Syftet med undersökningen var att utifrån beskrivningar från professionella socialarbetare, som arbetat med kvinnor som varit utsatta för mäns partnervåld, analysera vilka konstruktioner dessa professionella socialarbetare hade av den här klientgruppens situation. Frågeställningen var vilka konstruktioner ett urval av professionella socialarbetare, som arbetat med kvinnor som varit utsatta för mäns partnervåld, hade. Frågeställningen var fokuserad på följande teman: kvinnans livsvärld, förhållandet till mannen, våldet i relationen och faktorer för att stanna kvar i- respektive faktorer för att lämna förhållandet. Metoden var semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer. Fem professionella socialarbetare från olika kvinnojourer och socialtjänster intervjuades. Resultaten analyserades utifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv samt med stöd från tidigare forskning. Undersökningens viktigaste resultat och slutsats var att de professionella socialarbetarnas konstruktion av den misshandlade kvinnans situation var att hela kvinnans livsvärld påverkades negativt av mannens misshandel. Kvinnan var ambivalent i sitt förhållningssätt till mannen och hon levde hela tiden på hoppet om att mannen skulle förändra sig. Kvinnan upplevde inte våldet som något normalt och hon gjorde alltid på något sätt motstånd mot våldet. / The aim of this study was to analyze the social constructions social workers formed as result of working with women who had been victims of male partner violence. The social constructions analyzed came from the social workers descriptions of the client group’s situation. The question addressed was what social constructions a selection of social workers had that had worked with women who experienced violent abuse from men that they lived in a relationship with. The question was focused on the following themes: the women´s life conditions, the relationship to the man, the violence in the relationship, and what the factors affected whether the woman stayed or left the abusive relationship. The method used was semi-structured qualitative interviews. Five professional social workers from different shelters and social services institutions were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed from a social constructionist perspective with support from earlier research in the area. The most important finding from the study, and conclusion, was that the social constructions the professional social workers made from working with the abused woman was that the entire life situation of the abused women was negatively affected by the abuse from the man. The abused women were ambivalent in their approach to the abusive man, and they lived on the hope that the abusive man would change his abusive ways. The women did not experience the violence as something normal and they always resisted the violence in some way.

This thesis examines my experience of leading leadership development. During the last three years I have been researching my role as Head of Leadership and Organisational Development at the University of Hertfordshire (UH), with a view to making sense of and rethinking leadership and approaches to leadership development more generally. This thesis considers how my own thinking and practice has changed and developed as a consequence of paying attention to and reflecting on personal experience, whilst at the same time locating my sense-making in the broader academic scholarship. Narrative accounts of the significant incidents and interactions that I have participated in during the past three years have been shared verbally with the participants on the programmes that I lead, and explored more extensively in written form with colleagues in the learning community on the Doctorate in Management (DMan) programme at UH, as a means of intensifying my sense-making and its generalisability to a community of engaged enquirers. My research was prompted by disillusionment with the dominant discourse on leadership and leadership development based as it is on theories, frameworks, tools and techniques that privilege a form of autonomous, instrumental rationality and deceptive certainty that did not reflect the social, non-linear, uncertain day-to-day realities faced by me and the managers with whom I worked. In this thesis, I draw on my experiences as a manager, leader of leadership development, and a student of leadership development, to problematise the mainstream managerialist conceptions of leadership and organisation that are now part of the organisational habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) in the UK. The rise and naturalisation of managerialist ideology across the private, public, and charitable sectors in the UK makes it an inordinately difficult perspective to contest without risking some form of exclusion. I contend that my experience of attempting to encourage radical doubt and enquiry rather than the mindless acceptance and application of conventional wisdom contributes to knowledge in the field of leadership and organisational development by providing insight into and an alternative way of thinking about and practising leadership and leadership development. In contesting dominant conceptions, I proffer a more reality congruent alternative to mainstream thought. I draw on the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey et al, 2000, Griffin, 2002, Shaw, 2002), critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996), social constructionism (Berger et al, 1966), and other thinkers critical of managerialist conceptions of leadership and leadership education (Khurana, 2007) to explore leadership as a social, relational activity where leaders are co-participants, albeit highly influential ones, in the ongoing patterning of relationships that constitute organisation. However, I argue that it is insufficient for management educationalists to snipe critically at managerialism from the sidelines, problematising one perspective and simply replacing it with another (Ford et al, 2007), leaving their participants ill-equipped to navigate the potentially destructive political landscape of day-to-day organisational life. While the dominant discourse on leadership and organisation is flawed, to avoid exclusion managers must still become fluent in the language and practice of managerialism, the ideology that has come to dominate the vast majority of organisational communities in which they find themselves. In this thesis, I argue that it is crucial for managers and leaders of leadership development to engage with a polyphony of perspectives, and develop the reflective and reflexive capacity to continuously explore and answer for themselves the questions who am I, and what am I doing, who are we, and what are we doing?

