts to make sense of and respond to the predicament of the group. The study shows that efforts to secure rights and inclusion for the group revolved around two demands. The first demand, regularisation, aimed to secure rights for irregular migrants through status, i.e. through the granting of residence permits, whereas the second demand, access to social rights, aimed to secure rights through turning the group into right-bearers in the welfare state. The thesis concludes that the debates and claims-making during the 2000s resulted in a small, but significant, shift in policy. In 2013, new legislation was adopted that granted irregular migrants access to schooling and health- and medical care. I argue that this was an effect of successful campaigning that managed to establish these particular rights as human rights, and as such, rights that should be provided to all residents regardless of legal status. Overall, however, I conclude that there has been an absence of more radical contestation of the citizenship order, and of accompanying notions of rights and entitlement, in the debates studied.

Uppsatsens syfte är att genom diskursanalys identifiera hur begreppet “partnerskap” tillskrivs mening genom olika diskurser inom ramen för hållbar global utveckling, med särskilt fokus på privatoffentliga partnerskap (POP). Genom att tillämpa diskursiva begrepp från Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori har tre huvudsakliga diskurser och tillhörande nodalpunkter identifierats: globalisering, governance och solidaritet. Dessa olika men delvis överlappande diskurser tillskriver olika meningar till partnerskapsbegreppet, likväl som olika roller och identiteter till privat respektive offentlig sektor. Partnerskap är konstruerat som en nödvändighet för att lösa globala problem, en ideal samverkansform för hållbar utveckling samt som ett uttryck för global solidaritet. Vidare framkommer att privat sektor tillskrivs en mer aktiv roll, medan offentlig sektor ges en mer passiv och stöttande roll. / By applying discourse analysis, the purpose of this essay is to identify how different meanings are assigned to the term “partnership” through competing discourses in the context of global Sustainable Development, with special attention devoted to Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Using concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, three main discourses and corresponding nodal points have been identified: globalization, governance and solidarity. These different albeit somewhat overlapping discourses apply different meanings to the term partnership, and also attribute different roles and identities to the public and private sector respectively. Partnerships are constructed as a necessity for solving global issues, an ideal form of governance for sustainable development and as a natural expression for global solidarity. Furthermore, the results point towards a more active role appointed to the private sector, whilst public institutions are assigned a more passive and supportive role.

This paper is about how students, specifically those who have become marginalized becauseof neuro psychological divergences, depression and one case of narcolepsy, may, by usingself narration in art and media education, promote agency in order to develop the capability ofself advocating. Children must develop a perspective of themselves within society and itssocial structures in order to participate in the discourses concerning themselves as is theirdemocratic right according to the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child.Educators of art and media are in a position to accommodate the intellectual developmentleading towards a meta perspective, by integrating the autobiographical into the ordinarycurriculum. Learning through storytelling is a method that can be applied in both visual artsand media to this end.The artistic manifestation of this work: seven students who attended Nikeungdom, an alternative high school program which does not lead to a degree, were asked toshare their life stories offering insight into how the autobiographical, narrating the self, can beaccessed and why it can be developmentally meaningful. These stories manifested in anedited audio file in which the students told about their journey through the educational systemand their experiences of performing in ways that do not fit inside “the box”. The audio filewas played as sound graffiti from speakers hidden in a tree outside of Konstfack, theeducational institution I attended. This symbolizes divergent students’ exclusion fromrepresenting themselves within formal institutions. The graffiti, subtle and subversive, is alsomade to be played outside of the Board of Education and the psychological institutions thatare supposed to care for these peoples’ development and wellbeing; their social inclusion. Theinstitutions that are in place to form children’s lives exclude these children’s own voices, theyare not enabled to represent themselves. The fact that there was no audience prepared to takethe time and make the effort to listen to the compilation of stories told by these outsiders wasmeaningful for the work. It was also important that the audio piece was not orchestrated as anextravaganza using showmanship to attract attention. It is the job of the authorities, theinstitutions, the politicians, the teachers and psychologists to listen and hear actively,encouraging social inclusion and self-representation within the governing institutions.

