Bakgrund: Samhällets medvetenhet om klimathot har ökat det senaste decenniet, vilket medfört att fler företag både vill och måste redogöra för sitt ansvar, i och med nya lagkrav och direktiv om hållbarhetsrapporten. Hållbarhetsredovisningen kan ses som ett internt verktyg som hjälper företag att samla in, analysera och kommunicera hållbarhetsinformation. Tidigare forskning saknas om den komplexitet som kan uppstå inom organisationer vid upprättandet av hållbarhetsredovisningen, där strukturer och människor har en inverkan. Syfte och frågeställning: Uppsatsen syftar till att utforska och öka förståelsen för vilken betydelse strukturer och människor har för redovisningens kvalitet och omfattning. Studiens frågeställning är: Utifrån ett internt perspektiv, på vilket sätt har strukturer och människor en inverkan på hållbarhetsredovisningens innehåll? Metod: Studien utgår från en kvalitativ metod som inkluderar semistrukturerade intervjuer med sju personer från sju olika företag. Intervjuerna kompletteras med dokumentstudier genom att granska varje deltagande företags hållbarhetsredovisning. Resultat: Studiens resultat visar att regler har en inverkan på hållbarhetsredovisningen genom att de skapar struktur och tydliggör vad som måste rapporteras, hur informationen ska presenternas och vilka standarder som måste följas. Rutiner säkerställer att företag samlar in, bearbetar och rapporterar sitt hållbarhetsarbete på ett konsekvent och tillförlitligt sätt. Vidare spelar resurser en viktig roll eftersom företag måste ha tillgång till tillräckliga resurser både i form av tid, finansiella medel och personal för att kunna rapportera om sina hållbarhetsprestationer. I studien framkommer även att människor har en inverkan på hållbarhetsredovisningens innehåll genom sina handlingar, beteende och engagemang, likaså hjälper tidsaspekter företag att beskriva och mäta hur de har presterat över tid. Slutsats: Studien visar att tydliga regler, rutiner och tillräckliga resurser hjälper företag att upprätta en hållbarhetsredovisning av god kvalitet och omfattning. Människors handlingar, driv och tidsaspekter visar sig vara avgörande för hur hållbarhetsredovisningen utformas. / Background: Society's awareness of climate threats has increased in the last decade, which means that more companies both want and have to report on their responsibilities, partly due to new legal requirements and directives on the sustainability report. The sustainability report can be seen as an internal tool that helps companies collect, analyze and communicate sustainability information. Previous research is lacking on the complexity that can arise within organizations when preparing the sustainability report, where structures and people have an impact. Purpose and question: The purpose of this study is to explore and increase understanding of the importance of structures and people for the quality and extent of the accounting. The study's question is: From an internal perspective, in what way do structures and people have an impact on the content of the sustainability report? Method: The study is based on a qualitative method that includes semi-structured interviews with seven people from seven different companies. The interviews are supplemented with document studies by reviewing each participating company's sustainability report. Results: The study's results show that rules have an impact on sustainability reporting by creating structure and clarifying what must be reported, how the information must be presented and which standards must be followed. Routines ensure that companies collect, process and report their sustainability work in a consistent and reliable way. Furthermore, resources play an important role because companies must have access to sufficient resources both in the form of time, financial means and personnel to be able to report on their sustainability presentations. The study also shows that people have an impact on the content of the sustainability report, partly through their actions, behaviour and commitment, time aspects also help companies to describe and measure how they have performed over time. Conclusion: The study shows that clear rules, routines and sufficient resources help companies to create a sustainability report of good quality and extent. People's actions, commitment and time aspects prove to be decisive for how the sustainability report is designed.

North Sea Archaeologies traces the way people engaged with the North Sea from the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 BC, to the close of the Middle Ages, about AD 1500, drawing upon archaeological research from many countries, including the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and France. It addresses topics which include the first interactions of people with the emerging North Sea, the origin and development of fishing, the creation of coastal landscapes, the importance of islands and archipelagos, the development of seafaring ships and their use by early seafarers and pirates, and the treatment of boats and ships at the end of their useful lives. The study offers a ‘maritime turn’ in Archaeology through the investigation of aspects of human behaviour that have been, to various extents, disregarded, overlooked, or ignored in archaeological studies of the land. The study concludes that the relationship between humans and the sea challenges the frequently invoked dichotomy between pre-modernity and modernity, since many ancient beliefs, superstitions, and practices linked to seafaring and engagement with the sea are still widespread in the modern era.

No description available.

