<p>This paper concerns East German journalists and the changes they have undergone, from working in the totalitarian regime of GDR to enter a western liberal media system. The purpose is to study how professional identity is created in a controlled and authoritarian media system, and how this identity and the journalistic values changes in a transition phase. Through qualitative in-depth interviews with six former East German journalists, who all has worked as journalists after the wall broke down, we are exploring how their journalistic values and the conception of their profession has changed during this tumultuous time. We selected journalists with experience of working in both East Germany and united Germany to be able to see these changes. The result shows that the journalists from GDR used an inner opposition, both to survive the dictatorship and to adapt to the new reality. This means that their level of professionalization, despite the fact that they lived under oppression, was relatively high. In between these two systems a journalistic vacuum occurred which show that a different, more democratic, way of organizing the press is possible. In this vacuum the values of the journalists could be expressed in a way that wasn’t possible in GDR, nor in united Germany.</p>

Since Sweden has one of the most comprehensive welfare states, the role of voluntary organizations active in the field of welfare is often neglected. The unique Swedish nonprofit sector is characterized by 1) the tradition of popular mass movements in which members are central and the real owners of the organization, 2) large membership and volunteering, but low employment levels, 3) dominance in the fields of culture and recreation, but the relative marginalization in welfare. This Ph.D. dissertation empirically studies work and the perception of work in voluntary welfare organizations (VWOs) in Sweden. I completed a series of 38 interviews of employees and volunteers in four VWOs: 1) a children’s rights organization; 2) a women’s center; 3) a volunteer bureau; and 4) a humanitarian organization. A quantitative survey of some 200 VWOs supplements the qualitative data. Looking at the internal work setting and interactions between workers one realizes that work in VWOs is influenced not only by the popular mass movements (folkrörelser), which are the foundation model of all Swedish voluntary organizations, but also by paradigms emerging out of the public and for-profit sectors: 1) the public paradigm permanently shapes voluntary welfare organizations through the action of paid workers who often have public sector work experience; and 2) work in voluntary organizations is partly integrated into the regular labor market, and interfaces emerge between volunteering and professional life (for-profit paradigm). The private sphere also interferes with volunteering. Finally, this sheds a new light on the claims of VWOs that they are autonomous, “free” entities, and their contribution to social integration and strengthening of social ties.

Enrollment management is an organizational phenomenon that emerged in the mid-1970s and has since developed into a pervasive structure and practice at colleges and universities. The purpose of this study is to identify and trace the development of the underlying organizing principles (enrollment logics) that institutionalize enrollment management practices and professionalize the chief enrollment manager position. This study focuses on how discourses among members of a prominent professional association establish, diffuse, and sustain knowledge that promotes certain expertise, assumptions, beliefs, and shared understandings of enrollment management. This is qualitative study that uses first-person accounts of 18 chief enrollment managers, authoethnographic reflections, and historical texts to reveal the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements (symbols, relations, routines, and artifacts) that signify enrollment management as an institutionalized and professionalized phenomenon. Crystallization is used as the analytical approach for discourse analysis. Institutional Theory and Structuration Theory form the theoretical and analytical frameworks for this study. Study results suggest that enrollment management is an institutionalized organizational field and an emerging profession.

I Sverige finns det idag ett stort antal yrken och en del av dessa är i en professionaliseringsprocess. Studie- och yrkesvägledaryrket är ett exempel på ett yrke i denna process. Syftet är att beskriva utvalda aktörers syn på studie- och yrkesvägledaryrkets avgränsningar, kompetens samt eventuella auktorisation i ett professionaliseringsperspektiv. En kvalitativ metod har använts och fem elitintervjuer har genomförts med representanter från Lärarförbundet, Lärarnas Riksförbund, Sveriges vägledarförening, Högskoleverket samt Skolverket. Samtliga respondenter ansåg att det finns specifika kompetenser som endast studie- och yrkesvägledare besitter men åsikten om vilka kompetenser detta är, gick isär. Majoriteten av respondenterna ansåg att studie- och yrkesvägledaryrket borde auktoriseras/legitimeras, dock inte alla. Avgränsningen mot andra yrken när det gäller arbetsuppgifter fanns det skilda meningar om. Den slutsats man kan dra av studien är att fackförbunden och Sveriges vägledarförening arbetar för professionalisering av studie- och yrkesvägledaryrket men utan en gemensam strategi. Yrket har inom olika områden kommit olika långt i sin professionaliseringsprocess.