This paper discusses how I have made an original contribution to the field of family therapy and systemic practice in relation to three themes: the therapeutic relationship; working with emotions in therapy, and self-reflexivity in practice. I track how these three themes have developed in the course of my research and clinical practice between 1983 and 2008 and then go on to show how I have developed these themes into an original 'practical theory' that has broader application to the field of family therapy and systemic consultation. I put forward eight publications, focusing on my two books, 'Death Talk: Conversations with Children and Families' (Fredman, 1997) and 'Transforming Emotion: Conversations in Counselling and Psychotherapy' (Fredman, 2004). I show how my original contributions to the field of family therapy theory and systemic practice take forward the following issues debated in the field in the past ten years: systemic therapy's theorising of the therapeutic relationship; -the use of cybernetics, psychoanalysis and social constructionism in systemic family therapy; -the relationship between modern and postmodern approaches in the field of family therapy; -the relationship between theory and practice.

The newly revised 2017-2018 British Columbian high school curriculum, as a prevention education response to a growing concern around children and youths’ mental health, indicates that students will learn the signs and symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression and be able to explain strategies to promote mental well-being (Province of British Columbia, 2016). Youth voices may help in shaping this curriculum objective. This study explores the meaning that five high school students, who were trained to facilitate an anxiety-prevention program, make of the problem of anxiety and prevention through their narratives, applying a narrative methodology and analysis. These youth narratives do not provide a singular explanation, truth or understanding of anxiety; like all narratives, they hold multiple truths. The youth narratives are drawn from the participants’ local experiential knowledge as well as prevailing discourses that shape their understanding. The types of narratives in this inquiry include: i) the quest for problem-free childhoods; ii) the genesis of knowledge; and iii) overcoming giant stigma by connecting. There are implications and considerations pulled from the narratives, including how a prevailing psychologized discourse may obscure contextual factors in making sense of anxiety and prevention. This inquiry may help educators and other professionals to imagine what else could be possible in conceptualizing the problem of anxiety and implementing prevention programs. It is hoped that this study will add to the current dialogue around prevention and support strategies in British Columbian schools and beyond. / Graduate / 0525 / 0680 / 0519 / 0533 / 0347 / arfelix3@gmail.com

