The main purpose of this thesis is to analyse the discourses of particularly vulnerable areas in Sweden, a categorization made by the police authority, as these areas appear within student theses, written between 2010 and 2018. The aim of using this material along with theoretical discourse analysis is to gain a deeper understanding of academic as well as non-academic perspectives of these areas, in relation to the ongoing discussion of territorial stigmatization. Three main discourses where identified, structuring the analysis: the suburban discourse, the Swedish society discourse, and the critical meta discourse. In addition, I found that these are also present within studies conducted by higher scholars, and thus conclude that student theses can successfully serve as a source through which wider academic discourses can be understood.  While parts of the discourses found has been identified by previous researchers as well, I argue that  the critical meta discourse, having been dismissed as marginal, is prominent as a discourse within student theses. However, although the critical meta discourse serves to nuance the predominantly gloomy discourse of the suburb, I argue that this narrative also functions to preserve this image, and therefore should be used with some caution. Due to the magnitude of studies set out to “challenge the bad reputation” of these areas, the solidity and importance of these reputation are seen as given and thus possibly enhanced.

This dissertation examines the processes by which multiple positioned actors in Participatory Action Research or Community-Based Participatory Research (PAR/CBPR) understand, reproduce, and contest systems of power and oppression in the context of their relationships and collaborations to support community-driven change efforts. The first chapter serves as a preface by reviewing relevant literature on participatory action research and power. The rest of the dissertation consists of three empirical papers. The first of these papers examined the extent to which scholars interrogate systems of power and oppression in (PAR/CBPR) to advance social justice. Scoping review methodology was employed to systematically review scholarly literature written in English and published between 2010 and 2020 across 5 databases. Thematic analysis and data charting yielded six scholarly articles using critical self-reflexive qualitative methodologies to explore manifestations of power within the partnership. Articles describe researchers employing individual critical reflections to confront individual assumptions, modify individual collaboration practices, and identify multilevel structures restraining participatory action approaches to research. The second paper explored the perceptions of researchers and community stakeholders regarding key processes questioning and addressing power issues within the (PAR/CBPR) collaborations. Individual in-depth semi-structured interviews (n=23) were conducted with social work researchers (n=13) and community stakeholders (n=10) with current or prior experience engaging in (PAR/CBPR) to examine the ways they define, negotiate, and address power differentials and oppression within their collaborations. Key emerging themes and discourses merged into a conceptual model illustrated with a metaphor of a river to highlight key social sites, paradigms of knowledge production, and the degree to which it aligns with the pursuit of social justice. Downstream strategies that sustain colonial forms of knowledge production included othering, disembodiment, and extraction. Conversely, upstream approaches underscored the centrality of redefining social relationships and ethical commitments within PAR/CBPR collaborations through the cultivation of unsettling counterspaces, counternarratives, and dialogical brave spaces. Finally, the third paper explored researchers and community stakeholders’ conceptualization and understanding of social justice as well as recommendations for social work research, practice, and policy to contest power and oppression in the context of PAR/CBPR. A second wave of individual in-depth semi-structured interviews with social work researchers (n=11) and community stakeholders (n=11) with current or prior experience engaging in PAR/CBPR were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings illustrated converging and diverging understandings of social justice, in particular, community stakeholders emphasized an understanding of social justice interdependent of systemic transformations through dialogical processes among stakeholders, researchers, and social institutions. PAR/CBPR was described as a facilitating factor of social justice by fostering counterspaces and counternarratives. Additionally, PAR/CBPR was defined as a factor limiting the pursuit of social justice and deeply entrenched with tenure-track promotion and funding mechanisms perpetuating top-down configurations of power. Together and independently these papers further our understanding of the ways in which structural oppression and power in (PAR/CBPR) can be addressed. Research findings from all three studies highlighted participatory action research is not exempt from power hierarchies, and that multilevel strategies promoting counterspaces, counternarratives, and institutional changes are essential when redressing, negotiating, and contesting power and oppression. Findings inform best practices for the development of PAR/CBPR collaborations embodying ethical relationality across social work research, practice, education, and policy. Future studies should consider the use of longitudinal and critically in-depth dialogical approaches between multiple positioned actors in PAR/CBPR when defining social justice, PAR/CBPR, and power. / 2028-04-30

