Vad kan högskolorna göra för att finansiera forskning i framtiden? Är nya universitet och regionala högskolor beroende av regionala medel för att utveckla forskning ochforskarutbildning? I denna rapport undersöks ett urval högskoleenheter: 1) nya universitet, 2) högskolor som tilldelats vetenskapsområde, samt 3) högskolor som etablerats efter 1996. Sammantaget ingår tre universitet och sju högskolor i undersökningen där finansiering av forskning och forskarutbildning granskas på detaljnivå. Med avseende på forskning och forskarutbildning har högskolorna expanderat snabbt sedan fem år tillbaka. Deras externa forskningsmedel är fortsatt viktiga trots att den statliga direktfinansieringen i flera fall har ökat med 150 procent. Endast 40-45 procent är direkta statliga anslag till forskning och forskarutbildning, vilket jämfört med UoH-sektorn i sin helhet utgör en något lägre andel. Resultaten pekar mot att högskolorna i urvalet i många fall är starkt anknutna till sina regioner. Detta antyds av den höga andelen medel från svenska företag samt från kommuner och landsting. Enligt beräkningarna i rapporten bör drygt tio procent av de totala medlen komma från sådana källor år 2001. Innebörden av detta är att drygt en femtedel av de externa FoU-medlen har någon form av lokal eller regional anknytning. Utöver detta kan noteras att medel från de nya forskningsstiftelserna visar sig vara av stor betydelse och dessa samvarierar i stor utsträckning med de lokala och regionala medlen. Vidare indikerar rapporten att det finns ett starkt samband mellan vetenskapsområde och regional anknytning. De högskolor och universitet som arbetar inom tekniskt vetenskapsområde har en stark och betydande anknytning till regionala forskningsbeställare. Sådan inriktning är samtidigt en konkurrensfördel vad gäller KK-stiftelsens medel. I ett tentativt index som prövas i rapportens andra del konstateras att tre högskoleenheter förtjänar att lyftas fram som framgångsrika i sin regionala samverkan: Mälardalens högskola, Malmö högskola och Karlstads universitet. Dessa har höga andelar FoU-medel från såväl den kommunala sektorn som svenska företag. Rapporten inleds med en problematiserande genomgång som visar att forskning för att vara användbar för företag och kommuner behöver arbeta mot excellens. Internationellt sett starka forskare och forskarmiljöer erbjuder goda samarbetsmöjligheter. Detta fordrar långsiktighet och uthållig forskningsfinansiering. Om de öronmärkta resurser som hittills kanaliserats till nya universitet och högskolor i en framtid kommer att bli mer konkurrensutsatta fordras strategier för att fokusera och koncentrera forskningsmedel. KK-stiftelsens satsningar förefaller ha gått i den riktningen. Frågan är om de regionala forskningsbeställarna kan arbeta i samma riktning?

Informal institutions — family and kinship structures, traditions, and social norms — not only matter for development, but they are often decisive factors in shaping policy outcomes in environments of weak states and poor governance structures. Based on concrete examples in the areas of gender equality, governance and private sector development, this book advocates a pragmatic way of dealing with informal institutions. Neither the "romantic preservationist" nor the "bulldozing moderniser" approach promises an adequate solution.  Incorporating informal institutions in development strategies — whether by taking advantage of them in their existing state, by seeking to optimise their impact or by providing incentives to change them — will be instrumental in improving development outcomes, including achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

This article contains the text and discussion of a debate held at the IUAES World Congress in Anthropology at Manchester University in 2013. The motion was proposed by Bela Feldman-Bianco (State University of Campinas), seconded by Noel Salazar (University of Leuven) and was opposed by Shahram Khosravi (Stockholm University), seconded by Nicholas de Genova (then at Goldsmiths' College). The debate was chaired by Simone Abram (Durham University).

This thesis focuses on the dynamics of care in the transnational lives of Ecuadorian migrant women in Spain. It is concerned with the various forms of care that take shape and are sustained in the workplace, between friends, and among family members in Ecuador and Spain. Ultimately, it sheds light on how care is mobilised to sustain ideals of solidarity at work as well as togetherness in transnational life. The thesis is set against the background of the economic and political crisis in Ecuador of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which resulted not only in the dollarization of the economy and the removal of the country’s president, but in a dramatic shift of traditional male migration from the southern highlands to the United States, to a new wave of largely middle class female migration to Western Europe, especially Spain. Women from across the country left their children, spouses and elderly parents behind to work in domestic and care jobs abroad. In Ecuador, this disturbed the dominant cultural imaginary of the co-habitating and united family, centred on the presence of the woman as mother and wife. In light of this, the thesis engages with women’s dilemmas in giving and receiving care during years of absence, the role of family members, friends and domestic workers in this process, and the development of long-term goals focused on remittances, reunification, return, and the ultimate goal of creating a better future. Most generally, while challenging a series of dichotomies between love and money, home and work, gift and commodity—which have structured academic discussions concerning the feminization of international migration—the thesis describes the intimate relationship between women’s participation in the gift economy and a global labour market through the lens of care relationships.

