Diss. Örebro : Örebro universitet, 2007.

Diss. Örebro : Örebro universitet, 2004. / Del av upplagan med ISBN 91-7668-420-2 (Örebro universitet) på påklistrad lapp.

I denna kvalitativa studie var syftet att undersöka hur småföretag i Västerbottens glesbygd förhåller sig till att attrahera och behålla den kompetens som behövs i verksamheten. Syftet var även att undersöka förhållandet mellan företagen och glesbygdskontexten. En sociologisk referensram användes därför i analysen. Studien var av induktiv karaktär och data samlades in genom semistrukturerade, kvalitativa intervjuer. Intervjuerna transkriberades och sedan genomfördes en kvalitativ innehållsanalys med kondensering, kodning, kategorisering och tematisering. Sex centrala teman identifierades som handlade om ömsesidigt beroende i glesbygden, en familjär anda, en strategisk medvetenhet, missmatchning, svikande strukturer och en kreativ förmåga att ”göra lemonad av citroner”. I den teoretiska analysen konstaterades att glesbygdsstrukturen på många sätt begränsar men samtidigt möjliggör företagens handlande. Slutsatserna var att företagen har en passiv rekryteringsstrategi men samtidigt flera strategiska kompetensförsörjningsmetoder. Den låga personalomsättningen och det faktum att personalen stannar kvar gör att behoven att attrahera ny kompetens inte är så pressande. Den goda andan upplevs vara en anledning till att personalen stannar kvar. Förhållandet mellan företag och omgivning är tudelad. Det är en stark lokal samverkan men relationen till företagskommunen präglas av missnöje. Företagen har en tendens att acceptera förutsättningarna och göra det bästa av situationen

In this thesis the main features of Harrison C. White’s general sociology are studied. Since the 1960s White has played a crucial role in the development of the social network approach. He is well known for both the fecundity of the analytical tools he has developed over the years and for the original contributions he has made to several sub­fields of the discipline. White has also developed an unconventional and highly individual approach to social reality that, as the end-result of a sustained synthesizing effort, has grown out of a long and persistent endeavor. Yet, more than a decade after its publication, this general theoretical approach still remains largely unexplored. The main argument of this study is that White’s approach represents one of the mast persistent, elaborated and systematic efforts to enrich the analytical rigorous of the social network approach by adding the substantive theoretical insights that have been elaborated mainly within the symbolic interactionist perspective and the tradition of phenomenological sociology. In this study, first the premises of White’s approach are examined. It is demonstrated how White uses social networks as an analytical tool in order to obtain causal explanations of social phenomena. It is also shown how White re- conceptualizes the notions of social relationship and embeddedness. Furthermore, it is also discussed how White, on the basis of these conceptual innovations, develops a novel image of modern social contexts. This study proceeds by presenting the set of new basic concepts that are derived from this image, seeking to locate these concepts within the larger and more familiar context of theoretical sociology. It is also demonstrated in this study that White’s particular image of modern social contexts leads him to pose new questions and to develop new modes of analysis to answer them. White’s view of modem societies radically alters the very nature and state of the question of social order as well as the premises of its answer. As White dismisses the conventional formulations of the problem of social order, he considers the issue to be a question of identifying the small enclaves of regularity within the social landscape that is dynamic, indeterminate and shifting. In more concrete terms, it becomes a question of identifying the limited, local and stable patterns or configurations of relationships that prove sustainable and thus observable, despite all the dynamics of embeddedness and connectivity. Finally, the basic theoretical features of White’s model of production markets are presented and discussed. Production markets is a topic to which White has devoted a great deal of interest. Ever since the mid-1970s he has produced a long series of work with the ambition of developing a sociological account of these markets. This account represents the most extensive application of White’s general sociology, where he fleshes out his abstract ideas and arguments and where one finds a concrete case of his account of the emergence of social structures and local orders out of network ties and flows. The main conclusion of this study is that, despite all its shortcomings, the general sociological perspective that White has developed is an important contribution. It provides sociology with a new foundation and shows the direction towards which the discipline should be moving. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2003</p> / digitalisering@umu

In the present study, I analyze adolescent girls’ smoking through a unique combination of a quantitative survey of impressions and a theoretical analysis based on new elaborations of Bourdieu’s concept symbolic capital. The method of the study is three-fold. First, focus-group interviews elicit relevant impressions of adolescents in the eyes of peers. Second, a questionnaire survey distributed to adolescent peers quantitatively investigates how impressions of a girl on a picture differ depending on whether or not she has a cigarette. Third, a theoretical analysis based on elaborations of Bourdieu’s theories scrutinizes the results of the questionnaire survey. The results of the questionnaire survey indicate that smoking adolescent girls generate impressions of being significantly less likable, more popular, more conceited, less kind, less shy, more liable to bully, less funny, more deceitful, and less compassionate than non-smoking adolescent girls. In the elaborations of Bourdieu’s theories, I introduce a division of symbolic capital into two forms: symbolic virtue capital, generated through impressions of virtues, and symbolic power capital, generated through intimidating impressions of destructive power. According to the theoretical analysis of the results, smoking adolescent girls have relatively much symbolic power capital but relatively little symbolic virtue capital compared to adolescent girls that do not smoke.