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Biofuels, a solar-sourced technology that can be processed from non-fossilized plant matter, have significant appeal as a means of securing a reliable, sustainable energy supply. They appear to offer significant potential by virtue of being harvestable from common plant life such as prairie grasses. I argue that a shared set of knowledge claims emerging from multiple energy/environmental institutions in Germany and the U.S. are linked by a shared set of assumptions. I characterize these claims as a "mainstream" discourse because together they function as a single powerful discourse that influences national policy and research priorities. In examining the potential material impacts of the discourse on regional and global habitats, I demonstrate the powerful performative capacity of the discourse. I also describe how this mainstream discourse perpetuates momentum along existing trajectories of at least three socio-technological regimes: agriculture, transport, energy. The practitioners (biofuels experts) of the discourse construct representations of the realities that form the basis of their research. I refer to these representations as maps because like a city map, they privilege some things while marginalizing others. These maps are then utilized as guides for intervening into the habitat in order to develop and implement biofuels. Implicated within the maps are practices that have the potential to reconstitute reality. For example, the mapping of a variety of plants as "energy crops" implicates practices generally associated with high-yield cash crops intended for trade on the global marketplace. The materialization of these practices will assimilate various plants, reconstituting them as bona fide energy crops, resulting in monocultured regional and global habitats. I develop my argument by describing how knowledge production is regulated by the implicit rules that govern the discourse. This regulatory apparatus insures that certain types of knowledge as well as methods for producing that knowledge are privileged over others. I introduce several concepts--"institutional platform, thought collective, biofuels practitioner--"as analytical tools to develop my argument and explain how the discourse functions. I demonstrate how perpetual recirculation of knowledge claims through publication, citation, conferences, workshops and task forces naturalizes these claims, giving them authoritative force. This force is evidenced in an increased performative capacity as well as a higher degree of discursive hegemony. I demonstrate the material effects of the discourse at the practical level of its deployment by introducing another analytical tool --ground truthing. Geographers and military reconnaissance personnel use ground truthing to describe the process of physically inspecting the lay of the land in order to determine the accuracy of the maps. With this tool, I demonstrate the potential of the discourse to reconstitute habitats and landscapes. Finally I propose changing the terms of mainstream energy discourse through practices intended to de-scientize and democratize the discourse through incorporating alternative expertises. This includes: a} moving away from corporate control of energy solutions by situating energy-systems decisions and ownership at the local community level, and b} improving the definition of systemic problems by transitioning away from knowledge production that privileges the detached "spectator" approach over the embodied, participatory approach. / Ph. D.

There are three different uses of the term 'information' in ordinary language: in the restricted sense, it means diverse types of material objects, such as data or documents ('information as thing'); alternatively, the term is used as in reference to the act of informing or becoming informed ('information as process'), or to equate to knowledge ('information as knowledge'). Each of these connotations represents a legitimate view of information in its own right, being equally significant to information-intensive organisations. The literature lacks studies that approach information from an integrative viewpoint, however. The purpose of this study was to explore and develop the notion of 'information governance' as an integrative, systemic approach to information in the context of research organisations. Soft Systems Methodology was used in a case study involving the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. Qualitative data was gathered through in-depth interviews with researchers and information/knowledge managers, followed by a thematic, two-level analysis. From a 'macro level' of analysis (the wider Brazilian agricultural research system) it was found that, to solve increasingly complex research problems, collaborative, multidisciplinary networking is needed. On the other hand, competitive forces are continuously emanating from the systems of research steering, funds and resources' allocation, quality control, and recognition and reward. This conflict inhibits the collaborative sharing of 'information as thing' and 'as knowledge', disturbs internal communication flows and contributes to low levels of synergy and cross-departmental partnerships, ultimately affecting research outcomes. At a 'meso level' (the local practices and culture of agricultural knowledge production), different epistemic cultures were identified (named in vitro, in situ and in silico research), which respond differently to the opposing forces of collaboration and competition. Based on a deep understanding of the agricultural research system and underlying epistemic cultures, a framework for effective governance of information was developed. Action to improve the governance of information at Embrapa would involve nurturing an information culture that supports collaborative work. Given that interactions between researchers are determined by their individual pursuits and struggles, this would require a change in the corporate system of performance evaluation and reward, according to the different epistemic cultures.

