Latino students are the only ethnic group more likely to enroll in community colleges than four-year institutions. However, they transfer to four-year institutions at much lower rates than their white counterparts. This gap in transfer rates for Hispanic students is of significant concern to higher education researchers and policy makers because of its broad impact on overall educational attainment for Hispanics. Research on Latino transfer rates has focused predominantly on quantitative data, which paints a clear picture of what is happening, but falls short in explaining why transfer rates continue to be low. Researchers have offered both structural (social reproduction theory and the community college "cooling out" theory) and agency explanations (transfer aspirations and self-efficacy) for low transfer rates. This dissertation expands our understanding of Latino student transfer through a qualitative, interview-based study, which gives voice to six Latino students at an urban community college in the Ohio Valley. Individual interviews were conducted with transfer-ready students and were then transcribed and analyzed through narrative analysis. Each of the students in this study planned to earn an associate‘s degree and then transfer to a four-year institution, but despite these goals they had done limited transfer planning. Although the community college provides access to these students, the students also struggle financially and wonder if they‘ll be able to afford the American Dream. Within the context of the community college and American culture, the students are navigating cultural values, gender roles, and expectations as they pursue their education. The students pursue their educational goals and persistence within the context of strong family connections. They are navigating an unfamiliar education system, often in a foreign language. As they experience education in another language, they are actively engaged in the production of their own cultural identities. Despite the obstacles these students face – particularly financially), the student narratives are grounded in a strong sense of personal agency and a belief that education will provide them with a better future.

Sexuellt våld är ett ämne som sällan lämnar någon oberörd. Hur vi talar om sexuellt våld förändras över tid. Denna kvalitativa intervjustudie vill genom dialogisk och tematisk narrativ analys lyfta rösterna från kvinnor som utsatts för sexuellt våld. Utifrån en teoriram bestående av socialkonstruktionistiska teorier och feministiska teorier analyseras kvinnornas berättelser om det våld de utsatts för och dess konsekvenser. Studien belyser hur kvinnorna genom berättelser konstruerar sin identitet, men också vilka konsekvenser de beskriver att våldet fått för hur de upplever sina livsvillkor. Att berätta om våldet och att hantera konsekvenserna av våldet beskrivs och skildras av intervjupersonerna som en fortgående process. De beskriver att de fortfarande, flera år efter våldet, påverkas av det våld de utsatts för, men att sätt som våldet påverkar dem på förändras med tiden. Kvinnorna beskriver även att vilka berättelser som blir möjliga att berätta varierar beroende på kontext. Genom att betona sammanvävningar av maktordningar som rör ålder och kön vill denna studie bidra till forskningen om sexuellt våld genom ett intersektionellt perspektiv på utsatthet. Resultatet av studien visar att även år 2015 är sexuellt våld ett tabubelagt ämne, och att intervjupersonerna konstruerar både kollektiv och individuell identitet på olika sätt i relation till våldet. / Sexual violence is a subject that rarely leave anyone unaffected. How we talk about sexual violence does however change over time. The purpose of this qualitative interview study is to address the question of sexual violence, and to this by giving voice to women that have been victims of sexual violence. By applying a dialogic and thematic narrative analysis, the aim of this thesis is to highlight the subject of sexual violence from the women’s own perspective. The interviewees narratives about how and if they talk about the violence with others, and how they perceive the consequences of the violence is analyzed within a framework of social constructionist and feminist theory. The study highlights how women through stories construct their identity, but also what consequences they describe that the violence has had on how they perceive their living conditions. To tell about the violence and to address the consequences of the violence is by the interviewees described as an ongoing process. They describe that, several years after the violence occurred, they are still affected by the sexual violence they have been subjected to. The way the violence affect them is however also depicted as changing over time. The women also disclose that they perceive their possibilities of sharing narratives of sexual violence with others as something that depends on context. By emphasizing how power structures regarding not only gender but also age this study also contribute to research on sexual violence by applying an intersectional perspective on vulnerability. The result of the study shows that even in the year of 2015, sexual violence is a taboo subject, and that the interviewees construct both collective and individual identity in different ways in relation to the violence.

