The aim of this thesis is to identify how a social citizenship for people with disabilities is shaped bythe normative structures in the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian law governing their right to transportin everyday life. The thesis deals with three types of transport provided by the public to private individuals: transport services, car allowances, and cash benefits for reimbursing transport costs forpeople with disabilities. For each provision, the focus of the study is directed by the followingquestions: – Is there a rights/duties relationship between the public and the individual? Who is eligible forprovision? How does public funding impact entitlement? Who is obliged to provide? What are thelegal guarantees for entitlement? Despite objectives within Nordic law and policy that people with disabilities should be compensated for their impairments, and allowed to lead independent and autonomous lives, the results from the thesis show that the various transport provisions do not fully realize this. The legal relations between the public and those with needs for transport in their everyday lives are characterized by control, scrutiny and questioning. In order to protect the public budgets from costs, the eligibility criteria in the law are so constructed as to ensure that only certain needs for transport, and only some impairments, can meet them. The national, regional and municipal governments, and the administrative courts, subject people with disabilities to intrusive inquiries regarding personal details and other circumstances in their lives, in order to be able to judge which needs for transport are to be considered legitimate and which are not. The thesis shows that the individual rights to, especially, Swedish and Norwegian transport provisions are poorly protected against political decisions to cut funding. Local and regional self-governance isan interest that always competes with individual legal rights and make them weaker, irrespective of whether these rights can be appealed in administrative courts. The conclusion in the thesis highlights how a social citizenship is shaped in the law governing the right to transport for people with disabilities, and that this social citizenship does not reinforce independence and individual autonomy for those who are dependent on the various provisions tomeet their needs for transport in their everyday lives.

Bakgrund: Från internationell forskning finns det i dagsläget kunskap om synen på hemlösa, deras egna upplevelser av sina villkor, sitt identitetsskapande, sin livssituation, och om de hemlösas brist på hälsa och vård. Forskning på samma område saknas dock i svensk kontext. Syfte: Studiens syfte var att i svensk kontext beskriva hemlösas upplevelser av sin vardag och erfarenheter från vård och omvårdnad - från de hemlösas perspektiv och omvårdnadens perspektiv. Metod: En empirisk studie med kvalitativ ansats som baserades på samtal och dialoger med hemlösa, och på en interaktiv intervju med en sjuksköterska som arbetade med hemlösa. Deduktiv innehållsanalys, modifierad efter Malterud (2009), som baserades på omvårdnadens metabegrepp. Resultat: Analysen resulterade i 14 subkategorier som i diskussionen sattes i syntes med omvårdnadens fyra metabegrepp. Slutsats: Analysen resulterade i ny kunskap som visar att den hemlöse lever i en miljö som innebär en stor risk för att vara i lidandets grepp och ha ohälsan som ständig följeslagare, även om den enskildes mål är hälsa. Den nya kunskapen har också visat att de hemlösa sitter inne med en paradoxal styrka och en vilja att skapa god relation med omvårdnaden. För att denna relation verkligen ska stödja den hemlöse mot hälsa, krävs av omvårdnaden att låta den hemlöse bli sedd, att bejaka den hemlöses människovärde och värdighet, samt från sin sida bygga relationen på etik, moral och ansvar; genom det hjälps den hemlöse till ett gott livssammanhang. / Background: From international research, there is knowledge about the perception of homeless people, their own experiences of their condition, their identity formation, their life situation, and about their lack of health care. Research in this field is deficient in the Swedish context. Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe homeless experiences of their everyday lives and experiences of care and attention - from the perspective of homeless and nursing perspectives, in a Swedish context. Method: An empirical study with a qualitative approach, based on conversations and dialogues with the homeless, and an interactive interview with a nurse who worked with homeless people. Deductive content analysis, modified by Malterud (2009), which was based on nursing meta-concepts. Results: The analysis resulted in 14 subcategories, and in the discussion the subcategories was put in relation to the four meta-concepts of nursing. Conclusion: The analysis resulted in new information showing that the homeless are living in an environment that poses a major risk to be in the grip of suffering and have poor health as a constant companion, even if the individual goal was health. These new findings have also shown that the homeless have a paradoxical strength and a willingness to create good relationship with nursing care. It is required of nursing, for this relationship to really support the homeless to health, to allow the homeless to be seen, to affirm the homeless human worth and dignity, and to build the relationship of ethics, morality and responsibility; and by this help the homeless to a good life.

