This thesis uses vacancy chain analysis to investigate the complex dynamics of residential segregation within Stockholm County. Residential segregation has been a longstanding concern due to its implications for social inequality and community cohesion. While previous research has explored various factors contributing to segregation, this study focuses on understanding the intricate processes that drive neighborhood-level changes in occupancy patterns by analyzing the role of newly built dwellings. By studying the characteristics of the people that first move to the new dwellings and then the chains they create, the aim is to uncover segregating or desegregating patterns, which could prove essential for future residential planning. The findings presented in this thesis shed light on the interconnected roles of individual preferences, socio-economic factors, and neighborhood characteristics in shaping segregation patterns and provide important insights for designing targeted interventions to promote more equitable and integrated communities. Neighborhoods that fall into the fourth income decile exhibit the most considerable desegregating effect both for first and subsequent moves. Knowing this, targeting housing construction for lower-income neighborhoods could produce the best results.

Sweden was the first country that reformed their sexual purchase law and criminalized the purchase of sex and sexual services in the year 1999. Since then, the applicability of the law has been discussed both nationally and internationally as well as academically, politically and on various platforms of social media. Both research about sex-sellers and sex-buyers have been done, the latter is usually aiming to understand why men buy sex, and what type of man of whom could be the archetypical sex buyer. This study aims to understand how sex-buyers present masculinity in court in the context of being charged for purchasing sex. This was made possible through attending and observing the defendants during trials in district courts in the Stockholm area. To conceptualize the results a theoretical framework of masculinity, first coined by Connell (1995/2005), was used to detect different types of masculinities presented by the defendants during 11 trials regarding sex purchase lawsuits. In the analysis three themes were detected, which was “the purchase of sex and guilt”, “moral and brutishness” and “reactions to the police witness description of the defendant”. This was shown both through body language and verbally. Several masculinities were detected during the trials, and it was not uncommon that the same defendant was shifting between different masculinities during the same trial and sometime at the same time through what they showed through body language and what they said verbally. This study shows the complexity in researching men who buy or are accused of buying sex using norms of masculinity as a theoretical frame. The study also puts light on the influence of the courtroom environment and how this might have an impact on the defendant’s behavior during the trial. The results have shown that the behavior might have been influenced by masculinity norms, courtroom norms or even a combination of them both. This is due to the results of finding several masculinities in the same defendant during the same trial. I therefore urge the research of sex-buyers to widen the concept of masculinity and not group sex-buyers into distinctive groups based on masculinity norms as hegemony, toxic masculinity and subordinated masculinity when results of this study show the phenomenon to be far more complex than previous research has predicted.

This essay discusses the lived experiences and opinions of people living or working in so-called “vulnerable areas” in Sweden, predominantly in relation to issues of immigration and organized crime. Theoretically, the study uses Pierre Bourdieu’s framework surrounding capital and habitus and Norbert Elias concept of “the outsiders and the established”, while also drawing on the work of Gregory Bateson, Edward Said and more. This discourse analysis is based on empirical findings and interviews from fieldwork made in vulnerable areas in and around the Stockholm region, and aims to problematize the general discourse surrounding immigrants and their place in Swedish society by contrasting the views of the local population to the general narrative surrounding the areas. Generally, in Swedish media and amongst political representatives, vulnerable areas are often portrayed as dangerous areas inhabited primarily by immigrants, that culturally differs from the rest of Sweden and thus is seen to exist outside of general Swedish society. This essay argues the point of the studies respondents, which is that while it is to an extent understandable that these areas are associated with gang violence and disarray, it is highly stigmatizing and further drives a dichotomization between swedes and “non-swedes”. It also overlooks decades of exposure to segregation and socioeconomic disadvantages that migrant populations in Sweden have been subjected to, that has led to poverty and a subsequent rise in crime, as well as the emergence of parallel societies within Sweden.

I den här studien undersöks vilken social och praktisk funktion en ideell verksamhet fyller för personer i social utsatthet. Syftet med studien är att ge en holistisk bild av vad verksamheten betyder för besökarna, och hur den platsen formas av de som är där. Studien ger dessutom en förståelse för vilken roll delar av det civila samhället fyller för både individer, och för samhället i stort. Empirin som ligger till grund för studien baseras på observationer och samtal som gjorts under ett två månader långt fältarbete på en ideell verksamhet i Stockholm. Empirin analyseras med teorier om socialt kapital, sociala nätverk, fiktiv familj, tid, plats och agens. Studien visar att det är sociala behov som motiverar människor i social utsatthet att besöka verksamheten, och verksamheten som undersöks beskrivs som en social plats med specifika normer och regler som besökarna tillsammans upprätthåller. Dessutom ges flera exempel på hur verksamheten kan öka besökarnas sociala nätverk och sociala kapital. Den ideella verksamheten jämförs med en fiktiv familj, eftersom relationerna som formas där liknar biologiska familjerelationer i fler avseenden. Därtill visar studien att personalen på verksamheten går utanför sina officiella arbetsuppgifter och ger en dold hjälp, vilket innebär social och praktisk hjälp som inte är synlig för resten av samhället.

Under den pågående globala urbaniseringen, står orter i glesbygden marginaliserade med oviss framtid. Den demografiskt och ekonomiskt tillbakagående trenden, skapar en osäkerhet om platsernas överlevnad. Denna uppsats lyfter genom ett sex veckors fältarbete i Pajala, hur invånare i avfolkningsbygden finner hopp om framtiden, samt vad detta hopp innebär. Med hjälp av tidigare teorier identifieras socialt hopp producerade av två skilda aktörer: staten och civilsamhället. Studien belyser hur dessa aktörer skapar två separata innebörder av hopp i form av progression respektive kontinuitet.