In the last five years, alien lionfish, pufferfish, rabbitfish and sea urchins have proliferated in southern Crete. They are part of the 600 alien marine species that have entered the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Vibrant imperial debris and afterlives of global shipping, the tropical fishes are transforming ecologies across the sea. In this presentation, I delve into feelings of hope and despair when it comes to these processes. I conceptualize my interlocutors’ apocalyptic mindset and its concomitant ethics (which alarmingly is reflected in current biodiversity agendas) as a form of ‘cruel environmentalism’ to zoom into two rather different forms of cruelty. First, this mindset relies on necropolitics, advocating the killing of migrant species to save native ecologies. In this case, the solution to goes via the belly and 'invasivorism', i.e. the devouring of invasive species. Awareness campaigns inform consumers to “eat responsibly” by putting aliens on the menu. Marine biologists underline that endemic fishes need to cultivate a taste for alien inhabitants, turning invasivorism into a multispecies ‘responsibility.’ Second, this environmentalism is a form of ‘cruel optimism’ because of its futility. At its core, Laurent Berland (2011) explains, a psychological or emotional attachment is cruel when your desire (or the object of your desire) turns into an obstacle for your flourishing. The seascapes my interlocutors yearn for and seek to protect are not only landscapes of the past, they are idealized frozen memories of ecologies that only existed for a sliver of time (Kirsey 2015).

In 2008, Egyptian newspapers reported eight members of a family dead after consuming a meal of seafood (Ali 2008) in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Located on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and home to one of Egypt’s largest fishing ports, Alexandria is famous for its many seafood markets and restaurants. Everyone visits Alexandria to eat fish and so in this regard, the family did nothing out of the ordinary. But the tragedy was bewildering. A sea creature of such poisonous potency was not to be found in the sea; if it were, it would be well-known and infamous. After centuries of cohabitation with the sea and fish consumption, fishermen and fishmongers know which fish are tasty and edible and, indeed, which fish are poisonous and potentially lethal. Was it some kind of sea monster? The culprit was a bulky silver-dotted pufferfish (Lagocephalus sceleratus), an alien species and newcomer to this part of the world. Native to the Indian Ocean, the pufferfish is only one of over 600 species that have drifted north through the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. More will come. While the Suez Canal has been open for some 150 years, it is only in the last decades, due to dredging and enlargement of the passageway, that the influx of species is changing Mediterranean marine worlds fundamentally. New species keep on appearing, old species perish. In this roundtable, I will talk about cultural memories and current affects among people living with a sea that is changing beyond recognition. Based on research in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, it dwells on people’s shifting relation to the Sea, people who are witnesses and adjusting to one of the world’s largest species transformations.

This paper outlines how the concept stagecraft emerged as a productive analytic to understand the intricate politics of tourism capitalism, image curation, and rule by appearances during Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. This governance mimicked the logic of the tourism business and the industry’s dependence on appearance, images and imaginaries. Cultural heritage and tourism have long permeated Egyptian nation-building (Colla 2007), but only in the 1990s did tourism become an industry of economic importance on a mass scale: international arrivals went from two million visitors to fifteen;revenues from U.S. $380 million to 6.4 billion. Scholars have analyzed the conditions of this expansion (Hazbun 2007, Steiner 2010). My doctoral research, based on extensive fieldwork with tourist bureaucrats, marketing experts, and tourist workers in 2011-2013, instead turns attention to its effects: What influence did the tourism sector assert on power and statecraft in Egypt during the Mubarak era? What types of politics did it enable? What actions and visions did it foster among state actors and ordinary people? My findings suggest that by 2010, tourism was not only a successful business; it had become an integral mode of a kind of governance that mimicked the logic of the industry itself. The paper details how stagecraft through tourism worked at different levels. The ever-growing bank of romantic and stylized tourist images were employed as a means to promote particular visions of the regime, the nation and its future. The Red Sea resorts and the hosting of high-profile diplomatic meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh staged a liberal, wealthy and beautiful version of the country for Western audiences. Simultaneously, tourism provided opportunities for increased state control in previously peripheral regions (Sinai, the northern coast and the oases). I also show how the tourist gaze became a predominant mode of imagining the nation and ruling the citizens. Images of "touristy Egypt" resonated among the population, because it concretized the country's “potential” beyond present misrule. Tourism awareness campaigns further solicited citizens to curate the image of Egypt in front of the world, displaying certain sides (monuments, the Egyptian Museum and beaches) and hiding others (poverty, misrule and pollution). In 2011, tourism was Egypt’s outward face. The future looked bright. But the revolution would destroy the scene of Mubarak’s stagecraft. But his fall also marked the end of rule by appearance. Since then, audacity, boldness and post-truth have taken over the stage.

This first presentation introduces the themes and conceptualisation of the panel. 

If anthropology were to burn, the sea is already on fire. Due to warming water, oceans are experiencing mass exodus of marine life and species “out of place.” While mobile species and migrant humans claim rights to belong elsewhere via the ocean, states, corporations, and environmental organizations lay their own claims: as a space of movement, capital accumulation, extractivism, and sea-grabbing, the sea becomes the front stage for new forms of expansion, control and bordering practices. Focusing on disparate movements currently unfolding in our oceans: human and non-human mobility, sea grabs, and their concomitant regulations, this panel traces nativist, capitalist and colonial legacies in anthropology and beyond.

