La thèse s'attache à rendre compte des conditions pratiques et symboliques d'appropriation par les étudiants grévistes de la seconde moitié des années 2000 en France d'une forme d'organisation, l'assemblée générale (AG), qui fait partie de leur répertoire contestataire depuis les années 1960. Il s'agit ainsi de comprendre comment des formes d'action se reproduisent d'une mobilisation à l'autre, c'est-à-dire comment des acteurs en viennent à avoir recours à l'une plutôt qu'à d'autres qu'ils connaissent, comment ils en font l'apprentissage et comment ils la transforment à la marge en la pratiquant. Elle s'appuie principalement sur une enquête ethnographique menée sur les mobilisations qu'ont connu trois sites universitaires entre 2006 et 2010. Les usages des AG sont façonnés par les luttes internes aux groupes sociaux, politiques et syndicaux impliqués dans l'espace de ces mobilisations, de sorte que leur succès tient à la fois à une entreprise symbolique de justification de ces dernières au nom de la « démocratie » par des courants minoritaires, et à leur plasticité. Elles sont en effet investies de toute une palette de rôles – qui n'ont parfois rien à voir avec des normes « démocratiques ». Elles sont ainsi promues par des militants auxquelles elles permettent d'avoir le sentiment de peser sur une masse d'étudiants, et cela d'autant plus qu'ils appartiennent à de petites organisations qui sont loin de pouvoir mobiliser autant d'adhérents. / This dissertation illuminates the practical and symbolic conditions of appropriation of general assemblies (assemblées générales – AG) by striking students in the second half of the 2000s in France. This mode of organization has been part of their contentious repertoire since the 1960s. It tries to understand the recurrence of ways of action from a mobilization to another, that is, how actors come to resort to one of them instead of others they know, how they learn how to practice it and how they slightly transform it in the process. It is mostly based on an ethnographic investigation about the mobilizations of three higher education sites between 2006 and 2010. The uses of AG are shaped by internal conflicts among the social, political and union groups which are involved in the space of these mobilizations, so that their success stems from both the symbolic entreprise of justification of them in the sake of « democracy » by minority currents, and their plasticity. Indeed, they play a whole set of roles – which sometimes have nothing to do with « democratic » norms. They are promoted by activists to whom they give the feeling that they influence a mass of students, especially as they belong to organizations which are far from being able to mobilize as many members.

Pedagogical documentation is a certain procedure for documenting that, in recent years, has been embraced in several Swedish preschools. Teachers document children’s actions and conversations usually by photos or video recordings. This documentation is to be used for a pedagogical purpose. However, studies and governmental inspections have shown that pedagogical documentation gives rise to many questions among preschool teachers. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into what is being expressed when preschool teachers discuss pedagogical documentation, focusing on themes of content and on the participants’ expressions of their points of view. The data is comprised of transcriptions from audio recordings of discussions conducted in a research circle. The participants are eight preschool teachers that met over the course of one year. Each meeting focused on the documentation provided by a different participant. In that way the contents of the discussions were framed by the teachers own questions and narratives. Theoretically, the study departs from Social Constructionism and Discursive Psychology. The preschool teachers’ utterances have been analyzed using concepts of interpretative repertoires and ideological dilemmas. The results show the main themes to be: Knowledge content in a preschool setting, children’s learning, the teacher’s role and implementation of pedagogical documentation. The participants’ joint position is that the knowledge content at the preschool level is defined by the curriculum for the preschool. Concerning children’s learning and the teacher’s role, two main standpoints are disclosed. Ideologically those standpoints derive from two opposing theories of education. Based on how the standpoints have been expressed I have called them ”predetermined