Showing papers in "Sociologisk Forskning in 2009"

Towards a post-patriarchal gender order : Confronting the universality and the particularity of violence against women

Abstract: The issues of gender equality and women’s human rights have become major spheres of academic debate, policy and activism in virtually every corner of the globe. Violence against women, a relative latecomer to the international gender agenda, has provided a particularly critical entry point in challenging long standing gender ideologies and taboos as well as the gender biased mainstream human rights framework that kept, until recently, the gender specific abuses women experience outside of public scrutiny.

Survey Research and Sociology

Abstract: One of the distinguishing features of the discipline of sociology is its concern with met­ hods and methodology. By contrast with disciplines as various as history, anthropology, art criticism and economics, sociologists are often criticised for being excessively concer­ ned with methodological preoccupations and with spending unnecessary time and effort establishing the basis of the knowledge and research findings which they present. This preoccupation really needs no defence. From the time at least of Max Weber onwards, a healthy debate has gone on among sociologists, at both the level of general methodology and in relation to particular research methods, about the “scientific” basis of sociological knowledge and about the warrants for the statements which sociologists make. If sociology is justifiably self-reflective about its methodological stance, a further is­ sue which receives widely differing answers is whether sociology is characterised by use of particular methods. Is there one method which is most characteristic of the discipli­ ne, which embodies its approach and which is most characteristic of what sociologists do when they conduct empirical social research? Arguably the reason that economists and anthropologists are less preoccupied with methods is that there is a greater degree of agreement about the methods which are used, and to a considerable extent taken for granted, by members of the discipline. In anthropology, for example the mystique around “field work” as a rite de passage is a very strongly held principle, while many an­ thropologists have traditionally maintained that they are studying “other” cultures than their own, and are not equipped to carry out studies of their own society. [This view has always been disputed and is not held by some younger social anthropologists]. This note is concerned with the relationship between sociologists and one parti­ cular research method, large scale social survey research, typically using large natio­ nal samples selected using probability methods. These reflections are prompted by my own sociological career over the last forty years, coming into sociology from the study of history in the early 1960s, pursuing an interest in research methods throug­ hout most of the intervening period, and in the later years of full time employment working intensively for much of my time over a five year period on two projects con­ cerned with disseminating information about large-scale UK social survey research to the UK academic community. This recent experience has made me acutely aware of the ambivalence of perhaps a majority of UK sociologists toward survey research, and an awareness that the principal UK academic developments in survey research are not necessarily being carried out by sociologists. One does need to distinguish between disciplines, one of which is sociology, re­ search methods, one of which is survey research, and techniques of investigation, such as questionnaire construction and interviewing, which are part of the building blocks of particular methods. The degree of fit between discipline and method varies, and a

Sociologin, hybriderna och den sociala verkligheten - exemplet kärnavfall

Abstract: Sociology, hybrids and social reality: the case of nuclear waste The continuing technological transformation of nature means that sociology’s traditional vision of a sharp divide between nature and ...

Skilsmässor och separationer : Betydelsen av rollspecialisering och jämställdhet

Abstract: At the same time as women made their large scale entrance on the labour market divorce rates increased in most western societies. This combination of societal trends was widely understood from the ...

Eldén, Sara (2009). Konsten att lyckas som par: populärterapeutiska berättelser, individualisering och kön. Diss. Lund : Lunds universitet, 2009

Abstract: Elden, Sara (2009). Konsten att lyckas som par: popularterapeutiska berattelser, individualisering och kon. Diss. Lund : Lunds universitet, 2009

Ökat hot och våld i arbetslivet - en följd av förändrade arbetsförhållanden? : En studie utifrån de svenska Arbetsmiljöundersökningarna 1991-2005

