Bakgrund: De svenska börsbolagen gör större vinster än någonsin tidigare, men har fått stor kritik för att vara för långsamma i sin vinstallokering. Företag med överkapitaliserade balansräkningar utan investeringsbehov är potentiella måltavlor för riskkapitalisternas affärsidé om finansiell effektivisering och en aggressivare kapitalstruktur. Debatten i media har skapat kritik kring dessa så kallade kortsiktiga och giriga bolagsplundrare som påstås förstöra finansiella värden och kreditvärdigheten i företagen. I tidigare fall har marknaden svarat positivt på riskkapitalisternas investeringar, något som har reflekterats i ett kraftigt ökande aktiepris. Skeptiker hävdar dock att spekulationer är anledningen till att marknadsvärdet drivs upp, inte fundamentala aspekter. Syfte: Syftet med denna magisteruppsats är att fastställa en bild av fenomenet riskkapital och hur dess aktiva ägande inverkar på svenska börsbolags kreditbetyg, kapitalstruktur och värdering. Metod: För att uppnå syftet med vår magisteruppsats har en kvalitativ ansats till-lämpats baserad på tre börsbolag där riskkapitalisters aktiva ägande spelat en betydande roll. Det empiriska materialet har insamlats genom personliga intervjuer med aktie- och kreditanalytiker, och studien förlitar sig även på markandsdata, artiklar och nyhetssändningar i media, samt respektive bolags kvartals- och årsrapporter. Slutsats: Studien har gjorts over den tidsperiod som varit riskkapitalisternas inve-steringshorisont – explicit och implicit. Genom att analysera det aktiva ägarskapet i tre svenska börsbolag kan slutsatsen dras att det inverkat positivt i form av högre prestanda och marknadsvärdering. De finansiella förändringarna har, till skillnad från kritiken, styrkt kreditbetyget i fallen Lindex och Volvo. En analys av Skandia/Old Mutual visade dock en marginellt ökad kreditrisk. Slutsatsen visar härmed att riskkapitalisternas inverkan på svenska börsbolag är värdeförädlande utan att äventyra den finansiella statusen. / Background: The Swedish blue chip companies are performing better than ever, but have been strongly criticised for being too slow in their excess fund allocation. Companies with overcapitalised balance sheets and no investment needs are potential targets for activist funds’ business idea of more aggressive capital structures and financial restructuring. In media, this debate has raised criticism against these so called short-sighted, greedy asset-strippers that destroy company values and increase the companies’ risk of default. In prior cases where activist funds have taken actions, the market has responded positively through increasing the share price. However, sceptics argue that the higher share price is merely a response to a speculative reaction with no fundamental argument supporting the upgrade in market capitalisation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to establish a view of the phenomenon of activist funds and their impact on blue chip companies’, listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, credit rating, capital structure and valuation. Method: To fulfil the purpose of our master thesis, a qualitative approach has been applied based on three cases involving the activities of activist funds. The empirical findings have been retrieved via personal communications with stock- and credit analysts, and the study also relies on articles and news coverage from media, stock market data and annual reports from each of the chosen companies respectively. Conclusion: The study has regarded the period of time which has been the investment horizon of the activist funds – explicitly and implicitly. Analysing their active ownership, the conclusion can be drawn that these activist funds have clearly had a positive impact on each of the blue chip companies’ performance and intrinsic value respectively. The financial restructuring has - contrarily to the criticism – strengthened the credit ratings in the cases of Lindex and Volvo. In the Skandia/Old Mutual-case, a marginally higher default risk was detected. Thus, the study has concluded that activist funds indeed add significant shareholder value without jeopardising the companies’ financial statuses.

