This dissertation explores how social class matters in young men’s everyday relationship to digital media. The aim is to contribute to the existing knowledge about how young people incorporate digital media in their everyday lives by focusing on the structural premises of this process. It also presents an empirically grounded critique of popular ideas about young people as a “digital generation”, about the internet as a socially transformative force, and about class as an increasingly redundant category. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with 34 young men (16-19 years) from different class backgrounds, upper secondary schools and study programmes. Drawing on the conceptual tools of Pierre Bourdieu, three classes are constructed: the “cultural capital rich”, the “upwardly mobile”, and the “cultural capital poor”. The analysis shows that class, through the workings of habitus, structures the young men’s relationship to school and future aspirations. This also engenders class-distinctive ways of conceiving leisure and digital media use. Through their class habitus and taste, the young men tend to orient themselves and navigate in different ways in what they perceive as a space of digital goods and practices, endowed with different symbolic value in school and society. The “cultural capital rich” are drawn to-wards practices capable of yielding symbolic profit in the field of education and beyond, whereas the other classes gravitate towards the “illegitimate” digital culture but deal with this different ways. These findings indicate that there are social and cultural continuities at play within recent technological changes. They also expose the structural differences hidden by sweeping statements about young people as a “digital generation”. Finally, they show that class, contrary to popular beliefs about “the death of class”, still represents a pertinent analytical category.

Den vanligaste lösningen på problemet att för mycket energi används i den byggda miljön är implementering av energieffektiv teknik. Men installation av teknik räcker sällan för att nå förväntad energibesparing: det är människor som i sin vardag använder tekniken och de använder den inte alltid på det sätt som teknikutvecklarna har tänkt sig. I avhandlingen behandlas människors vardagliga användning av energiteknik. Det innebär att fokus skiftas från produktutvecklarnas och experternas intentioner och syn på teknikens användning, till det sociala sammanhang där människor lever sitt vardagsliv. Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka hur energiteknik som utvecklats för att hushålla med energi och effektivisera energianvändningen domesticeras i hemmet. En fallstudie har genomförts för att undersöka hur energikonceptet för passivhus med tillhörande teknik domesticeras i hemmet. Detta energikoncept förväntas leda till ett nytt energieffektivt sätt att hantera värmen i bostaden. Fallstudien består av två intervjuomgångar med boende i passivhusen i Lindås, söder om Göteborg. Utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv på lärande och begreppet domesticering analyseras hur de boende tolkar energikonceptet i passivhus, hur de på olika sätt förändrar sitt förhållande till värme och sitt sätt att hantera värmen inomhus, samt hur och varför deras engagemang för energitekniken begränsas. I avhandlingen analyseras processen där de boende med stöd av tidigare erfarenheter och olika typer av resurser efter hand gör tekniken begriplig och lär sig att hantera värmen i sitt passivhus. En slutsats är att mer uthållig energianvändning inte kan nås enbart genom att utveckla nya energitekniska lösningar, utan det krävs också att förutsättningar skapas för att människor ska kunna lära sig hantera de mer hållbara alternativen och dessutom välja dem. / New and more energy efficient technologies are usually regarded as the solution to the problem with too high energy consumption in the built environment. It is not enough, however, to fulfil the expected reduction of energy consumption since other influential factors have to be considered as well. There are for example people who use technology in ways unintended by the developers. In this thesis, people’s daily use of energy-related technology is investigated. Thereby, focus is shifted from the technology developers’ expectations and opinions regarding how to use the technology towards the social contexts in which people live their everyday life. The aim in this thesis is to investigate the domestication in private homes of energy technology developed to reduce energy use and improve energy efficiency. A case study is conducted of how the energy concept in passive houses and its related technologies are domesticated in the daily life of householders. This energy concept is expected to lead to a new energy efficient way of handling heating. The case study comprises of two rounds of interviews with the occupants of the passive houses in Lindås, south of Gothenburg. The households’ interpretation of the energy concept of passive houses and how the householders change their andling of and relationship to the indoor temperature are analysed from a sociocultural learning perspective and the concept of domestication. The thesis analyses the process in which the household members learn how to handle the energy technology in their passive house, supported by their earlier experiences and other kinds of resources. One main conclusion is that sustainable energy use is not only a question of developing new, energy efficient technologies. In order to meet the national and international goals set up for energy efficiency and energy conservation, tools must be developed that encourage people to choose and to learn sustainable ways of using the new technology.