learning” versus ”non-predetermined learning”. One main distinction between the standpoints is that predetermined learning emphasizes the results of learning, while non-predetermined learning emphasizes the processes of learning. The participants’ utterances show that teachers tend to subscribe to the idea that there is only one acceptable way of working with pedagogical documentation. This sometimes creates performance anxiety and feelings of not succeeding and has led to arguments advocating an alternate approach; pedagogical documentation can be done in many ways. The ideological dilemmas within the discourse can be perceived as resources by which the participants argue about knowledge, learning, teaching and about the implementation of pedagogical documentation. / <p>Licentiatuppsatsen har författats inom forskarskolan "Utforskande lärprocesser och literacy: förskolebarns lärande i språk, matematik och naturvetenskap" som genomförts i samarbete mellan Stockholms universitet, Uppsala universitet, Umeå universitet och Högskolan i Dalarna.</p>

Submitted by Aelson Maciera (aelsoncm@terra.com.br) on 2017-06-23T19:17:36Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseLRRF.pdf: 1828970 bytes, checksum: f6d92256401223cfcfe780c5b3b0194a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-28T08:52:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseLRRF.pdf: 1828970 bytes, checksum: f6d92256401223cfcfe780c5b3b0194a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-28T08:52:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseLRRF.pdf: 1828970 bytes, checksum: f6d92256401223cfcfe780c5b3b0194a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-28T08:57:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseLRRF.pdf: 1828970 bytes, checksum: f6d92256401223cfcfe780c5b3b0194a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-07 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / This dissertation seeks to understand what I call the aspiration horizons of women from brazilian popular classes and how the access to digital media allows a sociality around the negotiation of the limits and possibilities of such horizons. The objective was to show the context of housing, leisure and work of the subjects, in order to understand that the digital media are mobilized according to social relations established beyond them. This work is in agreement with the theories of the social modeling of technology to understand that both the nature of digital media and the needs and desires of users shape the meaning and utility of a technology in a given historical moment and context. In this sense, technologies are used according to social class relations, gender, sexuality, generational issues, among other aspects that need to be understood. In the same way, the media interfere in the daily life of the subjects, transforming their relations and, sometimes, increasing the possibility of access to diverse cultural repertoires. The empirical field was built on the Internet through Social Networking Service Platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp, seeking to observe the network sociality of women in the research, their postings, shares, likes and exposure dynamics; outside of the Internet, I did an ethnography in the Baixada Fluminense and in the popular classes of the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro in order to access their daily lives, their places of residence, their structure of access to technology, their circulation throughout the city and their moments of recreation. / Esta tese busca compreender o que chamo de horizontes de aspiração das mulheres das classes populares brasileiras e de que forma o acesso às mídias digitais permitem uma socialidade em torno da negociação dos limites e possibilidades de ampliação de tais horizontes. O objetivo consistiu em mostrar o contexto de moradia, lazer e trabalho dos sujeitos da pesquisa, de forma a compreender que as mídias digitais são mobilizadas de acordo com relações sociais estabelecidas para além delas. Este trabalho se mostra de acordo com as teorias da modelagem social da tecnologia que nos ajudam a compreender que tanto a natureza da mídia como as necessidades e desejos dos usuários moldam o significado e a utilidade de um determinado meio digital em um dado momento histórico e contexto. Nesse sentido, as tecnologias são usadas de acordo com relações de classe social, gênero, sexualidade, questões geracionais, dentre outros aspectos que precisam ser entendidos. Da mesma forma, as mídias interferem