Sweden hosted the first environmental development conference in 1972 and since then has been a European role model in sustainability issues (UN, 1972), following the triple bottom line: concern for the planet, people and profit (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). The present study deals with the application of micro-ethnography in sustainable communication, in the case of the municipality of Gnosjö in Sweden. Based on internal, external and strategic communication literature, the case study of Gnosjö, in which different areas of organisational communication were represented and how they affected the sustainable development of the organisation, is presented and analysed. It was investigated, which communication channels the municipality uses, how these channels look like and which aspects influence the communication and its development. The approaches of micro-ethnography were applied to collect and evaluate data. For this purpose, data were collected from participating observations with employees at Gnosjö town hall and the collection of seven interviews with informants from the fields of communication and sustainability and constantly compared.  The exploratory data analysis reveals how the employees remained powerless in performing their work routine. Politicians, as the main decision-makers, play an important role in the development of the municipality. Therefore, they should attend training programs to understand the importance of sustainable communication internally and externally.

Higher education globally is characterised by persistent inequality, which is particularly acute in South Africa. Due to the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid, students from certain categories of identity are marginalised, whereas others are privileged. An essential element of these dynamics of power is space. Intersections of identity such as race, class, ability and gender are axes of power in differential experiences of space. Despite this, space is often neglected in research into higher education transformation in South Africa. Through an institutional ethnography, this study examines the dynamics of space and identity at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The study involved a photovoice project, roving interviews and surveys with students; the collection of multimodal data in which space is documented; campus observations; and semi-structured interviews with staff and policymakers. The first analysis chapter involves a multimodal discourse analysis of the identity discourses produced for the Jameson Plaza by the students in the study, specifically as a place of belonging and connection and a place of alienation and discomfort. The second analysis chapter examines the institutional power geometries at play at the UCT across three specific dimensions: 1) spatial memory and material familiarity; 2) material campus symbolism; and 3) spatialised social practices and relations. The findings illustrate how space and power across these dimensions engender experiences of spatialised belonging or spatialised alienation on campus. The affective potentialities of campus, in turn, influence the types of identities students construct for themselves across campus space. Emerging from these considerations, the final analysis chapter explores what student do across, within and through campus spaces. The chapter focuses on everyday use of space by students at the individual level, and specifically spatial coping strategies students use to negotiate and manage their daily lives on campus.

Purpose - Research on punk culture often falls prey to three main dilemmas. First, an ageist bias exists in most popular music research, resulting in the continued equating of music and youth. Second, punk culture research often uses a Marxist economic lens that implies fieldwork reveals already known conceptions of class and culture. Third, research on punk culture lacks ethnographic and narrative examinations. This ethnographic project explores my reentry into punk culture as an adult, exploring it from a new researcher perspective. It provides an insider's view of emerging cultural themes at the site that disrupts these traditional research approaches. Methodology/approach - This ethnography examines punk culture at an inner city nonprofit arts establishment. Through grounded theory and using a fictional literary account, this research probes how rituals and cultural narratives pervade and maintain the scene. Findings - Concepts such as carnival, jamming as an organizing process - and as an aesthetic moment - emerged through the research process. This ethnography found narratives constituted personal and communal identity. Research limitations/implications - As a personal ethnography, this research contains experiences in one local arts center, and therefore is not necessarily generalizable to other sites or experiences. Originality/value of paper - Using ethnography, I explored punk as one of my primary identities in tandem with younger members of the scene. It critiques Marxist and youth approaches that have stunted music scene research for decades.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study set out to investigate siding and translanguaged siding as an under-researched student-to-student communication which happen parallel to teaching. Lemke (1990) defines siding as student-to-student talk while the teacher is teaching, and Antia (2017) defines ‘translanguaged siding’ as student-to-student talk in a language or combination of languages that is different from the LoLT. In this way, siding encapsulates ‘translanguaged siding’.

This thesis explores the drivers of the commitment of volunteers that support migrants. It aims at investigating the reasons that lead people to decide to get involved in solidarity action with migrants through the case study of Grenoble and the Isère department, in France. Through qualitative interviews with volunteers and coordinators from solidarity organizations in the geographical area, this ethnographically inspired research identifies factors participating to the birth of solidarity action. Beyond finding that there is never one reason for people to get involved, the study identifies internal and external drivers of the commitment and the mechanisms within which they operate. It concludes that a combination of internal and external factors resulted in the volunteers getting involved physically in helping migrants. Additionally, it contributed to the discussion on solidarity, including its political dimension, and generated findings about motives for volunteering that may benefit civil society actors supporting migrants.

