This master thesis is an ethnological study focusing members of a young, urban Jewishdiaspora in Sweden. The study's aim is to problematize and describe the relation between theJewish minority that is regarded as religious, and the secular normative majority societyregarded as non-religious. The study explores questions regarding social positioning,belonging and memory and how Jewish traditions are practiced in contemporary Sweden. Themethodological approaches are interviews and participation observations with a specific focuson food; its symbolic value and how food can materialize identities and communicatememories. The empirical data comprises 24 interviews in total, of which 11 interviews havebeen chosen and thus constitute the material on which the study's analysis is made upon. Theanalysis is mainly based upon the theoretical perspective of phenomenology focusinganalytical concepts as materiality, positionality, (conditional) belonging, minority/majorityand diasporic processes. By being regarded as "well integrated" and at the same time beingdesignated as one of Sweden's national minorities, the Jewish group is given contradictorypositionalities, which is examined in this study. The study also shows that memory and aconnection to the past (both personal and general Jewish history) are of great importance tothese informants when expressing their identities, and that this connection often materializesthrough food. By highlighting the informants' experiences of keeping kosher, it becamevisible that Jewish way of life challenges the normative (imagined) secularity in Sweden.

Stockholm County is a post-industrial Swedish region characterized by high levels of mobility and technologization as well as ethnic and religious diversity. Among its religious minorities exist various strands of charismatic Christianity, some of which originate from the Pentecostal revival of the early 20th century and some of which belong to more recent movements. The aim of this ethnographic study is to examine how affiliates of the multicultural charismatic Christian congregation New Life Church practice religiosity within the context of their personal daily lives, within the framework of the general congregation and in terms of their involvements with other religious organizations in the area of Stockholm. Beginning with the assumption that the practice of contemporary religiosity and the development of a religious identity are part of an ongoing process of habituation, the study describes how practitioners cultivate a form of charismatic piety characterized by certain embodied orientations, patterns of ritualization and narrative genres. To shed further light on this process, it draws upon a variety of theories concerning ritualization, embodiment, performance, narratives and materiality. Apart from this, the study also constitutes an attempt to explore and measure the impact on the practitioners’ religiosity of late modern developments such as urbanization, detraditionalization and global mobility as well as the growing absorption in consumerism, emotional intimacy and the unfolding of the “authentic” inner self. While pursuing these ends, the study also calls into question previous assumptions about charismatic Christianity in Sweden, most particularly the assumption that today’s practitioners remain inclined to be entirely faithful to one given institution and its system of beliefs and practices. Indeed this view is directly challenged herein by the finding that contemporary charismatics are far more inclined to eclectically appropriate elements and models of thoughts from various contexts of origin as well as to affiliate with and/or visit multiple Christian institutions.

Persistent Pasts: Historical Palimpsests in Nineteenth-Century Prose traces Victorian historical discourse with specific attention to the works of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot and their relation to historicism in earlier works by Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg. I argue that the Victorian response to the tense relation between the materialist Enlightenment and the idealist rhetoric of Romanticism marks a decidedly ethical turn in Victorian historical discourse. The writers introduce the dialectic of enlightened empiricism and romantic idealism to invoke the historical imagination as an ethical response to the call of the past. I read the dialectic and its invitation to ethics through the figure of the palimpsest. Drawing upon theoretical work on the palimpsest from Carlyle and de Quincey through Gérard Genette and Sarah Dillon, I analyze ways in which the materialist and idealist discourses interrupt each other and persist in one another. Central to my argument are concepts drawn from Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, and Frank Ankersmit that challenge and / or affirm historical materiality.

El objetivo de la tesis es profundizar en el estudio de la materialidad en auditoría, y, más concretamente, de los factores cualitativos asociados al concepto. En el primer capítulo, se analizan los fundamentos teóricos y normativos. En el segundo capítulo, se revisa la literatura previa. En el tercer capítulo, se desarrolla un estudio empírico dirigido auditores de cuentas y directores financieros de empresas españolas. Como conclusión principal se establece que la utilización efectiva de los factores cualitativos de la materialidad en auditoría constituye un instrumento válido que puede contribuir al esfuerzo de los auditores para mejorar la calidad de sus trabajos y ofrecer un mejor servicio a los usuarios, que redunde en una información financiera más fiable y transparente, para dar respuesta así a las críticas recibidas, recuperar la credibilidad de sus actuaciones y superar la actual situación de crisis que atraviesa la función. / The aim of the thesis is to study in depth the materiality in auditing, in general, and the qualitative factors associated to the concept, more specifically. In Chapter I we analyse the theoretical and normative foundations. In Chapter II we review the previous literature. In Chapter III we develop an empirical research over financial auditors and directors in Spanish companies. The main conclusion is that the effective use of qualitative materiality factors appears to be a useful tool in improving the quality of audits and in service provided to the financial statements' users. Through this improvement, the reliability and transparency of financial information could be increased, the numerous critiques received could be replied, the confidence in audit practice could be restored, and the current crisis of audit function could be overcame.

No description available.

This work is an exploration of the relationship between gender, the body and clothing, raising questions about identity while trying to deconstruct gender as a binary concept. I relate textile material transformations to drag and talk about the importance of non binary and trans visibility and representation. Interweaving my personal story with queer theoretical elements, I’m creating a sculptural installation, visualizing a possible future where fluidity supersedes fixity.

