Thesis advisor: Charles Derber / This thesis examines the relationship between consumption and politics. It focuses on how ethical consumption can be positioned to be part of political participation. It also pays attention to how it can serve as a pathway for creating a better society in which ethical, individual consumers are mobilized toward the collective activism and the conventional political participation that influences social change in the context of globalization and individualism. To demonstrate this, the study examines the case of a consumer cooperative: iCOOP in South Korea based on data from in-depth interviews with members of iCOOP. The findings show that ethical consumption practices can be understood in the context of life politics. Participants in this study constantly make attempts to readapt their consuming patterns and choose their lifestyles based on a changed consciousness of the self, the world, and the interrelations between both at the individual level. By extension, participants analyzed as political agents of life politics show that they can become more engaged in collective activism and conventional political participation. What makes this mobilization possible is that they were able to be involved in rehearsal phases for citizens' roles at the collective level, and to gain easy access to social issues and a set of political tools in iCOOP. It is significant that iCOOP provides a platform for collecting and maintaining the state of this collectivized consumer power by organizing individually scattered consumers. It is not an `imagined community' for mobilizing scattered consumers, but rather a practical and real community established by consumers themselves in which they try to become aware of interrelations between the self and the world, rearrange their ways of living, and further expand their interests and actions to large-scale social and political issues for making social change. These findings not only support the alternative views of ethical consumption as political participation, these also offer a fresh perspective by showing the process and the mechanism of the connection between consumption and politics. This study ultimately leads to the possibility that ethical consumption can become a vehicle that brings about a meaningful change in both life and conventional politics. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology. / Discipline: TO ADD.

There are shared opinions about how young people's participation in politics looks like today. Some studies show that young people's participation in party politics has been drastically reduced. Simultaneously, other studies show how young people are more politically interested today than in a long time. Thus, young people have a strong interest in politics, but participate to a lesser extent in party politics. Then where does young people's doing of politics go? The purpose of this study is to show how societal changes such as increased individualization and digitalization have come to influence how young people do politics today. In order to understand the changes that have taken place in what is considered to be politics and how politics is being practiced today, we need to take a step back and look at the major societal changes that have taken place in late modern society. Through a qualitative study based on interviews, this paper has sought answers to how today's young people are doing politics in late modern society and how it can explain the paradox of declining participation in party politics and at the same time increasing interest in politics. The result showed that young people's doing of politics today has come to be individualized, where much of the doing of politics is based on the individual and everyday life. Therefore, what was previously considered personal and non-political has come to be politicized. This politicization of the unpolitical has been done at the expense of the political which at the same time becomes more unpolitical for the young, and thus the low interest in the political system and to channel its political action through political parties. Digitalization has also contributed to the fact that this individual engagement can be exercised via social media which has become an important political arena for young people today. To a greater extent, the young citizen now wants to be a political actor of their own and to influence themselves directly in relation to society, rather than having their views represented by politicians. In this way, past private acts such as consuming less meat and one's own career choices are largely political actions in late modern society.