no cotidiano dos sujeitos, transformando suas relações e, por vezes, ampliando a possibilidade de acesso à repertórios culturais diversos. O campo empírico foi construído, na internet, por meio de Plataformas de Serviços de Redes Sociais como o Facebook e Whatsapp com vistas a observar a socialidade em rede das mulheres da pesquisa, suas postagens, compartilhamentos, curtidas e dinâmicas de exposição; fora da internet realizei etnografia na Baixada Fluminense e em regiões de classes populares da Zona Oste do Rio de Janeiro de forma a acessar os cotidianos dessas pessoas, seus locais de moradia, sua estrutura de acesso à tecnologia, sua circulação pela cidade e seus momentos de lazer.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-03T14:43:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 HilderlineCO_TESE.pdf: 1066215 bytes, checksum: 879d6f83087b576559ae92c8358032d0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-09 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The quarrel, in this study, tells about the language as social practical in the daily of Parnamirim State Prison that is integrated to the Rio Grande do Norte Penitentiary System - SISPERN, destined for men in fulfilment of penalty privative of freedom, in closed regimen. For the accomplishment of the research, the delimited objectives had been to analyze the language repertoires created in the prisional daily, trying to identify how it?s turned into distinct forms of resistance to the mechanisms of control in penitentiary system; to investigate which are the language repertoires created from the new sociability forms developed among prisoners and identify how the language repertoires are expressed in the daily prisional on relations/exercises of power not-institutionalized. In the methodological aspect, the study is in a qualitative boarding, that has as main instrument the interview. The inquiry was possible by means of using instruments for data collection, like as: the direct comment in the prisional daily duly registered as researcher?s ethnographical procedure, the analysis of interns? cadastre handbooks and the application of half-structuralized interview, to the subjects of the research. The construction and understanding of the study object had been based on authors who argue on the arrest, as: Foucault, Goffman, Carvalho Filho and, in particular was searched the theorical referencial that approaches the language in a social and cultural perspective: Orlandi, Manfred, Bastos and Candiotto, amongst others. Beyond the normative endorsement of the Brazilian legislation, through the Law of Criminal Execution, of the Criminal Code and the Federal Constitution of the country and the legal apparatus in state scope. Still in the research methodological perspective, after the collection the data had been submitted to an analysis of the speech from Foucalt?s theory and in the Orlandi?s perspective, being also qualitative and quantitative. The results had evidenced that the social and juridical profile of the population in the site inquired is not different of others Brazilian prisons, composed for men, in its majority, with age band between 21 and 30 years old, prisoners for practicing crimes against the patrimony, against life, amongst others, and, in special, criminal recidivists. It evidenced, still, that the daily prisional of PSP is characterized for a sociocultural diversity expressed in the relations of power not institutionalized, that contributes for the formation and division of the groups, each one using a set of language codes/ repertoires sustentation. Therefore, the language, in the daily prisional, is one of the ways to understand the singularity of the sociability relations and as social practicing mediated by relations/exercises of power and antagonistic interests, in which each group aims first of all, their own interests. It represents the complexity of the social relations, in the prisional space, with diverse effects, in function of the situation and the moment. The language in the arrest, beyond the communication function, assumes and represents central element for the sociability human being, contributes for its changings and it?s configured as one of the resistance forms of prisoners against the controling, disciplining and monitoring mechanisms of penitentiary system / A discuss?o, neste estudo, versa sobre a linguagem como pr?tica social no cotidiano da Penitenci?ria Estadual de Parnamirim, integrada ao Sistema Penitenci?rio do Rio Grande do Norte - SISPERN, destinada para