The aim of this thesis is to analyze how leadership is constructed as a narrative to explain what happens in organizations. Research on young co-workers in organizations has shown how young people are socialized into managerial and organizational cultures. At the same time these cultures and practices are changing. In addition, the younger generation is often expected to express new values or ideals in management. This thesis is developed from a social constructionist view on organization. The main research question is: How do young leaders construct leadership narratives in terms of their personal experience within organizations? The empirical material consists of interviews with 22 young leaders, 11 women and 11 men between 19 and 35 years old, encompassing 19 different organizations. Three of the young leaders were interviewed over a time period between one and two years. The remaining 19 were interviewed once. Leadership is constructed as the power to influence events and decisions in the organization and the responsibility for the outcome. Leadership is also constructed as an interpersonal power relationship. Leadership is analyzed as both construction and ordering of power and responsibility in interpersonal interactions. The analysis shows how the professional identity as a leader is constructed through a process of creative imitation. Emotions play an important role in the performance of the professional identity. Emotional experiences such as fear or vulnerability are often excluded or repressed in order to maintain competent professional appearances. Managers are expected to handle emotionally difficult situations. Prevailing responses– to ignore the situation or not to see at all vs. to acknowledge, act and react – are discussed. The latter category of responses is further analyzed as: to heal and to transform, to set boundaries and to react under stress. Fear or anxiety in these situations may activate survival strategies in interpersonal interactions. The underlying implication of the construction of leadership as an asymmetrical power relation may be that manipulation and codependency are plausible outcomes. / QC 20110909

Social exclusion of vulnerable children and families is a serious concern for policy-makers and practitioners alike. This doctoral thesis explores the social construction of exclusion in the UK. The thesis explores both historical and current processes of interactions between the socially excluded populations and policy agents. The empirical findings suggest that the neglect of the children's rights value perspective in social policy, and the resultant practice thereof, may be counter-productive to combating social exclusion. "... institutions perpetuate exclusion unofficially. Public Sector workers who reflect the prejudices of their society may institutionalise some kinds of discrimination" The Department for International Development (DfID), UK "it just kills you in the end.. especially because you don't know if you are doing more good than harm.. the worst decision for me is when I see the child should be removed from home but I know if I do that, he will never get the kind of therapeutic attention that he needs.. instead he will probably be in multiple placements and at the end of the day, it boils down to the choice whether you let him be abused by hi natural family or let the Government do it.. the abuse does not stop with intervention.. it's just the System that does it then.." "Practice is about watching your back not about what can I do for this child" Excerpts from interviews with child protection social workers, UK "Decisions were made for us, we were tossed here and there like a worthless piece of scum" Excerpts from interviews with care-leavers, UK Mayeda Jamal is a Doctoral student at the Center for Media and Economic Psychology at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), Sweden, and a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Organizational Social Psychology at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK. Mayeda has a Masters degree in Human Resource Management and a B.A. in Economics.

A feminist content analysis of writings and speeches of two main political figures of the Islamic government of Iran, Khomeini and Ahmadinejad, demonstrates the centrality of discourses around gender in their use of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and nationalist narratives. Essentialist beliefs about gender and the symbolic meaning of gender as social order and the "natural law of the universe" are the notions embedded in Khoemini and Ahmadinejad's narratives to suggest that changes in traditional gender relations are a threat to the order of the society. This study of dominance also reveals how the dominant culture produced by the Islamic state grasps on to the cultural elements of hegemonic discourse to bond coercion with legitimacy. Creating moral panics around changes in traditional gender relations and traditional definitions of femininity and masculinity is the main character of political speeches around women's issues and women's rights of these two figures. According to these narratives, femininity and gender "ideals" such as chastity, devotional motherhood, and women's role in maintaining the basis of the structure of the family are pivotal to the protection of the nation, its independence and its future.

Architecture and urban design are often powerful expressions of political desires to support and legitimise specific regimes. In many postcolonial cities, architecture and urban design are set out to construct national identity and affirm a political power that departs from the former colonial rule. Architecture and urban design may be used by successive postcolonial regimes to compete with each other to legitimise authority and symbolise power. While such concepts of national identity are established through a constellation of urban forms, national identity is always contested. Places may be used and interpreted in ways that differ from what is intended. Attempts to control the meaning of architecture and built form may conflict with the ways in which spatial practices undermine intended meanings.

