In a cultural context in which the car dominates and has become normalised, cyclists are often marginalised. For a Woman of Colour, cycling can introduce an additional layer of othering. She is already invisible as a Woman of Colour in broader society that privileges whiteness and maleness and she is not seen to belong to the cycling culture, which has tended to peddle narrow stereotypical representations of cyclists. She may also be breaking gender norms within her community. The project pairs Stuart Hall’s theories of representation and reception and bell hooks’ concepts of ‘talking back’ and the ‘oppositional gaze’ with tools and frameworks from critical discourse analysis, to explore the question of how, in the UK context, dominant discourses around cycling, gender and race play out in the experience of Women of Colour who cycle, and how these discourses are being challenged. With ‘rolling ethnography’, or participant observation on bikes, as its method the project finds that masculine sporty representations in cycling have concrete and material effects on the experience of cycling for women. At the same time, the lack of race and ethnic diversity in the cycling culture heightens the visibility of Women of Colour cycling in public spaces and raises questions about belonging. Women of Colour who cycle use various strategies to challenge this erasure: by rejecting the connotative meanings that centre White masculinity in cycling; by inversing gendered representations; by assimilating into the dominant discourse in cycling and by displaying joy. Applying approaches and frameworks more familiar to the study of communication, the project aims to contribute to the existing body of research on cycling culture in the UK. In doing so, it seeks to move beyond just discussing barriers faced by under-represented groups to critically exploring meanings attached to cycling and what the fluidity of these could mean for efforts to increase diversity in cycling.

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Under våren 2020 sprids SARS-CoV-2 viruset som en löpeld över hela jorden. I försök att minska smittspridningen bland Sveriges invånare uppmuntras alla, som har möjligheten, att arbeta hemifrån. Många organisationer och individer tvingades därför plötsligt ställa om sin verksamhet för att kunna bemöta det förändrade arbetssättet. Motivationsteoretiker har länge försökt svara på vad det är som motiverar människan till handling, och speciellt i arbetslivet är detta en ständigt aktuell fråga. Bland de externa motivationsprocesser som uppstår på en arbetsplats finner vi de som uppstår i sociala beteenden. Vad händer då med motivationen när arbetslivet flyttar hem till arbetstagarna, och nya hinder och högre trösklar uppstår mellan de interpersonella relationerna och interaktionerna på en arbetsplats? För att söka svar på detta, genom tre formulerade frågeställningar, genomfördes fem kvalitativa intervjuer med individer yrkesverksamma inom olika branscher, som i och med COVID-19-pandemin tvingades flytta sin arbetsplats till sitt eget hem. Att distansarbeta skapar nya hinder och högre trösklar för kollegor och chefer att umgås och diskutera jobb. För att överkomma detta krävs aktiva och ingående insatser för att vidmakthålla de sociala interaktionerna och relationerna mellan organisationers medlemmar. Beroende på bransch kommer dessa hinder vara mer eller mindre problematiska i yrkesutövningen, och på så vis kommer det kräva varierande insatser för att överkomma dem. Men trots dessa trösklar medför distansarbete en mobilitet och flexibilitet i relationen privatliv och arbetsliv som gör att de flesta ändå föredrar det här, för dem, nya arbetssättet.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in some ways, with restrictions and social distancing. People had to adapt and learn how to deal with the situation. Some people turned to online communities to get social interactions they no longer could get in real-life due to restrictions. The aim of the study is to create an understanding of how people engaged in online communities deal with the pandemic with the help of their community. Can people create a new form of social capital online and get the support they no longer can get through offline resources. Previous studies show the possibility with online communities and how people that are missing resources offline search for new ways to make up for it, with help of online resources. The study was done with observations through chatlogs and conducting sixsemi structured interviews with members from two different communities. The collected empirical data was analyzed with Pierre Bourdieu theory of socialcapital and Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowlers theory about networks.The outcome shows that there is a possibility for people to move resources such as social capital to an online environment, but all members need to put inmore effort and energy to make it possible. Furthermore, online communities have an advantage over offline communities due to not being limited to a physical location. The main conclusion is that online communities give their members possibilities to compensate for missing resources. However, it needs the right circumstances to create a social capital

