This thesis is an ethnographic examination of a local punk subculture. Its focus is the processes of meaning construction and subcultural identity formation and maintenance. Through in-depth interviews and on-site observations, the meanings of punk emerge in acts of social co-construction. An empirical analysis of the ways by which individuals define and explore what is involved and valued in a punk identity provides insight into this subculture. The concept of punk as a social practice is investigated discursively through interviews and documented discussions. My goal is to uncover thematic ideas, beliefs, and values in these interactions that form a matrix of interlocking cultural expressions, collectively creating a shared subcultural identity. As with any subculture, punk appears to be governed by a set of cultural codes and norms. The research reported here indicates that these themes are dominated primarily by knowledge displays and symbolic boundary maintenance.

The two essays that comprise this thesis use personal narrative to discuss various aspects of illness, resistance and the body. The first essay uses performance theory to explore the social structures, mandates and restrictions concerning illness. I use the cancer experience to explore the co-creation of self, identity, and modes of being between "performer" and "audience." "Performer," in this case, is the "breast cancer patient," and the "audience" is comprised of the "social others.” The second essay explores cyborgization of the body, its painful effects, and associated social and moral values. It also discusses how we create theory and understanding of self through fiction, media and experience.

Įgalinimas yra procesas, vykdomas galios turėtojo, siekiančio pasidalinti savo galia ir suteikiančio galimybę kitiems žmonėms, bendruomenėms, organizacijoms padidinti savo gyvenimo kontrolę ar jo kūrimą, dalyvavimą sprendimuose, liečiančiuose jų gyvenimą. Socialinių paslaugų įstaigų tikslas – kokybiškai tenkinti socialiai atskirtų asmenų poreikius, siekiant jų socialinės integracijos. Socialinių paslaugų sferoje kliento priklausomybė nuo paslaugų yra perspėjimas, kad paslaugos neefektyvios, socialinio darbo tikslai nėra pasiekti. Įstaiga turi organizuoti pagalbos tekimą tokiu būdu, kad leistų klientui pačiam tvarkyti savo gyvenimą ir visaverčiai funkcionuoti be paslaugų teikėjo pagalbos. Vykstant viešojo sektoriaus reformoms, socialinės paslaugos tampa svarbesne socialinės apsaugos sritimi. Jos tampa reikšmingesnės socialinės apsaugos sistemoje, keičiasi pačių socialinių paslaugų struktūra, didėja jų mastas. Vis aktyviau socialines paslaugas teikia nevyriausybinės organizacijos, pavyzdžiui, vaikų dienos centrai. Jos kelia sau pagrindinį tikslą – socialinių paslaugų plėtrą socialinės rizikos šeimoms ir vaikams. Šios institucijos siekia padėti probleminių šeimų nariams išugdyti gebėjimą pasirūpinti savimi, integruotis į visuomenę. Įgalinančios aplinkos konstravimas organizacijoje yra ilgalaikė ir nuolatinė veikla. Tam, kad susiformuotų stipri organizacija, turi būti remiamasi daugybe nuostatų ir vertybių, kurias galima įvardinti kaip: kūrybiškumo skatinimas, rizikos ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Empowerment is a process carried out by the holder of power, seeking share his power and allow access to other people, communities and organizations to increase their control over life and its development, participation in decisions affecting their lives. The social service agencies aim is satisfy qualitative all the needs of socially excluded people to their social integration. Dependence of the customer service in social services field is warning that services inefficient and social worker objectives are not achieved. The institution should organize on support in a way that allows customers to manage their own lives and play a full function without service provider for assistance. During the public sector reform, social services are becoming more important in social security. They become more significant in social security system, the structure of social services are changing, their size is increasing. Social services more often provided by non-governmental organizations, such as child day care centers. They raised its main objective - development of social services, social risk families and children. These authorities seek to help problematic families to develop the ability to take care of themselves, to integrate them into society. Empowerment environment construction of the organization is a long term and permanent basis. The emergence of a strong organization must be based on a number of provisions and values, which can be described as: promotion of creativity... [to full text]

The aim of this study was to examine how state representatives prepared domestic violence, regarding the economic consequences of women exposed to violence. In order to achieve a profound and comprehensive view of the governmental keyfigures discussion we performed five interviews and studied selected governmental preparatory works between the years 1995-2015. We used theory on social construction as an approach and certain themes were more regular in our empirical material, which we compiled in three different discourses. According to our empirical material the economic situation of women exposed to violence is caused by inequality and gender power structure. The solution given by state representatives are referred to the municipality and social services. But despite these results, our main result is the silence. Conclusively, this study displays, private economic consequences of combined women are not given much attention in state representatives preparation of domestic violence.