Approached as archives of the past, oceanscapes and sealives provide new stories about the world we inherited from the colonial era. Through this colonial framework, early anthropology was dominated by a terracentric and anthropocentric gaze, viewing humans and non-humans as sedentary subjects. While the 1990s “mobility turn” challenged this paradigm when it came to humans, oceans continued to be treated as transit spaces, not as social worlds made up by moving people and sea creatures. Water cannot easily be fenced, owned, territorialized or captured. A focus on attempts to regulate and control the sea, mobilites and resources through governance or ocean grabs teaches us how the logics of capture and control underpinning colonialism and capitalism have been premised on the qualities of land, and are being rescripted for the element of water.

No time to waste. The predicaments of the third-tier academic track are daunting: a heavy teaching-load as you get the classes no one else wants to teach, expectations to teach already designed courses with little introduction as to the logic behind the curriculums, and little possibility to influence literature lists or courses since short-term employees are not part of the departmental board. You are expected to behave like a teaching-machine. exceeds the stated hours in your contract, the teaching-gig ends up eating up the precious time that you have for publications and research applications. And it really doesn’t matter, because you spend most of your hours on cumbersome job applications that have inflated in absurdum: how did we end up in a system where a job application can take up to a week to prepare?

The third-tier precarious academic could be understood as the ultimate hustler from the university underground as they navigate these conditions. But why don’t precarious academics revolt or give up? That is the most puzzling question, given that a permanent position still entails significant workload and a pay that is lower compared to the private sector. Improvisation hinges upon imagination and creativity. Overwork, overstress and exhaustion severely undermine the capacities for imaginative play and thinking outside the box; and so does being a teaching machine. Has our imagination been stifled to such a degree that we only improvise and hustle within the limited frames of the iron tower? 

This talk thinks through multispecies invasivorism (eating invasive species) and the politics of eating in the context of alien marine species in the waters of Crete. In the last five years, alien lionfish, pufferfish, rabbitfish and sea urchins have proliferated in southern Crete. They are part of the 600 Lessepsian species, i.e. alien marine species entering the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, which are now transforming local marine ecologies. Why these changes are unfolding now, 150 years after the opening of the canal, is a complex story of entangled human, biological and geological processes. My current research project explores the unruly environmental afterlife of the Suez Canal on land and under the surface through ethnographic work with humans and fishes across the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. 

In Crete, invasivorism is increasingly being advocated as a solution for controlling alien populations in the future. Awareness campaigns inform people to “eat responsibly” by putting aliens on the menu. But invasivorism extends beyond human appetites. Marine biologists underline the need for endemic fishes to cultivate a taste for alien inhabitants. This is challenging. Fishes’ learning processes are little-known and local species have highly specialized feeding habits. In contrast to their distinguished taste, alien species are understood to undermine the food chain by “eat everything: juveniles, fishermen’s catch and each other.” Is their unsatisfiable appetite crude cannibalism or diligent invasivorism? To disentangle the meanings and politics assigned to more-than-human eating in this case, I think through concepts like distinction, gluttony, food chains and belonging.

I takt med att pandemins undantagstillstånd övergår i mer normal vardag växer förväntningarna på oss att ta upp tråden igen, i fråga efter fråga som satts på vänt under coronatiden. Agenda 2030, barnperspektivet, arbetsmiljö, utveckling, IT-säkerhet och samverkan tar plats igen tillsammans med så mycket annat. Höga ambitioner, mål och visioner trängs om uppmärksamheten och trots möten från tu till sju är det många som känner sig otillräckliga i detta race. 

I takt med att att-göra-listan fylls på och tempot trissas upp ser vi hur många ledare - till synes reflexmässigt – kavlar upp ärmarna och tar upp jakten på ”det perfekta systemet”, där allt gott på något mirakulöst sätt ska kunna genomsyra alla delar av verksamheten. Det är synd när denna speciella tid borde erbjuda ett gyllene tillfälle att stanna upp och fundera på förutsättningarna för ett mer situationsanpassat och inte minst hållbart ledarskap.

Det finns en otålighet i vår kultur och en övertro på smidiga och enkla lösningar. I Susanna Alexius bok Att leda komplexa uppdrag, synar hon orealistisk förhärskande ledarskapsideal som riskerar att bryta sönder ambitiösa ledare. Med grund i organisationsforskning och genom många exempel från samtida organisationer visar Alexius att allt gott omöjligt kan genomsyra allt, och att vad som är ”rätt” i ledarskap och organisering varierar över tid och rum. Så är det bara och det måste vi acceptera och förhålla oss till. 

I tider av gränsöverskridande utmaningar behövs djupare kunskap om organisationsformer för gränsöverskridande samverkan och social innovation. I det här kapitlet studeras hybridorganisering inom ramen för en föreningsägd koncern, som ett innovativt sätt att organisera sådan samverkan. Sedan 1933 har RFSU framgångsrikt kombinerat politisk aktivism i föreningsform, medicinsk vetenskaplig praktik på egen klinik och kommersiellt företagande i sina bolag i en och samma koncern. Sådan höggradig hybriditet kan betraktas som en social innovation i sig. I kapitlet beskrivs hur RFSU:s hybriditet har möjliggjort stora framsteg inom sexual- och familjepolitiken, både i Sverige och internationellt. 