This thesis is about renovations and municipal housing companies, and more generally, it concerns housing inequality and urban restructuring. The Swedish housing market is strongly characterized by housing inequality, and, in addition, large parts of the affordable rental stock are facing need for renovations. Renovations which risk making the rental stock less accessible and, in addition, reinforce inequality and displacement. Half of all the properties facing renovation in Sweden are owned by municipal housing companies, allmännyttan, which are obliged to provide good and accessible housing for everyone and the common benefit. However, since 2011, the municipal housing companies are at the same time to operate under preconditions that require profit. In the light of this potential conflict of interest, the overarching purpose has been to provide an empirical exploration and problematization of how renovations are managed and motivated within allmännyttan and what potential implications this has on supplying good housing for all. Through the case of the municipal housing company Bostads AB Poseidon and the district Frölunda Torg in Gothenburg, renovations have been explored within a municipal setting and larger urban restructuring process. The material that formed the empirical data was qualitative and comprised three parts: policy, communication with tenants, and interviews with employees at Bostads AB Poseidon. Central concepts in exploring the renovations have been displacement pressure, urban restructuring, and hegemonic gaze. The thesis has identified several aspects concerning renovations and the altered role of allmännyttan which raises questions whether the renovations can be understood as for the common benefit.

An atom, a cell and a solar system have very little in common. My science teachers from high school will confirm that I am very far from being an expert on the matter but nontheless, I have studied these three systems in separate classes: chemistry, biology and astronomy. So I believe they must be fairly unrelated from each other! All they have in common is that they are studied through a magnifying lens by people who are better than me in maths. But onceyou look through the lens, you should see a main body and smaller objects rotating around it. The electrons around the protons, the cytoplasm around the nucleus and the planets around the sun. The key element they have in common is structure. Perhaps this is too abstract, even for an abstract, so let’s bring things back to earth. Structures play a fundamental role in shaping the world around us and this thesis aims to understand to what extent and how they influence people’s daily lives. The case study is based on the new town of Arborea in Sardinia, originally designed and owned by a private company to make an efficient and innovative industrial food production system. It aims to show how the ambition to produce was ingrained in the buildings and societal structures and how the surroundings affected the people who moved there. Everything was studied in detail:from the road grid to the houses, the church’s positioning and even selecting people from the north of Italy who were deemed most suitable to work there. The use of structuration theory will be key to uncover the different layers and relations that still shape the community today. 35.000 cows, 3800 people, a history of cultural clashes, a productive system, a very fascist background, a ’sex patrolling’ priest, a dozen volunteering organisations will all feature in thethesis and together enable to draw a picture of the new town.

In the thesis, I aim to analyze how people remember their past in changed political circumstances, what and who affect that memory, and why and how does rapture between social memory and historical narratives come about. My subject of inquiry is the personality of Josip Broz Tito and above that the period of socialism and the years of his reign. Studying these my intention is not in writing his biography, rather I use him as an object through which I can get a closer look at the production of a new social memory. I analyze my ethnographic data by using the theory of collective memory and politics of memory theory. Those two main analytical tools are combined with more concepts and hypotheses. The inquiry is done on multisited places, by doing multi-local ethnography namely in Croatia and Serbia. I argue that the mnemonic communities like nations, social groups or power elites influence how people perceive their past and consequently remember historical facts. In times of unstable political circumstances like the change of communist order into capitalistic one, people tend to make sense of their complex past by producing different narratives which are often contested.

The purpose of the study is to examine what significance värdegrund (core values) has in a municipal organization, and if it’s important that employees have personal values corresponding with the organizational values. Some focus is directed at why organizations should work with core values. The qualitative case study includes 11 interviews with employees within the organization Uppsala municipality. Theories and earlier studies indicate a discrepancy between whether organizations should work with core values at all. The result shows a unified opinion that core values are beneficial for the examined organization, and that it has different functions. In regard to personal values, the respondents are not in agreement whether it’s important that they correspond with the organizations core values. A concluding remark, based on empirical findings and accounted theory, is that the municipal organization in this case should use core values to build a culture instead of using it as a method of management, and that they shouldn’t emphasize too much on the importance that personal values and core values corresponds.