This thesis explores diaspora experiences among Somali-Swedish parents and their daughters where the girls are enrolled in a Muslim-profiled school. The thesis uses migration theory with a transnational perspective, with findings that depart from the traditional view of migrants’ rootedness in a single country. It adopts the new paradigm for the sociology of childhood, where childhood is regarded as a social construction and children are considered to possess agency and competence. Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory and its main concept ‘duality of structure’ was employed as a theoretical tool. Methods that were used were participant observation, interviews (individual and in group) and analysis of essays. The thesis consists of three studies. The first study explores how Somali-Swedish parents explain their choice of a Muslim-profiled school for their children. The results refute the traditional view that such choices are solely faith-based, showing faith as important but not determining. Important factors were finding a school that met their high educational ambitions and  made both parents and children feel trusted, safe and not disrespected because of their faith and skin-colour. The second study explores transnational experiences, particularly the transfer of transnational practices from the Somali-Swedish parents’ to their children and the construction of a transnational social space, built on close global relationships. The results show that transnational practices are feasible irrespective of physical travel. The study also exemplifies the group’s readiness to relocate between countries by the onward migration from Sweden to Egypt, and implications for the children are illuminated. Somalis in diaspora often explain their propensity to move by their past nomadic life-patterns, but this study shows as strong factors the desire for better opportunities in combination with experiences of cultural and economic marginalisation in the West. The third study analyses how girls in grade 5 (about eleven years old) imagine their future career and family life by analysing essays. The findings reveal that their dreams are both consistent with the expectations of their families (in particular, high educational ambitions) and inspired from elsewhere (particularly in terms of future family life). How the girls imagine their adulthood could be seen as an example of how their original culture is subject to change in a new environment. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript.</p><p> </p>

This work offers a framework for researchers by linking service-dominant (S-D) logic to an intersubjective stream of philosophy of science. Service-dominant logic has resonated in marketing, but no existing research has attempted to link S-D logic with basic meta-theory to provide a framework. Since the range of philosophies of science (isms) referred to in the marketing literature is broad, varying from ‘realism’ to ‘relativism’, from ‘positivism’ to ‘constructivism’ and from ‘structuralism’ to ‘post-structuralism/postmodernism’, first the different isms are grouped into four main groups/streams and then S-D logic is analyzed and classified according to these streams. The four streams are: object-orientation (realism, positivism, empiricism, and so on); subject orientation (constructivism, interpretivism, and so forth); intersubjective orientation (social constructionism, pancritical rationalism, methodological constructivism, and so on); and sign orientation (post-structuralism, postmodernism, and variations). S-D logic is mainly underpinned by an intersubjective orientation and has a huge potential for further development both in and for marketing if seen from a sign-orientated, post-structural perspective and linked to the theory of practices.

The starting-point of the thesis was that teachers to a large extent teach on the basis of intuitive theories. This creates a tendency that a number of frequent conceptions, pedagogical and didactic theories, experiences of one's own school days etc. become parts of a more fragmentary structure of ideas, rather than a coherent theory of teaching. With the aim of creating a deeper understanding of questions related to teaching and learning, two dominating perspectives were described initial. By putting the intuitive ideas in relation to basic paradigmatic assumptions a picture was given of what the teacher has to know in order to thoroughly understand a certain perspective. In addition, examples of pedagogical theories were presented that can be referred to the perspective in question, which teachers can adopt to qualify their understanding. A critical discussion of the paradigmatic assumptions paved the way for a third perspective, where thoughts occurring in the other two were partly combined. Here a theoretical basis was also presented to explain why the use of mental tools of thinking, especially such that are linked to knowledge theory may lead the teacher to a more reflective way of dealing with questions of teaching and learning. The third perspective was illustrated, first with four examples of how teaching can be performed, and then also in the form of in-service training for teachers. In the empirical section and in the final conclusion the perspectives were illustrated, discussed and examined critically. On the basis of questionnaires answered by upper secondary school teachers, interviews and observations, assumed examples of intuitive theories were presented. The empirical material was also analysed from the same starting-points as the formulation of the perspectives. Ten teachers' systems of intuitive theories about teaching and learning could thus be constructed. Five of these were presented and a comparison with the perspectives was made. Some analyses, however, turned out to agree best with a further perspective, which had not been focused on in the thesis. It was also found that teachers' practice can be enriched by being confronted with scientific knowledge. The value of such knowledge was illustrated through the evaluation of an inservice programme for teachers.