This study explores the experiences of General Practitioners (GPs) and patients in the management of type 2 diabetes in contemporary Australia. I focus on the way the socioeconomic position of patients is a factor in that experience as my underlying interest is in exploring how health inequalities are understood, approached and handled in general practice. The study is thus a practical and grounded exploration of a widely debated theoretical issue in the study of social life, namely the relationship between the micro day-to-day interactions and events in the lives of individuals and the broad macro structure of society and the position of the individual within that. There is now wide acceptance and evidence that people’s social and economic circumstances impact on their health status and their experiences in the health system. However, there is considerable debate about the role played by primary medical care. Nevertheless, better theoretical understanding of the importance of psychosocial processes in generating social inequalities in health suggests medical care may well be important, as such processes are crucial in the care of chronic illnesses such as diabetes which are now such a large part of general practice work. I approach this study through an exploration of patient centred clinical practice. Patient centredness is a pragmatic, idealised prescriptive framework for clinical practice, particularly general practice. Patient centredness developed in part in response to critiques of biomedicine, and is premised on a notion of a more equal relationship between GP and patient, and one that places importance on the context of patients’ lives. It contains an implicit promise that it will help GP and patient engage with and confront social disadvantage.

Architecture and urban design are often powerful expressions of political desires to support and legitimise specific regimes. In many postcolonial cities, architecture and urban design are set out to construct national identity and affirm a political power that departs from the former colonial rule. Architecture and urban design may be used by successive postcolonial regimes to compete with each other to legitimise authority and symbolise power. While such concepts of national identity are established through a constellation of urban forms, national identity is always contested. Places may be used and interpreted in ways that differ from what is intended. Attempts to control the meaning of architecture and built form may conflict with the ways in which spatial practices undermine intended meanings.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka hur uppfattningen av det svenska vattenkraftsystemet förändrades under 1960-talet, samt att tillämpa teorin Social Construction of Technology, SCOT, på vattenkraften genom att studera debatten om Vindelälven. Frågan om Vattenfall skulle tillåtas bygga ut Vindelälven var central i 1960-talets vattenkraftsdebatt. I uppsatsen undersöks hur de tre grupperna Vattenfall, Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen och lokalbefolkningen längs älven förhöll sig till frågan om Vindelälvens framtid och vilka argument de använde sig av i debatten om älven. Uppsatsen undersöker om Vattenfall, Naturskyddsföreningen och lokalbefolkningen kan förstås som tre relevanta grupper enligt SCOTs definition, samt huruvida det svenska vattenkraftsystemet nådde closure 1970. Det material som har studerats utgörs av tidnings- och tidskriftsartiklar från de tre grupperna, publicerade under perioden 1960—1970. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Vattenfall och Naturskyddsföreningen uppfyller kriterierna för att betraktas som två relevanta grupper enligt SCOT. Vad gäller lokalbefolkningen är det mer komplicerat. Invånarna längs älven delar inte en gemensam uppfattning om utbyggnaden av Vindelälven och kan således inte betraktas som en relevant grupp, däremot finns det undergrupper som eventuellt uppfyller kriterierna. 1970 års beslut att bevara älven var avgörande för den fortsatta utbyggnaden av svenska älvar och kan ses som ett första steg på det svenska vattenkraftsystemets väg mot closure, vilket förmodligen nåddes 1993 i och med riksdagens beslut att klassa fyra älvar som nationalälvar.