Change is a timely issue across organisations, particularly since the start of the economic crisis, and especially within English local government. Yet, this question remains dominated by macro and micro explanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or leadership factors for successful change. This thesis problematises this literature, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) political discourse theory and its mobilisation by critical management studies of organisational change. Three avenues are identified to further this literature. First, the organisation is analysed as an ongoing and fragile hegemonic project in which spaces are defined and consent must be constantly renewed. Second, the organisation is recast as a discursively constituted ‘site’ within a flat ontology, where change is not the result of some ‘bigger’ phenomena such as neo-liberalism or austerity, but instead is the product of situated articulations, disparate demands being mobilised as threats or opportunities requiring change. Finally, a third proposition articulates leadership in organisations as a set of multiple and changing practices, pragmatically deployed by organisational players. In exploring those avenues, a five-step ‘logics of critical explanation’ approach is deployed, characterising organisational change practices according to social (rules and norms), political (inclusions and exclusions), and fantasmatic (fears and hopes) logics (Glynos and Howarth, 2007). A nine month case study of an English County Council and its local strategic partnership’s organisational change project, Integrated Commissioning 2012 (IC 2012), is analysed to problematise the emergence, transformation and failure of practices of change in organisations. Rather than a set of factors or top-down causes and effects, this research demonstrates how change, organisations and leadership are best explained as discursive constructions, where a set of conditions drawn from a given site must be problematised. This research contributes to critical explanations of organisational change politics in three ways. First, by developing the concept of hegemony and hegemonic spaces, this thesis evidences how organisations and change are the result of ongoing struggles, consent being notably gathered by the constant refuelling of the fantasmatic appeal of change. Second, framing the organisation as a site generates a more complex, situated and dynamic understanding of the mobilisation of disparate demands within change discourses. Third, by considering leadership as a set of changing discursive practices and developing four situated dimensions of leadership in the case study, this research adds to critical leadership studies and discursive discussions of the role of individuals in organisational politics.

A Comissão Intergestores Bipartite (CIB) foi instituída pela Norma Operacional Básica 01/93 e responde pelos aspectos operacionais do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS). É um espaço de negociação e pactuação entre gestores municipais e estaduais, promovendo a integração dos diferentes sistemas municipais de saúde sob coordenação do governo estadual. As normas expedidas pela CIB, na forma de resoluções, têm natureza jurídica de direitos-meio, isto é, estabelecem os procedimentos específicos para realização do direito à saúde, permitindo que todos os potenciais destinatários destas normas possam conhecer, aderir, criticar ou mesmo judicializá-las. O poder normativo da CIB decorre da previsão legislativa expressa para regular os aspectos operacionais do SUS e da legitimidade democrática, exercida diretamente pelo cidadão, ou através dos Conselho Estadual de Saúde (CES). As normas que emanam deste fórum deliberativo devem ser respeitas por integrarem o ordenamento jurídico e cumprirem sua função de instrumentalização normativa do SUS. Nesse sentido, o objetivo desta pesquisa foi discutir o poder normativos da CIB e a efetividade de suas normas, a partir do paradigma do discurso do direito. Realizamos uma análise documental, a partir das resoluções e das atas da CIB, para compreender sua dinâmica discurso-deliberativa e caracterizá-la, ou não, como um espaço de gênese democrática de direitos. Identificamos e classificamos as propostas aprovadas quanto à correspondência com as resoluções do CES, quanto ao conteúdo, à forma de aprovação à dinâmica da discussão das propostas aprovadas que resultaram em resoluções. Foi possível perceber que há um grande potencial democrático na CIB, um potencial que precisa ser explorado. Mas há também fragilidades e contradições na dinâmica das discussões no interior da Intergestores. Há indício de uma institucionalização que mina o potencial democrático-discursivo e se fecha à participação e controle social. Em tempos de uma democracia e de um sistema jurídico em crise de legitimidade, espaços como a CIB devem cada vez mais se abrir para a participação popular, estimulando uma radicalização democrática, construindo instrumentos de participação da sociedade civil e de abertura às novas formas de expressão da democracia participativa, que escapa às formas institucionais tradicionais / The Intermanager Bipartite Commission (IBC) was instituted by the Basic Operational Norm 01/93 and responds for the operational aspects of the Unified Health System (UHS). It is a forum for negotiation and pactuation between municipal and state managers, promoting the integration of the various municipal health systems coordinated by the state government. The norms issued by the IBC in the form of resolutions , have the nature of procedural rights, in other words, establish specific procedures for fulfill the right to health , allowing all potential receivers of these norms to acknowledge, support, criticize or even challenge them in court. The normative power of the ICB results from express legal prevision to regulate the operational aspects of the UHS, and its democratic legitimacy is the result of the control exercised directly by citizens or through the State Council of Health (SCH). The norms that emanate from the ICB should recognize as a part of the legal order and fulfill its operational goal inside the legal health system. Accordingly, the objective of this research was to discuss the normative power of the IBC and the effectiveness of its resolutions, under the paradigm of the discourse theory of law. The methodology was fulfilled through the documentary analysis of the resolutions and discussions of IBC, to understand its deliberative and discursive dynamics to characterize it, or not, as a forum for democratic genesis of rights. We identify and rank the proposals approved as its correspondence with the resolutions of the SCH, as its the content, its approval procedures, and the dynamics of the discussion to approve proposals that resulted in resolutions. We observed that there is a great democratic potential in IBC, a potential that needs to be explored. But there are also weaknesses and contradictions in the dynamics of the discussions within the Intermanager. There is evidence of a potential institutionalization that undermines democratic discourse and closes the IBC to social participation and control. In times of a democracy and a legal system in a crisis of legitimacy, spaces like the IBC must increasingly open to popular participation, encouraging democratic radicalization, building instruments for civil society to participate and openness to the new forms of expression of democracy, which escapes the traditional institutional forms