Abstract: Increase in work related violence. A reflection of changes in working conditions? An analysis based on the Swedish Work Environment surveys.Victim surveys from Sweden show that the proportion reporting exposure to work related violence has increased. On the basis of the Swedish Work Environment surveys 1991–2005 this article focuses on the following questions: What kind of situations and working conditions are related to workplace violence? And, has the number of employees exposed to these working conditions increased parallel to the rise of reported workplace violence? Logistic regression analysis shows that some situations and working conditions are indeed related tothe risk of violence. To some extent exposure to these working conditions co-varies with exposure to violence. This result is more prominent for women than for men. Further research is needed to understand how changes in working conditions affect the risk of violence and the development thereof, not least from a gender perspective. Even so, changes in working conditions can not alone explain the increase of reported workplace violence in Sweden during this period. It seems that the influence of changed working conditions offers an interesting complement to criminological theories of broadened definitions and decreasing tolerance against violence in problematizing how an increase in reported workplace violence should and could be understood.

Har den interna demokratin i politiska partier försämrats över tid

Abstract: Has intra-party democracy deteriorated over time?A widely held view in contemporary party research is that intra-party democracy, especially in traditional mass parties, has deteriorated in the age ...

Att prata ihop sig i rätten

Abstract: Negotiating experience in the courtHow do judges assess witness credibility, and how do they proceed to reach sustainable conclusions in a criminal court? This article is based on discussions in four focus groups with lay judges in Swedish district courts. In criminal court trials, a version of an event is generally reinforced if it is confirmed by witnesses. However, if their narratives are too similar, none of them is found trustworthy. The focus group participants agreed that if witnesses were suspected of having discussed their individual experiences of an event and accommodated them into a common story, their testimonies were not considered credible. While testimonies should ideally be untainted by other people’s impressions and opinions, other rules govern the truth of the court. The lay judges appreciated their deliberations, including negotiations on impressions and memories of the trial, and they sometimes adjusted their perceptions in the light of information provided by other members of the court. However, if the lay judges are viewed as witnesses of what takes place in the trial, this gives rise to a paradox: While witness negotiations on experiences are regarded as a means to construct a false or biased story, the same kind of interaction between the judges is considered necessary to establish a consensual truth of what actually happened.

Den virtuella kroppen : Presentationer av jaget i svenska dagboksbloggar

Abstract: The virtual body: the self and the body in Swedish diary blogsThere are no bodies on the internet and yet, there are bodies on the internet. This article deals with representations of the ‘virtuall ...

Ungdomars samtal kring risker i trafiken : Relationen mellan riskförståelse och platsanknytning

Abstract: Young people talking about risk in traffic milieus: the relationship between sensemaking of risk and place attachment This explorative study investigates the relationship between sensemaking of ris ...

Why Critical Whiteness Studies needs to think about warfare

Abstract: The history of whiteness is intrinsic to the concept of race itself, in all its changing formulations and fatal outcomes . Despite the continuing and careless use of racial terms to refer to skin colour and ethnic origin, one of the benefits of subjecting the term to political analysis has been to draw attention away from whiteness as a physical set of attributes, and to investigate and undermine its discursive power and symbolic currency within different national contexts . The uneven geographical spread of Critical Whiteness Studies, as it rapidly became known, was inevitably rooted in US perspectives, definitions and theoretical insights, or at least those of Anglophone countries such as the UK and more recently Canada and Australia . This hampered – as well as influenced – the ways that whiteness has been conceived within Europe . Charting the discursive production of whiteness as a racial construct demands a reckoning with the national past: colonial history, patterns of postcolonial migration, the development of multiculturalism as policy and practice . For all these reasons it has been difficult to produce definitions of whiteness that apply within and across multiple locations . Roger Hewitt, who has written extensively about racial conflict and perceptions of multiculturalism among working class communities in the UK, argues that whiteness is usefully conceived through the historicised and gendered notion of citizenship, whether this is achieved through the status of settlers or natives . Whiteness does not necessarily arise from a conception of the ethnic majority or the dominant ethnicity, he suggests, but is ‘augmented with the idea of ‘born to rule’ or ‘standard by which all others are judged’ or ‘grid through which all things should be perceived’ . This is the realm of the long history through which a cultural hegemony of ‘whiteness’ was achieved . 1 Hewitt is particularly concerned with the way in which particular groups of ‘migrant whites’ are considered more or less threatening than others . Since the influx of economic migrants into the UK from new EU countries in 2004, new hierarchies have been established: attitudes to Poles, Kosovans, Bulgarians and Lithuanians, for example, reflect the degree to which they are considered useful, threatening, needy, or hard-working . Within the new Europe, he argues, ‘Our conscious as well as tacit knowledge of racial discourse construction is immense – we have seen so much of it – and in truth many of its contradictions and putative ironies are very simple matters:

Smärta, skönhet och sociomaterialitet : En intervju med Dag Østerberg om begreppen form, förändring och socialitet

Abstract: Pain, beauty, and socio-matter. An interview with Dag Osterberg concerning the concepts of form, process, and sociality.Professor Dag Osterberg (born 1938) is one of the most prominent Nordic socio ...

Sociala normer, sociala identiteter och socialt avstånd

Abstract: Begreppet "sociala normer" var nastan det forsta nyckelord, som den begynnande uppsaliensiske sociologistudenten kom att inforliva med sin begreppsapparat, nar sociologiamnet var nytt vid Uppsala Universitet. Under hela 40och 50-talen var hanvisningar till "sociala normer" standigt aterkommande i professor Torgny Seger stedts introduktionsforelasningar pa den tiden. Av biografiska skal, som det inte ar ratta platsen att ga in pa har, sa. var jag i min ungdom skeptisk till den sorts normati vistiska retorik, som standigt hanvisade till behovet av starka och fasta normer for att vrida den skeva utvecklingen ratt. Denna min skepsis infor talet om vardet av "fasta" sociala normer kontrasterade naturligtvis med de sociologiforelasningar jag horde, dar professor Segerstedt starkt betonade de sociala normernas stora roll i samhallsbyggan det. Segerstedts i ovrigt starkt liberala framroning och hans nyfikenhet pa vad unga studenter kunde ha att komma med i det nya universitetsamnet Sociologi gjorde nog att den har ruvande motsattningen mellan en vetenskaplig anvandning av normbe greppet och normativistisk retorik ej lastes fast i ofruktbara ansatser. Min egen forsk ning kom alltmera att inriktas pa att leta efter de betingelser, som avgjorde huruvi da manskligt handlande huvudsakligen bestamdes av de sociala normer, som omgav henne, eller av en forening av rationella och emotionella overvaganden. Min starka overtygelse att aven sociologer maste ta hansyn till att rationella overvaganden ingar i manskligt handlade stammer for ovrigt val med vara nationalekonomiska kollegers starka betoning pa "rational choice". Kultur, symbolmiljo, sociala roller och identiteter, sociala konflikter och social for andring, allt kunde alltsa pa den tiden forklaras i termer av sociala normer gemen samma eller motstridiga. Eftersom en sa stor del av samhallet sags som uppbyggt av sociala normer med beloningar for normenligt beteende och nagon form av bestraff ning for avvikande beteende, sa var det forstas viktigt att pa ett otvetydigt satt kunna definiera sociala normer. En social norm definierades som ett imperativt pabjudande eller darmed synonymt sprakligt uttryck, vilket i en inlarningsprocess, kallad sociali sation, redan fran barndomen inforlivades med varje individs sociala repertoar. Gor som du blivit tillsagd av de sociala normerna dvs. av de sociala imperativen! Detta var den skolmastaraktiga bild av socialisationsprocessens verkningssatt som formedla des till just denne nyborjare i de uppsaliensiska sociologistudierna, nar amnet var nytt vid Uppsala Universitet. Men lat oss titta pa ett par filosofiskt intressanta komplika rioner. Den finlandske filosofen Eino Kailas bok Tankens Oro: Tre samtal om de yttersta tingen (1944) gjorde stort intryck pa mig, nar jag laste den ordentligare under den for

Arbetslöshet som en icke önskvärd konsekvens av socialbidrag : Resultat från en tidsserieanalys på befolkningsnivå i Sverige 1946–1990

Abstract: Unemployment as an unintended consequence of social assistance recipiency: results from a time-series analysis of aggregated population dataDoes the frequency of unemployment have a tendency to inc ...