This study explores what oral history interviews with my mother reveal about the familial and community dynamics that influenced Finnish-American children growing up on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between 1930 and 1950. Close to four hours of oral history interviews were conducted with Viola Nixon, who is second and third-generation Finnish-American on her father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. After conducting a narrative analysis of the interviews, five themes emerged as significant to community function: family, language, education, work and church. I grouped some of these themes together to create three stories informed by materials drawn from the interviews, a cookbook, and my personal experience. These stories were written for oral performance. The stories provide audiences the opportunity to learn about and feel empathy for America’s immigrants, as well as to explore their own immigrant roots. Opportunities for further studies exist to explore the immigrant experience on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

<p>The study&rsquo / s main starting premises is that there is a disjuncture between the rich educational engagements of these students in their environmental space and how their learning practices are framed, informed and positioned in the institutional space. My study is underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm in terms of which I set out to describe and understand the meanings that the student respondents assign to their learning practices when they are involved in discursive practices of speaking, knowing, doing, reading and writing. Qualitative research instruments: field notes, participant and non-participant observations and formal and informal interviews were used in order to answer my research question and achieve the desired research aims of this thesis. The findings are presented in a narrative format after deriving at categories and themes using narrative analysis. Finally, my research shows how these students are positioned in and by their lived spaces (whether environmental or institutional) in specific ways, and they, based on their own resources, networks and interactions, and by exercising their agency, actively construct their own spaces of learning. I describe these active constructions by these students as their &lsquo / conceptual space of learning&rsquo / to highlight the complex ways in which they go about to establish their learning practices in their lived spaces. The study provides an analysis of the basis upon which each of these four students go about constructing their learning practices.</p>

After sixteen intensive months, I quit my employed position as a security guard at a local hospital. By drawing on my autoethnographic experiences in the form of “ethnographic fiction writing”, as well as eight interviews with my former male colleagues, I explore how the guards’ constructions of masculinity intersect with their security assessment and subsequent application of force, chemical incarceration, and other coercive security tactics on involuntarily-committed mental health patients. The narratives are framed by the available literature on gender and masculinity within the security, police, prison and military institutions, as well as the theoretical notions of gendered institutions (Acker), hegemonic masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt), doing gender (West & Zimmerman), and Dave Holmes’s application of Foucauldian biopolitical power to forensic healthcare settings. These concepts are used in tandem with a creative methodological tool to reveal the “messy”, “bloody” and “gendered” ways in which hospital life unfolds between the guard, the nurse, and the patient prisoner. By escaping more traditional forms of academic writing, I am able to weave raw, sensitive and reflexive thoughts and emotions into the research design and analysis. The analysis is divided into two narratives: “Us” and “Them”. “Us” emphasizes the gendered ways in which the hospital guard learns, reproduces, resists, lives up, or fails to live up to the masculine codes of the profession. Here, the guard must confront cultural demands to demonstrate physical prowess, authority and heroism during a patient battle. “Them” explores how hegemonic masculinity shapes the hierarchical and coercive relations between the guard, the nurse, and the patient, and reinforces psychiatrized discourses that promote punishment, pain, bureaucracy and control. Overall, these findings call for the abolition of physical restraint, chemical incarceration and other coercive security measures within our healthcare institutions, and encourage future research to give voice to the lived experiences of women guards and security management teams.

This thesis explores how the Swedish legal system, specifically the police and district courts, understand and construct cases of human trafficking for sexual purposes and procuring with under-age victims. It draws on police investigative interviews and court decisions in 22 pronounced district court sentences, involving 36 female youths. Theoretically the thesis primarily builds on social constructionism and the sociology of childhood. Methodologically it builds on coding of forensic interviews, narrative analysis and discourse analysis. Study I explores the informativeness of 24 of the 36 adolescents when interviewed by the police. It shows that the adolescents were informative yet evasive, specifically when asked open questions. Experiences of violence and force as well as interviews conducted soon after the police intervention further contributed to evasiveness. Also evasiveness seemed intimately connected to circumstances in each unique case. Study II scrutinises the image of the ideal trafficking victim by asking how the issue of responsibility is handled when police interviews turn to prostitution. It also analyses which interactive and narrative conditions, related to agency and stake, apply for talk in this specific institutional setting. The findings suggest that in order to sort out the ‘real’ victims, the interrogator needs to pull apart the two categories ‘victim’ and ‘prostitute’ even if there may be problems with this clear-cut distinction since the categories tend to blend together. Further, in this institutional setting to talk about sex can be problematic as it may undermine the victim narrative instead creating a subject with interests. Study III explores how Swedish district courts assess the credibility of alleged victims of human trafficking for sexual purposes and the reliability of their testimonies. The findings indicate that the judges base their assessments on the Swedish Supreme Courts’ criteria of how to understand reliability and credibility but they seemed also to be influenced by extra-legal factors relating to victims’ behaviour. Further, the findings imply that the judges used the Supreme Court’s criteria to argue both for and against credibility. By so doing, their arguments supported the decision reached irrespective of how the adolescents reported or what impression they made. In brief this thesis can be said to point to a legal dilemma when law on paper is applied in practice as each unique adolescent must be recognized by the authorities as fitting the administrative category ‘victim’. When put into practice, categories are rarely neat and clear hence such categorizing becomes a phenomenon negotiated in interaction. Also, this legal context sets up limits and possibilities for the adolescents’ agency and this too can be said to have a bearing on if she is, or is not, constructed as a victim. In short, this thesis shows certain conditions of victimhood. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Submitted.</p><p>Forskningsfinansiär: Brottsoffermyndigheten genom Brottsofferfonden.</p> / Människohandel/koppleri med barn och unga för sexuella ändamål Vad går att lära av rättsväsendet och brottsoffrens erfarenheter?