State violence in Egypt is an embedded part of daily life and popular culture, and well documented in social and news media. The uprisings of January 11, which took place in Egypt were organized in large part against violence and torture regularly delivered by police forces. In this dissertation I examine the implications of chronic state violence on everyday life for low-income Egyptians. In doing so, this dissertation provides analysis of how violence shapes forms of intimacy within social life, how it shapes urban landscapes and the politics therein and how it informs individual piety and banal practices of security. This work contributes to studies within feminist geopolitics, memory and emotion within geography by understanding the lives of Cairenes through their experience of the landscape and places they inhabit, maneuver through, and create with the memory and threat of state violence. The project focuses on four selected sites in Greater Cairo: Kholousy Street in Shoubra, Musky Market in Old Cairo, Cairo University in Giza, and Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. These sites have been chosen because they represent different nodes of daily life (shopping, leisure, education, and political participation) for low-income Cairenes. Research methods include participant observation at the four sites, eleven focus groups and thirty-one interviews with low-income Cairo residents in two age cohorts: one group of participants between the ages of 18 and 26, and a second cohort between the ages of 49 and 57. For each of these questions, this project provides a gender sensitive comparison of the two age cohorts in order to gain insight into the role of youth and memory and gender in Cairenes’ interpretations and representations of the Mubarak era and the recent revolution.

Diabetes typ 1 (DM typ 1) är en av de mest förekommande kroniska sjukdomarna och drabbar främst barn och tonårningar. DM typ 1 kräver en livslång övervakning och behandling med insulininjektioner vilket ställer höga ansvarskrav på den drabbade. Barn- och tonåren karaktäriseras av olika stadium. För att främja utvecklandet av en god patientdelaktighet under hela mognadsprocessen är det viktigt att sjuksköterskan besitter fördjupad kunskap om barns upplevelser av att leva med DM typ 1. Syftet med litteraturstudien var att beskriva barn i åldrarna 10-18 års upplevelser av att leva med DM typ 1. Metoddelen var en litteraturstudie som bestod av tio vetenskapliga artiklar. Resultatet framfördes genom tre huvudteman och tre underkategorier: Upplevelsen av egenvård, upplevelsen av stöd med underkategorierna; stöd genom föräldrar, stöd genom vänner och stöd genom sjukvårdsteamet och skolan. Det sista temat beskrev upplevelsen av sjukdomens påverkan på vardagen. Över tid upplevdes förståelsen och kunskapen av sjukdomen öka vilket genererade i förbättrad egenvård. Barn upplevde att en god problemlösningsförmåga var nyckeln till en välfungerande vardag. Varje patientmöte måste på en djupare nivå anpassas efter individen för att optimera vardagsupplevelsen för en person med DM typ 1. Sjuksköterskans roll i förbättringen av den unge individens vardagsupplevelser bör därför diskuteras mer. / Diabetes type 1 (DM type 1) is one ofe the most common chronical diseases and affects mainly children and adolescents. DM type 1 requires a lifelong monitoring and treatment with insulin injections, which sets high standards of responsibility on the affected person. Childhood and adolescence is characterized by different phases. To foster the development of a good patient participation thoughout the maturation process, it is important that nurses possess indepth knowledge about youth´s experiences. The aim of this study was to describe children´s, in the age of 10-18, experiences of livning with DM type 1. The method was a literature study which consisted of ten scientific articles. The findings was performed by three main themes and three sub-categories: the experience of self-care, the experience of support with the sub-categories: support from parents, support from friends and support through the healtcare team and the school. The last theme described the experience of the diseases impact on everyday life. Over time the experienced understanding and knowledge of the disease increased, which generated in improved self-care. Children experienced that good problem solvning skills were the key to a functioning everyday life. Each meeting with a patient must in a deeper way be adapted to the individual to optimize the experience of everyday life for a young person with DM type 1. The nurses role in improvning young people´s experiences of everyday life should therefore be discussed further.