This thesis explores the increasing medicalization of society, the process whereby social phenomenon are transformed into medical problems. Alike the general tendency of neuropsychiatric diagnoses, the number of people with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) has increased and expanded from a boys’ diagnosis to include both adult men and women. Studies on the latter category is however scarce. The objective of the thesis is to contribute with a micro sociological and critical perspective on the effects of the biomedicalization process, by focusing women's experience of getting and living with ADHD. The empirical material consists of narrative interviews with sixteen women, diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. The participants, age 20 to 50, were enrolled via Swedish NGOs in 2010 and 2013. The thesis resides on four analytical themes: biomedicalization, pharmaceuticalizaton, functionality and gender. It shows how diagnostics evokes processes that involve learning and using a biomedical terminology to describe and understand oneself. ADHD is, in general, depicted as diffuse, expansionary, masculine and deviant sociability and cognitivity. Unlike depression and anxiety, described as temporary and unwanted illnesses, the ADHD-diagnosis embraces the whole personality. Hence, the women find it difficult to identifying and separating ADHD from the self. Furthermore, categorizations of oneself as a ‘woman with ADHD’ imply constructions of individual and collective identity that has ideological implications, i.e. the individual narratives are related to grand narratives. These contradictory grand narratives bring about ideological dilemmas that are handled rhetorically in the women's everyday life. The masculine connotation of ADHD, for example, render the women experiencing themselves as transgressing not only femininity but also ADHD-personhood. Additionally, as social actions are attributed to the ‘ADHD brain’, the brain is portrayed as a pathological deviant and dysfunctional object for pharmaceutical intervention. Nevertheless, this discourse is also contested by the women by pointing to 1) positive aspects of the ‘ADHD-brain’ in everyday life, or 2) gender inequalities and demands of the late-modern society. Concluding, the women in this study are not only victims of their bodies or societal norms, but also agents negotiating – adapting and opposing to – expectations of how to be an ideal citizen or woman.

This thesis is a study of bullying narratives, mainly co-produced in a process of ongoing interaction. The focus is on how narrators rhetorically organize their storytelling and identity work by using discursive resources. The empirical material consists of 12 interviews with, and 12 written stories by people who have been exposed to workplace bullying plus information from three websites about bullying, and previous research. The overarching aim of the study is to identify how a bullying discourse is produced, reproduced, challenged and negotiated in bullied persons’ narratives. Specific aims are to determine how bullying is portrayed publicly, how narrators with experience of being bullied build their stories, how the narratives stand in relation to victimization, what makes it possible to talk about vulnerability and what are its limits, and finally to develop a narrative approach.Theoretically and methodologically, the study has its basis in narrative analysis, discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and metaphor analysis. The study shows how the narrators categorize themselves as active, competent, and consensus seeking. They resist being victimized, but by their use of the interpretative repertoire and a standard story of bullying, they nevertheless become indirectly victimized. What’s at stake, in the narratives, is the question of guilt, which they rhetorically evade by the use of different metaphors. These metaphors depict bullying as a mystery, a lifelong source of suffering, a transformation, a learning experience, a battle, a contagious virus, and a trap. The narrators are constrained by the narrative conditions, the interpretative repertoire, standard story, and narrative form and content – a story of good and evil when creating their own story. The narrative conditions at the same time set the limit for expressing oneself in the identity work. This also means we are part of the production and reproduction of the bullying discourse when I, as a researcher, and the narrators use the repertoire and the standard story in mutual understanding. / <p>Helena Blomberg är verksam som universitetsadjunkt i sociologi vid Mälardalens högskola sedan 2001och vid Örebro universitet sedan 2003. Hennes huvudsakliga verksamhetsområde rör metodologiska frågeställningar kopplat till den kvalitativa forskningstraditionen, främst diskurs- och narrativ analys. Hon ingår även i Diskursgruppen vid Stockholms universitet, en tvärvetenskaplig forskargrupp som arbetar med olika diskursanalytiska ansatser.</p>