The notion of Mode 2, as a shift from Mode 1 science-as-we-know-it, depicts science as practically relevant, socially distributed and democratic. Debates remain over the empirical substantiation of Mode 2. In particular, our understanding has been impeded by the mutually exclusive framing of Mode 1/Mode 2. Looking at how academic science is justified to diverse institutional interests – a situation associated with Mode 2 – it is asked, “What happens to Mode 1 where Mode 2 is in demand?” This study comprises two sequential phases. It combines interviews with 18 university spinout founders as micro-level Mode 2 exemplars, and macro-level policy narratives from 72 expert witnesses examined by select committees. An interpretive scheme (Greenwood and Hinings, 1988) is applied to capture the internal means-ends structure of each mode, where the end is to satisfy demand constituents, both in academia (Mode 1) and beyond (Mode 2). Results indicate Mode 1’s enduring influence even where non-academic demands are concerned, thus refuting that means and ends necessarily operate together as a stable mode. The causal ambiguity inherent in scientific advances necessitates (i) Mode 1 peer review as the only quality control regime systematically applicable ex ante, and (ii) Mode 1 means of knowledge production as essential for the health and diversity of the science base. Modifications to performance criteria are proposed to create a synergy between modes and justify public investment, especially in the absence of immediate outcomes. The study presents a framework of Mode1/Mode 2 coexistence that eases the problem with the either/or perception and renders Mode 2 more amenable to empirical research. It is crucial to note, though, that this is contingent on given vested interests. In this study, Mode 1’s fate is seen through academic scientists whose imperative is unique from those of other constituents, thereby potentially entailing further struggles and negotiation.

How the world of experience, text-based medicine, and the social world came to interact with each other in a historically situated way is the subject of this doctoral thesis, which studies what I shall call zhang ("miasma") medicine in Song China (960-1279 CE). By the phrase "the world of experience," I refer to the bodily experience of the environment in a given region as well as to experiences of medical practices. "The social world" broadly refers to concomitant social, intellectual, and political events or trends. This thesis proposes a new approach to the study of the environment within the history of medicine in Imperial China (around 202 BCE-1911 CE), an approach which is inspired by anthropological analytical concepts. It highlights individuals' world of experience, treating their knowledge about environmental medicine as the culmination of a dynamic collaboration of their experiential world and existing culture-specific concepts, such as those deriving from scholarly medicine. This new approach dictates a re-examination of the sources that have received intensive attention in the history of medicine in Imperial China: texts up to the thirteenth century on the aetiology, therapies, and prevention methods of zhang as disorders endemic in Lingnan (in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces). Based on this re-examination, I contend that the Song period witnessed the emergence of a pronounced explanatory mode among authors of writings about zhang medicine about how their world of experience informed and affirmed their medical knowledge and practices relating to zhang. This Song explanatory mode embodies, I argue, the endeavor of Song scholar-officials and physicians to extend the proliferation of scholarly medicine at that time to zhang medicine, which lacked widely acknowledged textual references and therapies of medicinal effectiveness. The findings in this thesis firstly broaden our understanding of the development of environmental medicine in Imperial China and, secondly, extend our knowledge of the expansion of scholarly medicine into southern China in Song times.

