This thesis aims to explore the nature of emotion work within the context of care occurring in adult stroke survivors (18-59) and their carers situated at home in Nakhon Sawan Province, Thailand. It also investigates how their roles were constructed after the stroke event. An ethnomethodological approach facilitated the understanding of the sense-making processes in daily routines. Data collection was comprised of semi-structured interviews and observations which were gathered from a sample of twelve pairs of stroke survivors and carers, 24 participants in all, over a period of three months. Data were analysed by a thematic analysis approach. Stroke survivors’ belief about the cause of stroke and its effects on their attitude towards themselves and carers, and carers’ accounting for their care of stroke survivors emerged as two overarching themes derived from the interview data. The first theme illustrates that stroke survivors described difficult experiences during the first six months post stroke as the turning point of their lives. They searched their life experiences to create their current status within society. A self-evaluation of their health created a positive or negative attitude towards themselves, which affected their emotions in everyday living. In all cases the stroke survivors’ appreciation of carers’ help was significant. For carers, family relationships and expectations influenced their sense of responsibility and expectations. The feeling of gratitude, the morality of Buddhist values and a sense of duty were their underlying reasons for taking the caring role. Carers’ expectations of stroke survivors’ ability to perform routine activities were influential in managing their own feelings and actions in everyday life. The influence of neighbours reinforced carers’ ideas of moral standards of caring for stroke survivors. Emotion management is the third theme. Emotion work is involved in stroke survivors’ and carers’ everyday affairs which helped to keep their current life situations in balance and assist them in continuing to live as normal. Their life experiences and specific feeling rules (the feeling of gratitude and the sense of responsibility) govern the achievement of their emotion work. A differentiation between male and female roles also influenced their emotion work. Stroke survivors and carers presented how emotion work served to maintain their interpersonal relationship and to minimise difficult conditions in ordinary living. A conceptual framework of the process of emotion work is presented to facilitate understanding of how they engage in and accomplish emotion work during caring interactions. Emotion work emerges as a means to show their gratitude to each other and represents one of several ways to fulfil their Buddhist beliefs in the law of karma. They exchange emotion work for the values of caring and gratitude. These findings will be beneficial to stroke survivors and carers for dealing effectively with emotional problems in day-to-day life. Community nurses and other health professionals will gain a deeper knowledge of emotion work in order to assist them in providing holistic care for stroke survivors and carers. The findings will also be of interest to health policy makers to enable them to organise information and home-healthcare activities in future stroke care and health promotion strategies in rural communities in Thailand and elsewhere.

The thesis describes how family life is organised in the car, with a particular focus on exploring the role and use of mobile technology in this setting. The objective of this research is to use the insights from video ethnographic data collected with families to discuss how social interaction between family members may be situated to technology use. Drawing from the notion of ‘ordinary work’ discussed in ethnomethodology and applying this to naturalistic video data of families in cars, the thesis demonstrates how family activities are locally produced, drawing on background knowledge and common-sense understandings of family members’ work. Using methods from conversation analysis, the research demonstrates how transcribed instances of talk can reveal how parents and children produce their actions and talk to jointly produce activities in relation to media use. The analysis presented in this thesis demonstrates how the family car provides an opportunity for parents and children to come together, and engage in mundane family activities of talk and play while using a range of mobile devices. The thesis draws on richly documented and closely analysed episodes of interaction to demonstrate how family life unfolds in the accomplishment of activities in which interactions are situated, orderly and observable. The production of family life within the car involves talk and embodied action that is artfully placed within interactions between parents, children and technology. The analysis elucidates how the features of negotiation, collaboration and coordination around device-use are placed alongside driving activities. The contributions of this thesis lie in providing a descriptive analysis of the social organisation of family life through technology, developing an understanding of family technology use in a mobile context and highlighting elements of interaction that will inform the development of insights for the design of technology that is sensitive to the nuances of family life, mobility and technology practices.

