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Denna studie undersöker hur formuläret Organiserad Verksamhet i Renbetesfjäll inom förvaltning i Västra Jämtlandsfjällen förstås och används av människor som arbetar i besöksnäringen och i småföretagande. Med intervjuer som empiriskt material diskuterar studien hur begreppen funktion och struktur är relaterade till dominerande idéer i områdets förvaltning. Som teoretiskt perspektiv används Tim Ingolds dwelling-perspektiv. Studien når fram till att formuläret inte uppfyller de behov aktörerna har för att ha ett tillfredsställande samarbete med varandra och renskötarna. Formuläret för förvaltning är inte anpassat efter en lokal kulturell kontext, den är skapad utifrån idéen om landskapet som multifunktionellt vilket studien formulerar kritik gentemot.

This essay explores the mysterious disappearance of Olle Högbom from an anthropological perspective. It uses theories of hauntology, ruinology, and simulacra to examine how Olle's absence continues to affect society. The study involves a thematic analysis of online forums and qualitative interviews with Olle’s sister, contrasting public speculation with family narratives, and highlights the enduring presence of Olle in collective memory, illustrating how unresolved disappearances influence society, memory, and everyday life. This anthropological investigation into missing persons provides insights into how spectral presences shape cultural and social dynamics. Employing a blend of ethnographic interviews, content analysis, pictures, and autoethnography, this study paints an intimate portrait of relationships with the absent and examines the liminality of Olle’s existence. Autoethnography in combination with multimodality carries the potential to unearth the unknown and paint an intimate understanding of absence. Olle’s absence is depicted in the first chapter and partially in the third chapter, by presenting an autoethnographic account of the experience of forming relationships with the absent.

The aim of this essay is to study patterns in peoples behaviour in the subway. I analyse the subway as a liminal space and a non-place. Through ethnographic observations in the subway in Stockholm, and with the use of sensory autoethnography and rhythm analysis, I have gathered my data. I argue that there are two things that make the subway a liminal space and a non-place: the physical design of the room, and the norms that the people on the subway create and maintain. By analysing the rhythms of the subway I show that people sustain a collective rhythmic order by adapting and coordinating their behaviour. It is physically a neutral room and does not provide anything to do other than to sit or stand and wait. It is an in-between-space that people only pass through. With the use of technology, such as mobile phones and headphones, passengers can mentally disengage from the subway. The norm of the subway is to be indifferent towards each other and towards the space. By complying with these rules, passengers create a specific sort of community, an anti-communitas. Sellers, beggars and can collectors break these rules by interacting with the surroundings and by not utilising the subway as a space for transit. By using it as a place, they are using it incorrectly. The subway is a peculiar space with specific norms that, when followed, create a liminal space and a non-place.

This study explore how different forms of embodied experiences in virtual reality can be explained. Virtual reality (VR) is a quickly emerging, although understudied field that in the last decade have come to take a bigger and bigger part in everyone’s daily life. With the rise of virtual reality new possibilities for social platforms in VR have emerged, one of these is the virtual world of VRChat. This paper aims to give an introduction to the world of VRChat, through looking at how different embodied practises take place in it. It is based on a two-month long ethnographic fieldwork in the world of VRChat, following at a group of around 20 individuals scattered around the world and their experiences of embodiment in VRChat. This paper looks at how different forms of embodiment take place in VRChat and how these forms of embodiment affect different aspects of being in a virtual world. I study how mirrors and avatars through embodiment and interplay of different agencies create identity and a sense of ‘me’ amongst users in VRChat. I look at how embodiment connects to immersion and how it bridges the gap between reality and virtuality, through the translation of the sense touch in virtual reality to real life a. I see that a non-traditional form of immersion plays a big role in creating this phenomenon which is called phantom sense

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Idag finns en oro för att människor som spelar och pratar med andra online är ensamma och att det hämmar deras sociala liv. För att utforska detta undersöker denna studie hur de människor själv ser på den tid de spenderar online och de människor de möter där. Hur gemenskap skapas online på kommunikationsplattformen Discord och vilken roll den gemenskapen spelar i medlemmarnas sociala liv. De teoretiska verktygen som används för att besvara detta är Andersons imagined communities (2016) samt Faraj och Johnssons teorier om reciprocitet online (2011). Empirin samlades in genom etnografiska metoder som netnografi, deltagande observation och semistrukturerade intervjuer med medlemmar i en Discordserver. Resultaten visar att gemenskaper online möjliggörs och skapas genom medlemmars reciprocitet och skapande av sociala band, teknikens utveckling och aktiva medlemmar somhåller samman gruppen.