This project is an archival case study of the multimedia artist and writer David Wojnarowicz. I discuss Wojnarowicz's legacy as a queer activist and public intellectual to explore the potential of his posthumous rhetorical agency. I define "posthumous rhetorical agency" as a process enacted by the living to facilitate the participation of the deceased in public life. I emphasize that developing a theory of posthumous rhetorical agency can fuel the "momentum of the archival turn" while also deepening a "commitment to the queer turn" in rhetorical studies (Morris and Rawson; Crichton). I establish that Wojnarowicz's archive possesses the ability to reach into the future with remarkable velocity to contribute to his posthumous agency because he drew on extant queer kinship networks and engaged multiple mediums as a visual artist, writer, musician, performance artist, and filmmaker. I extend Avery Gordon's position that haunting differs from trauma because haunting produces a "something-to-be-done" quality, which leads to an engagement with the present and a desire "to reveal and learn from subjugated knowledge." I argue that Wojnarowicz's legacy has a "something-to-be-done" quality about it. His legacy stands as an indictment of a nation lulled into apathetic indifference and cowed into fear of social difference: at a national level when the AIDS epidemic began, politicians and corporations were inexcusably slow to respond because the disease was assumed to infect only gay men and other "high risk" populations. Thus, in understanding Wojnarowicz's suffering - as an individual and, to take this line of argument further, as part of a collective of people with AIDS who died due to the US government's neglect of a public health crisis from which the "general public" was assumed to be safe - one can conceive of his posthumous legacy as a positive and needful presence that calls attention to the value of integrating a partially erased or forgotten history more fully into the nation's history. I conclude that a viable theory of posthumous rhetorical agency must attend to issues of how to responsibly and justly represent the work of those who have been systematically excluded, censored, or erased from the historical record.

abstract: This dissertation examines the conditions that foster or hinder success of university-based community design centers (CDCs) in the United States. Little is known about the normative underpinnings of CDCs, how successful these centers have been, which factors have contributed to or impeded their success, and how they have responded to the changes in social, political, professional and economic contexts. Adopting Giddens' theory of structuration as a research framework, this study examined CDCs via a mixed-methods sequential research design: a cross-sectional survey of CDCs on current definitions of success and metrics in use; and in-depth interviews to document the centers' histories of change or stasis, and how these changes influenced their successes. The findings of the first phase were utilized to develop a comprehensive success model for current CDCs that comprise measures related to organizational impacts, activities, and capacities. In the multiple case study analysis, four major rationales were identified: universities for public service, pragmatist learning theories, civic professionalism, and social change. These four rationales were evident in all of the studied cases at varying degrees. Using the concept of permeability, the study also exemplified how the processes of CDCs had transformative impacts in institutional, societal, and personal contexts. Multidisciplinarity has also emerged as a theme for the current organizational transformations of CDCs. The main argument that emerged from these findings is that it is not possible to identify a singular model or best practice for CDCs. The strengths and unique potentials of CDCs depend on the alternative rationales, involved agencies, and their social, political and spatial contexts. However, capitalizing on the distinctive attributes of the institutional context (i.e. the university), I consider some possibilities for university-based CDCs with an interdisciplinary structure, pushing the professional, curricular, and institutional boundaries, and striving for systemic change and social justice. In addition to contributing to the theoretical knowledge base, the findings provide useful information to various CDCs across the country, particularly today as they struggle with financial constraints while the community needs they provide are increasingly in demand. Since CDCs have a long history of community service and engagement, the findings can inform other university-community partnerships. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Environmental Design and Planning 2011

abstract: This project draws on sociocognitive rhetoric to ask, How, in complex situations not of our making, do we determine what needs to be done and how to leverage available means for the health of our communities and institutions? The project pulls together rhetorical concepts of the stochastic arts (those that demand the most precise, careful planning in the least predictable places) and techne (problem-solving tools that transform limits and barriers into possibilities) to forward a stochastic techne that grounds contemplative social action at the intersection of invention and intervention and mastery and failure in real time, under constraints we can't control and outcomes we can't predict. Based on 18 months of fieldwork with the Sudanese refugee diaspora in Phoenix, I offer a method for engaging in postmodern phronesis with community partners in four ways: 1) Explanations and examples of public listening and situational mapping 2) Narratives that elucidate the stochastic techne, a heuristic for determining and testing wise rhetorical action 3) Principles for constructing mutually collaborative, mutually beneficial community-university/ community-school partnerships for jointly addressing real-world issues that matter in the places where we live 4) Descriptions and explanations that ground the hard rhetorical work of inventing new paths and destinations as some of the Sudanese women construct hybridized identities and models of social entrepreneurship that resist aid-to-Africa discourse based on American paternalism and humanitarianism and re-cast themselves as micro-financers of innovative work here and in Southern Sudan. Finally, the project pulls back from the Sudanese to consider implications for re-figuring secondary English education around phronesis. Here, I offer a framework for teachers to engage in the real work of problem-posing that aims - as Django Paris calls us - to get something done by confronting the issues that confront our communities. Grounded in classroom instruction, the chapter provides tools for scaffolding public listening, multi-voiced inquiries, and phronesis with and for local publics. I conclude by calling for English education to abandon all pretense of being a predictive science and to instead embrace productive knowledge-making and the rhetorical work of phronesis as the heart of secondary English studies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2012

