The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to explore the information practices present in hobby genealogy. The thesis uses a qualitative content analysis to analyse two popular Swedish genealogy magazines published between 2016 and 2019. The study investigates the information sources, objects, competences and emotions that the practice is built on. Our theoretical framework is centred around Reckwitz’ ideas of practice theory (2002), and the practice theory model introduced by Shove, Pantzar, and Watson (2012). The study finds that the information practices within hobby genealogy are heterogenous and extensive, and that information is a central part of the practice. The study also finds that emotions and motivations are important parts of understanding how the practice is maintained.

The purpose of this study is to identify how Covid-19 has impacted the behaviour of baby boomers when grocery shopping. While most countries in the world went on lockdown, the Swedes decided otherwise. Covid-19 has caused unprecedented behavioural changes amongst Swedish consumers, to avoid risks affiliated with the virus. This has led to the largest increase in usage of online grocery services among all industries. Baby boomers increased their online presence during the pandemic, more so than any other generation. Therefore, identifying and elaborating on these behavioural changes could help predict whether these are temporary or here to stay.  Researchers applied the exploratory design with a qualitative approach which allowed for extensive investigation of the baby boomers' experience and presented rich details of the topic from various perspectives. Through a deductive approach, the authors reached a conclusion that is in line with a predetermined proposition based on logic in theory and applying it. Therefore, existing literature was first reviewed to provide the authors with a theoretical framework.  Next, primary data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with participants that were gathered with the snowball sampling technique. The data was organised according to three global themes: Objects, Doings and Meanings. It was later compiled in a codebook, providing a general overview for comparison and analysis.  The study showed that during the pandemic the frequency and shopping schedule changed. Participants modified this behaviour to avoid crowding. In-store grocery shopping was preferred due to the generation’s desire to test the quality of products before purchase. After the pandemic, the majority of participants were eager to utilise digital tools in-store to a greater extent, as a means of convenience and efficiency. In addition, online grocery shopping is viewed to be complicated and it inhibits their ability to test the quality of products.

The thesis shows how practice theory can be applied in different ways when exploring how daily life can be supported to become more environmentally sustainable. Ultimately the thesis aims to contribute to new knowledge on how to design policies and interventions that aim at facilitating environmentally sustainable practices.  This thesis argues that practice theory is useful in the field of sustainability research since it offers as point of departure a perspective on human everyday life which decentres focus from individual behaviour and instead looks at how social practices are constructed by integrating and combining material, bodily and mental elements. The thesis discusses the following questions: i) How can the role of ICT in everyday life be conceptualized from a practice perspective?, ii) How can practice theory be used in order to describe and assess second order environmental effects? and iii) What are the key considerations from a practice perspective when designing social/physical interventions for sustainable mobility? The papers in this thesis all use practice theory as point of departure but with different outcomes. Practice theory is thus used conceptually, methodologically and analytically. The main conclusions of the thesis are:  Changes in practices due to ICT usage will inevitably have environmental impacts, both negative and positive, and for policy-makers it is imperative to take this into consideration when planning for the future and actively support and facilitate sustainable social practices. Looking at changes in practices due to new ICT usage can be one way to include second order effects in environmental assessments, in this way contributing to a discussion of potential environmental impacts from implementing a new product, application or service. Interventions, such as a cargo bike pool or restrictive work travel policies, have the potential to change existing practices. However, the potential of these changes, depend on a variety of different factors which are more or less difficult to influence for the individual practitioner such as work location, time schedules, availability of transportation means and modes. Further, it is difficult to foresee exactly how such changes will look and if they sustain in the long run. Finally, it is not necessarily so that an intervention will have the desired outcome that was intended, the outcome might be something else, consequently this means that interventions need to be analysed and assessed from other perspectives, one being a practice perspective. / Denna avhandling visar hur praktikteori (practice theory) kan tillämpas på olika sätt när man ska utforska hur det dagliga livet kan bli mer miljömässigt hållbart. Ytterst syftar avhandlingen till att bidra till ny kunskap om hur man kan utforma strategier och åtgärder som syftar till att stödja miljömässigt hållbara praktiker. Denna avhandling hävdar att praktikteori är användbart inom hållbarhetsforskning eftersom den utgår från de vardagliga praktikerna. Detta ger ett perspektiv på människors vardagsliv som lyfter fokus upp från individens beteende och istället undersöker hur praktiker skapas och omskapas genom de element (material, färdigheter och symbolisk innebörd) som utgör en social praktik. Avhandlingen behandlar följande frågor: i) Hur kan IKT: s roll i det dagliga livet begreppsliggöras?, ii) Hur kan praktikteori användas för att beskriva och andra ordningens miljöeffekter i miljöbedömningar? och iii) Vilka är de viktigaste överväganden utifrån ett praktikteoriperspektiv vid utformningen av sociala och/eller fysiska åtgärder för hållbar mobilitet? Artiklarna i denna avhandling utgår från praktikteori, men det teoretiska ramverket används på ett konceptuellt, metodologiskt eller analytiskt vis i de olika artiklarna. De viktigaste slutsatserna i avhandlingen är: Förändringar i till följd av IKT-användning kommer oundvikligen ha miljöpåverkan som kan vara både negativ och positiv.  För beslutsfattare är det viktigt att ta hänsyn till detta när man planerar för framtiden och aktivt stödja och underlätta för hållbara sociala praktiker. Miljöbedömningar behöver kunna hantera och inkludera så kallade effekter av andra ordningen för att kunna bedöma potentiell miljöpåverkan som en ny produkt, program eller en tjänst kan ha. Ett sätt att inkludera andra ordningens effekter i miljöbedömningar kan vara att titta på förändringar i vardagliga praktiker som uppstår vid användning av IKT. Interventioner och andra typer av åtgärder har potential att förändra befintliga mobilitetspraktiker. Men dessa potentiella förändringar, beror på en rad olika faktorer som är mer eller mindre svårt att påverka för den enskilde utövaren så som arbetsplatsens lokalisering, scheman, tillgång till transportmedel och transportsätt. Vidare är det svårt att förutse exakt hur sådana förändringar kommer att se ut och om de håller i sig i det långa loppet. Slutligen är det inte nödvändigtvis så att en intervention eller annan åtgärd kommer att ha det önskade resultatet som avsågs, utan resultatet kan snarare vara något annat. Detta innebär att insatser och åtgärder måste analyseras och bedömas ur andra perspektiv, till exempel ett praktikteoretiskt perspektiv. / <p>QC 20151023</p>

