The aim of this study is to investigate how oral sources can be documented in a better way, through a more conscious use of interview methods in archaeological contexts. By analysing and comparing three case studies, namely the excavation of The Overstone Miners’ Cottages in Northumberland, Great Britain, the excavation of Ramnässkärsparken near Uddevalla, Sweden and the excavation of The Mott Farm, Rhode Island, USA, different ways of using interview methods in relation to the archaeological material have been shown. One conclusion is that the use of the material world in the interviews gives them an archaeological focus. Therefor it is valuable that the archaeologist is the one performing the artefact-centred or spatial interview. Other conclusions are that memories from finds are dependent on recognition. A reference collection can be used to support reminiscence. The interview situation should be open and striving for different perspectives rather than facts. Lastly, archaeologists should apply ethical considerations in their research. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur muntligt källmaterial kan dokumenteras på ett bättre sätt, genom en mer medveten användning av intervjumetod i arkeologiska kontexter. Genom att analysera och jämföra tre fallstudier, nämligen utgrävningen av The Overstone Miners’ Cottages i Northumberland, Storbritannien, utgrävningen av festplatsen Ramnässkärsparken utanför Uddevalla, Sverige och utgrävningen av The Mott Farm, Rhode Island, USA, har olika sätt att använda intervjumetod i relation till ett arkeologiskt material framträtt. En slutsats från undersökningen är att användningen av det materiella i intervjuer ger dem ett arkeologiskt fokus. Därför är det värdefullt att just arkeologen håller i den föremålsbaserade eller rumsliga intervjun. Andra slutsatser är att minnen utifrån fynd är beroende av igenkänning. Referensexemplar kan användas för att stötta hågkomstprocessen. Intervjusituationen bör vara öppen och sträva efter att fånga olika perspektiv snarare än fakta. Slutligen bör arkeologer applicera etiska hänsynstaganden i sin forskning.

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This dissertation examines the role of material in six selected zines from subcultural, artistic and activist circles. The work deals with printed micro media with a small reach and is based on the concepts of alternative media, gives a brief overview of theoretical perspectives on zines from subcultural studies, through fan studies and participatory culture. The thesis is critical of the concepts and calls for the enrichment of existing perspectives, mostly consolidated in old (post- marxist) materialism: specifically, for a reflection on post-digital culture and new materialism, which allows us to reconsider the role of material in the production and distribution of zines. The case study combines personal interviews and content analysis with an emphasis on material and ethnography of the spaces where zines are formed and transmitted. Based on Bourdieu's field theory, the study conceptualises the zine scene as a field of zine production and seeks to radically contextualise the traffic between bodies, spaces, paper and other materials, machines, and finally capital (economic and subcultural). The theoretical apparatus allows to examine the changing role of zines in the post-digital age when information shifts from sowers to platforms of emotion and touch. The main argument of the thesis is that...

To write is, in a certain sense, to experience the immaterial thoughts of one’s mind materialize in the becoming of scripture. Nevertheless, since early modernism, the writing of poetry has rarely been perceived as an unmediated transition of language, from the interior of the self to the material surface of writing. Indeed, the tendency of modernist and subsequent postmodernist aesthetics to emphasize the density, opacity and autonomy of the poem, for example through various techniques of fragmentation, draws attention to the ways in which the materiality of writing is implicated in the production of meaning. The present thesis is a study of how meaning and materiality interrelate in two poetry collections, Skäran (2001) and Täthetsteoremet (2012), by the contemporary Swedish poet Helena Eriksson. The aim is to show that these relationships are important effects of the metapoetic discourse in Eriksson’s poetry, and how they produce a certain tension or ambiguity in the writing subject's relation to body and language, self and other. Through a reading of the diverse representation of the hand in Eriksson’s poetry as a metapoetic motif, the analysis combines a phenomenological view of embodied subjectivity, with a media theoretical conception of the writing hand, as well as a new materialist approach to agency and embodiment. The method of analysis that follows from these perspectives is a close, reparative reading, where the poetic text is seen as a situational discursive act that reaches out to the reader in a communicative gesture, offering its own body as meaning.