The following thesis presents an empirical investigation of hybrid war in eastern Ukraine, drawing on the insights from Actor- Network Theory and New Type Wars theory. Taking a different route in studying a complex phenomenon of hybrid war, this study focuses on the social-material networks which constitute the hybrid war. This thesis aims to identify the actors and analyse their interactions at different stages of war. Actor-Network Theory will be used in this research to ask the questions, what role do the non-human actors play in hybrid warfare in eastern Ukraine, and how do they affect the dynamics of war. Highlighting the significance of non-human actors, this thesis aims to contribute to the existing literature on hybrid warfare in eastern Ukraine and thus shed light on the peculiarities of this phenomenon.

This dissertation traces the metaphysical underpinnings of the Protestant Reformation through a close reading of the work of the Protestant reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562). It is premised on the assumption that all theological reasoning is metaphysical insofar as it simultaneously depends on and conveys a vision of how God and the world relate. This opens the possibility to analyse the implied metaphysics of theological work. The study focuses on four areas of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s work: divine and human agency, grace and justification, the Eucharist, and political theology. It analyses Vermigli’s thought by enquiring what structures of being and causality it displays in each of these areas. The key research question is whether Vermigli’s theology implicitly construes ‘being’ as a neutral category, univocally applying to God’s being as well as created being, or whether it conceives of Divine being as transcendent and pre-eminent, with all other being participating in it. Divine and human causation is moreover construed differently in other of these ontological alternatives. The main argument of this dissertation is that the metaphysical framework sustaining Peter Martyr Vermigli’s thought is complex. When examined in terms of its structures of being and causality, Vermigli’s theology simultaneously inhabits two different metaphysical frameworks, one based on ontological participation and the other on the univocity of being. If Vermigli is representative of the Reformation more broadly – an argument which is made based on recent developments in Calvin and Luther scholarship – then this finding is significant for the hermeneutics of the Protestant reformation in two ways. First, it nuances the Reformation’s role in the genesis of modernity, vis-à-vis certain commentators’ suggestion of a causal link between Reformation thought and modernity, while predicating the latter on a univocal ontology. Secondly, the history and development of Protestantism may be better understood by considering possible long-term effects of the metaphysical complexity at the heart of Reformation thought.

Abstract Rainer Stenius (1892–1955) was one of the key figures of Finland’s veterinary profession, who during his career was involved in every aspect of any activity concerning veterinarians. At the peak of his career and his power in the late 1940s he was at the same time the veterinary office manager for animal health at the ministry of agriculture, the president of the Finnish Veterinary Association and the executive director of the College of veterinary medicine. I study Stenius’ activities and his exercise of power in the field of veterinary medicine during 1918–1951. The period was a time of powerful change in medication practices and diagnostics as well as in scientific thought. Women came alongside men in the profession and the College of veterinary medicine was established. I will examine these phenomena through Rainer Stenius, which makes my research two-fold: on the other hand it is history of science and on the other, ideological and personal history which follows an individual’s activities, perceptions and feelings. My principal sources are Stenius’ correspondence, Finnish Veterinary Journal, minutes of meetings as well as memoirs and oral history. I interpret the material through a cultural historical perspective, trying to understand the way past people interacted with each other and their communities. I will show in my research that Stenius was a determined developer of veterinary medicine and at the same time an active authority, who treated his colleagues differently according to his personal preferences. However the disputes between Stenius and his colleagues were often also related to tensions in the veterinary profession and to transition points in the whole field of veterinary medicine. Formally Stenius had power only as an authority and an expert. In practice, he projected his expert power to use economic and political power, even if Stenius acted as being above special interests as a neutral expert. By increasing the visibility and the resources of veterinary medicine, Stenius expanded and maintained his role and the significance of his profession in the society, influencing legislation and justifying significant resources to combat animal disease. / Tiivistelmä Rainer Stenius (1892–1955) oli yksi Suomen eläinlääkärikunnan avainhenkilöistä, joka oli työuransa aikana mukana kaikessa eläinlääkäreitä koskevassa toiminnassa. Uransa ja valtansa huipulla 1940-luvun lopulla hän oli samanaikaisesti maatalousministeriön eläinlääkintöosaston eläintautitoimiston päällikkö, Suomen Eläinlääkäriyhdistyksen puheenjohtaja ja Eläinlääketieteellisen korkeakoulun toiminnanjohtaja. Tutkin Steniuksen toimintaa ja vallankäyttöä eläinlääketieteen kentällä vuosina 1918–1951. Ajanjakso oli eläinlääketieteessä voimakkaan muutoksen aikaa niin lääkityskäytännöissä ja diagnoosien teossa kuin tieteellisessä ajattelussakin, naiset tulivat tuona aikana miesten rinnalle ja Suomeen perustettiin eläinlääketieteellistä opetusta antava korkeakoulu. Tarkastelen näitä ilmiöitä Rainer Steniuksen kautta, jolloin työni on tavallaan kaksijakoinen: toisaalta se on tieteenhistoriaa, toisaalta yksilön toimintaa, käsityksiä ja tunteita valottavaa aate- ja henkilöhistoriaa. Päälähteitäni ovat Steniuksen kirjeenvaihto, Suomen Eläinlääkärilehti, kokouspöytäkirjat sekä muistelmat ja muistitieto. Tulkitsen aineistoani kulttuurihistoriallisesta näkökulmasta pyrkien ymmärtämään menneisyyden ihmisten tapaa merkityksellistää vuorovaikutusta toistensa ja yhteisönsä kanssa. Osoitan tutkimuksessani, että Stenius oli määrätietoinen eläinlääketieteen kehittäjä ja samalla aktiivinen vallankäyttäjä, joka kohteli kollegoitaan eriarvoisesti omien henkilökohtaisten mieltymystensä mukaan. Kuitenkin Steniuksen ja hänen kollegojensa välisissä kiistoissa oli usein kyse myös eläinlääkärin ammattiin liittyvistä jännitteistä ja koko tieteenalan murroskohdista. Muodollisesti Steniuksella oli vain auktoriteetti- ja asiantuntijavaltaa. Käytännössä hän käytti asiantuntijavallan avulla myös taloudellista ja poliittista valtaa, vaikka esiintyi erityisintressien yläpuolella olevana neutraalina asiantuntijana ja yleisen edun vaalijana. Lisätessään eläinlääketieteen näkyvyyttä ja sen saamia resursseja Stenius samalla laajensi ja säilytti omaa ja oman ammattikuntansa yhteiskunnallista roolia ja merkitystä, esimerkiksi vaikuttaessaan lainsäädäntöön tai perustellessaan merkittäviä määrärahoja eläintautien torjuntaan.