This study, the first in its scope on transgender religiosity, is based on in-depth biographical interviews with 13 transgender participants with a Jewish Orthodox background (currently and formerly Orthodox). The primary aim of the study has been to elucidate the entanglements of gender and religion in three periods of the participants’ lives: pre-transition, transition and post-transition. One of the main topics investigated have been the ways participants negotiated gendered religious practices in those three periods. A secondary aim of this study has been to co-theorize, in dialogue with the participants, different possible paths for religious change; that is, the ways in which the larger Orthodox community might respond to the presence of openly transgender members in its midst. Concerning the findings, in the course of this study I have developed the themes of dislocations and reversal stories to explain how the participants negotiated the entanglements of gender and religion particularly in the transitional and post-transitional periods. The latter theme–reversal stories–has been of special relevance to explain how gendered religious practices, which were generally detrimental to the acceptance of the participants’ gender identities during the pre-transitional period, had the potential to become a powerful source for gender affirmation after transition. In this study I argue that this possibility and its related mode of agency are not contained within the binary resistance/subordination that feminist scholars have developed to account for the agency of women in traditionalist religions. In order to better conceptualize the notion of agency and explore the nature of the mutual entanglements of gender and religion, I deploy the body of theoretical work developed by Karen Barad known as agential realism. Lastly, I conclude by examining my initial commitments to social constructionism (in Peter Berger’s definition). In the final chapter, I describe how in the course of my study I have encountered three unexpected sites of resistance to social constructionism that have led me to reconsider my previous epistemological commitments and embrace posthumanism as a more satisfactory alternative. / The Impact of Religion - Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

Since the early 1990s, religion and matters of faith and spirituality have become a focal point in numerous arenas beyond the individual and traditionally sacred. With President George W. Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives of 2001, the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that preceded it in 1996, and the myriad of legal challenges that followed, matters of religion have become paramount in political discourse regarding social welfare. The viability of faith-based social service provision and the organizations providing the direct services have been the focus of speculation, debate, and a growing amount of research. Few studies, however, have explored the role of faith-based advocacy or lobbying organizations in shifting the social welfare climate, in proposing or opposing policy changes in the social welfare system, or in defining social welfare. Little is empirically known about the organizational dynamics of religious advocacy groups whose attempts at structural influence are, in part, affected by theological positions and religiously-informed values.Considering the dearth of research on such organizations, particularly those that operate on the state level, this study explored faith-based advocacy organizations that seek to influence social policy in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Within an interpretive paradigmatic and theoretical framework that allowed for the exploration of meaning associated with advocacy activities, the inquiry asked the following questions, How do faith-based organizations engage in legislative advocacy in the Commonwealth of Virginia? What meaning do the organizations assign to their advocacy activities? The inquiry's findings, congruent with interpretive research assumptions, are tentative in nature and suggest that while the focal organizations' advocacy activities appear similar to other interest groups, their religious mandates for action distinguish them from their secular counterparts. Interpretations of these mandates significantly influence the organizations' decision-making, their representation of multiple constituencies, and their definitions of success. Unlike previous studies that suggest these organizations distance themselves from insider politics, the religious advocates in the study suggest that fidelity to their mandate means actively participating in the political process while retaining their unique voice as representatives of God and religious traditions.

Dissertation / The impact of stranger rape on the victim and those close to the victim is widely researched. However, little data is available on couples’ experiences of stranger rape and their relationships in the aftermath of such trauma. The researcher aimed to explore and gain an in-depth understanding of the unique experiences and relationship dynamics of couples dealing with stranger rape in order to enhance what is known about these couples. A qualitative research methodology was employed which consisted of conducting unstructured in-depth interviews with each of the three participant couples as well as obtaining individual written reflections from each participant. The study explicated unique descriptions of each couple’s experience of stranger rape, illuminated the interconnectedness and recursiveness between the rape and the couples’ relational and system dynamics and identified possible systemic effects at play in these couples’ relationships in the aftermath of such trauma. Key terms: stranger rape, couples, post-traumatic stress disorder, relational dynamics, systems, family systems theory, qualitative research, hermeneutics, social constructionism, postmodernism / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)