Today, the mass media is playing a key role in reinforcing globalisation, providing people with information that can make them more enlightened about the world. But apart from being an efficient tool for spreading information and a possible ”window on the world” the media can also produce preconceptions and create distance between people and places. This is a study on how African countries are portrayed in the Swedish Television news. The aim of the study is to describe, analyse and compare how Africa was described in 2003 and how it is described ten years later, in 2013. The analysis is based on foreign news reports in one of the main Swedish public service broadcasters, Sveriges Television (SVT). The theoretical framework primarily consists of theories on media logic and news values, representation, identification, globalisation and cosmopolitanism. One of the main conclusions is that although the amount of news on Africa has increased, the character of the news reports is still dominated by negative events such as wars, conflicts and suffering. Alongside this stereotypical and highly negative portrayal of Africa exists another story that focuses on economic development and success – An image that both brings new insights and creates new stereotypes.

This study investigates the relationship between faith, communication, and organization in a large Baptist church. A chief purpose of this study is to describe and interpret potential communicative dimensions and consequences of immateriality (e.g., faith-oriented influences) for organizations and their members. This investigation also interrogates organizational communication scholars’ theoretical understandings of how communication constitutes complex organizations (McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Taylor & Van Every, 2000; see also Putnam & Nicotera, 2009). Toward this end, I conducted an extended case study of a large Baptist church. This research process was guided by descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative questions regarding (a) the nature and interplay of various discourses in the organization, (b) member interpretations and communicative consequences of these discourses, and (c) the implications for a communicative ontology of organizational constitution. Data collection consisted of formal meeting observations, semi-structured interviews, and examination of multiple organizational documents that presumably inform the church’s organizational processes. In total, I observed 26 formal meetings (52 hours of observation), conducted 40 interviews with pastors, support staff, and lay leaders, and examined seven documents generated by the church and related institutional bodies. Two forms of analysis were employed to strengthen the case studying findings, an ethnographic discursive analysis of the meeting interactions and a narrative analysis derived largely from the interview data. The ethnographic discourse analysis examines three communication codes that governed the organization’s meeting interactions. I refer to these codes as keep the faith, secular thinking, and business as usual and explore potential patterns and consequences of their collective use. This analysis was supplemented by an additional narrative analysis of interview data that highlighted four narratives representing the varied ways that participants shape and are shaped by the organization. The congregationalist and spiritual authority narratives are more widely espoused and endorsed in organizational literature while the rubber stamp and separation narratives reveal a more hesitant or regretful confession of church organizing processes. I synthesize these findings by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of immaterial influences on organizational constitution, particularly in non-profit or third sector contexts. / text

Ce mémoire de maîtrise porte sur le concept d’identité organisationnelle, appliqué au milieu des organisations humanitaires. Le contexte mondial actuel dans lequel évoluent ces organisations leur impose de revoir certaines de leurs valeurs et façons de faire. En effet, les équipes des ONG sur le terrain sont confrontées à des conflits de plus en plus nombreux et complexes, qui remettent en question l’identité de leur organisation. Cette recherche vise à dresser un portrait du travail des employés de l’organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) lors de missions humanitaires, alors que ceux-ci doivent justifier et négocier la présence de l’organisation auprès de la population et des autorités locales. En nous basant sur le concept de sensemaking développé par Karl E. Weick, nous présentons une analyse narrative des récits de mission de cinq employés de MSF. Cette analyse permet d’étudier comment, au quotidien, les employés d’une ONG le terrain sont impliqués dans des négociations où l’identité organisationnelle est continuellement menacée et remise en question. / This thesis focuses on the concept of organizational identity, applied to humanitarian organizations. The actual international context is forcing these organizations to review some of their core values and procedures. Consequently, their teams on the field are confronted with more and more conflicts and complex situations where the organisation’s identity is at stake. The aim of this research is to produce a better understanding of the work that employees of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) do on the field during a mission, especially when they have to justify and negotiate the presence of their organisation with the local populations and authorities. Based on Karl E. Weick’s concept of sensemaking, we present a narrative analysis of fieldwork stories we collected by conducting interviews with five MSF employees. Not only does this analysis help us understand the roles employees have to play on the field, but it also provides insight into the different situations when organizational identity is being negotiated.