本研究針對紀登斯（Anthony Giddens），探討其對於現代社會的結構特性、作為能動者的人類主體之構成，以及建構合乎現代人性需求政治制度的思想，並推演其在教育上可以有的發展。研究發現：一、紀登斯將主體重建為兼具身體與人格、意識與無意識、論述與實踐、自我與共在、源流與變化、例行性與創造性的能動者；二、意識可分為三個層級但其與行動層級並非一一對應關係；三、本體安全感除透過擱置之外，仍須透過生活政治學反思性地處理本體安全感的需求；四、結構概念具有多項特性，並與人類的能動性呈現雙重性及二元性兩種關係；五、系統與結構的區分應從組合式及聚合式之間的差異來瞭解。六、高度現代性社會有不同於以往的制度、動力、後果與特性。七、生活在高度現代性之下人們有更多自我決定的空間與必要性。八、針對高度現代性的各種特性，政治治理必須有不同以往的思考，並秉持烏托邦現實主義、世界主義，調和懷疑與獻身，使每個人都能對社會有所貢獻。依據上述發現，筆者在教育方面針對個人、結構、現代性、政治治理，與社會學研究方面進行衍釋，作為教育方面的啟示。 / This dissertation study Anthony Giddens’s thoughts about Structuration theory, modernity and politics, and try to find the implications in education. The author find that Giddens reconstructed subjects as agents by 6 pairs of concepts, pointed out 8 relative characters about structure, and contrasted structure with system as paradigmatic with syntagmatic. The author also find that Giddens’ stratification model of personality did not simply correspond to his stratification model of action. And the existential questions which are bracketed by the ontological security should be answered by life politics. Radical Modernity is different from tradition in institutions, dynamics, consequences and properties. People living in this era have more space and necessities to make decisions for themselves. To avoid the possible risks, people should hold the utopian realism, cosmopolitanism, balance the doubts and commitments. Implications in education are addressed on these findings.

In this thesis the vocational orientation of the courses offered - as an expression of the folk high school's self-identity- is analysed. The point of departure was that what the folk high school do, is a way to show what it wants to be and, therefore, reflects what it is. Focus is on how the folk high school meets with contemporary tasks and demands in different areas of society. The research objects are, the folk high school as type of school (a total of 147 schools) and a sample of ten individual schools with different ownership. The study is about what the offered courses reveal about the folk high school's reflections and conclusions as regards its future activities in relation to its history and contemporary society. The theoretical framework of the thesis is built on the sociologist Anthony Giddens 'Theory of Structuration' and the concepts of structure and agency. Reflections about the surrounding world and the contributions the schools' want to make in society is assumed to result in a more or less conscious strategy for the future, the folk high school's course politics as it is expressed in action. The identity has been interpreted in vocational roles as they appear in course contents. The word 'vocation' is used in almost the same sense as Giddens defines 'work'. Self-identity was analysed from three different kinds of texts and with one question for each. In the first perspective focus is on official investigations and political decisions, in the period 1970-2000. What role in society is imposed upon the folk high school in contemporary educational policies? In the second perspective all courses offered at all folk high schools in 1972 and 2000 are studied, in order to present a picture of the overall pattern of vocational orientation. In the third perspective the course politics of the ten selected folk high schools are investigated, from the start of the respective schools, and in relation to what each school thinks it 'is'- with different owners and in its particular geographical situation. One overriding conclusion is that the characteristics that make the identity of the folk high school seem unclear and paradoxical are the very same that constitute the self-identity of the folk high school as being complex and multifaceted. The self-identity seems paradoxical when the vocational orientation presents itself as both preserving traditions and answering to today's needs. In other words, the school 'does what it has always done' (is conservative) and at the same time 'captures new needs and tasks' (is flexible). The folk high school's role and uniqueness in what they actually do can be understood as what I have called 'contemporaneous civic functionaries'. Their profiles emerge when flexibility is based on history. I want to designate 'existential rationality' to the motivating mechanism that seems to at the same time force changes and lean on own experiences. Expressing contemporary self-identity is grounded in the individual tradition as motivationbased values, cultural and geographic conditions.