[pt] Vida e obra dos objetos: uma investigação sobre as potências da materialidade a partir do Sermão do Espírito Santo, de Antônio Vieira apoia-se, funda-mentalmente, na polissemia dos termos vida e objeto para examinar certas situações interacionais em que objetos (entendidos modernamente como inanimados) são investidos de vida, isto é, de qualidades e comportamentos em geral atribuídos a sujeitos (seres que se movem, agem e possuem um ponto de vista próprio). A dissertação propõe apreender o fenômeno da vida dos objetos através de três caminhos que se entrecruzam. O primeiro consiste em observar manifestações dessa vida na circunstância mais imediatamente presente, contemporânea ao pesquisador, num registro cotidiano e doméstico dentro do qual o próprio ato de escrita da dissertação se desenrola. O segundo e principal caminho conduz aos séculos XVI e XVII: sob a intercessão privilegiada do Sermão do Espírito Santo, do padre Antônio Vieira, e tomando como pano de fundo as tensões culturais implicadas na colonização das Américas e na catequização das populações nativas, realiza-se uma comparação pontual entre concepções ameríndias e concepções eurocristãs da vida dos objetos. O terceiro caminho é uma especulação sobre a possibilidade de falar em uma vida do texto, e, para tanto, busca-se aplicar ao domínio estrito das palavras alguns pressupostos contidos em teorias recentes acerca da agência de objetos materiais. Somando estes esforços aos esforços crítico-reflexivos de outros pesquisadores, a dissertação espera apresentar uma rica diversidade de traços subjetivos encarnados pelos objetos, diversidade que espelha diferentes maneiras de viver. / [en] Life and work of objects: an investigation on the powers of materiality based on the Sermon on the Holy Spirit, by Antonio Vieira rely fundamentally on the polysemy of the terms life and object to examine some interactional situations in which objects (modernly understood as inanimate) are invested with life, that is, with qualities and behaviours attributed in general to subjects (beings which move, act and have their own point of view). The dissertation proposes to apprehend the life of objects phenomenon through three paths which are intertwined. The first one consists in observing the manifestations of this kind of life in the most immediately present circumstance, contemporary to the researcher, in a daily and domestic register inside of which the very act of writing the dissertation happens. The second and main path leads to the 16th and 17th centuries: with the privileged intercession of the Sermon on the Holy Spirit, by priest Antonio Vieira, and also by taking as a background the cultural tensions involved in the colonization of the Americas and in the catechization of native populations, a punctual comparison is made between Amerindian conceptions and Euro-Christian conceptions of the life of objects. The third path is a speculation about the possibility of speaking of a life of the text, and for this purpose some assumptions contained in recent theories about the agency of material objects are applied to the strict domain of the words. By joining this efforts to the critical-reflexive efforts of other researchers, the dissertation expects to show a rich diversity of subjective features embodied by objects, a diversity that reflects different ways of living.

Hållbarhetsrapporter används av företag som ett verktyg för att kommunicera ut arbete kring socialt, ekologiskt och ekonomisk hållbarhetsarbete till interna och externa intressenter (Tewari & Dave 2012). Enligt en enkätstudie gjord mellan 2019 och 2020 av KPMG (2020) använder 96 procent av de 250 största företagen i världen någon form av hållbarhetsrapportering. I denna studie upptäcks en konflikt då tidigare forskning förklarar vikten av att kommunicera hållbarhetsrapporter till intressenter, eftersom det genererar finansiell avkastning, förstärkt rykte och ökat börsvärde. Å andra sidan hävdar andra forskare att många företag kommunicerar rapporten utan att veta vad intressenter efterfrågar. Syftet med studien är således att undersöka hur stora svenska företag upprättar hållbarhetsrapporter samt hur hållbarhetsarbetet kommuniceras ut till intressenter. Detta för att ta reda på vilket arbetssätt samt kommunikation som är mest framgångsrik. För att besvara forskningsfrågorna genomförs en intervjustudie med tio företag. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt grundar sig i signalteorin. Fokuset ligger på att analysera vilka signaler företagets avsändare skickar till intressenter samt vilken feedback mottagarna återkopplar med. Resultaten visar att hållbarhetsrapportens innehåll, utöver lagkraven, framför allt styrs av företagets bransch samt dess intressenter. Vidare tyder resultatet på att hållbarhetsrapporter inte är effektiva att kommunicera sitt hållbarhetsarbete via. I stället ger sociala medier samt företags hemsidor upphov till en effektivare tvåvägskommunikation. / Sustainability reports are an important tool for corporations to communicate their efforts to improve ecological, social and economic sustainability to stakeholders (Tewari & Dave 2012). According to a survey done in 2020 by KPMG, 96 percent of the world's top 250 corporations publish some form of sustainability reporting. Previous studies emphasize on the importance of communicating sustainability to improve financial returns, reputation and market capitalization. However, other studies argue that big corporations are rarely familiar with their stakeholders' interests. The aim of this thesis, which is written in Swedish, is therefore to understand how Swedish companies create sustainability reports and how they communicate their sustainability work to their stakeholders. The reason being is to find out which means of communication is the most effective. The study is based on ten interviews from companies which are analyzed through signal theory. During the analysis, the main focus is to construe which signals are being sent to stakeholders and the feedback that they later create. The conclusion is that the content of the sustainability reports, aside from the legal requirements, is both affected by the companies’ industry and their stakeholders’ expectations. Furthermore, it shows that the reports are not an effective form of communication, hence companies using social media and their websites instead to achieve a two-way communication.