FundaÃÃo de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Cearà / A partir do contexto de uma realidade BiopolÃtica, articulada com as doutrinas neoliberais, apontadas por Michel Foucault, procuraremos, em um primeiro momento, relacionar esse poder sobre as espÃcies e as populaÃÃes, com os conceitos de Estado de ExceÃÃo e Homo Sacer desenvolvidos por Giorgio Agamben. à dizer, situaremos de que maneira os temas referentes à exceÃÃo brasileira â a influÃncia da Ditadura Militar na democracia â se articulam com a educaÃÃo. Nesse sentido, essa dissertaÃÃo tem como objetivo realizar uma pesquisa das prÃticas de arte ativista, as denominadas intervenÃÃes urbanas educativas, Ãs biopolÃticas incrementadas do perÃodo da Ditadura Militar atà hoje. Trata-se de pesquisar de que maneira essas intervenÃÃes urbanas se colocam como estratÃgias de resistÃncia educacional ao campo biopolÃtico. Como metodologia, escolheremos a pesquisa bibliogrÃfica e documental em livros, fotografias, vÃdeos e imagens referentes à temÃtica. Apresentaremos as estratÃgias de resistÃncia à biopolÃtica, com foco na apresentaÃÃo dos trabalhos de trÃs coletivos que vem desenvolvendo IntervenÃÃes Urbanas, de arte e resistÃncia ao modelo de exceÃÃo brasileiro iniciado pela Ditadura Militar e presente na atualidade. Analisaremos experiÃncias do coletivo fortalezense Aparecidos PolÃticos, do paulista Coletivo PolÃtico QUEM e do nacional Levante Popular da Juventude. SerÃo apresentadas algumas intervenÃÃes dos coletivos realizadas entre os anos de 2010 e 2012 centradas nas questÃes concernentes Ãs exceÃÃes brasileiras. Finalizaremos a dissertaÃÃo relacionando com os aportes teÃricos levantados, os trabalhos desses coletivos, e demonstrando de que forma essas intervenÃÃes urbanas educativas vÃm, de alguma maneira, quebrando consensos estabelecidos em relaÃÃo à educaÃÃo e à realidade. / At first, from the perpective of a biopolitic reality and neoliberal doctrine pointed by Michel Focault, this writting will describe the interectation between the power over species and population with the concepts of "Exception State" and "Homo Sacer", which was developed by Giorgio Agamben. In addition, it will be made referance of how, themes such as the brazilian exception - the influence of military dictactorship in democracy- and education can be articulated. The aim of this dissertation is to research how the artistic intervention on urban areas about the military dictatorship, named as "education urban intervention" can be used as educational strategy in the biopolitc field. The methodology we choose was the bibliographic and documental research, books, photography, videos and images refering to the topic were used. Whatsmore, there will be presented the work of three groups, called "coletivos" which have been using those urban interventions and its strategies. The name of those are : "Aparecidos PolÃtcos" from Fortaleza , "Coletivo PolÃtico QUEM" from SÃo Paulo and the national wide "Levante Popular da Juventude", This intervention are between the years 2010 and 2012 and are linked with the brazilian exception. The dissertation ends with the relationship of the studieded theories, the work of theses colectives and a demonstration at the way this educational urban interventions changes the way people see the education and the reallity.

O presente trabalho é um estudo da poética do escritor, jornalista e militante argentino Rodolfo Jorge Walsh. Tradutor, editor e autor de relatos policiais, soube fazer da atividade literária um ato de reflexão sobre a história do seu país e da própria ação militante. Os procedimentos de escrita utilizados dentro da sua obra procuravam a eficiência persuasiva, mas também a eficiência na representação dos problemas que estavam colocados para o escritor na sua ação política. São objeto de estudo deste trabalho: a passagem do policial de enigma para o hard-boiled e o posterior abandono do subgênero; a opção pela forma breve do conto e não do romance; o abandono da escrita estritamente literária que seria retomada só nos últimos meses da sua vida -processos que coincidiram com o desenvolvimento de investigações sobre crimes de Estado e seu ingresso na militância- e a retomada da autoria, pouco antes de morrer, para a produção de uma série de cartas pessoais no contexto da ditadura que se iniciou em 1976 e da polêmica do autor com a direção da organização Montoneros, na qual militava. / The present work is a study of Rodolfo Jorge Walsh\'s poetry. He was an author, a journalist and an activist. Also a translator, editor an author of police short stories. He knew how to transform the literary activity into an act of reflexion about the history of his country and the activist action itself. The writing procedures used inside his works searched not only for a persuasive efficiency, but also the efficiency in representing the problems faced by the author in his political action. They are object of study: the passage from police enigma to hard-boiled and the following desertion of the sub gender; the option for the brief form of the short story and not the novel; desertion of the writing strictly literary that would be taken up again in the last months of his life - processes that coincided with the development of State crime investigations and his participation in an activist life - and getting back the authorship, shortly before his death, into a production of personal letters in a dictatorship context that began in 1976 and the controversy of the author in relation to the direction of the Montoneros organization, for which he was an activist.