homens em cumprimento de pena privativa de liberdade, em regime fechado. Para a realiza??o da pesquisa, os objetivos delimitados foram analisar os repert?rios lingu?sticos tecidos no cotidiano prisional, buscando identificar como se configuram em distintas formas de resist?ncia aos mecanismos de controle do sistema penitenci?rio; investigar quais s?o os repert?rios lingu?sticos criados a partir das novas formas de sociabilidade desenvolvidas entre os apenados e identificar como os repert?rios lingu?sticos no cotidiano prisional se expressam nas rela??es/exerc?cios de poder n?oinstitucionalizado. No aspecto metodol?gico, o estudo se situa numa abordagem qualitativa, que tem como instrumento principal a entrevista. A investiga??o foi poss?vel mediante a utiliza??o de instrumentos de coleta de dados, como: a observa??o direta no cotidiano prisional devidamente registra no di?rio de campo como procedimento etnogr?fico do pesquisador, a an?lise documental dos prontu?rios dos internos e a aplica??o de entrevista semi-estruturada, junto aos sujeitos da pesquisa. A constru??o e compreens?o do objeto de estudo fundamentaram-se em autores que discutem sobre a pris?o, como: Foucault, Goffman, Carvalho Filho e, em particular buscou-se o referencial te?rico que aborda a linguagem numa perspectiva social e cultural: Orlandi, Manfredo, Bastos e Candiotto, dentre outros. Al?m do respaldo normativo da legisla??o brasileira, atrav?s da Lei de Execu??o Penal, do C?digo Penal e da Constitui??o Federal do pa?s e do aparato legal em ?mbito estadual. Ainda na perspectiva metodol?gica da pesquisa, ap?s a coleta, os dados, foram submetidos a uma an?lise do discurso a partir da teoria foucultiana e na perspectiva de Orlandi e de cunho qualitativa e quantitativa. Os resultados evidenciaram que o perfil sociojur?dico da popula??o do locus de investiga??o n?o se apresenta diferente das demais pris?es brasileiras, composta por homens, em sua maioria, com faixa et?ria entre 21 e 30 anos, presos pela pr?tica de crimes contra o patrim?nio, contra a vida, dentre outros, e, em especial, reincidentes criminais. Evidenciou, ainda, que o cotidiano prisional da PEP se caracteriza por uma diversidade sociocultural expressa nas rela??es de poder n?o institucionalizado, que contribui para a forma??o e divis?o dos grupos, que cada um disp?e de um conjunto de c?digos/repert?rios de sustenta??o da linguagem. Por isso, a linguagem, no cotidiano prisional, ? um dos caminhos para compreender a singularidade das rela??es de sociabilidade e como pr?tica social mediada por rela??es/exerc?cios de poder e de interesses antag?nicos, nos quais cada grupo visa, a prior, atender aos seus interesses. Ela representa a complexidade das rela??es sociais, no espa?o prisional, com efeitos de sentidos diversos, em fun??o da situa??o e do momento. A linguagem na pris?o, al?m da fun??o de comunica??o, assume e representa elemento central para a sociabilidade humana, contribui para a sua din?mica e se configura como uma das formas de resist?ncia dos reclusos contra os mecanismos de controle, disciplina e vigil?ncia do sistema penitenci?rio

This thesis set out to study the debate on circumcision of boys in Sweden. The study concerns itself with how categories and positions become rhetorical resources in the debate and how categories andpositions thus are made relevant. In order to get at what is made possible through the use of theserhetorical recourses this study has analyzed debate articles, official Swedish governmental documentsand the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Three interpretativerepertoires surfaced as distinct in this material and they are; Religious identity and belonging,medicine and the UNCRC. The analysis will therefore be structured and guided by these repertoires.As the debate is centred around the Human Rights Paradigm there is an ingrained ideological dilemmain the debate that can be explained as the tension between a Universal and a Cultural relativisticinterpretation of Human Rights. This tension will be discussed throughout the study. Severalconclusions can be drawn from the analysis: The various and contradictory positions allowed for bythe use of the UNCRC makes it an elusive tool in both theory and practice. The ideological dilemmatends to coerce the participants into opposing positions and even question the rhetorical tools utilizedin the debate. The child surfaces in various categories and at the end of this thesis the question remain;Is it a religious child or is it a child of religious parents?