Genom sin speciella hybrida form har RFSU verkat för frågor relaterade till god hälsa och välbefinnande, långt innan de paketerades som ”mål 3” i Agenda 2030. För att hitta lovande vägar framåt när det gäller social innovation och hållbar utveckling behöver vi lära av historien. Inte minst behöver vi återuppliva kunskap om föregångares organisering och betydelsen av äldre organisationsformer som kan vara högaktuella än idag. 

Through a longitudinal mixed method case study, this paper’s general aim is to contribute to the organizational analysis of the intricate relations and mutual influence between manifold forms of organization involved in tackling grand societal challenges (Alexius and Furusten, 2020; Brès et al 2018; George et al, 2016; Gray and Purdy, 2018; Gümüsay et al, 2022; Kaufmann and Danner-Schröder, 2022). As noted in the call for abstracts, many previous studies have highlighted confusion, contradiction and conflict in organizations with heterogeneous expectations. And among the fewer, more positive studies, a great number are conceptual rather than empirical (Segnestam Larsson and Wollter, 2020). That is to say that in these studies, hybrid or other alternative organizational forms, are treated as promising a priori (Greenwood and Freeman, 2017).

These insights may make one wonder whether there is solid empirical evidence to suggest that alternative forms of organizing are capable of tackling grand societal challenges. In this paper, drawing on an historical case study, I claim that the Swedish Federation for Sexual Education (RFSU) has potential to qualify as an interesting success case in this regard. An old saying goes: “All good things come in threes”. It all started in the 1930s. Internationally renowned journalist and social activist in sexual education and parental planning, Elise Ottesen Jensen, founded the Swedish Federation for Sexual Education (RFSU) in 1933. Missions like free and legal abortion, an acceptance of homosexuality and sexual education and access to contraceptives for all teenagers, were among those that motivated Ottesen Jensen to set up RFSU (Lennerhed, 2002).

Ottesen Jensen realized early on that her mission to extend sexual and reproductive rights in society could not be achieved solely on public funding, since the political ideas she and her co-founders (medical doctors and representatives from the workers’ movement) wanted to push were radical. There was a need for own “free cash” able to finance political sexual rights advocacy that in 1930s Sweden was seen as provocative to many.

From the start, Ottosen Jensen therefore had the idea of an organization made up of three different organizational “bodies” – a nonprofit parent organization for political advocacy and education, a clinic for therapy and treatment and a fully owned limited enterprise (RFSU Limited), producing and selling a product that was closely in line with the core political mission of sexual education and rights: condoms. Although each of the three had their particular institutional conditions, they also shared the same mission and were able to cooperate on their respective fronts, using different means (Lennerhed, 2002; Alexius and Segnestam Larsson, 2019).

Theoretically then, RFSU may be defined as a constitutional hybrid: an organization that is hybrid by constitution, hence an organization that was established for the explicit purpose of integrating not only different institutional logics but also structural elements typically found in different societal spheres, to fulfill its mission (Alexius et al, 2017; Alexius and Furusten, 2019). Examples of constitutional hybrids include limited enterprises fully owned by the public, cooperatives, mutually owned enterprises and the category of organizations focused in this paper; limited enterprises fully owned by civil society organizations.The paper is a development of a recently published Swedish essay (Alexius, 2022) and describes how the “holy trinity“ of radical political mission, clinical care and own market income, has been at the heart of RFSU and vital to its success during its 90 years in operation for the sexual health and rights in Sweden and abroad. In terms of data, the case study draws on previous historical volumes on RFSU and their founder (Lennerhed, 2002; Lindahl, 2003; Thorgren, 2014), as well as own document studies and 12 interviews conducted 2015-2021 with previous and current RFSU leaders and staff.

An important conclusion is that the common assumption in previous literature on hybrids, that power asymmetries will lead to mission-drift towards company-ization and marketization, should not be taken for granted. Rather, these processes must be scrutinized empirically using theoretical concepts like that of constitutional hybridity that opens up for recognition of the mutually strengthening mechanisms that have enabled RFSU to tackle grand societal challenges by achieving important social and sexual reforms.

References

Alexius, S. (2022). Hybridorganisering som social innovation: En historisk fallstudie av RFSU. I Bonnedahl, K J; Egan Sjölander, A and Lindberg, M. (eds). Social innovation för hållbar utveckling. Lund: Studentlitteratur

Alexius, S., Gustavsson, M., & Sardiello, T. (2017). Profit-making for mutual benefit: The case of Folksam 1945–2015. Score Working Paper Series, no 2.

Alexius, S., & Furusten, S. (2019). Exploring Constitutional Hybridity. I Alexius, S & Furusten, S. (eds.) Managing Hybrid Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1-26.

Alexius, S. & Furusten, S. (2020). Enabling Sustainable Transformation: Hybrid Organizations in Early Phases of Path Generation, Journal of Business Ethics, no. 165, p. 547-563.

Alexius S. & Segnestam Larsson, O. (2019). Market Means to Political Mission Ends: Scrutinizing the Social Meaning of Money in the Swedish Federation for Sexual Education (RFSU), Essay presented at the conference Political Resources: Autonomy, Legitimacy, Power, Södertörn University, Sweden, 17 May, 2019.

Brès, L, Raufflet, E. & Boghossian, J. (2018). Pluralism in organizations: Learning from unconventional forms of organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 20, no. 2, p. 364-386.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016): “Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research.” Academy of Management Journal, vol. 59, no. 6, p. 1880–1895.