Under flera år har diskussionen om jämställdheten inom fotbollen blivit allt större och väckt ett intresse i samhället. Dagens diskussion kretsar främst kring ekonomiska skillnader mellan dam- och herrspelare. Herrspelare tjänar mer i lön jämfört damerna, fast de spelar på samma nivå. Jämställdhet uppmärksammas när damspelare berättar om sin situation och orättvisa villkor inom samma bransch. Hur upplever då damspelare att dom blir behandlade till följd av skillnaderna som finns inom sporten? Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur kvinnor inom damfotbollen upplever hur de blir bemötta. Studiens frågeställningar är: hur kvinnor upplever att de blir bemötta, vilka kommentarer får de, samt hur ser utvecklingen ser ut inom arbetet med en mer jämställd tillvaro. Studiens teoretiska referensram är begreppen makt, intersektionalitet och globalisering. Fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer med aktiva och före detta aktiva damspelare har genomförts med tematisering som grund. Resultatet visar att det finns ett förnedrande bemötande som saknar respekt mot damspelarna, men att det samtidigt har skett en positiv utveckling. Vidare visar resultatet att genom kvinnors engagemang påverkar att utvecklingen fortsätter och uppmärksammas åt rätt håll. Damfotbollen är beroende av globaliseringen för att ändra på maktfördelningen. / During several years the discussion about equality in soccer has grown and now interests the society at large. This discussion is often focused on economical differences between male and female players, where male players earn more, even though they play at the same level. The equality subject is always more notice when female players talk about their situation and their unfair conditions within the same sport. How do female players experience the way they are treated as a result of the difference in the sport of soccer? The aim of this of this study is to look at how female players perceive treatment within women’s soccer. The research questions of the study are: how are women experiencing that they are being treated, which comments do they get, and what has changed over time within the sport for more equal existence. The theoretical frame of the study is the concepts of: power, intersectionality and globalization. Four semi-structed interviews with active and previously active female players were conducted. The result shows that there is a degrading attitude that lacks respect against female players, but that at the same time there has been a positive development. Further the result shows that through women’s commitment and influences the development continues to be noticed in the right direction. Women’s soccer is dependent on globalization to change the distribution of power.

Sjömansyrket har länge varit mansdominerat och det ter det sig därför intressant att undersöka de kvinnliga sjömännens subjektiva erfarenheter av att vara minoritet. Studiens syfte är att undersöka kulturell exkludering av kvinnor som minoritet i en mansdominerad bransch. Detta görs genom frågeställningarna Vilka exkluderande uttryck i sjömanskulturen upplever kvinnor till sjöss? och På vilka sätt hanterar kvinnor dessa?. Studiens datamaterial består av sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med tematiskt öppna inslag. Studien har utgått från en abduktiv ansats, det vill säga det har skett en växelverkan mellan induktion och deduktion. De teoretiska utgångspunkter som främst används behandlar organisationskultur, samhällets könsstrukturer samt strukturella effekter och copingstrategier som har identifierats i förhållande till avvikarpositionen. Resultatet visar att undersökningsdeltagarna trivs med sitt yrkesval och i många fall med branschen överlag, men att sjömanskulturen är manligt kodad vilket medför flertalet exkluderande uttryck. De exkluderande uttryck som identifieras är sjömansstereotypen, jargong, mumshaming, fysisk arbetsmiljö, uteslutning från språkliga praktiker, homogena chefsled samt jämställdhetsdiskursen. Utifrån studien tas en modell för en framgångsrik strategi fram, där anpassning, motstånd och socialt stöd kan ses som tre kompletterande delstrategier. En pågående förändringsprocess av kulturen i sjöfartsbranschen identifieras, vilken påverkas av att normer förändras på samhällsnivå. Detta märks särskilt genom hur Me too-rörelsen har medfört en stark förbättring av sjömanskulturen.