In this thesis the vocational orientation of the courses offered - as an expression of the folk high school's self-identity- is analysed. The point of departure was that what the folk high school do, is a way to show what it wants to be and, therefore, reflects what it is. Focus is on how the folk high school meets with contemporary tasks and demands in different areas of society. The research objects are, the folk high school as type of school (a total of 147 schools) and a sample of ten individual schools with different ownership. The study is about what the offered courses reveal about the folk high school's reflections and conclusions as regards its future activities in relation to its history and contemporary society. The theoretical framework of the thesis is built on the sociologist Anthony Giddens 'Theory of Structuration' and the concepts of structure and agency. Reflections about the surrounding world and the contributions the schools' want to make in society is assumed to result in a more or less conscious strategy for the future, the folk high school's course politics as it is expressed in action. The identity has been interpreted in vocational roles as they appear in course contents. The word 'vocation' is used in almost the same sense as Giddens defines 'work'. Self-identity was analysed from three different kinds of texts and with one question for each. In the first perspective focus is on official investigations and political decisions, in the period 1970-2000. What role in society is imposed upon the folk high school in contemporary educational policies? In the second perspective all courses offered at all folk high schools in 1972 and 2000 are studied, in order to present a picture of the overall pattern of vocational orientation. In the third perspective the course politics of the ten selected folk high schools are investigated, from the start of the respective schools, and in relation to what each school thinks it 'is'- with different owners and in its particular geographical situation. One overriding conclusion is that the characteristics that make the identity of the folk high school seem unclear and paradoxical are the very same that constitute the self-identity of the folk high school as being complex and multifaceted. The self-identity seems paradoxical when the vocational orientation presents itself as both preserving traditions and answering to today's needs. In other words, the school 'does what it has always done' (is conservative) and at the same time 'captures new needs and tasks' (is flexible). The folk high school's role and uniqueness in what they actually do can be understood as what I have called 'contemporaneous civic functionaries'. Their profiles emerge when flexibility is based on history. I want to designate 'existential rationality' to the motivating mechanism that seems to at the same time force changes and lean on own experiences. Expressing contemporary self-identity is grounded in the individual tradition as motivationbased values, cultural and geographic conditions.

When collective action for community is defined as local development or as a struggle for survival different understandings are in focus. Politically, this kind of community action is defined as local development and understood in terms of growth and economics. An economic approach to community action is also emphasised in the EU-programmes that support local development groups and projects. On the other hand local groups describe their activities as a struggle for community and community survival. Inspired by feministic research approaches and with an interest in human aspects and values this study investigates meanings of community action as experienced and expressed by rural inhabitants and activists. The study is based on fieldwork that was carried out in a small rural community in the northern inlands of Sweden: Trehörningsjö. Since the middle of the 1990s, the women in Trehörningsjö have driven collective action to uphold the community. With its point of departure in the community and expanding into the arenas of reserach and politics, the study takes on the form of a reflexive research process in which the researcher's former knowledge and new understandings are made visible and discussed parallel with the interpretations made. The main focus of the study is the activist's demand of voice, visibility and worth. The first chapter presents the local community and provides a background to the study. The chapter includes an account of the reflexive approach that widened the field of research from a local to a translocal study of community action. In chapters two, three, four and five the struggle for community is reflected through fieldwork experiences in Trehörningsjö and other arenas beyond the village. Situated events and instances of collective action such as the fight for the local health care centre, are analysed as symbolic expressions of community values and rural importance. From chapter two and onwards, the study follows the footsteps of the leading female activist in and beyond the community itself; that is, the day-to-day work, meetings, conferences and other places where community action is acted out. The struggle for community is proven to focus on translocal rather than local action. In chapter six the fieldwork experiences - that tell about resistance and a struggle for community values and perspectives - are placed in the wider context of the rural development movement, local development research and governmental rural policy in Sweden. On all these arenas community action tend to be interpreted as local development in line with a growth perspective, rather than as community protests and struggles that expresses other meanings. Chapter seven takes the analyses and discussion further, and relates community struggle to concepts such as civil society and social economy. Anthony Giddens concept of life politics and Alberto Meluccis concept of collective action are used to deepen the analysis on how humane meanings and relation based aspects of community action are made invisible on the political "growht and development" agenda. Community struggle presents a possibility for rural inhabitants to (re)define and reclaim their community and themselves as important and valuable. However, to be able to understand what the concept of community struggle expresses, and demands, it needs to be acknowledged as a form of action that has the potential to challenge established bureaucratic and political defintions, which, in practice, proves to be difficult.