The making of a beach

In the Anthropocene, it becomes problematic to imagine a sustainable balance between society and the environment. This calls for post-sustainability modes of articulating human/non-human relationships. As an attempt towards an Anthropocenic understanding of society and the environment, we analyse how ecosystem services are mobilised in marine spatial planning in the south of Sweden. The study investigates how ecosystem services are understood and narrated in environmental strategy and interviews with environmental planners. We focus on seaweed and sand. These are two kinds of materials and potential resources that materially circulate and force together society and the environment in planning discourse and practice. Our findings show that although ecosystem services are readily understood as an anthropocentric construction, when mobilised in planning to manage an unruly nature they can be re-storied as an ontological mediator in human/non-human relations

Ten essentials for action-oriented and second order energy transitions, transformations and climate change research

The most critical question for climate research is no longer about the problem, but about how to facilitate the transformative changes necessary to avoid catastrophic climate-induced change. Addressing this question, however, will require massive upscaling of research that can rapidly enhance learning about transformations. Ten essentials for guiding action-oriented transformation and energy research are therefore presented, framed in relation to second-order science. They include: (1) Focus on transformations to low-carbon, resilient living; (2) Focus on solution processes; (3) Focus on ‘how to’ practical knowledge; (4) Approach research as occurring from within the system being intervened; (5) Work with normative aspects; (6) Seek to transcend current thinking; (7) Take a multi-faceted approach to understand and shape change; (8) Acknowledge the value of alternative roles of researchers; (9) Encourage second-order experimentation; and (10) Be reflexive. Joint application of the essentials would create highly adaptive, reflexive, collaborative and impact-oriented research able to enhance capacity to respond to the climate challenge. At present, however, the practice of such approaches is limited and constrained by dominance of other approaches. For wider transformations to low carbon living and energy systems to occur, transformations will therefore also be needed in the way in which knowledge is produced and used

Negative campaigning En kartläggning av politiska annonser i Dagens Nyheter

Titel: Negative campaigning: En kartläggning av politiska annonser i Dagens Nyheter Författare: Olle Berntson och Eric Säwe Uppdragsgivare: Institutionen för journalistik, medier och kommunikation vid Göteborgs Universitet Kurs: Kandidatuppsats i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap på Institutionen för journalistik, medier och kommunikation vid Göteborgs Universitet. Termin: Höstterminen 2014 Handledare: Gabriella Sandstig Sidantal: 31, inklusive bilagor Syfte: Att kartlägga omfattningen av negative campaigning i svensk dagspress under andra hälften av 1900-talet. Metod: Kvantitativ innehållsanalys Material: Annonsmaterial i Dagens Nyheter Huvudresultat: Våra resultat visar att omfattningen av negative campaigning i svensk dagspress över tid har minskat. Andelen negative campaigning hade en tillfällig uppgång under 1970- och 1980-talen med en topp 1988, för att sedan slutet av 1990-talet försvinna helt. Under valrörelsen 1988 var andelen annonser klassade som negative campaigning som högst och låg på 13 %, för att under efterföljande decennium försvinna helt

Att tala med, mot och förbi varandra : Samtal mellan föräldrar och skolledning på en dövskola

In the spring of 1997 a group of parents of deaf and hearing-impaired children and representatives of a special school in the south of Sweden began to hold formally arranged meetings in order to start a “dialogue”. This particular form of collaboration became the focus of this study. The meetings lasted two to three hours and I attended seventeen of them. The transcriptions of those meetings form the basis for the analysis. In many arenas of contemporary western society there is a strong belief in dialogue; this is seen as a way to constructive and edifying ends. People do communicate with intentions to understand and help each other and to create commonly adhered to values and goals, but also to manipulate and control each other. I have analysed empirical material from a constructivist perspective. More specifically, I examine how problems are produced, dissembled and fought over as they are constructed in the world of deaf education. Different kinds of dialogical aspects of talk, such as the climate of conversation and the speed of talk are identified. Turns of talk are analysed in an attempt to discover how a specific conversation develops. The study shows how both parties tried to find different ways to avoid talking about responsibility and guilt. In many cases this lead to an evasive speech, which in its own way makes agreement possible. Vagueness is analysed as a conversational tool. The study points out a way of talking, a kind of repeated pattern that constantly seemed to circulate around “a minimum of consensus”. The dissertation focuses on how identities and categories are created and shaped in these specific speech situations. For example how the construction of a particular problem involves malleable and constantly ongoing identity creation. It is mainly in the formulation of the pupils’ capacity and competence that different attributions are made. Finally, the study argues that conversation is both a governed and intended action and an action with unforeseen elements and it is here that social order constantly is sought to be established