Against Sally Haslanger’s influential position, I argue that gender is not needed to ensure the just treatment of sexually differentiated human bodies. Gender is only needed if the just treatment of socially important sexual differences is most effectively realized through the use of gender terms, such as “woman” or “man.” In light of this aforementioned condition, I assess the following phenomena: sex differences relevant to health and medicine, reproduction, and childcare. In all of these cases, compared to gender terms, non-gender terms, such as “female,” “pregnant person,” or “lactating person,” more simply and accurately capture the morally relevant features of socially important sexually specific phenomena. For this reason, I find that the gender is not needed for justice.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans la contribution des recherches visant à recenser les conditions permettant de prévenir durablement les troubles musculo-squelettiques et psycho-sociaux dans les entreprises. Nous nous sommes interrogés sur la façon de créer les conditions de la mobilisation d'acteurs internes à un établissement, facteur d'efficacité des interventions, en vue de permettre la construction sociale de la prévention des troubles musculo-squelettiques et psycho-sociaux. Pour faire cela, nous avons suivis le déploiement d'une démarche de prévention des risques professionnels en milieu de soins appelée ORSOSA. Nous avons analysé qualitativement l'activité d'acteurs d'horizons et de niveaux hiérarchiques différents durant le déploiement d'une démarche de prévention primaire. Nos résultats nous amènent à identifier quatre catégories de conditions permettant la mobilisation des acteurs lors du déploiement d'une démarche préventive : en lien avec le contexte organisationnel, les stratégies utilisées par l'intervenant, le lien effectué par les acteurs internes entre leur activité individuelle et la démarche mise en œuvre et enfin le développement de l'activité collective. L'apport de cette thèse est à la fois de proposer une nouvelle méthodologie mais aussi un regard renouvelé aux praticiens et aux chercheurs, afin de mieux mobiliser des acteurs et ce le plus en amont possible lors du déploiement d'une démarche préventive. / This thesis aims to contribute to research aimed at identifying the conditions to sustainably prevent musculoskeletal and psychosocial disorders in companies. We brought into question how to create the conditions for the mobilization of stakeholders within an establishment, a factor for effective interventions, in order to enable the social construction of the prevention of musculoskeletal and psycho-social disorders. To do this, we followed the deployment of professional risk prevention approach in health care called ORSOSA. We qualitatively analyzed the activity of players backgrounds and different hierarchical levels during the deployment of a primary prevention approach. Our results suggest four categories of conditions for the mobilization of stakeholders when deploying a preventive approach: the organizational context, the strategies used by the practitioner, the link made by the internal stakeholders between their individual activity and gait implementation and finally the development of collective activity. The contribution of this thesis is to offer both a new methodology as well as a renewed overview to better mobilize stakeholders as early as possible when deploying a preventive approach, both to practitioners and researchers.

Detta examensarbete är gjort med syfte att identifiera diskurser i medias framställning av hemlösheten och de hemlösa samt att se om dessa diskurser har någon ideologisk grund. Tidigare forskning har visat på två huvudgrupper av diskurser där individens ansvar respektive samhällets ansvar ställs mot varandra. För detta genomfördes en diskursiv analys av debattartiklar och politiska uttalanden som publicerats i Aftonbladet och Dagens Nyheter. Vi valde att fokusera på dessa två tidningar då de är två av de tidningar som ges ut i störst upplaga i Sverige.  Tre övergripande diskurser kunde skönjas; samhällsperspektivet, individperspektivet samt individ- och samhällsperspektiv. I vårt resultat visade det sig att individperspektivet var den mest utbredda diskursen. Vi kunde inte finna att diskursen hade någon koppling till ideologi utan istället kunde kopplas till regerings- eller oppositionsställning. Yttranden från personer tillhörande partier i regeringsposition tenderade att ha ett individperspektiv på hemlösa och hemlöshet. De i opposition efterfrågade större insatser utifrån ett samhällsperspektiv. / This thesis has been made with the purpose of identifying discourses in the way media choose to portray the situation of the homeless as well as the homeless themselves. The aim is also to investigate whether these discourses have an ideological foundation. Previous research distinguishes two main discourses where the responsibility of the individual and the responsibility of the society are portrayed as being in opposition to each other. Our method has been to perform a discourse analysis of political statements and debate articles which have been published in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. We chose to focus on these two newspapers since they are two of the Swedish newspapers which sell the most copies. Three general discourses were visible; the perspective of the society, the perspective of the individual, and the third, combined perspective of the society and the individual. Our results showed that the perspective of the individual was the most wide-spread discourse. We did not find ground for any connection to ideology. Instead we found that it could be connected to the ruling government or to the opposing parties. Opinions from people belonging to a ruling political party tended to have the perspective of the individual in mind, whereas the opposing parties demanded greater efforts from society.