Background Within trauma teams, effective communication is necessary to ensure safe and secure care of the patient. Deficiencies in communication are one of the most important factors leading to patient harm. Time is an essential factor for rapid and efficient disposal of trauma teams to increase patients’ survival and prevent morbidity. Trauma team training plays an important role in improving the team’s performance, while the leader of the trauma team faces the challenge of coordinating and optimizing this performance. Aim The overall aim of this thesis was to analyse how members of trauma teams communicated verbally and non-verbally during trauma team training in emergency settings, and how the leaders were positioned or positioned themselves in relation to other team members. The aim was also to investigate the use of a communication tool, closed-loop communication, and the time taken to make a decision to go to surgery in relation to specific factors in the team as well as the leader’s position. Methods Eighteen trauma teams were audio and video recorded and analysed during regular in situ training in the emergency room at a hospital in northern Sweden. Each team consisted of six participants: two physicians, two nurses, and two enrolled nurses, giving a total of 108 participants. In Study I, the communication between the team members was analysed using a method inspired by discourse psychology and Strauss’ concept of “negotiated orders”. In Study II, the communication in the teams was categorized and quantified into “call-outs” and “closed-loop communication”. The analysis included the team members’ background data and results from Study I concerning the leader’s position in the team. Poisson regression analyses were performed to assess closed-loop communication (outcome variable) in relation to background data and leadership style (independent exploratory variables). In Study III, quantitative content analysis was used to categorize and organize the team members’ positions and the leaders’ non-verbal communication in the video-recorded material. Time sequences of leaders’ non-verbal communications in terms of gaze direction, speech time, and gestures were identified separately to the level of seconds and presented as proportions (%) of the total training time. The leaders’ vocal nuances were also categorized. The analysis in Study IV was based on the team members’ background data, the results from Study I concerning the leader’s position in the team, and the categorization and quantification of team communication from Study II. Cox proportional hazard regression was performed to assess the time taken to make a decision to go to surgery (outcome variable) in relation to background data, the leader’s position, and closed-loop communication (independent variables). Results The findings in Study I showed that team leaders used coercive, educational, discussing, and negotiating repertoires to convey knowledge and create common goals of priorities in work. The repertoires were used flexibly and changed depending on the urgency of the situation and the interaction between the team members. When using these repertoires, the team leaders were positioned or positioned themselves in either an authoritarian or an egalitarian position. Study II showed that closed-loop communication was used to a limited extent during the trauma team training. Call-out was more frequently used by team members with eleven or more years in the profession and experience of trauma within the past year, compared with team members with no such experience. Scandinavian origin, an egalitarian team leader and previous experience of two or more structured trauma courses were associated with more frequent use of closed-loop communication compared to those with no such origin, leader style, or experience. Study III showed that team leaders who gained control over the “inner circle” used gaze direction, vocal nuances, verbal commands, and gestures to solidify their verbal messages. Leaders who spoke in a hesitant voice or were silent expressed ambiguity in their non-verbal communication, and other team members took over the leader's tasks. Study IV showed that the team leader’s closed-loop communication was important for making the decision to go to surgery. In 8 of 16 teams, decisions on surgery were taken within the timeframe of the trauma team training. Call-outs and closed-loop communication initiated by the team members were significantly associated with a lack of decision to go to surgery. Conclusions The leaders used different repertoires to convey and gain knowledge in order to create common goal in the teams. These repertoires were both verbal and non-verbal, and flexible. They shifted depending on the urgency of the situation and the interaction within the team. Depending on the chosen repertoire, the leaders were positioned or positioned themselves as egalitarian and/or authoritarian leaders. In urgent situations, the leaders used closed-loop communication as part of a coercive repertoire, and called out commands and directed requests to specific team members. This repertoire was important for making the decision to go to surgery; the more closed-loop communication initiated by the leader, the more likely that the team would make a decision to go to surgery. Problems arose if the leaders were positioned or positioned themselves as either an authoritarian or an egalitarian leader. The leaders needed to be flexible and use different repertories in order to move the teamwork forward. It was notable that higher numbers of call-outs and closed-loop communication initiated by the team members decreased the probability of making the decision to go to surgery.