Notre travail explore les groupes activistes en tant qu’organisations de mouvements sociaux. Pour cela, nous étudions comment les activistes expriment leur message en mobilisant des symboles (discours, position du corps, objets…) pour construire un ensemble de performances spécifiques appelé le répertoire tactique. Pour ce faire, ils s’inspirent de leurs prédécesseurs et de leurs cadres théoriques. Dans un deuxième temps, nous décrivons comment les activistes mobilisent les médias à l’aide d’une stratégie médiatique, reposant à la fois sur le répertoire tactique et sur une certaine intégration des activistes en son sein. Enfin, nous analysons les moyens par lesquels le groupe activiste mobilise ses membres (c’est-à-dire les recrute et les retient) ; cela passe en particulier par l’acquisition de compétences émancipatrices pour les activistes. En conclusion, nous montrons que le répertoire tactique constitue la colonne vertébrale d’un groupe activiste et participe à toutes les tâches que nous avons décrites (mobilisation de symboles, des médias et des activistes). Cette spécificité définit le groupe activiste en tant qu’organisation. Nous nous appuyons sur un travail ethnographique d’un an auprès du groupe activiste féministe La Barbe qui dénonce l’absence de femmes en haut des organisations. Notre travail s’accompagne d’une réflexion méthodologique sur l’observation d’un groupe féministe par un ethnographe homme. / This work analyses activist groups as organizations of social movements. Firstly, I study how activists express their message by mobilizing symbols (discourses, demeanor, objects…) in order to build a set of performances called the “tactical repertoire”. To do so, they draw inspiration from their predecessors and their theoretical frames. Secondly, I describe how activists mobilize media. Their media strategy relies both on the tactical repertoire and the integration of activists into the group. Finally, I enquire how the activist group mobilize its members (how it recruits and retains them); the acquisition of emancipatory skills is a particularly strong motivation for activists. In the conclusion, I show that the tactical repertoire is the backbone of an activist group as it participates in all the tasks described (mobilization of symbols, of media and of activists). This specific characteristic defines the activist group as an organization. I rely on a one-year-long ethnography among the French feminist activist group La Barbe, which denounces the absence of women at the head of organizations. I also reflect on the methodological implications of observing a feminist activist group as a male ethnographer.

Existence Stories is an interactive activist art project that gathers personal narratives from people about the ways in which their lives have been impacted by the current political climate in the United States, particularly surrounding the 2016 Presidential election and its aftermath. The project harnesses first-person narrative and audience participation as tools for humanizing the “Other” and building connections between people through the act of sharing stories. As the project has progressed over time, it has evolved in multiple directions and come to incorporate a variety of media, primarily comics, animation, printmaking, and zines. The roles that reproduction, distribution, and communication play in all of these media are also explored within this body of work.

In the development of digitally connected solutions that require the use of personal data, the issue of data privacy is an important factor that must be taken into account. Simply informing users about how data is used and getting their consent with a simple click is not enough to create awareness of the issue of data privacy and let them make a conscious decision about the use of their personal data. Furthermore, there is a big gap in knowledge about what personal data is and what is considered sensitive data. Especially the knowledge about what biometric identifiers that they are used in a variety of everyday life applications and in which sense the handling can be problematic is unknown.This thesis project explores how the use of critical play in form of an activist game can create awareness of the issue of data privacy, inform about the value of biometric data and foster self-reflection of handling one’s own personal data. Through the simulation of dependencies between personal data, the motivation to share them and the aggregation of personal data in combination with real and prospective use cases, players are empowered to reflect on their behaviour and to critically deal with the topic of data privacy.

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