En möbel som har ett tydligt program, en tydlig funktion kan vara begränsande. I min metod har jag utgått ifrån en möbel och förbisett dess program för att vidga mitt sökfält när jag har gjort om den. Jag har sett begreppen funktion, upplevd funktion och materiell funktion som värden som går att höja eller sänka. Möbelns nätverk av komponenter har tillåtits bli instabilt för en stund, för att sedan se till helheten och göra nätverket stabilt åter igen - programmet får komma tillbaka men med en ny gestaltning.

The interest in further expansion of wind power has increased significantly during the last decades, as it is an environmentally and financially competitive energy source. Wind power is an important part of achieving energy goals and climate commitments in several countries, not least in Sweden. The localisation of the wind turbines has, however, appeared to be controversial and local resistance occurs more frequently as the energy source expands. This creates a complex environmental conflict where various actors struggle to obtain differing goal settings. Such a situation occurred in Ödeshög municipality, when wind power entrepreneurs expressed their interests in establish wind turbines in forest and transition areas of the municipality. This thesis aims to emphasise how wind power expansion became such a controversial environmental conflict in Ödeshög. To be able to do this, the conflict is analysed from an Actor-Network Theory perspective. This theoretical framework has been used with the ambition to describe how the involved actors strategically have acted to possibly influence the outcome of the conflict. The situation in Ödeshög have much to say about how these conflicts occur and by learning from this situation several similar conflicts may be avoided.

Univ., Diss.--Göteborg, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. [289] - 313.

Thesis (M.A.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

This paper analyzes a contentious road-building project by elucidating the different values involved and articulated in the decision-making process, delineating the various networks of institutions, individuals, organizations and materials formed around these values, and describing the outcome of the conflict as a function of the interactions between and among these networks. The project in question is the South Lawrence Trafficway, a section of Kansas Highway 10 (K-10) intended to route traffic south around the City of Lawrence, as opposed to its current alignment through the local streets of the city. This particular project has been contested for decades, primarily because of the historical, cultural and environmental values placed on the land through which the road is routed, known as the Wakarusa Wetlands, Baker Wetlands, or Haskell/Baker Wetlands. The analysis focuses on moments of value articulation- critical points during the conflict during which actors and networks of actors express their values with the intent of affecting the outcome of the decision. This paper’s analysis of the conflict draws on Henrik Ernstson’s framework for studying environmental justice and ecological complexity in urban landscapes, along with research on place meaning and desired outcomes for land-use decisions and natural resources planning efforts. The report will examine the decision-making process behind the proposal and approval of the South Lawrence Trafficway, taking into consideration the various institutional and individual actors (and networks of actors) involved, the positions, motivations and strategies of these actors, and the documents used in arguments for either side (maps, documents, court decisions, reports, etc.). The paper begins with an introduction, which includes a condensed summary and chronology of the South Lawrence Trafficway project. Literature review and research design sections follow. The next chapter discusses the actors, networks, values and materials involved in the conflict, as well as the legislative and institutional context within which the conflict occurs. The paper concludes with a summary of findings, and the proposal of future research questions. / text

This dissertation applies a mixed-methods model across three cases of climate risk in order to examine the rhetorical dynamics of uncertainties. I argue that a rhetorical approach to uncertainties can effectively scaffold civic agency in risk communication by translating conflicting interests and creating sites of public participation. By tracing the networks of scientists and their artifacts through cases of climate risk, I demonstrate how the performances of scientific ethos and their material-discursive technologies facilitate the personalization of risk as a form of scientific prudence, and thus a channel to feasible political action. I support these claims through a rhetorical model of translation, which hybridizes methods from discourse analysis and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in order assemble a data-driven and corpus-based approach to rhetorical analysis. From this rhetorical perspective uncertainties expand on our notions of risk because they reveal associations between scientific inquiries, probability assessments, and the facilitation of political dialogues. In each case, the particular insight of the model reveals a range of rhetorical potentials in climate risk that can be confronted through uncertainties.