Gray, B., & Purdy, J. (2018). Collaborating for our future: Multistakeholder partnerships for solving complex problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Greenwood, M., & Freeman, R. E. (2017). Focusing on ethics and broadening our intellectual base. Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 140, no. 1, p. 1-3.

Gümüsay, A. A; Marti, E; Trittin-Ulbrich, H. and Wickert, C. (eds), (2022). Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, vol. 79.

Kaufmann, L J & Danner-Schröder, A. (2022). Adressing Grand Challenges Through Different Forms of Organizing: A Literature Review. In Gümüsay, A. A; Marti, E; Trittin-Ulbrich, H. and Wickert, C. (eds), (2022). Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, vol. 79, p. 163-186.

Lennerhed, L. (2002). Sex i folkhemmet. RFSUs tidiga historia. Stockholm: Gidlunds förlag.

Lindahl, K. (2003). Sex – en politisk historia. Stockholm: RFSU/Alfabeta Anamma.

Segnestam Larsson, O. & Wollter, F. (2020). Vad kännetecknar de organisationer som studeras med hjälp av begreppet hybridorganisation? Score report series 2001:7

Thorgren, G. (2014). Ottar och kärleken: En biografi. Norstedts förlag.

Under de 10 år som har gått sedan Organisation & Samhälle grundades har nästan 200 artiklar publicerats i 20 tryckta nummer. Tidskriften har bjudit in till bidrag författare 15 temanummer och även välkomnat bidrag som handlat om andra ämnen. Nästan 200 artiklar har publicerats i 20 tryckta nummer. Utöver det har intervjuer, krönikor, debattartiklar och ett stort antal bokrecensioner publicerats . I den här texten reflekterar vi över några framträdande och mindre framträdande diskussioner som har präglat tidskriftens första årtionde. 

'The un/selfish' leader explores notions of selfishness, as they were perceived by people in the village of Ekkaraiyur, Tamil Nadu, India, at a time they associated with thorough changes in their lives.

Discussing locally held notions about agrarian change, seen as causing the erosion of earlier village loyalties and leading to the emergence of a new type of leaders, the study focus on the censure of the alleged corruption of these leaders. Expressed in a rich repertoire of stories about the ideals of leadership and about the excellence of the past and foreign societies, the censure was routinely voiced in public debates and in everyday conversations.

Set against a background an increasing role of the state for the people in Ekkaraiyur, the censure of leaders implied a critique of the contemporary society they were taken to represent. Moreover, the study argues that the critique was grounded in evaluations of individualism and selfishness in human nature.

The study is based on fieldwork carried out in Ekkaraiyur between 1988 and 1990

As a response to editors Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang’s outline of ‘the trouble with tourism and travel theory’, this article sketches some further troubles. It is argued that researchers have adopted modernist spatio-temporal distinctions that reproduce a singularity of the Tourist-as-Westerner. Meanwhile non-Westerners are mostly seen as immobile pre-modern participants of Western tourism. As non-Western tourism involves considerably more people than Western tourism, tourism theories on the whole do not necessarily fit most tourists of the world today, and they may even serve to re-enforce the global geopolitical hierarchy. Illustrated with ethnographic examples from Vietnam, it is suggested that a radical questioning of autocentric spatio-temporal distinctions is needed to arrive at a more heterogeneous and complex view of both modernity and tourism. While this will open up the field of inquiry, a sensitivity to socio-cultural diversities and, more importantly, global inequalities and the situated knowledge production is needed.

With the introduction of the reform project doi moi in 1986, Vietnam turned to tourism as a major new economic resource. Demands from international visitors have entailed a commodification of the Vietnam War. This article approaches tourism as an ideologically saturated nexus where identities and worldviews are continuously being represented, consumed, reconfirmed, negotiated and modified. Practices and narrations of Western backpackers, who travel to Vietnam spurred by phantasms of Vietnam as a war, are related to discourses of Vietnam in tourism literature, popular media, academia, journalism and politics, and traced to a `popcolonial' fantasy of Western superiority. At the core are the hegemonic implications the `been there, done that' cliché carries when war and tourism go hand in hand. It is argued that the dichotomies of here/there and war/peace need to be dislodged in order to understand the ideologies of both tourism and war.