Abstract  Pedagogical documentation is a certain procedure for documenting that, in recent years, has been embraced in several Swedish preschools. Teachers document children’s actions and conversations usually by photos or video recordings. This documentation is to be used for a pedagogical purpose. However, studies and governmental inspections have shown that pedagogical documentation gives rise to many questions among preschool teachers. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into what is being expressed when preschool teachers discuss pedagogical documentation, focusing on themes of content and on the participants’ expressions of their points of view. The data is comprised of transcriptions from audio recordings of discussions conducted in a research circle. The participants are eight preschool teachers that met over the course of one year. Each meeting focused on the documentation provided by a different participant. In that way the contents of the discussions were framed by the teachers own questions and narratives. Theoretically, the study departs from Social Constructionism and Discursive Psychology. The preschool teachers’ utterances have been analyzed using concepts of interpretative repertoires and ideological dilemmas. The results show the main themes to be: Knowledge content in a preschool setting, children’s learning, the teacher’s role and implementation of pedagogical documentation. The participants’ joint position is that the knowledge content at the preschool level is defined by the curriculum for the preschool. Concerning children’s learning and the teacher’s role, two main standpoints are disclosed. Ideologically those standpoints derive from two opposing theories of education. Based on how the standpoints have been expressed I have called them ”predetermined learning” versus ”non-predetermined learning”. One main distinction between the standpoints is that predetermined learning emphasizes the results of learning, while non-predetermined learning emphasizes the processes of learning. The participants’ utterances show that teachers tend to subscribe to the idea that there is only one acceptable way of working with pedagogical documentation. This sometimes creates performance anxiety and feelings of not succeeding and has led to arguments advocating an alternate approach; pedagogical documentation can be done in many ways. The ideological dilemmas within the discourse can be perceived as resources by which the participants argue about knowledge, learning, teaching and about the implementation of pedagogical documentation. / Forskarskola för förskollärare "Utforskande lärprocesser och literacy:Förskolebarns lärande i språk, matematik och naturvetenskap"

Concern of this master thesis are action repertoires of czech feminist organizations. The main goal of this paper is to find out whether there are some types of activism in terms of following characteristics in the Czech Republic: organizational age, political opportunity structure, human and financial resources, and action repertoir to be found. The thesis is devided into two parts - theoretical and empirical. The author introduces evolution of the social movement theory in the theoretical part. Greater attention is given to an advocacy function of civil society organizations and to action repertoire, which social movement organizations use to reach their goals. Subsequently is shown how the literature talks about particular forms of action and its selection. There are characteristics mentioned above used in Hierarchical Cluster Analysis on sample of twenty-nine czech feminist organization in the empirical part. Finally, findings of this paper are being discussed. Keywords: Action repertoires, social movements, social movements organization, non-governmental organizations, feminist organizations, Czech activism.

No description available.

‘Corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘socially responsible investment’ (SRI) have become predominant frameworks connecting business to society that have spread across the globe. They comprise a shared set of ideas and practices, such as those promoted in global reporting standards and by international organisations such as the UN Global Compact. Nonetheless, both are constructed and reproduced by companies in relation to context-specific social institutions, including norms and conventions shaping company engagement in social issues. Using a neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, the thesis examines constructions of social responsibility in discourse and within institutional contexts, across regions that are not often compared in the research terrain: two West European welfare states (Sweden and the UK) and two emerging African economies (South Africa and Mauritius). The purpose of the thesis is to add to the literature on CSR and SRI with a sociologically informed perspective that is comparative and connects institutional theory with social constructionism and a Foucauldian perspective on power. The thesis analyses how perceptions of CSR and SRI are constructed in