Notre recherche doctorale vise la problématisation des TIC, le téléphone mobile en rapport avecla question du développement socio-économique au Congo-Brazzaville. C’est l’occasion de mettre entension les discours des acteurs institutionnels et les pratiques des usagers. Nous inscrivons notre problématique en SIC, dont le « caractère interdisciplinaire peut permettre de multiplier les angles de vue » (Loneux, 2007). Nous privilégions le projet scientifique d’Harold Garfinkel, l’ethnométhodologie, en tant qu’ « analyse des façons de faire ordinaires que les acteurs sociaux ordinaires mobilisent afin de réaliser leurs actions ordinaires » (Mucchielli, 2004). La notion de communication est au coeur de notre réflexion : saisir la propension de l’activité communicationnelle à participer aux reconfigurations des pratiques socio-organisationnelles. Ainsi, notre perspective d’interprétation du réel s’emploie à dépasser les présupposés patents ou inavoués pour prétendre mettre en lumière, puis en discussion, les nouveauxmodes d’appropriation du téléphone mobile dans les nouvelles formes d’organisation des activités socioéconomiquesdes acteurs en contexte situé. Les discours de légitimation des TIC des officiels congolais relèvent de la pure « dépossession de la discursivité ». Or, les TIC ne peuvent servir le développement intégral que si les populations qui les utilisent se les approprient dans leur vie quotidienne. En ce sens, les usages du téléphone mobile ne peuvent pas être envisagés comme étant isolés, plutôt dans leur « enchâssement » dans les autres pratiques sociales des usagers congolais. Les résultats de cette recherche visent donc à enrichir les débats en SIC autour des nouvelles visions sur l’usage des TIC / This doctoral research aims to problematize ICT, connecting the mobile phone with the socioeconomic development in Congo - Brazzaville. It is the opportunity to oppose the discourses of institutional actors and practices user. We record our problem in CIS, which the "interdisciplinary nature can help to multiply the angles" (Loneux, 2007). We favor the scientific project of Harold Garfinkel, namely ethnomethodology, as an "analysis of ordinary ways to make that ordinary social actors mobilize to achieve their common shares" (Mucchielli, 2004). The notion of communication is at the heart of our reflexion : to understand the propensity of communicative activity to participate in reconfigurations of socio-organizational practices. Thus, our perspective of interpretation of reality seeks to overcome overt or unspoken presuppositions to reveal and discuss the new modes of ownership of the mobile phone in the new forms of organization of the socio-economic activities of the actors within a given environment. The discourse of legitimation of ICT Congolese officials is pure "dispossession of discursivity", (Serge Latouche, 1986). However, ICT can not serve the integral development unless people appropriate them in their daily lives. In this sense, the uses of the mobile phone cannot be considered as isolated but should be seen in their "entrenchement" in existing social practices of Congolese users. The results of this research thus aim to enrich the debates in SIC around new visions on the use of ICT

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / This study is about the way in which men, specifically in the local context of Cape Town, dominate the rap music culture. Globally, rapping is associated with poetic lyrics that express the rappers' environment or worldview. Historically women's worldviews were kept silent and it is within this context that this investigation explored why women are not represented well in the rap culture. The significance of the study lies in the possibility of identifying ways in which women interested in becoming rap artists could overcome the barriers that currently inhibit their participation. This project represents an interdisciplinary study that falls within the realms of social psychology, music, feminism and social constructionism. Specifically, this thesis employed feminist psychology and social constructionism to construe and interpret the roles of women in rap music. Working within a qualitative feminist framework, the data was gathered through focus groups and in-depth telephonic individual interviews with participants. The discussions held with the participants were transcribed and the data was analyzed thematically. The results reflect that women feel that they are being discriminated against in rap culture on the basis of their gender. Despite the key finding that women are being discriminated against in the rap culture, it was also found that when the two sexes came together and spoke about the gender inequalities in the culture, a strong awareness of gender sensitivity was created. This study therefore suggests that one powerful way of challenging gender inequality in rap culture may be through raising awareness by way of discussions of gender bias and discrimination at rap forums, radio talk shows and workshops aimed at unifying the South African rap culture.

No / As growing numbers of scholars become disaffected by the research traditions laid down by leadership psychology, there is a steady turn towards treating leadership as a discursive phenomenon. In response, leadership researchers are increasingly adopting interpretive and observational methods in the search for the practices of leadership in everyday life. This article suggests that while there are many advantages to an interest in discourse and action, there are also many subtle difficulties in making leadership observable and knowable in the field. Taking Louis Pondy's notion of leadership as a language-game as its starting point, this article argues that leadership studies as a discipline suffers from a persistent category mistake; a category mistake that some recent interpretive studies of leadership reveal, but inadvertently reproduce in the search for leadership's essential character. Instead, this article takes Pondy's thesis to its logical conclusion and outlines a programme of research that confronts this category mistake, whilst demonstrating the potential for, and limitations of, treating leadership as a language-game.