A materiality approach is developed in this thesis in order to understand social-material relationships during the south-east Scottish Iron Age. The focus is on everyday objects, traditionally lesser studied in terms of cosmological value, made of bone and antler, stone, clay/pottery and metal (copper alloy and iron) from the Broxmouth Hillfort assemblage and other excavated Iron Age sites in East Lothian. This study sets out to move away from typology to examine the connections between these materials through their sourcing, affordances (signative and pragmatic), design, manufacture, use and deposition. In addition to the archaeological evidence, a range of analytical methods are employed; including laser scanning confocal microscopy, raman spectroscopy, and residue and isotopic analysis. It becomes evident that the materials studied, despite their predominantly local availability, were invested with meaning in appropriation, making, and were deliberately curated and maintained in use, assembling rich personal biographies. Identities were tied up with making, using and depositing of materials in turn embodying beliefs of fertility, renewal and productivity which were central to Iron Age cosmology, continuing into the Roman Iron Age. These results contribute to our understanding of the construction and practice of society in the Iron Age of Britain, with implications for how we may design our own 21st Century material worlds. It is proposed that social relations in the Iron Age of south-east Scotland were heterarchical. / Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

I uppsatsen undersöks barns konstruktion av det teologiska språket med avseende på försoning som begrepp. Barnens förståelse av försoning sätts i kritisk relation till Miroslav Volfs förståelse av försoning och omfamning (embrace). Därigenom framträder att barnen utvecklar försoningsbegreppet genom att det överträder vår uppfattning om tid och rum. Barnen konstruerar det teologiska språket utifrån en materialitet som består av egna erfarenheter av kroppslig (o)försoning. / In this essay I study how children construct their theological language in relation to the topic of reconciliation. The children's voices are put in critical dialog with the Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf’s notion of reconciliation in relation to embrace. The children’s perception of reconciliation develop and expand the theological concept of reconciliation. Seemingly, children's theological language describe reconciliation as an act that transcends time and space. Children construct their theological language through a materiality based on their own corporeal experiences of conflict and reconciliation.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, a relatively mild global disruption, our global society experienced large-scale shortages of high-tech materials, the increasing cost or absence of many commodities usually taken for granted, and the floundering of industries that facilitate our global industrial civilisation such as shipping and aviation. By comparison, catastrophic climate change stands to be far more devastating.  Body-Safe Apocalypse is an attempt to encourage a shift in thinking and practice away from the presumed possibility of eternal “sustainable” growth within a digital, high-tech global context and towards a practical, grounded framework of understanding, preparing for, and working beyond the collapse of global, high-tech, industrial civilisation. The method of exploration is through an analysis of sexual materiality, the contextualisation of sexual and broader materiality within a failing industrial civilisation, and the creation of a sex toy using materials and processes accessible in a collapsing/collapsed global civilisation.  As well as focusing on the craft and materiality of sexual practices in a collapse context, Body-Safe Apocalypse provides theoretical framework on collapse meant to address a current gap in design literature, critique on the current Western/anglo design paradigm that is yet to consider the catastrophic as non-speculative, and encouragement to designers to look into- and then beyond- the upheavals and endings of the systems most of us have built our lives/careers around and upon.

Den Europeiska Unionen vill med Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) standardisera hållbarhetsredovisning för företag som är verksamma inom unionen. Återigen kommer fler och fler företag omfattas av reglerna att behöva upprätta en obligatorisk hållbarhetsredovisning – vilket kan utgöra en utmaning för mindre erfarna små och medelstora företag. Denna studie undersökte små och medelstora företags syn på hållbarhetsredovisning samt deras uppfattning för dess kärnbegrepp; närmare bestämt ESG och materialitet. Studien utfördes genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex företag och med hjälp av sju respondenter. Studien visade att det finns en överväldigande positiv inställning till hållbarhetsredovisning bland de studerade företagen. Hursomhelst framgick det tecken på att företagen var bristfällig i vissa aspekter. Till exempel upplevde samtliga företag svårigheter med att koppla delar av sin verksamhet till hållbarhet på en bolagsstyrningsnivå (eng. governance). Liknande resultat upptäcktes för materialitet. Alla företag upplevdes ha svårigheter att begripa innebörden av begreppet ’materialitet’. Studien visade, trots svårigheten att begripa innebörden av materialitet, att de studerade företagen visade tecken på att vara effektiva i identifieringen av materiella hållbarhetsaspekter. / The European Union wants to standardize sustainability reporting with the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Once again, more and more enterprises will be subject to the mandatory requirements to disclose sustainability information – which may pose a challenge for less experienced small and medium sized enterprises. This study examines the perception of small and medium sized enterprises on sustainability reporting and its foundational concepts; namely environmental, social and governance (ESG) and materiality. The study was conducted on six individual companies and seven interviewees in total. The study concludes that there exists an overwhelmingly positive perception of sustainability reporting amongst the studied enterprises. However, there were signs that the studied companies were deficient in certain aspects. For example, all enterprises experienced difficulties in identifying aspects of their business that could be linked with governance sustainability. Similar results were discovered on the materiality topic. All enterprises had difficulties in understanding the term ‘materiality’. The study concludes that, despite the difficulty understanding materiality, the studied enterprises showed signs of being efficient in identifying material sustainability topics.