Why, in the second decade of the 21st century, do Chinese temple-goers visit Buddhist temples even if they are religiously unaffiliated, folk religionists, or even self-proclaimed secularists? How can we develop new conceptual tools to better understand religious involvement in contemporary China? The thesis investigates the significances of temple-based activities under late socialist state secularism, which defines religion in a specific way. It suggests that temple participation allows diverse Chinese citizens to flexibly negotiate modernity, sidestep institutional constraints, and introduce ritual-religious momentums to their temple-going lives in a mainstream society. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork, the study identifies and documents three stylistic forms of temple participation that are widely accessible and require no prior religious commitments: making wish-vows, drawing efficacious lots, and providing residential temple services. It refines a method of ritual analysis for studying how these non-institutional activities affect temple-goers’ self-understandings and their worldly stances. Theoretically, the dissertation discusses the social conditions for creative actions and the relationship between religious participation and state secularism. It shows that “temples” as spatial entities can be a place for many-sided meaningful activities and an incubator for complex visions of life, outside the conventional typecast of sacred spaces based on institutional religious differences. In late socialist China, Buddhist temples exist as semi-public sites because of an inclusive Mahayana Buddhist ideal of bodhisattva practices and, paradoxically, because of a state secularist policy that endorses “Religious Activities Venues” as spatial and even residential units. Overall, the dissertation treats Chinese temple-goers as our interlocutors sharing the global modernist predicament of state secularism. We theorize a sidestepping, non-confrontational mode of religious activism, move beyond a dichotomous view of religiosity and secularity, and consider the existing creative transformative processes of a hegemonic linear-developmental view of history. Temples as places of self-transformation are historically constituted sites within the sovereign state spaces. When Chinese temple-goers reconfigure their historical selves by actively visiting temple spaces, they also open the possibility of different futures for the late socialist regime. This brings us to an anthropology of religion effectively considering the making of humanity in contemporary China in a shared modern world.