The ‘localist turn’ in technology studies, exemplified by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), emphasises the agency of actors in innovation processes while, arguably, neglecting structural influences. They provide rather little guidance regarding methodological choices apart from encouraging rich description and offer only limited capacity to explain the dynamics of technological change. This thesis addresses the need to articulate a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the contextually-shaped, often highly contingent processes of technological innovation. For this purpose a single, in-depth longitudinal case study was conducted of the development, implementation and use of a strategic information system - a strategic network planning tool - in a German car company. It was analysed applying a biographical perspective which argues for extended analytical foci across multiple sites, moments and time frames in technology studies to account for the complexities and uncertainties inherent in technological change processes. A mixed repository of historical and ethnographic data has been collected, drawing on public and internal corporate documents as well as 44 interviews and extended periods of participant observation at multiple sites. The data was coded and analysed aided by simultaneously building an extensive data-rich timeline of the innovation journey. As a result, our empirically detailed focus on a twelve-year period is contextualised by a historical narrative considering corporate historical developments over three decades. An ecology metaphor is articulated to appreciate multiple episodes and moments of innovation dispersed in space and time - a view neglected by common metaphors of systems and networks. The metaphor underpins a loose framework, tentatively entitled the Ecological Shaping of Technology, that draws on concepts from science and technology studies and cognate discussions in the sociology of professions to engage with the intricacies of space and scales of time in studying the ‘Biographies of Artefacts and Practices’ (Pollock and Williams, 2009; Hyysalo, 2010). The framework pursues a dynamic, longitudinal understanding of the evolution of a protracted technology development project which went through significant changes in conception and in the players involved and their configuration. This is conceptualised in terms of the development of a ‘kernel’ (Ribes & Polk, 2015) of resources and services managed by, and made available to, an alliance of players. While alliances can shift, the kernel persists and evolves over time as players try to attract more resources by entering into negotiations in promising ‘arenas of expectation’ (Bakker et al., 2011) or navigating around those that are less amenable. Technology is portrayed as an element of a package of instrumentalities (de Solla Price, 1983) comprising theories, methods and instruments that are spread across a wider ecology of distributed boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Technologies crystallise from efforts of adopting, testing and developing packages to solve specific problems (Fujimura, 1995). A specific technology is co-developed, according to the set of local constrains and specifications delineated by a kernel's alliance of ecologies. These are understood in terms of Abbott’s (2005) conception of linked ecologies. The historically shaped and contingent ecological topography of an innovation project is highlighted as a major influence in the social shaping of technological artefacts.

Disordered eating in men is said to be uncommon with men forming less than ten per cent of reported cases. Yet it has been suggested that the number of males with eating disorders is beginning to increase, affecting more men than ever before. This presents problems for healthcare services that have created previous models of support around women. Current research offers pathological and epidemiological data, including information about testing men for eating disorders using male-centred instruments. However, understanding is aetiolated due to a focus on medical accounts of male disordered eating, rather than focusing on the stories that men themselves have to tell. This exploratory qualitative study addresses this problem by focusing on men’s stories of disordered eating. Four men share their accounts of living with an eating disorder and these are analysed using a hermeneutic approach, in order to glean insights into their experiences with food, body and self. These insights include an examination of the meaning of fat male bodies, analysis of the phenomenon of gender ambivalence that prevails in men with disordered eating and the fragmented and colonised nature of the male eating disordered self. These represent an original contribution to understanding as they have not been considered elsewhere in the literature to date. Additionally, an extensive analysis of the male eating disorder literature, use of a hermeneutic methodology and the positioning of male eating disorders within the context of masculinities studies further add to the novel value of this research.

Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-11T20:02:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Marieze Torresseg.pdf: 1307389 bytes, checksum: d7d33f1b576fc9e82a85d9c01c36cbb8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-05-26T11:03:36Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Marieze Torresseg.pdf: 1307389 bytes, checksum: d7d33f1b576fc9e82a85d9c01c36cbb8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-26T11:03:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Marieze Torresseg.pdf: 1307389 bytes, checksum: d7d33f1b576fc9e82a85d9c01c36cbb8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / A presente tese examina a discussão teórica sobre emoções no âmbito da produção sociológica norte-americana recente, através de algumas posições e polarizações recorrentes, que demarcam as fronteiras entre escolas de pensamento de perspectivas distintas de análise das emoções de um ponto de vista sociológico. As polarizações são abordadas no âmbito dos debates travados entre as posições caracterizadas como “biossocial,” representada por Theodore Kemper e Jonathan Turner, e “construtivista” por Arlie Hochschild, Susan Shott e Steven Gordon. No debate, as divergências dizem respeito à própria definição de emoções e de seus elementos componentes ou causais. Trata-se de saber se as emoções são inatas e universais, pré-fixadas no organismo e distinguidas por certos hormônios, ou se as emoções são “culturais-específicas” e a sua definição um produto da interpretação do ator. Essas discordâncias, transpostas para as proposições de articulação dos níveis macro e micro de análise, contrastam a posição construcionista de que a vida social é organizada por “regras de sentimento” e “vocabulários de emoções”, com a posição biossocial que propõe os conceitos de poder e status como dimensões estruturantes, universais, fisiologicamente correlacionadas, de todas as relações sociais humanas. Considera-se que as divergências tornadas explícitas nesses debates, retomam e atualizam questões polemizadas pelos pragmatistas William James e John Dewey. Concluise que uma análise sociológica e integradora das emoções em seus nexos com o corpo ainda precisa ser buscada, embora já se configurem. / Salvador