Denna studie utgår från barns möten i förskolan och undersöker ålder som ett görande. Studiens data utgör 18 timmars videoobservationer på en förskoleavdelning i en större svensk stad där sexton barn deltar från åldrarna ett till sex år. Studien utgår från en posthumanistisk grundsyn genom agentisk realism (se Barad, 2007 och Lenz Taguchi, 2012) och tematisk analysmetod har tillämpats i analysdelen (se Braun & Clarke, 2006). Studiens resultat visar att barn, språk, diskurser, material och miljö intra-aktivt samhandlar och performativt producerar ålder som fenomen i förskolan. Studiens bidrag är att med stöd i agentisk realism introducera sätt att förstå ålder som ett socialt och materiellt fenomen. Detta skapar en förskjutning från barnet som ensam aktör i förklarandet av normerande ålderspraktiker i förskolan för att mer tillgängligt möjliggöra ett förklarande av aktörskap inom sociala och materiella praktiker och hur dessa samkonstituerar ålder som fenomen i förskolan. / This agential realist study aims to explore age as a social and material doing in children’s meetings in preschool. The data consists of eighteen hours of video observations in a preschool located in a larger city in Sweden. The study works theoretically with agential realism (see Barad, 2003, 2007 and Lenz Taguchi, 2012) and the analysis was conducted thematically (see Braun & Clarke, 2006). The study shows that children, language, discourses, materiality and the surrounding environment intra-actively co-operates and performatively produces age as a phenomenom in preschool. The study contributes with support in agential realism to introduce a way to understand age as a socially and materially constructed phenomena. This produces a consequential shift from the child as the only responsible actor in the explanations of childrens normative age practices in the preschool and enables a possible explanation of agency within the social and material practices where these collaboratively produces age as a phenomena in preschool.

Founded in 1967, the Amsterdam-based improvising collective the Instant Composers Pool is one of the longest consistently performing groups in improvised music. This thesis forms an ethnography and musicological study of the ICP Orchestra, which originated when the "pool" developed a more coherent line-up around 1980. With a background in experimental music as well as free jazz, their performance practice differs in many respects from the practices of American forms of jazz. Whereas most accounts of improvisation emphasise orality and creative interaction in opposition to the performance of composed music, 'instant composition' defines improvisation precisely in terms of compositional thinking. Moreover, founding member and orchestra leader Misha Mengelberg composed a very diverse repertoire for the group which draws on styles from Duke Ellington to John Cage and uses various forms of compositional and notational techniques to explore the different improvisatory possibilities that they afford, thus blurring the distinction between improvisation and composition both in name and in practice. Apart from a detailed historical and ethnographic description of a group that is central to a genre that has been underrepresented in music-historical research, this thesis investigates the repertoire of the ICP and its use as an opportunity to reconsider the relation between musical text and performance. Drawing on my observations and interviews with the musicians, and connecting these to theories of material culture and science and technology studies, it develops a concept of compositions as animated and animating objects in performance, tools and materials that participate in the creative interactive process of improvised performance rather than textual representations of 'the music itself'. I substantiate this theory with detailed descriptions of ICP performances recorded during fieldwork. This contributes to a rethinking of musical notation and simultaneously brings new insights into improvisation as a creative practice.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:19:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silas Cardoso2.pdf: 1303036 bytes, checksum: 6bfbab99f1aee463f9c257e694559274 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The research aims the Torah as an aniconic cultic object in the postexilic, revealing its ritualistic face in the Ancient Israel worship. It is proposed that the centralization of Torah in the Second Temple Period will be an ideological and macrostructural construction i.e., an invented tradition of the post-exilic priesthood that aims to unify the nation that rebuild itself. For that analysis, three cuts related to the question are persecuted: (1) the cult materiality in its continuities and ruptures with the pre-exilic Israelite religion, from the material culture and biblical analysis of four central cultic objects presented in the Deuteronomistic History, bamah, massebah, Asherah and Ark; (2) the redactional practices that defend the Torah centralization that inspires in the other cults of Ancient Israel, especially observed in the exegetical analysis of Ps 19, one of the major Torah Psalms of the Hebrew salter; (3) the canonical texts editing that was legitimator retroprojected visions of the posterior and centralized vision of Torah, from the creation of a text materiality typology, from the exegetical analysis of the texts. With that environment we propose a model of four instances of construction of post-exilic aniconism, centralized on Torah and reaching the different layers from judahite religion. / A pesquisa trabalha a Torá como objeto de culto anicônico no pósexílio, apresentando sua face ritualística no culto do Israel Antigo. É proposto que a centralização da Torá no período do Segundo Templo seria uma construção ideológica macroestrutural i.e., uma tradição inventada do grupo sacerdotal pós-exílico em vista de unificar a nação que se reconstruía e reconfigurava. Para tal análise, observam- se três recortes distintos ligados à questão: (1) a materialidade do culto em suas continuidades e rupturas com a religião israelita pré-exílica, a partir da análise da cultura material e da análise da literatura bíblica de quatro objetos cúlticos centrais da OHD, bamah, massebah, Asherá e arca; (2) as práticas redacionais que advogavam a centralização da Torá com inspiração nos demais cultos e concepções do divino no Antigo Israel, especialmente observada na análise exegética do Sl 19, como um dos principais Salmos da Torá que teriam sido produzidos no período para promulgar a nova prática; e (3) a editoração dos diversos textos canônicos que teriam sido retroprojeções legitimadores da visão posterior centralizadora da Torá, através da criação de uma tipologia da materialidade dos textos e da Torá advinda da análise exegética de diversos textos. Com tal panorama, sob pesquisa exegética de orientação histórico-crítica, é proposto um modelo de quatro instâncias de construção do aniconismo pós-exílico, centralizado na Torá e atingindo as diferentes camadas da religião judaíta.

This thesis is focused on role of the external auditor and risks and ethical behavior during his working. During individual phases of audit auditor must pay attention to many parts to determine no misrepresentation information in financial statements. Too he checks up into questions of ethical behavioral, for example by the evaluation of contract´s risk.