Food production has been shown to have considerable negative impacts on the environment. A means to reduce this is to choose organic products when shopping for food. Through the case of the EcoPanel, a web application prototype that visualises the organic proportion of the household’s food shopping, the thesis explores the intersection between design, reflection and sustainable food shopping practices. In order to contextualise the role of the EcoPanel, the text discusses the concept of food shopping practice, both from the perspective of social practice theory (SPT), and the more focused food choice perspective. The studies show that it is fundamental to understand the complexity of choosing food, and the habitual aspect of practice, in order to understand the role of reflection in food shopping practice, and consequently the role of a tool for reflective decision-making, like the EcoPanel. We have used a research through design approach to develop the EcoPanel prototype. In an iterative process we probed how the EcoPanel could be designed to be as relevant and accessible for the users as possible. Essential in the process were the iterative user feedback sessions. The way in which the users answered the questions from the sessions formed the guiding principles for the development of the design. A central question in the thesis is to explore in what ways the users’ access to their individual sustainable grocery data provided by the EcoPanel affects their food shopping practices. The studies include monitoring sixty-five users of the EcoPanel over five months, a survey regarding aspects of lifestyle and attitudes to food, and interviews with ten of the users. The long-term study shows an increased organic purchase level (17%) for the EcoPanel users in comparison to the reference group. We also see that when the users receive feedback on their organic food purchases through the EcoPanel, they can make more reflective decisions. This is shown to be highly relevant and creates meaning for the users in several different ways. From this result, in combination with the result of the long-term study, we can conclude that the EcoPanel contributes with support for more sustainable food practices. The last question in the thesis is to understand how SPT can be useful for design practice. SPT shows a view that goes beyond the traditional interaction perspective, and points to the importance of approaching complex issues, such as sustainability challenges, with an awareness that also includes social and cultural aspects of the context. As well as this view being pertinent when approaching sustainability issues, it also provides value to designers in their emerging roles of dealing with more socially embedded concerns, such as social innovation and design for public policies. / <p>QC 20160311</p>