The notion of Mode 2, as a shift from Mode 1 science-as-we-know-it, depicts science as practically relevant, socially distributed and democratic. Debates remain over the empirical substantiation of Mode 2. In particular, our understanding has been impeded by the mutually exclusive framing of Mode 1/Mode 2. Looking at how academic science is justified to diverse institutional interests – a situation associated with Mode 2 – it is asked, “What happens to Mode 1 where Mode 2 is in demand?” This study comprises two sequential phases. It combines interviews with 18 university spinout founders as micro-level Mode 2 exemplars, and macro-level policy narratives from 72 expert witnesses examined by select committees. An interpretive scheme (Greenwood and Hinings, 1988) is applied to capture the internal means-ends structure of each mode, where the end is to satisfy demand constituents, both in academia (Mode 1) and beyond (Mode 2). Results indicate Mode 1’s enduring influence even where non-academic demands are concerned, thus refuting that means and ends necessarily operate together as a stable mode. The causal ambiguity inherent in scientific advances necessitates (i) Mode 1 peer review as the only quality control regime systematically applicable ex ante, and (ii) Mode 1 means of knowledge production as essential for the health and diversity of the science base. Modifications to performance criteria are proposed to create a synergy between modes and justify public investment, especially in the absence of immediate outcomes. The study presents a framework of Mode1/Mode 2 coexistence that eases the problem with the either/or perception and renders Mode 2 more amenable to empirical research. It is crucial to note, though, that this is contingent on given vested interests. In this study, Mode 1’s fate is seen through academic scientists whose imperative is unique from those of other constituents, thereby potentially entailing further struggles and negotiation.

The current global formation, characterised by a burgeoning knowledge economy alongside widespread social discontent and economic upheaval, situates the study of knowledge production in the field of community psychology at a timely socio-historical juncture. Community psychology has a long-standing tradition of introspection about its identity, achievements and future direction, established historically through the analysis of published work. This research engages with this tradition, foregrounding the intellectual role and social position of scholars in the field, and the tensions that are collectively evident their work. The study critically appraises the characteristics of published work over a decade with a view to distilling the topics of interest, the preferred methodological choices and the predominant theoretical concerns of the sub-discipline of community psychology. The study employs a mixed methodology to highlight patterns of dominance and marginality in these elements that situates South African scholarship in the field within the global arena. The study presents a content analysis of trends in 2 229 published articles drawn from two local South African journals (South African Journal of Psychology and Psychology in Society) and four international journals (American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology and Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community) that were published between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2009. Among the variables investigated in the quantitative data analysis were constitutive of the authorship characteristics, publication types, topics, theoretical choices, research methods and participant characteristics appearing in published work, including the representation of marginalised groups. The discursive analysis that follows, presents an in-depth reading of selected texts drawn from this dataset though the use of a critical discursive frame to illustrate of how power and the tensions between dominant narratives and marginal positions in community psychology manifest in published work. This serves to foreground contradictions in the identity, values and foci of the field, and some of the discourses implicated in how these disparities are perpetuated. The thesis contends that knowledge production is a contested site where attention to patterns of dominance and marginality reveal how the workings of power can be detected using both quantitative and qualitative analytic methods to investigate the state of published work. Though vastly different in the quantity of publications generated, and the field’s stage of development, the theoretical and methodological features of articles published internationally and in South Africa were remarkably alike. Across both contexts, results showed the prominent use of preventionist, traditional and ecological theories, rather than critical or social perspectives. This reveals the pervasive influence of biomedical epistemologies in the field. Authors were primarily located in academia rather than in applied community contexts. They published empirical articles most often, and showed an affinity for positivist research approaches and the survey method of data collection. The use of a critical