This study explores the relationship between ideals of motherhood and heterosexual normativity, from the perspective of women at the margins of these discourses. The title, In the shadow of Motherhood, illustrates the overriding power of the image of motherhood to marginalise alternative experiences. The concept of motherhood, like that of Family, has traditionally signalled the reproduction of the normative; it does not usually encompass the critical scrutiny that would allow for diverse experiences of mothering. Theoretically, the study is located within the fields of feminist sociology and inclusive family studies in productive dialogue with queer notions of gender and sexuality. Methodologically, it is inspired by narrative analysis and consists of in-depth interviews with eight lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual women grappling with different experiences of motherhood and mothering practices. Some of them identify as mothers while others do not, but by not being biogenetic mothers within a heterosexual relationship they share the position of being outside of what is often considered normal, natural and desirable. The analysis reveals a considerable variation in the positions, experiences and identities of the participants, particularly in regards to changes over time, which cannot be reduced to binary categories such as heterosexual/lesbian, biological/non-biological, mother/childless or voluntary/involuntary childlessness. The analysis also exposes a deep tension between ideologies of motherhood and lived experiences of care practices. Furthermore, from the perspective of the participants, the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion reinforce and challenge each other, creating spaces of both individual and collective resistance. The study illuminates the need to shift the location of these experiences from the margins to the centre not only in sociological research of family and gender, but also within feminist sociology.

Starting from a personal, contemporary outlook on society today, it might be obvious for a reader to immediately think of media as global, an entity hovering over national borders, transcending geography and geo-politics. As such viewers, we ignore thus that media - and the press in particular - have for a long time in the past been associated and tightly linked with mechanisms of nation-building, as well as with concepts such as nation, national identity and nationalism. Living in Sweden one might be acquainted with a fairly frequent representation of Russia in the media, just as well as with a fairly specific one; and the same would plausibly go for other countries. Through a narrative analysis of newspaper articles, this study focuses on the comparison of the representation of Russia in Swedish and Italian liberal online press in order to research whether the weaker degree of partisanship that characterises liberal journalism would still allow for two different storylines about Russia to be told through different narratives. With Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini’s study of media systems, as well as Kristina Riegert’s comparison of national representation in foreign news as a background, this study researches whether societal and political agendas and partisanship shape the image (and hence narration) of Russia in the two countries’ newspapers. Using Allan Bell’s values of newsworthiness and Vladimir Propp’s analysis of the quest’s narrative structure, it concludes that although the storylines about Russia told by the two countries were in fact different and plausibly coherent with the respective country’s circumstances (with a margin of exception), their narrative did not fully represent the model that Hallin and Mancini had assigned them.

The necessity of economic growth is a conventional wisdom of our time, assumed to lead to more prosperity and be a panacea for any societal problem. However, infinite economic growth is hard to reconcile with a finite planet, and there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that growth is no panacea nor inherently linked to prosperity. With the starting point that news media is of ideological importance, this study investigates how the hegemony of growth (as it has been called by Schmelzer [2016]) is perpetuated in news. Through a narrative analysis of articles from 2017, from Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Times of India (TOI) it analyses how news describes benefits of GDP growth, constructs stakeholders in relation to it, and discusses the ideological implications of these portrayals. The results show that the basic narratives are similar in both newspapers and primarily describe economic growth as desirable, without any references to contested status of the ability of growth to lead to prosperity – perpetuating the hegemony of growth. Many position the state as responsible for generating growth, others describe corporate growth as something good in and of itself, and the narratives create a ‘we’ in relation to ‘the economy’. These are narratives with implications for how societies negotiate between economic growth and competing goals, e.g. keeping within the planetary boundaries. Further, as growth cannot be assumed to automatically lead to ‘better’, this has implications for how journalistic autonomy should be perceived in relation to economic reporting.