This study focuses on how a specific type of family invests in and ascribes value to friluftsliv and how the outdoor habits parents create for their children can be understood in relation to their children’s education. Friluftsliv is a Nordic term that involves nature-based activities such as hiking and camping but can be many activities conducted in connection to nature. However, the concept is also closely linked to the meaningful emotional connection while spending time outdoors. With a Bourdieusian view on friluftsliv, five families were interviewed, and two participant observations were conducted on two separate occasions by following an outdoor organization in Sweden, that provides children and young adults with outdoor experiences. The organization also founded its own preschool focused on outdoor pedagogy. A sixth interview followed, interviewing an organization manager of one of the outdoor organization branches in the country. In understanding how the families in this thesis invest in and practice friluftsliv, this study explored the connection between the families interviewed and their active choice of having their children in outdoor preschool. The choice of outdoor preschool was found to be a strategy that the families utilize to set a foundation for their children, a foundation for resilience and autonomy in a long-term perspective. The friluftsliv concept as a practice thus became an asset also in children’s school life, by cultivating a foundation of an active lifestyle and, by extension, managing and coping with staying in school even if it is strenuous and challenging at times. Through outdoor preschool and friluftsliv, the children learn skills and values that are useful throughout their childhood and adulthood.

As living beings, seaweeds exist at the periphery of people’s awareness, and not much is known about what they mean to people, and the relationships we can have with them. They are useful, versatile commodities, and multitask as foodstuffs for people and other beings, as sources of biofuel and medicinal compounds, and the list goes on... but, what else? This work seeks to shed light on the kinds of relations that people can have with seaweeds when relationships of use are purposefully bracketed out, in order to understand their social and symbolic worlds. To this end, during the months of November through January, the author discussed the perceptions of seaweeds with the neighbours of the area of Loch Hourn, a sea-loch (fjord) in the western seaboard of the Scottish Highlands, and some other nearby townships. The present study interlaces participant observation nuanced by the winter and the weather, and interviews, to explore how, through relations of biosociality, companionship, awareness and interanimation of the environment, alternative configurations of knowing, Gaelic tradition, symbolism, and hope, seaweeds embody different aspects of the meaning of‘sanctuary’.

Heathenism is a branch of Paganism based on Germanic mythology, whose diverse spiritual beliefs are united by a common sacrificial ritual called blot. The Swedish Heathen organization The Swedish Forn Sed Assembly [Samfundet Forn Sed Sverige] is a self-described nature religion, who see nature as sacred and whose public blot ceremonies are held outside in order to commune with the gods. In this thesis I explore the relationship between ritual, space, and place by asking where blot are held, and why they are held where they are. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and written sources, I argue that practitioners transform sacred space into place by imbuing it with meaning through ritual. Blot locations are points of connection between the practitioners and the gods and spirits that dwell in nature. Furthermore, nature can be understood as sacred because it is less affected by historical processes characteristic of modernity, such as urbanization and industrialization. In this sense, the Heathen understanding of sacred space predicates upon the same modernity that it defines itself in opposition of: by seeking to reconnect with nature in a supposedly disenchanted world, Heathenism subverts the narrative of disenchantment.

In this study, the aim is to find answers to which factors influence young under graduates’ choices to join two types of organisations – the unemployment insurance fund (a-kassa) and trade unions – in order to access unemployment insurance, while also investigating the awareness of the importance of membership. The study is based on Bourdieu's (1997) forms of capital to investigate this. Five semi-structured interviews are conducted to answer the two main research questions. The result shows that Bourdieu's three forms of capital influence the choice to join or remain without membership in the unemployment insurance. Particularly significant was the cultural capital for membership in both the unemployment insurance fund and in a trade union. Cultural- and economic capital co-vary in relation to membership in the unemployment insurance, and cultural- and social capital co-vary for membership in a trade union. Furthermore, results also show that family relationships, in the form of encouragement and conversation, affect the awareness of what is required to qualify for economic protection in terms of membership in both the unemployment insurance organization and in the unions. However, awareness among all respondents was very limited, with none of the respondents being completely sure of what was required to qualify for receiving financial protection in the event of unemployment.

This thesis dives into the future imaginaries of blockchain professionals in Hanoi and Saigon. Looking at sites of futures enactment, and constant negotiations around an emerging technology, economy, and start-up ecology. The blockchain industry has risen to prominence in the socio-economic and technological imaginary of geeks, financial speculators, and states around the globe. In this thesis, I investigate a hitherto underexplored context of technological imagination. Based on physical and digital ethnographic fieldwork among blockchain professionals in Hanoi and Saigon and through an amalgamated theoretical lens with nodes in the anthropology of future imaginaries, emerging technologies, digital materiality, and anthropological theories of value, I set out to map and critically engage with the modes by which professionals in and around the Vietnamese blockchain industry imagine the future. These future imaginaries appear not only in speculative, predictive, and hopeful proclamation but too in present enactment; thus, doings in real time become crucial in this investigation. Technologies of imagination often deviate in form and teleology, so consequently, processual negotiations are continually unfolding. Convoluted alliances within actors are often placed at odds, or in line, with broader imaginaries predicated on different levels of social scale. These spaces between imagined future and enacted reality, along with how these are negotiated amongst, ultimately provide complex embedded contexts through which socio-technical assemblages, conceptualizations of value, and emerging phenomena can better be known in ways beyond techno-solutionist or -determinist narratives and critiques of multiple futures.