Samhällsvetenskaplig forskning har på senare år börjat uppmärksamma unga kvinnor, som tidigare fört en undanskymd tillvaro i skuggan av de unga männen. Syftet med denna avhandling är att, delvis i linje med denna forskning, undersöka hur tjejer i en svensk gymnasieskola skapar genus. Fokus ligger på hur genusskapande alltid sker i samverkan med andra strukturerande principer, såsom klass, sexualitet och etnicitet. Den empiriska utgångspunkten är ett trettiotal tjejer mellan 16 och 18 år på två skilda gymnasieprogram, Samhällsveteskapsprogrammet och Barn- och Fritidsprogrammet. Genom att undersöka hur dessa tjejer förhåller sig till föreställningar om hur man ska vara som tjej, illustreras hur den normativa femininiteten – såväl som deras sätt att hantera denna - måste förstås mot bakgrund av tjejernas skilda klasstillhörigheter. Likaså visar empirin hur det feminina idealet är otvetydigt heterosexuellt. Som en röd tråd genom avhandlingen löper därför en problematisering av de idéer, påbud och sanktioner som säger att det är heterosexuell man ska vara som tjej, inget annat. Genom att kartlägga olika beståndsdelar i den heteronormativa genusordningen, synliggörs hur heteronormativiteten premierar vissa relationer framför andra; hur man som tjej förväntas vara både heterosexuell och homosocial enligt vissa specifika mönster. Omvänt kommer homosociala och heterosexuella relationsmönster att generera två genusmässiga motpoler, killar och tjejer. I avhandlingen undersöks även hur den enskilda kroppen fungerar både som symbol och redskap i skapandet av det heterosexuella kvinnoidealet; hur imperativet att göra kroppen ”naturligt kvinnlig” tycks centralt för tjejernas uppfattning om sig själva och varandra som normala. Föreställningar om normalitet och den normala tjejen är också det raster genom vilket processerna av genusskapande iscensätts. Denna normalitet formuleras till stora delar genom olika utpekade motpoler, det tänkt onormala och stereotypa. Genom att bestämma vissa positioner som mer stereotypa än andra, kommer tjejerna att presentera sig själva som fria och självständiga individer. Med utgångspunkt i tre av de positioner som återkommande skapas som just avvikande och icke-önskvärda – horan, den lesbiska och invandraren – åskådliggörs hur den normativa femininitet tjejerna förhåller sig till, iscensätter och i vissa fall utmanar är en heterosexuell, vit och medelklassbaserad sådan. Vidare diskuteras hur imperativet att vara en fri och obegränsad individ - något som genomsyrar såväl skolvärlden som det övriga samhället – enklast tycks uppnås genom ett förkroppsligande av normen. Därigenom synliggörs hur den förment neutrala uppmaningen att ”vara sig själv” blir mer möjlig för vissa än för andra.

In the past decade, the European Union and its member states have invested heavily in a far-reaching, diffuse, and technologized border regime targeting the elusive figure of the clandestine or illegal African migrant. Taking the mismatch between these large investments and the statistically small number of overland irregular migrants as its starting point, this article explores the embodied effects of illegality engendered in the policing of the Euro-African borderlands. Based on fieldwork with West African police forces, aid organizations, and migrants, it focuses on the migration circuit between the Sahel and Spain, where a joint European response to irregular flows was first tried and tested under the umbrella of the EU border agency Frontex. By highlighting the means of detection used to apprehend illegal migrants - from bodily signs to presumed intentions to migrate - the article looks at how an increasingly reified and embodied modality of migrant illegality is produced on the circuit between West Africa and Europe's southern shores. This production of illegality crucially depends on the incentives offered to African forces for participating in European controls. Tensions among African officers over the unequal gains from such incentives and ambivalence over the rationale for controls, I argue, make the transnational policing of clandestine migration a fraught site of state investment and concern.

Money can be understood as a disembedding mechanism, detaching social relations from a spatiotemporal context. However, different infrastructural instantiations of money make visible–and invisible–different qualities of money. Through a two-month ethnographic study of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as a complimentary legal tender, I show how Bitcoin in El Salvador functions as a technology of the imagination that brings future-making and deterritorialization into the forefront of money infrastructure(s). 

The thesis is divided into three main parts. First, I briefly introduce how people leverage Bitcoin as a tool for shaping subjective attitudes towards time, and consequently–to inspire hope. 

Then, I show how foreigners travelling to El Salvador to use Bitcoin are not doing this out of economic considerations. Rather, this transnational group of Bitcoiners can be characterised as a recursive public that utilises Bitcoin to escape the formation of the nation-state and form a deterritorialized community around shared speculative visions of the future. Bitcoin also allows them to make general infrastructural features of money visible and to contest these. The prime example being money’s disciplinary effects on subjective attitudes towards time.

In the last part, I show how deterritorialization and speculative futures also come to the forefront of Salvadoran imaginaries of Bitcoin. We can understand attitudes of fear and attitudes of hope as responses to this imaginary. The thesis concludes by arguing that Bitcoin’s materiality affords imaginaries of disembedded social landscapes, thus rendering visible preexisting infrastructural features of money. However, in the specific context of El Salvador Bitcoin also works as a tool for re-embedding, but only for the Bitcoiners.

Distintas investigaciones han demostrado la importancia del trabajo doméstico como sector privilegiado de inserción de las trabajadoras migrantes en España, principalmente en los primeros años de su inmigración, independientemente del nivel formativo. Esta concentración, lejos de responder a las trayectorias laborales de estas trabajadoras, es el resultado de la articulación de diversas variables en el contexto de recepción (políticas migratorias, políticas laborales, relaciones de género, características del mercado de trabajo, concepciones sobre el trabajo doméstico, etc.) y las formas de organización del trabajo productivo y reproductivo de las familias migrantes. En esta ocasión, este artículo se propone analizar las variables que han incidido en el proceso de feminización de las migraciones hacia España y su vinculación con la importancia del empleo de hogar como lugar preponderante de inserción laboral de las mujeres migrantes no comunitarias. Posteriormente, se resumirán algunos datos estadísticos, para luego presentar los resultados de un trabajo de campo exploratorio con empleadas de hogar en situación irregular residentes en Madrid, prestando atención a las condiciones de trabajo, relaciones con los empleadores, relaciones de género, proyectos migratorios, vida familiar e ideologías del cuidado en origen y destino.