En à peine plus de deux décennies, la maladie d’Alzheimer est devenue un objet de préoccupation majeure du monde de la prise en charge professionnelle des personnes âgées. Une démographie croissante des personnes concernées parmi le public du secteur ainsi qu’une mobilisation de l’action publique autour du phénomène ont contribué à en faire un problème de santé publique prioritaire. La thèse analyse la manière dont les pratiques professionnelles, en particulier dans les établissements d’hébergement pour personnes âgées, se sont réorganisées autour de cet enjeu. Elle éclaire le processus de spécialisation que connaissent ces institutions, dès lors qu’elles circonscrivent une partie de la population hébergée en la considérant comme spécifique et en développant pour elle des traitements particuliers. L’analyse repose sur une enquête ethnographique mobilisant observations, entretiens et analyse documentaire, menée dans deux établissements, l’un sanitaire, l’autre médico-social. Elle permet de documenter les cadres de compréhension des difficultés qui se font jour dans l’accompagnement de certaines personnes, ainsi que les solutions et adaptations qui sont développées pour y répondre. L’enquête met en évidence un processus de spécialisation affectant les pratiques professionnelles à trois niveaux différents. Au niveau de l’institution, elle montre qu’il se traduit par une évolution de l’organisation institutionnelle, qui prend en particulier la forme de dispositifs de prise en charge temporaire dédiés à la maladie d'Alzheimer et spatialement séparés du reste des lieux d’hébergement. Cette apparente mise à l’écart prend son sens dans la perspective du temps long : l’histoire des établissements d’hébergement pour personnes âgées permet en effet d’appréhender ce que la spécialisation institutionnelle doit à l’évolution contemporaine du mandat de ces institutions. Le mouvement de spécialisation autour de la maladie d'Alzheimer est ensuite saisi au niveau de l’éthique professionnelle qui s’organise autour du soin. Les épreuves produites aux yeux des professionnels par les particularités d’un public qui ne semble pouvoir s’inscrire dans les modalités ordinaires de la relation de soin amènent à des modulations de cette éthique, voire même à une remise en cause du sens que donnent les soignants à l’accompagnement et au soin. Enfin, le processus de spécialisation affecte les métiers impliqués dans la prise en charge. L’enquête fait apparaître l’évolution de leur contenu, mais aussi les réorganisations des relations entre les métiers que la spécialisation Alzheimer induit dans l’écologie professionnelle du secteur gérontologique. / Over the last two decades, Alzheimer's disease has become a major preoccupation for those working within the sector of aged care. The number of persons concerned as well as a growing public concern and policy interventions by the French public authorities have contributed towards maling the treatment of Alzheimer's disease a significant public health priority. This

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Communities are currently being shaped and influenced by larger neoliberal social policies, which has resulted in decreased funding from public sources, which therefore creates greater competition among neighborhood organizations for limited resources. In this thesis, I analyze how larger neoliberal currents have created conflict within the local policy subsystem of rezoning in the Crooked Creek neighborhood in Indianapolis. My analysis spotlights the consequences of devolution one of which is the shift from government to neighborhood governance; I examine these issues by mapping out the causes and consequences of three separate rezoning cases. I compare the conflicting perspectives among local influential organizations, including the Community Development Corporation (CDC) and a number of state registered neighborhood groups. I frame this conflict through the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier 2007) in order to map out the connections between neoliberal social policies and local level conflict.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / American cities are rampant with structural inequities, or “unfreedoms,” which manifest in the forms of poverty, housing instability, low life expectancy, low economic mobility, and other infringements on people’s abilities to do things they value in their lives and meet their full potential. These unfreedoms affect historically and systemically disenfranchised communities of color more than others. Too often, economic development that is supposed to remediate these issues leads to disproportionate economic growth for people who already have access to opportunity, without adequately creating conditions that equitably remove barriers, extend opportunities, and advance freedoms to all people. This dissertation investigates why this pattern persists. In this work, I describe the significance of the differing ways in which economic development is perceived by people living and working in an historically and systemically disinvested urban neighborhood facing socioeconomic transformation near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and city decision-makers in governmental, nonprofit, and quasi-governmental organizations. The ethnographic research methods I used in this study revealed that: many residents described economic development as a process that takes real and perceived neighborhood ownership away from the established community to transform the place for the benefit of outsiders and newcomers, who are, more often than not, white people; and city decision-makers contend that displacement is not a problem in Indianapolis but residents consistently see economic development leading to displacement. I contend that the type of disconnect that persists between the perceptions of people who live and work in the neighborhood and those of city decision-makers is the result of exclusionary development practices and helps perpetuate inequities. This work concludes with a solution for rebalancing the power between well-networked and well-resourced decision-makers and residents facing inequitable and exclusionary development.

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