To eat or not to eat meat? That has become a central question in the sustainability conversation. There is growing scientific consensus that the global meat consumption issocially and ecologically unsustainable. Planetary and human health concerns aside, there is also a moral dimension to meat, that is, the rights and responsibilities we have towards the animals that make the meat. While there is, indeed, mounting ethical discomfort with meat consumption, scientific and public moral inquiries tend to omit on-farm perspectives.  This thesis zooms in on the moral sustainability of cattle farming and does so from the perspective of lived experience. Two Swedish cattle farms are selected as case studies and the question is how rearing animals for food is morally possible. Combining discursive and non-discursive methods of research, I uncover the narratives behind the farms’ different farming practices. For the analysis, I build an eclectic conceptual framework that draws on practice theory, the concept of morality, and human-animal studies. I show how human values, the physical environment of the farm, and understandings of animality interplay to create a specific farming practice. In these practices, certain human-animal relationships are possible while others are impossible. The nature of the human-animal relationships has implications for what is perceived as moral when animals are reared for human food.  By showing how ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in our relationships with nonhumans form, the study broadens the meat discussion beyond concerns for human and planetary health. The aim is to equip the reader with tools to reflect over what human-animal relationship the meat we eat represents and, ultimately, what relationship we want it to represent.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the premise that a pianist like Clara Wieck/Schumann ‘speaks’ in her song compositions. This, however, raises a number of epistemological questions that will be discussed in this article. First of all, an explicit distinction is made between the examination of the ‘technical’ aspects of her compositional practice – in German: Praktik – (which may allow conclusions to be drawn about the pianist’s implicit knowledge) on the one hand, and the social aspects of her discursive practice – in German: Praxis – on the other. Thus, it is also necessary to discuss the criteria that the structural-analytical methodology must satisfy, as well as to consider to whom the pianist is actually speaking: to us music researchers of the 21st century? Or should we ask ourselves whether our analysis is not rather a “reading of traces” in the sense of Sybille Krämer, through which we invent the ‘producer’ of the analyzed ‘trace’ in the first place? Or to put it another way epistemologically: how do we make the pianist speak? What function does our ‘speaking’ of her compositions – namely the piano parts in her songs – have in scholarly argumentations?

The intention of this thesis is to take a closer look at the information practices of SFI students, a group that is not researched much in regards to their behavior of handling, processing and searching for information and news. This was done using a survey that was sent out to 90 students at an SFI school and it resulted in 59 students answering, furthermore this empirical data was then analyzed using Reckwitz (2002) basic ideas about practice theory, further built on Shove, Pantzar &amp; Watsons (2012) thoughts on the different concepts, as well as Savolainen's (2007, 2008) thoughts on information practice. Findings show that a majority of the respondents search for both information and news with the help of the internet, and furthermore is sharing as well as receiving information and news to and from others of great importance. The study also finds that the respondents think of information as knowledge and learning, and that information and news is something that can be helpful in regards to being aware of ones surroundings and the rest of the world. Findings show as well that the global COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact in regards to how the respondents search for information and news, and how they perceive it.

