The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to investigate what approach or approaches the Church of Sweden have to meditation and how meditation is used by the parishes that this investigation is built upon. I have made two question formulations to meet this purposes:  Why does the parishes I have studied organize meditation?  How is meditation used and performed by the parishes in the Church of Sweden that I have studied? I have in order to answer this questions used a ritual theoretic model, composed of Peter Habbe´s theory as it is described in Att se och tänka med ritual – kontrakterande ritualer i de isländska släktsagorna and Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw´s ritual theory that is presented in their work The Archetypal Actions of Ritual – A theory of ritual illustrated by the Jain rite of worship. The theoretical model that I have put together consists of what is characterizing a ritual, and through this model I have examined my empirical material, the phenomenon of meditation and how it crystallizes in the context of the Church of Sweden. The empirical material consists of five interviews with five leaders of meditation in the Church of Sweden and three participative observations at three meditation occasions held by parishes in the Church of Sweden. The interviews are qualitative deep interviews that have a semi–structured nature. Based on this material, I have then typologized the phenomenon through my theoretical model and from there answered the research questions that my purpose demanded. The meditation in the parishes that I have visited in this study are very similar, and there is conformity among the parishes in order how the meditation is to be executed. The most differentiating inquiry among the parishes is why they are organizing meditation, if it is because the participants are to embrace the Christian faith, or if everyone is free to participate with the faith or non–faith he or she has got. In this question there is a split up in two groups among my informants, those who deem that the meditation has to have a pronounced Christian orientation, and those who deem that it isn´t possible to divide the meditation activity in confession or non–confession, and that it is up to everyone to decide the orientation of the meditation. / Denna c-uppsats har som syfte att undersöka vilket eller vilka förhållningsätt Svenska kyrkan har till aktiviteten meditation och hur den används inom de församlingar som ligger till grund för denna undersökning. För att möta denna föresats har jag formulerat två frågeställningar:  Varför anordnar de församlingar jag studerat meditation?  Hur används och utförs meditation av de församlingar i Svenska kyrkan jag studerat? För att besvara dessa frågor har jag använt mig av en ritualteoretisk modell, sammansatt av Peter Habbes teori som beskrivs i Att se och tänka med ritual – kontrakterande ritualer i de isländska släktsagorna samt Caroline Humphrey och James Laidlaws ritualteori som läggs fram i deras verk The Archetypal Actions of Ritual – A theory of ritual illustrated by the Jain rite of worship. Den teoretiska modell jag satt samman utifrån dessa teorier består av vad som karaktäriserar ett ritual och jag har genom denna undersökt mitt empiriska material och fenomenet meditation och hur det utkristalliserar sig i Svenska kyrkans kontext. Mitt empiriska material består av fem intervjuer med fem meditationsledare inom Svenska kyrkan samt tre deltagande observationer på tre meditationstillfällen anordnade av församlingar inom Svenska kyrkan. Intervjuerna är kvalitativa djupintervjuer som är semi–strukturerade till sin natur. Utifrån detta material har jag sedan typologiserat fenomenet utifrån min teoretiska modell och därifrån besvarat de forskningsfrågor som mitt syfte krävt. Meditationen inom de olika församlingarna jag har besökt i denna studie är mycket likartad och det råder konformitet mellan församlingarna när det gäller hur de utför och lär ut meditation. Det som skiljer mest mellan församlingarna är frågan om varför man anordnar meditation, om det är för att deltagarna ska anamma den kristna tron eller om var och en är fri att delta med den tro eller icke–tro hen har. I denna fråga kan mina informanter delas upp i två grupper, de som anser att meditationen måste ha en uttalat kristen inriktning för att användas inom Svenska kyrkan, och de som anser att meditation inte kan delas in i konfessionell eller icke–konfessionell och att det är upp till var och en att bestämma inriktning på meditationen.