"This thesis presents learning and interaction algorithms to support a human teaching hierarchical task models to a robot using a single or multiple examples in the context of a mixed-initiative interaction with bi-directional communication. Our first contribution is an approach for learning a high level task from a single example using the bottom-up style. In particular, we have identified and implemented two important heuristics for suggesting task groupings and repetitions based on the data flow between tasks and on the physical structure of the manipulated artifact. We have evaluated our heuristics with users in a simulated environment and shown that the suggestions significantly improve the learning and interaction. For our second contribution, we extended this interaction by enabling users to teaching tasks using the top-down teaching style in addition to the bottom-up teaching style. Results obtained in a pilot study show that users utilize both the bottom-up and the top-down teaching styles to teach tasks. Our third contribution is an algorithm that merges multiple examples when there are alternative ways of doing a task. The merging algorithm is still under evaluation. "

This thesis adopts a bottom-up, qualitative approach to Palestinian identity construction in East Jerusalem and asks how the new politics and altered geography of the city since Oslo are recreating Palestinian subjectivities and redefining Palestinian struggle. I make the case that East Jerusalemites are doubly marginalised, first as Palestinians spatially and politically dislocated from the West Bank, then as residents of Israel, inside the politics and economy of the state but permanently excluded from the national project. Distanced from both state projects and from the discursive structures through which Palestinian identity was constructed after 1967, East Jerusalem residents are redefining from below what it means to be Palestinian in ways that are unfamiliar to Palestinians elsewhere in the occupied territories. Drawing on the vocabulary and theoretical contours of discourse theory, I problematise the top-down optic favoured by mainstream academic approaches which essentialises identities and privileges an occupation/resistance binary. I suggest that a ground-level approach to everyday practices in East Jerusalem sheds light on the extent to which existing nationalist and resistance discourses have either lost or changed meaning for Palestinian residents and makes evident the complexities of domination which are not visible from an elevated perspective. I suggest that the view from the ground in East Jerusalem is significantly underexplored and that from this position, the assumptions underlying existing analytic approaches to Palestinian identity and struggle are called into question.