paradigm and associated methodological choices, such as discourse analysis, was rare. Most studies did not focus specifically on marginalised groups, although the presence of forms of structural marginality by race, gender and socio-economic status were similarly proportionate across local and international research. Results suggest a persistent neglect of researching specific marginalised groups, such as those socially excluded due to age, HIV status, migration and sexual orientation. Differences across contexts were especially evident in the choice of research topics, rather than approaches used. On the whole, international research has a much greater emphasis on research topics related to child, youth and family development. Findings suggest that disciplinary forces in the field heavily influence the form of articles and their theoretical and methodological features, across local and international research. However, journal topics are more context-sensitive aspects of publications, and reflect local concerns. In addition to publication trends, the thesis identifies several discourses present in published work that show how the field is constructed and its ideological tensions. The thesis considers these findings in view of the power relations they represent and critically reflects on the intrinsic and extrinsic issues at stake in defining the field of community psychology in light of global knowledge production imperatives.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:32:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Maria de Campos.pdf: 24948238 bytes, checksum: dde8087bd7fbb81556c5c1665a51d490 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-02-04 / The present narrative investigation aims at studying an experience in the development of educators carried out in the city of Campinas-SP through 2003-2004. Its relevance is justified by the analysis of narratives and documents such as autobiographies, letters, diaries, poetry and chronicles written by popular educators who have been participating in the literacy programs of young and adults, including this researcher educator. These sources have proven very powerful in providing insights from the movements of re-creating knowledge along life. The reflexive and autobiographic notes written a posteriori the live experiences reveal the understanding of the personal history deeply involved in the personal histories of the individuals/object. The educators attitude as a writer manifested in the texts and in their life choice as educators indicates that the emancipating conception of the production of knowledge experienced in the Popular Education gives rise to the development of the intellect, of creative energies, and of solidarity in overcoming the social constraints and restrictive conditions. The written texts also give rise to a new meaning of life as a work of art still to be finished and open to new experiences. This investigation amplifies the voices that have been silenced in the official culture and in the academy, and brings light to other versions for discussions and new propositions to be worked out in the social contexts where educational practices take place. This work was developed in line with the Research of Pedagogical Practices and the Educators Education, within the ICCON Research Group (Interdisciplinary and Knowledge Production Group) of the Post Graduation Program of the Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica de Campinas with grant from CAPES. / A presente investiga??o narrativa tem como objetivo estudar uma experi?ncia de forma??o de educadores realizada na cidade de Campinas-SP, no per?odo de 2003-2004. Sua relev?ncia ? atestada ao se utilizar como instrumentos de an?lise narrativas autobiogr?ficas, cartas, di?rios, poesias e cr?nicas produzidas por educadoras populares participantes do projeto de alfabetiza??o de jovens e adultos, incluindo a pr?pria educadora-pesquisadora. As fontes s?o potentes para dar a ver os movimentos de recria??o de saberes constru?dos ao longo da vida. As anota??es reflexivas e autobiogr?ficas, escritas a posteriori da experi?ncia vivida, revelam a compreens?o da hist?ria pessoal imbricada na hist?ria social dos sujeitos/objetos. A atitude autoral manifesta nos textos e nas op??es de vida das educadoras sinalizam que a concep??o emancipat?ria da produ??o do conhecimento experienciada na Educa??o Popular favorece o desenvolvimento da intelig?ncia, das energias criativas e da solidariedade para a supera??o dos estigmas e condicionamentos sociais. A ressignifica??o da vida como uma obra de arte, inconclusa e aberta pode ser vislumbrada nos registros autorais. Com esse percurso investigativo se amplifica as vozes silenciadas na cultura oficial e nos discursos acad?micos, trazendo ? luz outras vers?es para dialogar e problematizar os contextos sociais em que se d?o as pr?ticas educativas. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido na Linha de Pesquisa Pr?ticas Pedag?gicas e Forma??o do Educador, junto ao Grupo de Pesquisa ICCON (Interdisciplinaridade e Constru??o do Conhecimento) do Programa de P?s-Gradua??o em Educa??o da Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica de Campinas e contou com financiamento da CAPES.