Granbarkborre är en betydande ekonomisk skadegörare i svensk skog men den är också en art som skapar död ved av försvagade granar. Sommaren 2019 var granbarkborrarna ovanligt många och orsakade stor skada för skogsbruket. I den här etnografiska studien, baserad i Stockholm och närområdet, undersöks hur granbarkborreangreppen sommaren 2019 dels kan förstås som en process av skapande av en sammanhängande värld, dels en möjlighet att i sprickorna hitta öppningar för att driva politik. Med utgångspunkt i att hur problemet med granbarkborre formuleras är viktigt för vilka åtgärder som föreslås undersöks vad vi kan vi lära oss om skogsindustri, natur och biodiversitet. 

Att skyddade områden förstås som en orsak till granbarkborreangrepp och att klimatförändringar, älgar och andra varelser är en del av att göra det moderna skogsbruket oförutsägbart framkommer som viktiga resultat. Genom att visa hur den döda vedentillsammans med granbarkborren kontrolleras på vissa platser, visas hur olika kunskapsproduktioner träder fram, något som också underlättas av att mycket runt granbarkborrens livscykel är osäkert. Därför möjliggörs tolkning av naturen istället för konkreta orsakssamband. Uppsatsen är ett bidrag till antropologin om miljöförändringar.

This thesis explores different ways of relating to forests, and thus also different types of forestry. Starting with the Swedish forest industry one which is characterized by the planting of forests at the expense of natural regeneration, thus making Sweden the fifth country in the world in terms of planted area the study then examines different forests. This study is conducted with qualitative methods and by “following the seed” looks at various actors’ interests and potential flaws in the venture of planting forests. Different possibilities of doing forestry are explored in the thesis through letting modern forestry meet local forest-owners as well as a seed-collecting practice in central Sweden. 

These processes are explored by understanding the forest as an assemblage of historical decisions, species and human interests, tracing relations and powers within and beyond forestsfrom a more-than-human perspective. Forestry emerges as an attempt at domestication of the forest and the thesis explores how it goes wild, as well as the meeting of modern industrialism and science with other world views, values and practices.

This allows for an alternative understanding of forests, forestry beyond industrialism and modernity, and what sort of futures we might have living together with forests. 

Since the 1990s, a new model for market control organized through tripartite standards regimes (TSR), has expanded globally and affected most market exchanges through standard-setting, accreditation, and certification. This article investigates business-consumer relations under this regime, with a specific focus on the functions of accreditation and certification. In our case study of Sweden, a new picture of consumer protection under late capitalism evolves. Seeing it as a form of neoliberalization, the article uncovers a transition between two regimes of control; from one built on a potential conflict between consumer and business interests, to one based on the assumption that business interests are beneficial for all parties. Although business interest was formulated as pleasing the consumer-or the customer-by both certification firms and the Swedish Accreditation Authority, in practice consumer interest as something worth protecting was made abstract in the era of the TSR.

This study examines the mobilisation and identity formation of the Scottish independence movement post-referendum. By analysing arguments, emotions and actions in support for independence, I aim to discuss how the movement make use of cultural perspectives on history for continuous mobilisation. The study focuses on the members of the umbrella organisation of Yes Scotland, which is a diverse network of activist and party-political groups. To understand the movement, I have made use of a political and active approach such as participating in meetings and at demonstrations. Importantly, while I acknowledge how the Scottish independence movement navigates within a discourse of nationalism because of its nationalist character, I argue that the movement mainly make use of an alternative ideology. This ideology is tied to historical narratives which are remade in present forms and take several expressions. For instance, I claim that this ideology generates the practice of international solidarity as well as a specific identity which is constructed and reproduced for one specific political project: to achieve Scottish independence. This thesis is a contribution to the study of social movements, as well as it provides understanding of reasoning beyond and within nationalism.

This master’s thesis will be discussing how nuanced experiences affects the crafting of identity among transnational and/or transracial adult adoptees raised in Sweden from an anthropological perspective.The purpose of this thesis is to show that adoptees craft their identity in numerous and complex ways, one as unique as the other. The nuanced experiences are important to underscore since the adoptee demographic is vast and it consists of multiple individuals with unique lives, and if these distinctiveness are ignored, we run the risk of depicting a flawed picture of the adoptee experience. In an attempt to avoid doing so, this thesis will use an intersection of different theoretical frameworks from previous literatureon adoption and identity, which are belonging, body, and kinning, with additional theoretical concepts on materiality to complement. This paper follows eight adoptees, who share their individual narratives that revolves around the crafting of their Swedish, Adoption, and Ethnic identity. I will bring their experiences to life by putting them in relation to each other to showcase their uniqueness. Keywords: Adoption, Belonging, Body, Kinship. 