The Corona pandemic and its need for social distancing and feelings of fear have affected consumers worldwide and their shopping practices when it comes to food and groceries. Previous research has shown that in normal conditions it is difficult to change shopping practices and consumers routines, but that major changes in the outside world led to new or changing practices. Changed food shopping practices are a consequence of the Corona pandemic and there is a gap in previous studies when it comes to crises in the form of pandemics as they are highly unusual. The purpose of this study is to understand how consumers have changed their food shopping as a result of the pandemic from a practice theoretical perspective. We want to give an insight into where, when and how the consumer buys groceries, but also try to understand what it is that drives the consumer to a certain form of food shopping in crises in the form of a pandemic. To study this, we have used a practice theoretical perspective and conceptualized food shopping as a social practice. The analysis was based on a qualitative method in the form of a combination of focus groups and individual interviews. The study involved 23 participants divided into four focus interviews, five individual interviews and one interview with two ICA suppliers/consultants. By applying a practice-theoretical perspective to food shopping practices, the study was able to provide an insight into how consumers have changed their food shopping as a result of the pandemic and what drives the consumers to do so. The study shows that food shopping practices have changed during the pandemic and that societal crises to this extent can change strongly implemented and routinized patterns. We found that hoarding was a consequence and can be motivated by fear and “the herd effect”. At the same time, it is a concept with negative and shameful associations. We also found an increase in e-commerce. This was justified by the fact that the consumer’s main motive for shopping online was due to the risk of infecting or becoming infected themselves. Another change in food shopping practices that we observed was shopping with protection. Lastly, we found a new form of shopping called collective shopping, which is a practice that occurs temporarily and may involve a transition back to the normal state. The results of the study aim to contribute to knowledge for marketers and other practitioners to prepare society for disruptions due to other pandemics in the future. / Coronapandemin och dess följder har lett till ett behov av social distansering och känslor av rädsla har påverkat konsumenter världen över och deras shoppingpraktiker när det kommer till dagligvaror. Tidigare forskning har visat att det i normala tillstånd är svårt att förändra shoppingpraktiker och konsumenters rutiner men att större förändringar i omvärlden kan bidra till nya eller förändrade praktiker. Förändrade matshoppingpraktiker är en följd av Coronapandemin och det finns ett gap i tidigare studier när det kommer till kriser i form av pandemier då de är högst ovanliga. Syftet med denna studie är att förstå hur konsumenter har förändrat sin matshopping till följd av pandemin utifrån ett praktiksteoretiskt perspektiv. Vi vill ge en inblick i var, när och hur konsumenten handlar dagligvaror, men också försöka förstå vad det är som är driver konsumenten till en viss form av matshopping i kriser i form av en pandemi. För att studera detta har vi använt oss av ett praktikteoretiskt perspektiv och konceptualiserat matshopping som en social praktik. Analysen baserades på en kvalitativ metod i form av en kombination av fokusgrupper och enskilda intervjuer. I studien deltog 23 deltagare uppdelade i fyra fokusintervjuer, fem enskilda intervjuer och en intervju med två ICA-leverantörer/konsulter. Genom att applicera ett praktikteoretiskt perspektiv på matshoppingpraktiker kunde studien ge en insikt i hur konsumenter har förändrat sin matshopping till följd av pandemin och vad som driver konsumenten till det. Studien visar att matshoppingpraktiker har förändrats under pandemins gång och att samhällskriser i denna omfattning kan förändra starkt implementerade och rutiniserade mönster. Vi fann att hamstring var en följd av pandemin och kan motiveras med bland annat rädsla och “the herd effect”. Samtidigt är det ett begrepp med negativa kopplingar och som tycks vara skambelagt. Vi fann även en ökning av e-handel. Detta motiverades med att konsumentens viktigaste motiv till att handla just online var att minska kontakt med andra människor på grund av risken för att smitta, eller själva bli smittade. Ytterligare en förändring i matshoppingpraktiker som vi uppmärksammade var att handla med skydd. Slutligen fann vi en ny form av shopping kallad för kollektiv shopping, vilket är en praktik som sker tillfälligt och kan därmed innebära en övergång tillbaka till det normala tillståndet. Studiens resultat ämnar bidra med kunskap för marknadsförare och andra utövare för att förbereda samhället inför störningar till följd av andra pandemier i framtiden.

The aim of this thesis is to explore medical librarians information practice in a pedagogical context. The empirical material was produced by 6 semi-structured interviews at 5 different hospital libraries during April and March 2023. A practice-oriented approach was used by the theoretical lens of Social Practice by Shove, Pantzar and Watson. In the analysis it was thematised by the practice elements material, competences and meanings. The findings show that medical librarians informationpractice in a pedagogical context work with many different materials and have competences that are of importance for students, hospital staff and researchers. They adapt their teaching and guidance for the user and their level. The different meanings that the medical libraries user and organization put on the medical library and their services has an impact on their ability to reach more of their users and their development.

This master thesis explores Swedish public libraries and their practices in relation to welcoming Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion in 2022. A qualitative study drawing on semi-structured interviews with librarians (n=9) from various parts of Sweden forms the empirical foundation. A theory of practice framework influenced by Kemmis (2011) is then employed to analyze the material using qualitative content analysis, capturing the cultural-discursive, social, and economic-material dimensions of practice, as described by Pilerot and Hultgren (2017).   The results showed that the number of Ukrainian refugees visiting the libraries has been substantially lower than expected. Still, the libraries offered information and literature in Ukrainian alongside with language and children’s activities. The analysis showed that the activities and therefore the practice have been influenced by the dimensions of practice to a high degree The experiences of the refugee crisis in 2015 seem to greatly influence the activities of today, and it is likely that the combined experiences of the refugee crises in 2015 and 2022 will be of value for the future practice.   The importance of competences related to meeting individuals in socially exposed situations, and the importance of language- and cultural competence, are highlighted in the thesis. As is the need for both further research into and political recognition of the work being done by libraries in relation to refugees and social inclusion more general.     This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science. / PubLIB for Refugees: https://sites.google.com/view/publib-for-refugees/home