The crisis on Wall Street. This essay is a comparative study of how two business newspapers report on the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings in September 2008. Seven articles from the Swedish European financial newspaper Affärsvärlden (Business World) and five articles from the Chinese-Asian news agency XINHUA FINANCE are examined. The aim is to analyze, understand and evaluate from a rhetorical perspective. My thesis is that rhetors storytelling can tell us more about how we cope with crisis in the global economic discourse. The texts can portray man as a narrative creature when identification as a rational actor is not enough.  The analytical methods used are linguistic analysis with an emphasis on metaphor analysis, narrative analysis based on pentad - Critical dramatism, and discourse analysis with doxological outlook.  The results show that both newspapers seek to defend the global economic discourse, but they do so in different ways. Affärsvärlden advocates calmness and conveys a cautious attitude. The heart of the crisis, as well as its solution, is on Wall Street. XINHUA advocates control and expresses confidence in authorities and the system. Asia is presented as Wall Street's savior. / Krisen på Wall Street. Uppsatsen är en komparativ studie av hur två affärstidningar berättar om banken Lehman Brothers Holdings konkurs i september 2008. Materialet för undersökningen är sju artiklar från den svenska europeiska finanstidningen Affärsvärlden och fem artiklar från den kinesiska asiatiska nyhetsbyrån ZINHUA FINANCE. Syftet är att analysera, förstå och värdera situationen från ett retoriskt perspektiv. Tesen är att tidningarna (retorerna) kan visa oss, via sina texter, berättelserna om en kris i den globalekonomiska diskursen. Texterna kan visa människan som narrativ varelse där identifikationen som rationell aktör inte räcker till. Analysmetoderna som används är lingvistisk analys med störst vikt vid metaforanalys, narrativ analys utifrån pentaden - kritisk dramatism, samt diskursanalys med doxologisk utblick. Resultatet visar att båda tidningarna strävar efter att försvara den globalekonomiska diskursen, fast de gör det på olika sätt. Affärsvärlden manar till lugn opch visar en avvaktande attityd. Räddningen och krisens centrum finns på Wall Street. XINHUA visar på kontroll och tilltro till auktoriteter och systemet. Asien framställs som räddare åt Wall Street. Nyckelord: Retorik, lingvistisk analys, metaforanalys, Eubanks, narrativ analys, Pentden, Burke, diskurs, doxa, Lehman Brothers konkurs, 17 september 2008, Affärsvärlden, Xinhua Finance.

<p>The study&rsquo / s main starting premises is that there is a disjuncture between the rich educational engagements of these students in their environmental space and how their learning practices are framed, informed and positioned in the institutional space. My study is underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm in terms of which I set out to describe and understand the meanings that the student respondents assign to their learning practices when they are involved in discursive practices of speaking, knowing, doing, reading and writing. Qualitative research instruments: field notes, participant and non-participant observations and formal and informal interviews were used in order to answer my research question and achieve the desired research aims of this thesis. The findings are presented in a narrative format after deriving at categories and themes using narrative analysis. Finally, my research shows how these students are positioned in and by their lived spaces (whether environmental or institutional) in specific ways, and they, based on their own resources, networks and interactions, and by exercising their agency, actively construct their own spaces of learning. I describe these active constructions by these students as their &lsquo / conceptual space of learning&rsquo / to highlight the complex ways in which they go about to establish their learning practices in their lived spaces. The study provides an analysis of the basis upon which each of these four students go about constructing their learning practices.</p>

While the story of teaching makes plenty of room for academic and social learning, the telling often leaves out some of the most important details. In this thesis, I tell the stories of four teachers — how they practice and make sense of the caring relationship in the school and how such relationships lead to moral good in people, schools, communities, and the world. The moral is centered in the ongoing dialogue about what is best in schools and the world — the good, and the relationships in which the stories are set. The method is narrative analysis and the format is a series of free verse poems. The characters tell stories of knowing and being known, meaningful dialogue, modeling, authentic care, struggle and tension, individualized attention, hope, and transformation. The conclusion is a deep imagining of possibilities, implications, and outcomes.