This study explore how different forms of embodied experiences in virtual reality can be explained. Virtual reality (VR) is a quickly emerging, although understudied field that in the last decade have come to take a bigger and bigger part in everyone’s daily life. With the rise of virtual reality new possibilities for social platforms in VR have emerged, one of these is the virtual world of VRChat. This paper aims to give an introduction to the world of VRChat, through looking at how different embodied practises take place in it. It is based on a two-month long ethnographic fieldwork in the world of VRChat, following at a group of around 20 individuals scattered around the world and their experiences of embodiment in VRChat. This paper looks at how different forms of embodiment take place in VRChat and how these forms of embodiment affect different aspects of being in a virtual world. I study how mirrors and avatars through embodiment and interplay of different agencies create identity and a sense of ‘me’ amongst users in VRChat. I look at how embodiment connects to immersion and how it bridges the gap between reality and virtuality, through the translation of the sense touch in virtual reality to real life a. I see that a non-traditional form of immersion plays a big role in creating this phenomenon which is called phantom sense

January 22 & 23:

In the first of a two-part series on the Juba peace talks, world-renowned scholars, Ron Atkinson and Sverker Finnstrom provide an exclusive look at the process in its earliest stages in late 2005 to February 2007. In Part II, they examine recent developments, new threats to the process and the likely future of the peace talks.

This study is about the developmental challenges and adversities to children and the youth in Arba Minch which is one of the emerging towns of Ethiopia. Primary data for the study was collected through case stories, in-depth interview with key informants from families, experts in concerned organizations, FGD and observation methods. The purpose of the research was to explore how the emerging risk situations in the family, community and school environments are threatening the socio-economic and intellectual developments of children and the youth in the town. It is identified that there are adverse situations for thousands of children and the youth in the family, school and community environments. Risk factors in the community include high rate of substance abuse, crime and violence, unemployment, idleness and absence of children and youth recreational centers. The presence of shops that show pornographic and action video, drug centers around schools, shortage of educational inputs or teaching-learning facilities, absence of variety of learning styles, students’ misbehaviors, and low academic achievements have made schools ineffective. The family environment is also not comfortable for positive child development due to the prevalence of child abuse, child neglect, poverty and family disorganization.

This thesis examines the composition of affective atmospheres, emerging in court sessions of criminal matter in Vienna. The notion of atmosphere is used to explore collective affective qualities, emerging through the interplay between affective bodies and their environment. The focus provides as analytical frame for bringing forward the workings of affect in legal procedures. From a starting point in theories of affect and atmosphere, I cast light at how the affectively charged space is both monitored and beyond control. First, I trace affect through the lens of spatial arrangements of courtrooms. I show how the architectural and interior arrangements and aesthetics of courtrooms are expedient in creating resonance between the bodies and control over the situations, while being visual and material representations of law. Second, I trace affect in the relation between the bodies that produce atmosphere and regard for the bodily capacity to affect and be affected. I consider principles of criminal procedure structuring and disciplining affective bodies in courtrooms and the juridical labour entailing work on emotions. Third, I trace affect in the dynamics and changes of affective atmosphere by showing how atmospheric changes come about and are contested through intensification and ruptures in atmosphere. I discuss the compositions of affective atmosphere in relation to discipline and control converging with bodies entering the legal setting. The ethnographic material is collected through participant observation in one hundred court sessions, as well as through interviews with people involved. 

This thesis examines the media discourse surrounding Kibera, an urban informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Using a qualitative content analysis, this study identifies and critically analyses reoccurring themes in the descriptions of Kibera in the UK broadsheet paper The Guardian. The claimed relevance of such analysis rests upon the assumption that discourse matter; certain narratives can influence beliefs and policy concerning the management of urban informal settlements, with material effects for these places and their residents. The result of the analysis shows there are varying and conflicting themes in the portrayal of Kibera, describing the community in both negative and positive terms. However, the imageries move between two extremes, either describing Kibera as an urban dystopia of crime, suffering and filth, or emphasising stories of hope, success and the entrepreneurial spirit of Kibera’s residents. Missing in the articles are descriptions of Kibera in terms of being an ‘ordinary place’, where people live their everyday lives and make ends meet. Drawing on earlier research about connections between language and representation in the construction of marginalized places, this paper discusses the possible consequences of hyperbolic and sensationalistic discourse, arguing for a more nuanced portrayal of the Kibera community and its residents – depictions that won’t further marginalise Kibera and its people, nor romanticize life in this highly populated low-income community.

This exploratory article is based on a research project which runs from 2011 to 2013 that examines how global processes are expressed in educational policies and pedagogical texts in Lebanon, Sweden and Turkey by focusing on school subjects like civics, history, geography, and religion. In this text we discuss the development of education in Lebanon, the development of history and civics after the civil war, and on opinions about these school subjects in order to make a preliminary analysis of how the future Lebanese citizen is depicted in policies, curricula, and textbooks. Lebanon is interesting because of its unique education system in which foreign international institutions rather than national ones have the task of preparing individuals for a globalized world. Material for the study were collected from a sample of curricula used in private and public or national schools for history and civics/citizenship education in grade 8 as well as interviews and conference proceedings and conversations with activists, teachers and principals. We also reviewed findings of relevant empirical studies conducted in Lebanon. Our data collection was guided by three questions: how is the right citizen depicted in the Lebanese material? How is the relationship between national and global perspectives treated in guidance documents and pedagogical texts? What civic rights and obligations are given attention and what individuals are included/ excluded? Our preliminary findings imply that there is no consensus on the importance of teaching a unified history and civics book and subjects in Lebanon. Other findings indicate that private and international schools have a greater impact than national schools on preparing Lebanese students as future citizens.