This is a compilation thesis consisting of three different articles with the purpose to explore the relationships between language practices, identity construction and learning in the context of the Vehicle Program, a vocational program in Swedish upper secondary schools. A feature of the particular setting studied here that sets it apart from the general education of auto mechanics in Sweden is that it was carried out in English. The study focuses on language practices within a community of practice where the norms for second language use, gender arrangements and identity work are negotiated in conversations between students and between students and teachers. The language practices are considered as talk-in-interaction, and identity construction and learning are understood as processes in socially situated activities. The study was conducted through an ethnographic approach, including observation, field notes, approximately 200 hours of video recorded interactions, and interviews with students and teachers. The recorded interactions were analysed using tools from conversational analysis and methods focusing on linguistic activities and interactional patterns. An eclectic approach combining linguistic ethnography, ethnometodological conversation analysis and socio-cultural theory of learning, in particular the concept of communities of practice, form the basis of the theoretical framework. The findings in study I highlight that language alternations are repeatedly used in the workshop as a meta-language to play around with language, which relates to emerging communicative strategies that also produces – and helps contest – local language norms. Study III suggests that teasing in students’ peer relations are not only disruptive, off-task behavior, thereby rendering them important only from a classroom management perspective. Teasing, this study proposes, should rather be seen as an organizing principle by which the students are able to position themselves in relation to an institutionally established language ideology. Study II focuses on how participants invoke and renegotiate conventional forms of masculinity tied to the ability of handling tools. Such micro-processes illuminate how gender is a constantly shifting social category that is done, redone and possibly undone. The findings suggest that new forms of auto mechanic student identities are formed that challenge current dominant discourses about what a mechanic should be.

The software engineering community is concerned with improvements in existing methods and development of new and better methods. The research approaches applied to take on this challenge have hitherto focused heavily on the formal and specifying aspect of the method. This has been done for good reasons, because formalizations are the means in software projects to predict, plan, and regulate the development efforts. As formalizations have been successfully developed new challenges have been recognized. The human and social role in software development has been identified as the next area that needs to be addressed. Organizational problems need to be solved if continued progress is to be made in the field. The social element is today a little explored area in software engineering. Following with the increased interest in the social element it has been identified a need of new research approaches suitable for the study of human behaviour. The one sided focus on formalizations has had the consequence that concepts and explanation models available in the community are one sided related in method discourses. Definition of method is little explored in the software engineering community. In relation to identified definitions of method the social appears to blurring. Today the software engineering community lacks powerful concepts and explanation models explaining the social element. This thesis approaches the understanding of the social element in software engineering by applying ethnomethodologically informed ethnography and ethnography. It is demonstrated how the ethnographic inquiry contributes to software engineering. Ethnography is also combined with an industrial cooperative method development approach. The results presented demonstrate how industrial external and internal socio political contingencies both hindered a method implementation, as well as solved what the method was targeted to do. It is also presented how project members’ method deployment - as a social achievement is played out in practice. In relation to this latter contribution it is provided a conceptual apparatus and explanation model borrowed from social science, The Documentary method of interpretation. This model addresses core features in the social element from a natural language point of view that is of importance in method engineering. This model provides a coherent complement to an existing method definition emphasizing formalizations. This explanation model has also constituted the underpinning in research methodology that made possible the concrete study results.