When war broke out in Europe in 1939 a mother of two, the thirty-three-year-old Astrid Lindgren, begun keeping a journal. In this diary she wrote about the events of the war, the decisions of the government of Sweden and her own personal life in Stockholm. With a micro historical approach and with a theoretical framework from history of emotions this study aims to explore Lindgren´s emotional life and her emotions towards the changing aspects of the ordinary life, her government´s political agenda, and towards the international players and victims of the second world war. With the use of William K. Reddy´s terminology of emotive and emotional navigation as well as Hugo Nordland´s emotional strategies as analyzing tools the results showed that Lindgren´s initial emotion towards the ordinary life, now affected by the war, was despair, expressed in emotives such as chock, sadness and despondency. The emotion later shifted to gratitude (towards her own privileged situation) and blues (caused by war fatigue), existing simultaneously. The most common emotion expressed correlating to the Swedish government is the emotion of trust. Lindgren´s main emotions towards the victims of the war was compassion. At multiples times, in her diaries, she expressed pity for those who suffered and gratitude for not being among them. The emotions she expressed correlating to the great powers of the war was hate (Germany), fear (Soviet Union) and contempt (Italy). But she also felt conflicted when faced with the fact that she might have to make a choice between Germany and the Soviet Union. The fear of the Russians trumped her loathing of the Nazi regime, but when she gained a greater knowledge of the German atrocities, she came to regard both regimes as equally horrible. The frequent use of certain emotives (such as confidence, gratitude and pity) indicates an emotional navigation to consolidate her feelings and avoid other less desirable emotions. In the same way the uses of biblical metaphors, comparisons of beasts and the reference to brotherly love gives proof of emotional strategies in her handling of undesirable feelings such as hatred and shame. Lastly, this study concludes in a didactical discussion arguing that Astrid Lindgren´s war diaries is a material of great value when teaching of and developing a historical consciousness.

The introduction of personal assistance in Sweden in 1994 showed an ambi­tion by policymakers to ameliorate the conditions of persons with extensive disabilities. The legislators expressed a vision of autonomy and integrity, and that persons with considerable disabilities should lead a life like others. This includes having a family and being a parent. The thesis “Family life with personal assistance” has aimed at exploring what it means to have an extensive disability and to have personal assistants in everyday family life. The thesis has had an explorative onset and is based on interviews with eight women and men and their family members: partners, children and members from the family of origin. They were interviewed about their experiences of daily life with personal assistance. The results are structured under three themes. The first theme is about power - loss of power and control – loss of control in different situations in everyday life. The results indicate that the assistance users, in spite of a legislation that allows the user to choose how they want to form their personal assistance, are confronted with different dilemmas striving to maintain power and control over their everyday life and daily help. To cope with these challenges the assistance users had developed different strategies. The second theme is about the results of applying a life course perspective on the different experiences depending on when in life the assistance users became disabled – if they were born with the impairment or if they had an accident or became ill as adults. These different experiences have had an effect on how they look upon personal assistance and it has also had an impact on how they formed their strategies about assistance and the assistant’s relations to their children. The third theme is about the role of the family. Family members play a significant role in making everyday life work. In designing and using personal assistance, the individual’s freedom is balanced against his or her need of autonomy on one hand and the family’s demands for privacy on the other.

The study deals with the life stories of six women and four men who were born in Germany and who now live in Sweden.  Its purpose is to examine the histories of those who grew up in Germany during and after the Nazi era, their descriptions of their lives and experiences during childhood and adolescence, and how they regard their encounters with Swedish people, and the ways in which these encounters have affected their ways of describing the growth of their attachment to this country. The main approach is a narrative analysis focussing on the interview interaction and the wider social and political contexts of their life stories. When speaking of their lives in the two countries they show varying degrees of attachment to the places involved. This is why I use the term “travellers” when describing how their feelings of “belonging” change. The theoretical concepts used are those of habitus and capitals derived from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and Marianne Horsdal’s view that people often refer to the idea of a “good life” when relating their life stories. This concept can of course vary widely from one person to another. Nine of the group emigrated to Sweden voluntarily; the remaining one came here as a refugee after the end of the second World War.  The older ones - born between 1920 and 1940 - have memories of their early years in Nazi Germany and of the wartime period. The younger ones, born after 1950, have differing memories of childhood and adolescence spent in East and West Germany. Some of them lost close relatives during the war.  Those who came to Sweden during the late 1940s and the 1950s were met with very negative attitudes from some Swedes, while the later immigrants were treated with respect. / Tyskland i Sverige och Sverige i Tyskland