This study examines collaborative work between colleagues in the newsroom of local radio stations. Through the framework of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis the overall aim is to explore how backstage work in the newsroom is initiated, established, and negotiated as a collective knowledge-based practice. Based on video ethnographic fieldwork in five local radio stations, the analyses demonstrate how the newsroom is constituted as a collegial knowledge-based practice through the ways in which colleagues contribute to the accomplishment of seemingly individual tasks in the production of news, and through encounters where journalists request assistance from colleagues to carry out work assignments that are typically technical/practical in their character. The analyses highlight the participants’ epistemic orientations as an interactional engine, but emphasize how this orientation is made relevant for professional actions. Examining in detail how members orient to epistemic asymmetries when requesting assistance in individual tasks, it is shown how accounts expressed in those situations are often double barreled in that they also explicate if the current situation is to be met with instructions or a division of labour. When examining the interactional sequences that ensue in response to requests for help, it is shown how those situations can be understood as communicative pedagogical projects, how the tutor in situ must decompose the overall task into relevant steps and formulate these composite actions so they can be recognized and performed by the colleague. It is also shown how embodied action or absence of expected embodied action is treated as expressions of knowledge, that is, epistemic stance. In these everyday pedagogical practices, the participants establish a local rationality and a situation where two professional colleagues interact. The study thus demonstrates how interaction with colleagues contributes to institutional tasks as well as to the development of different professional skills. In highlighting collaborative work between colleagues in newsrooms the study contributes to the field of epistemics in social interaction, collegial work, talk in institutions, and newsroom ethnographies.

Lernende sind zunehmend herausgefordert ihren Lernprozess selbstständig zu steuern, zu organisieren und zu gestalten. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht von diesen Erwartungen aus und fragt nach den kreativen Prozessen in der Lerntätigkeit. Dazu wird eine kritische Prüfung von Lerntheorien hinsichtlich ihrer Berücksichtigung von Kreativität und Materialität unternommen. Durch Entwicklung eines Designbegriffs, der die scheinbar selbstverständlichen Techniken und Strategien im Lernalltag als Alltagsdesign erfasst, wird ein wenig berücksichtigtes Forschungsgebiet eröffnet, das in qualitativen Untersuchungen medienübergreifend analysiert wird. Die verschiedenen Aspekte des Alltags­designs in der Lerntätigkeit – die Einrichtung des Arbeitsplatzes, das Aufgabenmanagement, die Aufbewahrung und die Verarbeitung von Lernmaterial werden detailliert beschrieben und analysiert. Resultat ist eine gegenstandsbezogene Theorie des Alltags­designs in der Lerntätigkeit, die einen Beitrag zum Verständnis von Wissensarbeit als materiale Praxis liefert. / This thesis is a contribution to current debates about technology enhanced learning – namely “web 2.0” and “e-learning 2.0” where learners are expected to be active creators of knowledge. The figure of the learner as creative designer is addressed in this work, which concentrates on learners’ individual activity. The focus on the individual contrasts with many current studies about learning which center on collaborative aspects in knowledge building. First a review of learning theories is undertaken to examine their contributions to questions of materiality and creativity in learning activities. Turning to design research, a notion of design as practice is developed, which here complements and enhances current learning theories. Adopting notions of “use” and “user” the everydayness of design is reconstructed, leading to a conceptualization which is suitable to everyday activities of learners. From this everyday design perspective, the research question is formulated: How is learning activity accomplished as design activity? This question is tackled through several ethnographically oriented studies that focus on the individual everyday practices of students in their natural working environments. The analysis of the ethnographic data is developed using a Grounded Theory approach. A descriptive story is developed that analyzes arrangements of workplaces and objects, storage and task management, and the production of personal learning material as design. From these concepts four core aspects of everyday design in learning activities are developed: The design of the environment, “becoming designed”, designing oneself, and designing the design process. A model of the everyday design process is proposed which reveals both its creative and persistent side. The notion of everyday design in learning activities is an important concept to understand learners’ difficulties in knowledge building and to advance the development of learning strategies.

should one react against the laziness of railway tracks between the passage of two trains investigates the everyday as experienced in the post-industrial landscape. Through the activities of walking and mapping, fieldwork is conducted during treks that follow the route of the railroad in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. I examine detritus as post-readymade artifacts of the industrial economy that has abandoned the area. Interventions of minimal gestures engage the inherent narratives of these discarded materials. Improvised assembled sculptures mark my route as a form of wayfinding that re-appropriates the neglected urban space of the railroad right of way. Online maps document these treks as open works of art to be completed by participants as self-guided walks. The activity of walking and assembling sculptures in these marginal landscapes is a playful strategy that resists the alienation of immaterial labour in our contemporary economic context.