<p>Abstract</p><p>The aim of this work is to understand, from a perspective of sociology of emotions, how employees within the health care sector experience their working environment and the conditions. By analysing how these experiences shape the interviewees’ perceptions of the quality of their working environment, the dissertation also seeks to arrive at an understanding of what the contributing factors are for their choice to either remain in or leave the organizations in which they are employed.</p><p>This study has been conducted as a qualitative interview study. Vocational categories represented in the study are doctors, nurses, assistant nurses, midwives, and physical therapists.</p><p>The analysis has employed an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation, and theory are combined. The interpretative and empirical focus, and the theory used concentrate largely on emotions, and the resulting analysis is, thusly, a contribution within the sociology of emotions.</p><p>The empirical analysis is organized in three chapters, describing and analysing three main areas: dissatisfaction with public organisations, social embeddedness, and emotional labour.</p><p>In terms of results the dissertation demonstrates that workplaces undergoing repeated changes without strong support from the staff are experienced as bad, while workplaces where the employees feel affirmed and competent are experienced as good. However, it is not working environment and conditions alone that are meaningful for the interviewees, but so is the balance between work and private life, as well as the balance between social relations in and outside of the workplace.</p><p>In addition, the emotional culture in workplaces and among colleagues is of crucial importance for the interviewees’ perceptions of their work. It is suggested that this pertains to the fact that health care work constitutes a specific type of emotional labour which, in the dissertation, is described as harbouring work. Hence, more than a matter of working environment and conditions, the interviewees’ experiences depend more upon factors such as the degree of embeddedness in social relationships, the emotional climate in the workplace, and the possibility to form a buffer culture. Moreover, it is these factors that underpin how and why employees choose to remain in or leave their workplaces.</p>

This study is a qualitative study on the participants on the Ganga Arti. It does focus on the participants on how they attend, how they express their religious belief and why the ritual is important for them. The study has been done in Varanasi, India, on a period of three months. Also the study has been done on the two ghats Tulsi and Assi. It tries to explain how the ritual can be understand both thru the participants eyes and thru theory. That has been done with both interviews and participant observations. Thru the study it has shown how complex the ritual and ghat is for participants and the society. The study have shown how fieldwork can be done and which considerations can be done. It has also shown that people in Varanasi participant the ganga arti in different ways, the religious beliefs can be different and also how they show it.

The aim of this work is to understand, from a perspective of sociology of emotions, how employees within the health care sector experience their working environment and the conditions. By analysing how these experiences shape the interviewees’ perceptions of the quality of their working environment, the dissertation also seeks to arrive at an understanding of what the contributing factors are for their choice to either remain in or leave the organizations in which they are employed. This study has been conducted as a qualitative interview study. Vocational categories represented in the study are doctors, nurses, assistant nurses, midwives, and physical therapists. The analysis has employed an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation, and theory are combined. The interpretative and empirical focus, and the theory used concentrate largely on emotions, and the resulting analysis is, thusly, a contribution within the sociology of emotions. The empirical analysis is organized in three chapters, describing and analysing three main areas: dissatisfaction with public organisations, social embeddedness, and emotional labour. In terms of results the dissertation demonstrates that workplaces undergoing repeated changes without strong support from the staff are experienced as bad, while workplaces where the employees feel affirmed and competent are experienced as good. However, it is not working environment and conditions alone that are meaningful for the interviewees, but so is the balance between work and private life, as well as the balance between social relations in and outside of the workplace. In addition, the emotional culture in workplaces and among colleagues is of crucial importance for the interviewees’ perceptions of their work. It is suggested that this pertains to the fact that health care work constitutes a specific type of emotional labour which, in the dissertation, is described as harbouring work. Hence, more than a matter of working environment and conditions, the interviewees’ experiences depend more upon factors such as the degree of embeddedness in social relationships, the emotional climate in the workplace, and the possibility to form a buffer culture. Moreover, it is these factors that underpin how and why employees choose to remain in or leave their workplaces.

In the four early modern revenge tragedies I study, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the ubiquitous depictions of corporeal violence underscore the authors’ skepticism of the human tendency to infuse bodies – physical manifestations of both agency and vulnerability – with symbolism. The revengers in these plays try to avenge the death of a loved one whose disfigured body remains unburied and often continues to occupy a place on stage, but their efforts to infuse corpses with meaning instead reveal the revengers’ perverse obsession with mutilation as spectacle. In Chapter one, I show how in The Spanish Tragedy Thomas Kyd portrays the characters’ assertions of body-soul unity to be arbitrary attempts to justify self-serving motives. Although Hieronimo treats Horatio’s dead body as a signifier of his own emotions, he displays it, alongside the bodies of his enemies, as just another rotting corpse. In Chapter two, I explore how in Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare questions the efficacy of rituals for maintaining social order by depicting how the play’s characters manipulate rituals intended to celebrate peace as opportunities to exact vengeance; Titus demands human sacrifice as not just an accompanying element, but a central motive of rituals ostensibly intended to signify commemoration. In Chapter three, I read The Revenger’s Tragedy as illustrating Thomas Middleton’s characterization of the depiction of corporeal mutilation as an overused, generic convention; the play’s revenger, Vindice, attributes multiple, constantly shifting, meanings to the rotting skull of his lover, which he uses as a murder weapon. In Chapter four I argue that in The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster destabilizes spectators’ interpretive capacities; within this play’s unconventional dramatic structure, the main characters use somatic imagery to associate bodily dismemberment with moral disintegration. Corpses, the tangible remains of once vigorous, able-bodied relatives, serve as central components of respectful commemoration or as mementos of vengeance, yet these dead, often gruesomely mutilated bodies also invite repulsion or perverse curiosity. Thus, rather than honoring the deceased, revengers objectify corpses as frightening spectacles or even use them as weapons.