This thesis weighs the merits of "rhetorical" and "dialectical" theological responses to the history of western thought as a history of objectification. Objectification is theologically relevant insofar as it can be shown to be the root of modern and postmodern "suspicion" of religion. In modernity's predictable temporal economy, the human being is not a true "agent" in history, but the object of a spatialized logic of determining causes. And postmodernism's acute sensitivity to temporality as unpredictable "flux" nonetheless implies that the human being as agent is "sacrificed" at each successive moment to an arbitrary measure of difference. What is ruled out in both cases is the Christian supposition that the true form of creation is not a "thing" but a "way," a way whose temporal articulation may be analogous to the eternal "differentiation" of the Trinitarian God. This diagnosis is derived from the theology of John Milbank and "Radical Orthodoxy," which suggests in addition that only a theological "rhetoric" can safeguard the human being from objectification, in that rhetoric does not tempt the subject to define himself or herself as a "thing," but "persuades" that subject into becoming a self only by living the mysterious movement of caritas. This thesis first of all clarifies the little noticed Kierkegaardian heritage implicit in Radical Orthodoxy's "existential" imperative to rhetoric. But ultimately it argues that Kierkegaard's account of love, which refuses to appeal to a "hope" that is authenticated by any rhetorical exemplars, more adequately captures the Radical Orthodox imperative to Christianity as an existential way than does any rhetorical appeal. On my reading, Kierkegaard offers an account of love as giving rise to a unique mode of expectancy- a comportment to the future as the possibility of the good-which keeps the subject eternally in motion through faith's inexplicable resolve. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Denna studie undersöker vilka upplevelser och erfarenheter som påverkat individer när de tagit beslutet att lämna en kriminell livsstil; och vilka faktorer som varit avgörande i förändringsprocessen till ett liv utan kriminalitet. Kvalitativa intervjuer har använts som metod för att besvara frågeställningarna. Fem personer med koppling till organisationen KRIS har intervjuats och resultatet har analyserats utifrån en teoretisk referensram bestående av Laub och Sampsons (2006) definition av begreppet turning points; Paternoster och Bushways (2009) identitetsteori om avhopp från kriminalitet; och Emirbayer och Mishes (1998) teoretiska beskrivning av begreppet human agency. Resultatet visar att alla intervjupersonerna påverkats av crystalization of discontent och drivkraften att undvika the feared possible self (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009) när de beslutat att lämna kriminaliteten. Den egna viljan beskrivs av intervjupersonerna som den mest avgörande faktorn i förändringsprocessen. Andra faktorer som varit betydande är socialt stöd och att hålla fast vid nya rutiner kopplade till livet utan kriminalitet. Slutsatserna i uppsatsen är att det sällan räcker med enskilda faktorer, ofta är det ett samspel mellan flera faktorer som leder till förändring. / The purpose of the present study is to identify events and experiences that influences individuals to make the decision to desist from a criminal life style; and to identify crucial and important factors in the process of desisting from a criminal life style. The used method is qualitative interviews. Five persons connected to KRIS (an organization with the aim to help desisters) were interviewed and the results were analyzed through a theoretic framework consisting Laub and Sampson ́s (2006) definition of the concept of turning points; Paternoster and Bushway ́s (2009) identity theory of desistance from crime; and Emirbayer and Mishe ́s theoretical definition of the concept of human agency. The result shows that all interviewees were affected by crystalization of discontent and the motive to avoid feared possible self (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009) when they decided to desist from criminality. The own will was identified as the most crucial factor in the process of criminal desistance. Social support and the importance of hanging on to new routines were mentioned as other important factors in the process. The conclusion of the study is that it is seldom enough with single factors as solutions to the problems of this study. A successful desistance process is often a result of an interplay between several factors.

The aim of this dissertation is to shed light on how life can turn out for individuals with long term social assistance and afterwards when it has ceased. The primary objective of the dissertation is to study the changes that have occurred during the life course and the impact of those changes on the life course at large. A key question of this dissertation is the development of selfsufficiency and work-life patterns in a longitudinal perspective. The dissertation consists of a longitudinal study based on qualitative interviews with an interval of 20 years. The empirical data is composed of interviews with 11 recipients of social assistance – seven of which have been interviewed again in 2008/2009. A life course perspective is employed in the data analysis as a comprehensive approach and analytical tool. Other analytical approaches are related to the impact of the welfare state on the life course and to the term marginality. The situation of the interviewed group regarding self-sufficiency, employment and social conditions is viewed from a one-year perspective, a 20- year perspective and a life course perspective. The different time perspectives generated widely diverse pictures and nowledge. Not everyone worked at the point of the last interview but all were in a better social and economical position. No one remained on social assistance. One conclusion is that the notion of social problems being reinforced and exacerbated over time is simplistic. Another conclusion is that it appears that social assistance and social services have little importance from a life course perspective. A concluding result is that cross-sectional studies of individuals in a vulnerable situation are of limited value. A brief look at a person’s life does not say much of what the rest of his or her life will look like. Keywords: Life course, long term social assistance, social welfare services, human agency, timing, social integration, notions of social problems, welfare state, marginality.