Formal education is primarily based upon learning about space through static two-dimensional representations, while landscape architecture responds to the ever-changing spatial and temporal conditions of the material world. The film medium, with its illusion of movement and three-dimensionality, offers an easily accessible antidote to this conundrum. Although cinematic settings are often constructed to promote a particular narrative rather than emulate physical reality, these filmic worlds trigger powerful imagery which overwhelms the lived experience of space. Through the analysis of three seminal films by director Alfred Hitchcock – Rear Window, North by Northwest and The Birds – this project represents an endeavour to deconstruct the haunting filmic atmospheres which transformed my perceptions of three familiar landscapes. Through the use of drawing and composite graphics, I have sought to understand this cinematic ostranenie – or defamiliarization – of the everyday and its underlying creative potential for the realm of landscape architecture.

The overall aim of this thesis was to study elderly persons’ everyday life and the benefits of community-based day care rehabilitation (DCR). Further aims were to describe everyday life as experienced by elderly persons eligible for DCR and what they expected to gain from attending DCR. Participants in  study I and II were 22 prospective elderly day-care patients with physical disabilities. Interviews about their experiences of everyday life (study I) and their expectations of DCR (study II) were conducted and analysed according to a qualitative research approach called phenomenography. In study III 15 elderly persons were interviewed about changes in everyday life after having been discharged from DCR. A narrative approach was used for analysing the interviews. In Study IV occupational therapy patients’ records from 59 patients that had been discharged from DCR were analysed using deductive content analysis for describing individual treatment goals and level of goal attainment. The findings in study I, showed that cessation of activities and social contacts resulted in feelings of resignation and dejection for some participants. Participants also described how activities and social contacts continued, albeit in a different way, and that being active resulted in feelings of pleasure. In study II the findings described expectations of participating in physical training and socialisation with others at the DCR. The findings in study III, in the form of four case-stories, described positive changes in the participants’ everyday life such as improved occupational performance and heightened sense of wellbeing. The findings indicate that it was a combination of several events that together contributed to the changes. The findings in study IV showed that “Walking” was the category that contained the highest proportion of treatment goals. A majority of the treatment goals were either completely achieved or partially achieved. DCR could have a significant impact on elderly persons’ everyday life.

The everyday practices of maternity and beauty are important for the enactment of femininity. This dissertation deals with femininities created in the context of changing ideas about “normality” in Soviet Russia during the mid 1930s-1960s and explores a diversity of norms, discourses and rituals. The main sources are women’s magazines, advice books, and interviews with women living now in three different cities of the Russian Federation – Moscow, Saratov (Volga region) and Ufa (capital of Bashkortostan Republic). The results of the research suggest that some parts of the Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty turn out to be similar to those that were characteristic for other European countries of the same historical period. At the same time the interviews show that the modern practices of medical and welfare institutions, the consumption of clothes as well as advice about appearance and childcare were situated in the context of shortages of goods, women’s work outside of home, rhetorics of the “naturalness” of maternity for every woman as well as that of a woman’s particular need to care about looking nice. Together with the home reproduction of many rural/patriarchal rituals of maternity and beauty it led to a contradictory everyday performance of femininity. Fluctuating categories of social status, ethnical belonging, geographical location and generation also contributed to a diversity of femininity constructions. Common sense normativities concerning practices of becoming a mother, caring for a baby and making oneself beautiful suggest that Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty were only partly accepted and reproduced by women. They were also partly rejected and subverted in everyday practices. The analysis of maternity and beauty practices shows that performative femininities were utterly complex. / <p>Boken innehåller en sammanfattning på ryska.</p>