This study explored how women navigate leaving destructive relationships. Qualitativeresearch methods, especially semi-structured interviews, were chosen to address the study'spurpose and questions. To achieve a deeper understanding of the inherent patterns anddynamics within the complex material, the analysis is grounded in Helen Rose FuchsEbaughs (2018) Role-Exit theory in combination with Eva Lundgrens (2022) normalizationprocess. Results from some women revealed that the decision to leave destructiverelationships was often based on their role as mothers, aiming to protect their children fromviolence. However, the majority showed that specific events played a crucial role in theirturning points. For example, witnessing abuse or experiencing public humiliation acted aspivotal moments prompting women to break free. The elucidation of the second researchquestion in the results reveals clear patterns in the personal transformations these womenundergo. Some strive to reclaim lost parts of their identity and social self-image, while othersexperience negative consequences such as increased withdrawal and unwillingness to initiatenew relationships. The majority, despite prior suffering, report positive changes, includingheightened self-awareness and the ability to identify warning signs in potentially harmfulrelationships.

Migraine is an extremely common and disabling disease that affects three times more women than men, and is characterized by recurring migraines comprised of disturbances in sensation perception, intense head pain, nausea, and increased sensitivity to light and sound that can last from several hours to multiple days. Currently, there are no cures for the disease, no official social services that can help a person to handle living with it, and limited studies on its mechanisms or impact on a person’s life. One of the reasons for the low priority handling of migraine, is its stigmatization as a disease of hypersensitive women of weak moral character. To break this stigma, awareness of the severity of episodes and their effects on people’s daily lives is necessary. However, communicating experiences of highly intense invisible pain shrouded in prejudice is difficult, and rational language cannot reach every aspect of it. For this master thesis project, I studied migraine from a medical anthropological perspective, focusing on the life experiences of student musicians between the age of 20 and 30 living with regularly returning migraines in Sweden. I aimed to connect the sufferers’ somatosensory experiences of migraine to their experiences regarding its perception in Swedish society, and relate these to anthropological phenomenological theories of embodiment, wellbeing and illness narrative. Rather than letting words alone define their pain encounters, I explored how my participants expressed themselves via music, theatre, and affects, through semi-structured interviews and a group workshop where participants conveyed their migraine experiences using their bodies and musical instruments. In the first part of the thesis, I discuss how my participants translated migraine pain into music, theatre, and affects, and show that a combination of these modes of expression can provide a more complete understanding of migraine experience. In the second part I explore how my study participants experience migraines as relating to stress, show that the relation is interdependent, complicated and affective, and suggest that a view of stress as a cause for the disease might, despite its limited practical use in sufferer’s lives, aid its legitimization as an illness that can, in principal, affect anyone. Together, the findings illustrate how ordered discourse can fall short off conveying extreme pain and how attunement to alternative forms of communication can provide insight beyond the bounded premises of language.

Denna studie undersöker syskonens upplevelser av att ha ett syskon med tidigare narkotikamissbruk. Syftet är att få en djupare förståelse för hur narkotikamissbruket har påverkat deltagarnas privata och sociala liv. För att nå detta mål intervjuades åtta personer som har ett syskon som har haft ett narkotikamissbruk men är ren idag. För att tolka resultaten användes teorierna sociala band, differentiering samt skam och stolthet. En hermeneutisk metodansats användes för att tolka deltagarnas utsagor och förstå deras perspektiv på missbruket. Resultatet visade tre teman; syskonens negativa association till narkotikamissbruk, relation till kris och trygghet och isolering. Resultatet presenteras med hjälp av dessa teman i den fördjupade tolkningen. Intervjupersonerna förklarar sina erfarenheter samt syn på narkotikamissbruk i olika perspektiv. Jag har försökt att presentera deras svar så noga som möjligt så att det lyfter fram känslorna och upplevelserna som de har haft under denna tid.