No description available.

<p>Vad händer vid en medling och hur upplevs detta möte av de parter som ingår i medlingsprocessen? Denna fråga är utgångspunkten i föreliggande uppsats vilken belyser gärningspersoners och brottsoffers upplevelser samt den förändrade syn på sig själva och den andra parten vilken medlingen bidragit till. Medling vid brott innebär att gärningsperson och brottsoffer möts och samtalar om sina upplevelser av brottet. Denna uppsats har med intervjuer som bas studerat parternas egna upplevelser av medlingssituationen. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna för uppsatsen är George Herbert Meads ”Den Generaliserade andre”, Thomas Scheff och Susanne Retzingers skambegrepp, Erving Goffmans samspelsteori samt ”Det intersubjektiva tredje” vilket beskrivs av Samuel Gerson. Med hjälp av dessa teorier har gärningspersonerna och brottsoffrens upplevelser av medling analyserats, analysen visar att medling av båda parter beskrivs som ett möte där en motpart gett dem insikt om den andres upplevelse av brottet. Denna insikt resulterade i en för gärningspersonerna förändrad livssyn samt för brottsoffren en känsla av att få brottet utrett. Slutsatsen som dras i denna uppsats är att medling vid brott bidrar till att ge gärningsperson och brottsoffer en ny bild av händelsen och att denna nya bild leder till eftertanke kring det egna beteendet samt en förståelse för hur det egna agerandet påverkar andra.</p> / <p>What happens at a victim-offender mediation and how is this process perceived by the parties involved? That is the starting point in this paper illustrating perpetrators and victims’ experiences and their changing views of themselves and of the other party given by the mediation process. Criminal mediation means that the perpetrator and the victim meet to discuss their view of the crime. This paper, based on interviews, studies both parties own experiences of the mediation. The theoretical starting points of the paper are George Herbert Mead´s "the Generalized Other”, Thomas Scheff´s and Susanne Retzinger´s shame and reintegrative shame concept, Erving Goffman´s interaction ritual theory and "the concept of the third” described by Samuel Gerson. Perpetrators and victims experiences of the mediation have been analyzed by means of these theories, the analysis shows that mediation is described by both parties as a meeting giving them insight into the other parties’ experience of the crime. This insight resulted in a changed view on life for the perpetrators and a feeling of having the crime investigated for the victims. The conclusion in this paper is that victim-offender mediation gives the perpetrator and the victim a new view of the incident, resulting in reflection about their own behaviour and an understanding of how their acting affects others.</p>