This paper concerns East German journalists and the changes they have undergone, from working in the totalitarian regime of GDR to enter a western liberal media system. The purpose is to study how professional identity is created in a controlled and authoritarian media system, and how this identity and the journalistic values changes in a transition phase. Through qualitative in-depth interviews with six former East German journalists, who all has worked as journalists after the wall broke down, we are exploring how their journalistic values and the conception of their profession has changed during this tumultuous time. We selected journalists with experience of working in both East Germany and united Germany to be able to see these changes. The result shows that the journalists from GDR used an inner opposition, both to survive the dictatorship and to adapt to the new reality. This means that their level of professionalization, despite the fact that they lived under oppression, was relatively high. In between these two systems a journalistic vacuum occurred which show that a different, more democratic, way of organizing the press is possible. In this vacuum the values of the journalists could be expressed in a way that wasn’t possible in GDR, nor in united Germany.

<p>In this dissertation, I study medicalization, a wide spread phenomenon in this world but understudied in the current literature. The main theoretical focus of this dissertation is on expanding the medicalization theories. Questioning the breadth of conceptualization, the feasibility of measurement, and the depth of empirical implications in the extant medicalization theories, this dissertation proposes a new conceptual model of medicalization and further develops a quantitative measure of medicalization by disaggregating it into empirically valid dimensions that could be used to examine how degree of medicalization is related to social outcomes. Specifically, I conceptualize medicalization as an institutionalization process whereby the medical model becomes increasingly dominant in the explanation of health, illness, and other human problems and behavior. Medicalization is multidimensional and is represented by expansions in the three major components of the health care system: increasing medical investment, medical professionalization/specialization, and the relative size of the pharmaceutical industry. </p><p>Based on this new conceptual model and measurement, I probe three research questions: (1) how medicalization may impact population health in the context of recent epidemiologic transitions and how this impact may differ by the stages of epidemiologic transition and socioeconomic development; (2) what are the mechanisms that reproduce medicalization; and (3) how the lay public may respond to medicalization, the institution of medicine, and the medical profession.</p><p>This dissertation links several lines of theoretical and empirical research from medical sociology, demography, epidemiology, health economics and management, and medical science, and extensively employs OECD Health Data, World Development Indicators, the World Values Survey, the European Values Study data, the U.S. General Social Survey, and the U.S. National Health Interview Survey. It uses several advanced statistical methods, e.g., multiple imputations, latent variable analysis, mixed models, generalized estimating equations models, generalized method of moments models, difference-in-difference models, and hierarchical-age-period-cohort models.</p><p>Results for the first research question suggest that various dimensions of medicalization vary in importance on population health and these effects also differ by the stages of epidemiologic transition and socioeconomic development. I discuss the mechanisms linking various dimensions of medicalization to population health and then discuss these findings in the context of epidemiologic transition, fundamental causes of disease and death, and global health movement. </p><p>Results for the second research question suggest that medicalization at both the societal and individual levels negatively affect individual subjective health, which leads to increasing health care utilization. These social processes function together to promote and reproduce medicalization at societal level. I discuss several pathways linking medicalization to lower subjective health and other agents of medicalization.</p><p>Results for the third research question suggest that American's "confidence in the medical institution and profession" has continuously declined in the last three decades and groups with higher socioeconomic status report lower obedience to doctors' authority, but are more likely to trust doctors' ethics than their counterparts. I discuss the mechanisms for the changes in public confidence in the medical institution and profession, the status of medicine and the medical profession in the era of medicalization, the paradox of opposite trends in attitudes toward medicine and health utilization behavior, and group differences in obedience and trust.</p> / Dissertation