Background: The effect of Malaria attack on maternal and child health in Nigeria is high compared with other countries in sub Saharan Africa. This problem has been a persistent issue in Nigeria and many researchers have tried to proffer solutions. Insecticide treated nets (ITN) have been identified as providing approximately 80% protection against malaria attack. However, all the measures put in place to control malaria failed to meet up with the set target of the Roll Back Malaria Initiative, which aimed at reducing malaria deaths in Nigeria by half by 2010 in line with the Millennium Development Goals (Anyaehie et al., 2009). As part of the global initiative to reduce malaria deaths before 2015 (Amoran, Senbanjo and Asagwara, 2011) the Nigerian government introduced intervention programmes to protect pregnant women, and children under-five years of age (Anyaehie et al., 2011). However, although there has been considerable and effective intervention in controlling this preventable disease in the African continent, marked inconsistency in the distribution of the ITN, scarcity and low usage in Nigeria (Amoran, Senbanjo and Asagwara, 2011) are apparent, despite emphasis on community-based strategies for malaria control (Obinna, 2011). For midwives in rural Nigeria the disproportionate vulnerability of pregnant women and young children is of great concern. This particular issue is the focus of a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry into the experiences of pregnant women and mothers in their efforts to protect their families and themselves from malaria attack. The study contends that the ‘big (pan-African/national) story’ of malaria has found many voices, speaking from a predominantly positivist perspective. While some more interpretivist approaches to exploring experience have been employed elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa (Rachel and Frank 2005), there remains a need for more participatory research related to health care issues in Nigeria (Abdullahi et al 2013). Women and children make up the majority of the Nigeria population of over 160 million. An attack of malaria on them affects entire households and the economy of the nation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to give voice to the ‘small (household) stories’ of Nigerian women (mothers and health workers), living and working in impoverished rural communities, and consider how their viewpoints, perspectives and imaginings might contribute to the fight for a malaria-free Nigeria. Methodological approach: The research draws on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The participants’ accounts are interpreted in terms of Africana ‘Womanism’ as defined by Hudson-Weems (1993), the socio-narratology approach elaborated by Frank (2010), and Igbo world-view. Research procedure: Individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with Igbo women in three rural communities in Enugu State in eastern Nigeria (Nsukka, Ngwo, and Amechi). This was a three-phase process involving an initial orientation visit to engage with local gatekeepers and community health workers. A first round of interviews and discussion took place in three communities in 2014, followed by the first phase of interpretation. A second field trip took place in 2015, during which participants discussed the ongoing interpretation and elaborated further on some of the issues raised. Interpretive phases 2 and 3 followed this visit. Interpretive process: Interpretive shifts in understanding were accomplished in three ways: 1. Seeking thematic connections between participants’ accounts of living with the threat of malaria. 2. Engaging in dialogical narrative analysis to explore the work done by the stories embedded in individual accounts of living under the threat of malaria. 3. Crafting found poetry from within the collective accounts to produce an evocative text that could mediate an emotional response and understanding of the malaria experience. Key outcomes: The research was a response to calls for more participatory research into the detailed experiences of people in Africa facing up to the threat of malaria. It has provided a vehicle for the voices of a group of Nigerian women and health workers to bring attention to the continuing plight of pregnant women and their families with limited access to insecticide-treated bed nets in poor living conditions. They have told how they seek to empower themselves in their own small and particular ways. It has provided insights into their worldview(s) and what others might see from where they stand. As such it has added to their own call expressed during the research to “Keep malaria on the agenda.” The research has used the women’s own testimony to create an oral resource designed https://youtu.be/XelMXLUzTV0 to facilitate education and action among small local groups of women and their families, and for health workers in local rural communities.

Este trabalho pretende analisar o romance João Ternura, de Aníbal Machado, do ponto de vista das contradições entre os projetos ideológicos do primeiro Modernismo e os problemas trazidos pelo processo histórico nacional. No momento em que inicia a escrita de seu único romance, em 1926, Aníbal Machado partilha dos objetivos libertários e dos pressupostos ideológicos que animavam a vanguarda artística brasileira. Como, no entanto, o romance continua a ser escrito até 1964, é possível ver no movimento de sua forma um embate entre matéria narrativa e dinâmica histórica da nação. Tal conflito acaba por fazer com que protagonista e obra entrem em um processo de dissolução que os condena a subsistirem parcialmente inconclusos. A análise de João Ternura traz à tona uma reflexão sobre as possibilidades de constituição do Brasil como nação autônoma e independente / This work aims to analyze the novel João Ternura, by Aníbal Machado, in relation to the contradictions between the ideological project of early Brazilian Modernism and the problems of the national historical process. When he starts writing his only novel, in 1926, Aníbal Machado shares the libertarian goals and ideological assumptions of the Brazilian artistic avant-garde. However, as the novel continues to be written until 1964, the year of the military coup, its very form and style document the collision between the narrative material and the national historical process around it. These conflicts culminate in a process of dissolution that condemn both the novel and its protagonist to a state of inconclusiveness. Analyzing João Ternura brings to light reflections on the possibilities of Brazilian formation as an autonomous and independent nation