Vad händer vid en medling och hur upplevs detta möte av de parter som ingår i medlingsprocessen? Denna fråga är utgångspunkten i föreliggande uppsats vilken belyser gärningspersoners och brottsoffers upplevelser samt den förändrade syn på sig själva och den andra parten vilken medlingen bidragit till. Medling vid brott innebär att gärningsperson och brottsoffer möts och samtalar om sina upplevelser av brottet. Denna uppsats har med intervjuer som bas studerat parternas egna upplevelser av medlingssituationen. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna för uppsatsen är George Herbert Meads ”Den Generaliserade andre”, Thomas Scheff och Susanne Retzingers skambegrepp, Erving Goffmans samspelsteori samt ”Det intersubjektiva tredje” vilket beskrivs av Samuel Gerson. Med hjälp av dessa teorier har gärningspersonerna och brottsoffrens upplevelser av medling analyserats, analysen visar att medling av båda parter beskrivs som ett möte där en motpart gett dem insikt om den andres upplevelse av brottet. Denna insikt resulterade i en för gärningspersonerna förändrad livssyn samt för brottsoffren en känsla av att få brottet utrett. Slutsatsen som dras i denna uppsats är att medling vid brott bidrar till att ge gärningsperson och brottsoffer en ny bild av händelsen och att denna nya bild leder till eftertanke kring det egna beteendet samt en förståelse för hur det egna agerandet påverkar andra. / What happens at a victim-offender mediation and how is this process perceived by the parties involved? That is the starting point in this paper illustrating perpetrators and victims’ experiences and their changing views of themselves and of the other party given by the mediation process. Criminal mediation means that the perpetrator and the victim meet to discuss their view of the crime. This paper, based on interviews, studies both parties own experiences of the mediation. The theoretical starting points of the paper are George Herbert Mead´s "the Generalized Other”, Thomas Scheff´s and Susanne Retzinger´s shame and reintegrative shame concept, Erving Goffman´s interaction ritual theory and "the concept of the third” described by Samuel Gerson. Perpetrators and victims experiences of the mediation have been analyzed by means of these theories, the analysis shows that mediation is described by both parties as a meeting giving them insight into the other parties’ experience of the crime. This insight resulted in a changed view on life for the perpetrators and a feeling of having the crime investigated for the victims. The conclusion in this paper is that victim-offender mediation gives the perpetrator and the victim a new view of the incident, resulting in reflection about their own behaviour and an understanding of how their acting affects others.

The aim of this study was to explore the purposes and effects of women’s leadership in rituals in relation to their social and religious role in society. This was carried out by using qualitative methods and analyzing the data by using ritual theory and theories on religion and gender. The interviews and observations focused on two rituals carried out by women: the Partiv Puja and the Chhath Puja. The results show that women participate in the rituals for religious, cultural, and social reasons, and that their participation in the rituals could be viewed as a reclaim of the public space of religious practice. Furthermore, the women’s participation and leadership in rituals could also, from a ritual theoretic perspective, be viewed as a tool to refuse and change social power structures. The research was carried out in Varanasi, India, during an eight-week Minor Field Study and the study was performed by using observations and interviews, which were conducted between the 21st of October and the 2nd of December 2018 / Målet med denna studie var att utforska syften och följder av kvinnors ledarskap och deltagande i religiösa ritualer i relation till deras sociala och religiösa roll i samhället. Studien genomfördes genom kvalitativa metoder samt en analys av resultaten ur ett ritualteorietiskt perspektiv, samt med hjälp av teorier om religion och kön. Intervjuerna och observationerna fokuserade på två ritualer som utförs av kvinnor: Partiv Puja och Chaath Puja. Resultaten visar att kvinnor deltar i ritualerna av religiösa, kulturella och sociala anledningar, samt att deras deltagande skulle kunna ses som ett återtagande av den offentliga platsen för religiöst utövande. Tilläggningsvis skulle kvinnors deltagande och ledarskap i ritualer, ur ett ritualteoretiskt perspektiv, även kunna ses som verktyg för att gå emot, och förändra, sociala maktstrukturer. Studien genomfördes i Varanasi, Indien, under en åttaveckors Minor Field Study och utfördes genom observationer och intervjuer. Dessa ägde rum mellan den 21:a oktober och den 2:a december 2018.

The aim of this paper is to use a cultural-hermeneutic methodology to investigate how meaning is constructed in a contemporary social situation (co-culturally) and to suggest the Christian concept incurvatus in se as a critical theological resource (counter-culturally). Central to this account is how to think theologically in a secular situation. It could also be understood as a habermasian translation of a christian experience of the human problem as curved into themselves (homo incurvatus in se) into a existential language for a (possibly) universal experience. I liken this curvedness to the pervasive individualism of today’s society and argue that meaning-making based on the idea of individual freedom can lead to a lack of meaning and existential emptiness.  To arrive at a discussion of incurvatus in se as a theologically critical resource for the study of existential emptiness, I analyze film, parenting and worship to get an idea of what a meaning-making process can look like in these examples. The result of this analysis suggests that by viewing these activities as something that points beyond themselves, rather than something that only reflects the subjective, they can play a meaning-making role.  In light of this result and the interpretation of the situation, I propose a concept of humans as homo incurvatus in se as contrast to an idealization of individual freedom and selfrealization. Overall, this study develops a excurvatus ex se approach that is constituted by conscious and critical meaning-making and argues further that a modified understanding of the human problem as curved into themselves can serve as an incentive, or even a primus motor, to seek meaning outside the subjective in a responsible way.