In today's social work there is an ambition to work evidence-based in order to improve quality and competency in business. This study is made in a disability administration which has introduced a common approach towards users for all employees. The approach is called low arousal approach. The purpose of the study is to investigate how a method takes hold and implements within an organization. The empirical data is analyzed by theories of professionalization, idea dissemination and translation. The results demonstrate that the studied administration is influenced by the outside world’s quest for evidence-based work and professionalization in care and welfare sector. It also shows how a method changes when it enters a new context and the consequences the implementation has in the studied administration.

No description available.

As researchers provide compelling evidence pointing to climate change, governments and civil society actors are getting stimulated to act and reverse the negative impacts of extreme climate change. The impact of climate change on Kenya is profound and staggering. It is estimated that Kenya’s landmass is 582,350 km2, of which only 17% is arable, with 83% consisting of semi-arid and arid land. Climate change and human activities are resulting in desertification and increasing total semi-arid and arid land. Researchers further estimate that 17% of Mombasa or 4600 hectares of the region’s land area will be submerged as a result of sea-level rise. This situation demands policy actions to combat the situation. As developing countries wade into combating climate change, the government of Kenya is implementing far reaching polices to fight climate change including its 2006 water quality regulation and 2009 regulation of wetlands, riverbanks, lakeshore and sea management regulations of 2009. In addition, development partners such as the UNDP and civil society actors working on climate change have played a critical role complementing government policy actions. Working through the Africa’s Adaptation Programme (AAP), civil society organizations (CSOs) are participating in agenda setting, and increasing awareness that promote climate change adaptation through civic engagement. Civic engagement serves as an important tool for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote a more effective response to the hazardous effects of extreme climate change. Despite this, researchers and policy analyst argue that civil societies work within the environmental sector is not based on rigorous research, their actions are uncoordinated, and outcomes are poorly communicated. As a focal point, this report examined how CSOs organize around key policy issues and work through the AAP to set the agenda and influence climate change policymaking in Kenya. The study is based largely on an evaluation of secondary data sources including websites, Programme documents and academic articles. I also benefited from a summer internship at UNDP offices in Nairobi in 2010. The study explored how AAP is professionalizing and how that increases its leverage and strengthens NGOs to actively participate in policy influencing. The study summarizes scattered pieces of information into one report to enhance the AAP’s database building efforts. Finally, this serves as resource for CSOs policy engagement in Kenya and beyond. Overall, the report reveals that the AAP is bridging ties between CSOs working within the climate change sector by bringing them under one umbrella. This social bonding behavior serves as social capital to influence policy. However to increase leverage for effective policy engagement, the AAP needs to incrementally apply rigorous evidenced based research to generate more compelling information that transforms policies. It further suggests commercializing clean energy technologies by charging affordable rates for deploying such infrastructure to households. Finally, using policy entrepreneurs can dramatically improve policy advocacy in Kenya. / text

This dissertation is developed around questions of how cultural fascinations with seeing the city from above are intertwined with the birth and development of the city planning profession. To explore this question, I examine three contexts linked to already-familiar episodes from the history of city planning: Paris in the aftermath of Haussmann-ization, the visual approach of proto-planner Daniel H. Burnham, and the New York region in advance of the rise of master-planner Robert Moses. These settings serve as a basis for a reoriented approach to understanding how and why a new category of experts tasked with intervening in urban conditions emerged. Among other views, Paris is seen from the height of a tethered hot air balloon; San Francisco and Chicago from Twin Peaks and the roof of the Railway Exchange Building, respectively; and New York from the lens of a Fairchild aerial camera, as well as from the 86th story of the Empire State Building. The sublime experience facilitated by such vistas undergirds the discussion. It is employed to recast existing historical accounts of the birth of the city-planning profession at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries to more deeply reflect its interaction with the proliferation and subsequent breakdown of a visual culture of "the city" from above shared amongst experts and citizens alike.