This thesis investigates how an institutional coordination of civic policies and organizational processes within Pride Toronto were brought to bear on the activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in their attempts to participate in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 Toronto Pride Parades. Utilizing an institutional ethnography (IE), I explore this issue in two key ways. First, by mapping a work-text-work sequence of QuAIA’s experience in applying to march in the 2010 Parade, I demonstrate how the application process was subject to social relations that extended beyond Toronto Pride. Second, through the elaboration of processing interchanges, I demonstrate how the experiences of QuAIA were hooked into a series of translocal relations via Pride Toronto’s funding relationship to the City of Toronto. These translocal relations working through the City of Toronto were themselves varied, from pro-Zionist pressure on individual City councilors, to an alignment with anti-tax and arguably homophobic interests on council. / Graduate

Using a feminist, autoethnographic methodology and in depth interviews with twenty-three participants, I sought to better understand the meaning of family memory keeping for women and their families through this research, paying particular attention to the ways that dominant gender ideologies shape family memory and the act of preserving family memory. This research also endeavoured to explore those instances wherein families lose that memory keeper due to memory loss, absence, or death. Interviews revealed that, despite its absence from the literature, women’s family memory keeping is a valuable form of gendered labour – and leisure – that makes significant individual, familial, and social contributions, while simultaneously reproducing dominant gender ideologies and gendered constructions of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family. Through an exploration of the loss of a mother’s memory due to illness, death, or absence, this study also demonstrated the loss of a mother’s memory is both deeply felt, and deeply gendered. However, this study illustrated participants challenging these dominant gender ideologies, as well, and using family memory keeping as a way to resist, critique, and cope. As such, this study speaks to the absence of women’s family memory keeping from the gendered work, leisure studies, social construction, and loss literature, contributing a better understanding of both the activity itself and the gendered ideologies that shape the activity, as well. Not only does this study speak to gaps in existing literature, but findings make fresh theoretical contributions to this literature through three new concepts: the notion of the good mother as the “remembering mother”, the concept of “compliance leisure”, and the re-envisioning of women’s unpaid labour as contributing to “the homing of the home”. And with these contributions to the literature, this research also provides valuable insight for professionals working to improve policy and services surrounding postpartum care, individual and family therapy, caregiving, extended care, and palliative care.

Background In recent decades, system-wide policies and substantial resources have been directed towards enhancing the use of ICT in learning contexts. This development can be observed at international and national levels. However, reports have indicated a ’slow uptake’ of the use of ICT for pedagogical purposes among compulsory schools and teacher education institutions. Although the teacher education at Umeå University follows this pattern, there have been several initiatives in using ICT for learning in the teacher education programmes. The aim of this study is to scrutinise the process in which ICT-supported methods for learning have been introduced, used and disseminated throughout teacher education. Methods Three ICT-supported methods for teaching and learning were chosen for this study: digital individual development planning (IUP), blogs and e-portfolios. To capture teachers’ and students’ experiences of introducing the pedagogical use of ICT, 115 interviews were conducted and four questionnaires were administered over a four-year period (2006-2010). Course documents and observations of blogs and e-portfolios supplied additional data. Hermeneutics was chosen as the methodological approach. Thematic content analysis was carried out in the first three part-studies, and theoretical frameworks suited for the identified themes were chosen for the analyses. Since pedagogical discourses appeared to be important, discourse analysis was used in the fourth part-study. A final meta analysis has been carried out and is presented later in this thesis. Results In Umeå, as in other countries, teacher education has been slow to adopt ICT for learning. Still, the use of ICT for learning has increased over time. ICT-supported methods such as IUP, blogs and e-portfolios have found their way into the context through a recontextualisation process in which ICT discourses and designs are socially constructed. However, the recontextualisation process could merely be found within sub-fields, such as teacher teams and project groups, since in the main-field (i.e. teacher education) traditional ways of teaching and learning have been internalised. These traditions hold symbolic capital, and teachers who have the means to do so will act according to their habitus and defend the traditions. The recontextualisation process will therefore be kept within the sub-fields, and the dissemination will be limited. Furthermore, the sub-fields are rather isolated from one another, and therefore pedagogical ICT discourses and designs are created in varied ways. However, none of them could be regarded as internalised, and the social construction of pedagogical ICT discourse and design has to be considered to be still ‘under construction’.