Abstract The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and increase understanding of hospital change project actuality. Project actuality means various level social processes that go on in hospital change projects and through which people in project perceive reality. A way to capture hospital change project actuality is to focus on little-studied project participants’ lived experiences, i.e., reflexive actors’ situational thinking. Approaching hospital change project participants’ lived experiences through a Weickian sensemaking perspective, this dissertation investigates hospital change project actuality in one university hospital in Finland. Sensemaking means a process through which people generate meanings for their experiences and it provides a well-grounded perspective to focus on lived experiences in hospital change projects. The study is a qualitative case study consisting of three sub-studies, which consist of four interrelated articles. The first sub-study explores hospital change projects as a context for sensemaking from mid-level nurse managers’ viewpoint. The second sub-study investigates the role of emotions in the process of nurse managers’ sensemaking of change in a hospital project. The third sub-study examines different project participants’ discursive sensemaking of their lived project work experiences in hospital and introduces a discursive sensemaking perspective as a conceptual framework to study lived experiences through discourses. The primary data consist of 37 interviews, which were analyzed deploying different qualitative analysis methods, so deductive content analysis, discourse analysis and narrative analysis. The first sub-study shows that hospital projects provide a reasonable context for sensemaking of change, however, hierarchy between different professions may obscure it. The second sub-study indicates that poorly experienced change facilitation maintains negative emotions influencing also plausibility of the organizational change in hospital project. The third sub-study suggests that high expectations regarding project-based work seem not to realize in practice in hospital. All in all, the study shows that hospital change projects actualize as paradoxal processes that are characterized by tensions between collaboration, competition and control. / Tiivistelmä Väitöskirjan tarkoituksena on kuvailla ja lisätä ymmärrystä sairaalan muutosprojektien aktuaalisuudesta. Aktuaalisuudella tarkoitetaan eritasoisia sosiaalisia prosesseja, joiden kautta sairaalan muutosprojektien toimijat hahmottavat todellisuutta ympärillään. Sitä voidaan tarkastella projektiin osallistuvien ihmisten kokemuksellisuuden eli refleksiivisten toimijoiden tilanteisen ajattelun kautta. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan sairaalan muutosprojektien aktuaalisuutta Weickiläisen merkityksellistämisen näkökulman kautta yhden yliopistosairaalan kontekstissa Suomessa. Merkityksellistäminen tarkoittaa prosessia, jonka kautta toimijat kehittävät merkityksiä kokemuksilleen voidakseen toimia mielekkäästi. Se tarjoaa perustellun näkökulman sairaalan muutosprojektien aktuaalisuuden tarkasteluun. Tutkimus on laadullinen tapaustutkimus koostuen kolmesta osatutkimuksesta, jotka puolestaan koostuvat neljästä artikkelista. Ensimmäinen osatutkimus tarkastelee sairaalan projekteja merkityksellistämisen kontekstina ylihoitajien näkökulmasta. Toinen osatutkimus tutkii osastonhoitajien tunteiden roolia muutoksen merkityksellistämisen prosessissa sairaalan projektissa. Kolmas osastutkimus tarkastelee sairaalan muutosprojektiin osallistuvien eri toimijoiden projektityön kokemuksellisuutta esitellen diskursiivisen merkityksellistämisen konseptuaalisena viitekehyksenä, jonka avulla voidaan tarkastella kokemuksellisuuden merkityksellistämistä diskursseihin yhdistettynä. Väitöskirjan pääaineisto koostuu 37 haastattelusta, joita on analysoitu kvalitatiivisilla analyysimenetelmillä, kuten teorialähtöistä sisällönanalyysiä, diskurssianalyysiä sekä narratiivista analyysiä, hyödyntäen. Väitöskirjan ensimmäinen osastutkimus osoittaa, että sairaalan projektit tarjoavat mielekkään kontekstin muutoksen merkityksellistämiselle, joskin eri ammattikuntien hierarkkisuus saattaa haitata sitä. Toinen osatutkimus viittaa siihen, että heikkona koettu muutosprosessin tukeminen ylläpitää negatiivisia tunteita vaikuttaen myös negatiivisesti organisaatiomuutoksen uskottavuuteen sairaalan projektin kontekstissa. Kolmas osatutkimus viittaa siihen, että korkeat odotukset projektityötä kohtaan eivät usein todennu käytännössä. Kaiken kaikiaan väitöskirja osoittaa, että sairaalan muutosprojektit aktualisoituvat paradoksaalisina prosesseina, joita luonnehtii jännitteisyys yhteistyön, kilpailun ja kontrollin välillä.