relation to the social institutions that encase companies’ engagement with social issues, such as national level welfare configurations and the institution of financial investments. The main argument in this thesis is that CSR and SRI need to be seen as contextually constructed, in discourse and practice, in ways that draw the boundaries and set the conditions for company engagement with social issues. The thesis comprises three articles. Article 1 is a content analysis of company self-reporting on CSR and the article examines how the content given to CSR relates to broader welfare configurations and as such differs in four national settings across the divide between emerging African economies and Western welfare states. Article 2 is a discourse analysis that examines interpretative repertoires occurring in company self-reporting across the same set of four countries. The interpretative repertoires are analysed as discursive practices where power intersects with the production of knowledge on CSR. Article 3 focuses on SRI and examines responsible investing as a form of institutional work that institutional investors engage in. Based on an interview study with institutional investors in Sweden, the article analyses institutional work as a process that has the effect of both institutional creation and maintenance and it connects these institutional processes to the construction of meaning on SRI. In its entirety the thesis contributes a sociological perspective on how prevailing understandings of corporate social responsibility come into being and are reproduced. / Uppfattningar om företags samhällsansvar har begreppsliggjorts i huvudsak genom idéer om ’corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) och ’ansvarsfulla investeringar’. Under de senaste decennierna har dessa begrepp utvecklats till att bli vanligt förkommande och har spridits över världen. Som globala koncept medför de en gemensam uppsättning av idéer och metoder, såsom de som förs fram i internationella standarder för företags CSR rapportering, och utav internationella organisationer såsom FN:s Global Compact. Ändå skiljer de sig åt mellan olika kontexter och är konstruerade och återges av företag i förhållande till sociala sammanhang. Begreppen ges mening i relation till sociala institutioner i form av normer och konventioner som redan omger företag och sociala frågor. Baserat på nyinstitutionell teori undersöker avhandlingen konstruktioner av samhällsansvar och ansvarstagande, i diskurs och i institutionella sammanhang, över regioner som inte ofta jämförs i forskningen kring skillnader i företags samhällsansvar: två Västeuropeiska välfärdsstater (Sverige och Storbritannien) och två tillväxtekonomier i södra Afrika (Sydafrika och Mauritius). Syftet med avhandlingen är att bidra till litteraturen kring CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar med ett sociologiskt perspektiv som är jämförande och för samman institutionell teori med social konstruktionism och Foucaults perspektiv på makt. Avhandlingen analyserar hur föreställningar om CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar konstrueras i förhållande till de sociala institutioner som omger företags engagemang i samhällsfrågor, och belyser speciellt vikten av samhällets välfärdssystem och konventioner kring finansiella investeringar som betydelsefulla för dessa begrepp. Huvudargumentet i denna avhandling är att CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar måste ses som kontextuellt skapade, i diskurs och praxis, på ett sätt som drar gränserna och skapar förutsättningarna för företags engagemang i samhällsfrågor. Avhandlingen omfattar tre artiklar. Artikel 1 är en innehållsanalys av företags självrapportering om CSR och artikeln undersöker hur innehållet som ges till CSR i självrapporteringen relaterar till hur samhället i övrigt hanterar välfärd och sociala frågor. Artikeln visar på hur CSR på så sätt skiljer sig åt mellan fyra olika länder där två är tillväxtekonomier i södra Afrika och två är Västeuropeiska välfärdsstater. Artikel 2 är en diskursanalys som undersöker språkliga repertoarer (interpretative repertoires) som förekommer i företags självrapportering om CSR, i samma uppsättning av fyra länder. Repertoarerna analyseras som tillämpandet av diskurs och de synliggör hur makt är av betydelse i skapandet av diskurser kring CSR. Artikel 3 fokuserar på ansvarfulla investeringar och undersöker detta som en form av aktivt skapande och återskapande av samhällsinstitutioner. Baserat på en intervjustudie med institutionella investerare i Sverige analyseras ansvarfullt investerande som en process som på samma gång innebär både skapande av en ny social institution, ansvarsfulla investeringar, och återskapande av en existerande institution, finansiella investeringar. Skapandet av nya idéer inom ramarna för en existerande institution påverkar innebörden i ansvarsfulla investeringar. I sin helhet bidrar avhandlingen med ett sociologiskt perspektiv på hur uppfattningar om företags samhällsansvar skapas och återskapas. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>