This PhD thesis argues that accounts are influenced by culture, are a fundamental form of social practice by which interaction is accomplished, and thus a central sociological concept. The focus of the thesis is that accounts of time and money are affected by religious belief. It examines and (re)conceptualises the concept of an account. Accounts are re-theorised as taking two forms: rational and rhetorical, with their mediation emphasised as the feature that makes them empirically different. Studies of accounting in religious institutions are critically examined and complemented using research from a neglected (in 'financial' accounting studies) branch of sociological research about accounts as ubiquitous social practices. Time and money are appropriate phenomena to research sociologically because they are relevant to sociological and financial conceptions of an account as numerically accountable phenomena that also have socially meaningful features. Ethnomethodology and institutional ethnography are deployed as two mutual methodological frameworks for researching the social accomplishment of accounts in small-scale interaction and ways in which a complex of wider ruling relations, through institutional discourses, are implicit in accounting interactions, especially in institutional settings. The thesis forwards a set of theoretically derived propositions to provide an explanation of accounts that explores their social embeddedness more closely than previous work. Briefly, these are that accounts generally, and particularly as applied to time and money, are a key means to make actions visible; are an attempt to promote a morally worthy self; are culturally relative; give information about the social norms of the social collective; always occur at moral and sometimes institutional interfaces; and are ubiquitous social practices. To provide and interrogate an applied example of these theoretically and methodologically derived propositions about accounts of time and money and how these are affected by culture and beliefs, I use observation, participant observation, analysis of community produced literature, and semi-structured interviews in a critical case study of the Findhorn Foundation. Therein time and money are rhetorically accountable; are indicative of the spiritually influenced moral code of the Findhorn Foundation; and the moral code provides for a vocabulary of motives that members use in order present morally worthy selves. The ideal moral self is culturally relative to the Findhorn Foundation and sets itself in opposition to an ideal type of capitalist production, consumption and generally dominant ways of knowing, being, and organising in industrialised western societies. Rhetorical accounts of time and money pervade rational ones at the organisational level and spiritual principles are blended with business acumen. However, although spiritual principles have epistemological and ontological differences (from dominant ways of doing business in the wider society), they need to be commensurable with the extra-locally produced discourses found within the wider society in order to remain legally viable. Furthermore, tensions around inefficient decision-making processes exist. Accounts are tied to multiple (at times competing) moral codes within Findhorn, and also operate within pragmatically set limits involving disposable resources. This thesis is argued to be a valuable contribution to sociological literature around social accounting in general, and in religious institutions in particular, and contributes to the literature concerning social actors' accounts of their social actions, regardless of the specific setting. That is, these findings are 'about social practices' in general. Succinctly, my thesis puts forward a strong case for seeing accounts as a central sociological concept.

The objective of this Master’s research project was to examine religious dialogue from the point of view of multi-religious families and different faith-based organizations. This research attempted to raise awareness of the multiple benefits of religious dialogue society-wise, of the general diversity of faith-based systems and of the role that multi-religious families play. Furthermore, it was studied how different faith-based organizations and other societal factors relate to multi-religious families, and how these relationships could be improved.   This is a qualitative research, to which a few quantitative elements were included. These elements were implemented in the two online surveys that were used for the collection of data, as well as during the data handling process. In addition to a comprehensive analysis on religious dialogue, this research considered the concepts of faith and ethnomethodology. These three underlying theories did not only support the research findings, but were actively used as the basis for the development of the surveys and their analysis. Although this research was based on a Finnish context, it can easily be generalized to any given society because of its impartial and universal basis.   The surveys were designed together with a Finnish NGO called Familia ry, and the findings of this research will be used to help them develop their future work.

La recherche porte sur l’instrumentation des processus d’évaluations pédagogiques avec des technologies. Cette recherche-action permise dans le cadre d’un contrat de Convention Industrielle de Formation par la Recherche (CIFRE) dans l’entreprise de conception des technologies, NEOPTEC, vise à analyser les pratiques langagières permettant le développement des technologies et celles permettant leur ancrage dans les pratiques d’évaluation. Le corpus a été constitué auprès des concepteurs et usagers des technologies. Il s’appuie sur la prise de notes en situations d’activités professionnelles, sur des enregistrements sonores et audiovisuels explorés à l’aide de l’Analyse de Conversation et de l’ethnométhodologie, ainsi que sur une collecte des documents et traces numériques réalisés dans le cadre des activités évaluatives. Cette recherche offre une réflexion sur la manière d’instrumenter un processus d’évaluation par l’intégration de la technologie et met en évidence les apports de celle-ci pour l’Éducation. / This action-research focuses on the use of digital technologies for educational assessment. The research has been made possible through an Industrial Training Research Convention (CIFRE contract of) contract with the company NEOPTEC, which develops assessment technologies. The aim is to analyze the linguistic practices enabling development of technologies and those enabling assessment practices. The corpus has been constituted through the observation of designers and users of technology. It relies on analysis of notes taken in professional situations, of sound and video recordings, which are explored using Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology, and of documents and digital traces produced through assessment activities. This research provides a reflection on technology’s role in the implementation of an instrument-based evaluation process and on its benefits for education.