This work traces the relationship of individual persons to national economic phenomena associated with consumer finance. The work follows the assemblage of individual consumer credit/debt agents through credit reporting and credit scoring, through to the aggregation of these agents in student loan-backed securitization and credit ratings. The work focuses on the unique technico-cultural constructions produced when human subjects are operatively conjoined to other related discursive and material objects, including related legislation, private corporations, and governmental bodies. The work explores how these unique constructions form stable networks connecting individuals to larger socio-economic settings: networks at once revealing the profoundly distributed nature of both ‘agents’ and their ‘agency,’ and at the same time intimating alternative approaches to questions of individual and collective agency outside the agent/structure dichotomy. The work concludes by addressing the place of this research in consumer finance generally, and the role of consumer finance in contemporary US economics broadly.

Organic farming has often been described as a single unified entity. Further, this unified praxis is often discussed as an alternative approach to agriculture and as a particular social and environmental movement. There has been increasing acknowledgement in academia that there are many different organics, or versions, or knowledges of organic, but what this means to individual farmers and farms remains to be explored. This is the point of departure for this work. This is an interdisciplinary project situated at the intersection of human geography, cultural anthropology, and political science, informed by and engaged with actor-network theory and visual methodologies. My methods include ethnographic participant observation, interviews, and photovoice. For this project I visited 17 small-scale organic farms in southern British Columbia. My findings indicate that different ideas, opinions, and narratives of organic abound, but most importantly that reconciling difference and nostalgia amid vast change was an overwhelming theme for the farmers and farms in this project.

The increasing importance of media, especially digital media, in society has been studied widely, from identity formation to activist movements. In international relations studies digital media’s impact has focused considerably on public diplomacy 2.0. This focus has caused a more holistic view of digital diplomacy to be neglected. This study explores how digital media’s impacts as a part of mediatization are seen within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Semi-structured interviews with 11 officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were conducted. These led to the creation of three thematic fields. The first one looks into how the agency of the Ministry is seen to be impacted by digitalization. The second section looks into how community building is seen as essential. And the third part investigated how the ministry evaluates the impacts of digitalization on other ministries of foreign affairs in the light of its own experience. The finding is that the ministry is expanding into a new digital sphere and that in the process of so doing the Ministry is not a tabula rasa, but it mirrors the cultural and political context of the country within the online sphere.

Införande av en HR Shared Service-organisation syftar till att omfördela HR-funktionens personalarbete och separera det administrativa personalarbetet från det strategiska. Med hjälp av ny teknologi kan HR administration flyttas över till HR/IT-system och HR-arbetet kan i större utsträckning ske via självservice som hanteras av ledare och medarbetare i organisationen. Den senaste tidens forskning kring HR Shared Service och det nya sättet att leverara HR-service visar att gamla sampels- och handlingsmönster fortfarande lever kvar mellan ledare och HR-medarbetare. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur HR Shared Service har införts på ett Telekom företag och vilka konsekvenser det fått för ledarna på företaget. Den empiriska undersökningen har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod i form av 11 intervjuer med ledare och projektdeltagare för införandet av HR Shared Service-organisationen. Tre deltagande observationer genomfördes med avseende på hur ledare söker information på HR-portalerna. Actor Network Theory (ANT) är ett perspektiv som används för att analysera hur människor och teknik sammanbinds i ett nätverk vid teknologiska och organisatoriska förändringar. Resultaten visar att införandet av Shared Service-organisationen har medfört en positiv utveckling för ledarna efter ett antal år. Förkortade handläggningstider och lättillgänglig information och support gav en effektivisering i det administrativa arbetet. Vidare framkommer att informationen på HR-portaler inte alltid är anpassad efter ledarens behov, vilket ger en osäkerhet i ledarskapet. Gamla samspelsmönster mellan ledare och HR Managers har i stor utsträckning omdirigerats till HR Shared Service. För att ledaren ska kunna utföra sitt HR-arbete och ledarskap på ett tillfredsställande sätt måste HR-service vara lättillgänglig, HR/IT-system lätta att använda samt att innehållet på HR-portaler ska vara verksamhetsanpassat. Det handlar om en kontinuerlig översättningsprocess mellan HR och ledare för att öka förståelsen för ledarens och verksamhetens behov både ur ett socialt och tekniskt perspektiv.