Social capital and local development in Swedish rural districts

This paper studies local social capital in two Swedish rural districts. It concentrates on the relations between local political/public bodies and local development groups. The political bodies have acted somewhat differently towards local development initiatives in the two districts. This has resulted in differences in the number of development groups and in the social capital of local culture, leisure and service environments. There are, however, few examples of social capital in these environments spreading to changes in production environments, in the form of e.g. attitudes to entrepreneurship, risktaking, etc. The study supports the view that private and public actors can change local social capital. Local organizations who act as intermediate nodes between the local groups and the political bodies seem to be of special importance. However, our results suggest that changing local social capital is a long-term mission that demands sustainable work.

"De står tillsammans och försöker förstå det ofattbara" : Medierade sorgeyttringar i svensk nyhetsjournalistik

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine news journalism covering expressions of mourning related to violent or unexpected deaths. What rituals for mourning are brought out in media and do media present guidance to how mourners should behave?   The questions examined were: What characterised news events that leaded to texts on expressions of mourning? How was grief framed? Which narrative patterns were there in the texts? How was the deceased represented? How were the mourners represented?   165 texts, from Swedish daily newspapers, covering 93 different news events were analysed. The methods were mainly discourse analysis with focus on identities and relations, but also semiotic analysis with focus on staging and symbols and narrative analysis with focus on patterns for storytelling.   The result showed that a news story about ordinary people expressing their feelings of grief has elements of melodrama. The news story is based on the myth of the victim, and formed as a typical story where equilibrium is disturbed when the inconceivable happens and the mourners can by their actions restore equilibrium. The paradigms behind are the opposites life – death and good – evil.    The deceased is represented as a victim in a mythic sense. The most important qualities of a victim are youth, innocence and goodness. The victim is framed as a person we could sympathise and identify with. The mourners in the texts praise the victim and sanctify the place where the victim died with candles, roses and notes. The mourners are essential to the story; they create identification and an identity that include us as readers in a community and a discourse of mourning and mourners. The ordinary people who appear as mourners in the texts are relatives and close friends of the victim, but also mourning tourists, media chosen friends and anonymous women who are represented, in a stereotypical way, as the professional female mourner who weep over the deceased. In some texts celebrities appear as mourners of ordinary people, and they personalize how the distinction between public and private is erased in popular journalism. They also might give a kind of legitimacy to the way media frame the story about ordinary people mourning the innocent victim.   Some texts had a partly diverging story. If the victim, in some aspect, could not be framed as innocent the paradigm good – evil became problematic. When victims or mourners had foreign origin the contrast us – them was added.  In some texts the ethical code for Swedish journalists was disregarded, mainly by publishing information on ethnicity or by interviewing children and people in shoc

Guillain-Barré syndrome : disability, quality of life, illness experiences and use of healthcare

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to provide a comprehensive description of how individuals may be affected by GuillainBarré syndrome (GBS), in terms of on body function, activity, and participation as well as on healthrelated quality of fife, and describe changes over time during the first 2 years after onset. Other aims were to describe the use of healthcare and patient satisfaction, and to report on the subjective experiences of failing ill with GBS. Methods: In Papers I-II 42 patients diagnosed with GBS were followed for 2 years with repeated evaluations of functioning, health-related quality of life and coping capacity. Assessment of functioning included testing of muscle strength, facial functions, grip strength, 10 meter walking, manual dexterity, balance, motor performance, pain, fatigue and respiratory function. Measures of sensory functions were performed by vibration, paraesthesia and pinprick/light touch. Measures of disease-related variables included the discase-specific Hughes Scale, falls and autonomic dysfunction. Independence in activities of daily living (ADL) was assessed via the Barthel Index and extended Katz ADL Index. Frequency of social/lifestyle activities was assessed via the Frenchay Activity Index. Health-related quality of fife was assessed via the Sickness Impact Profile and coping capacity via the Sense of , Coherence Scale. Evaluations were performed primarily as home visits at five occasions during the 2-year followup period. In Paper III the use of health-care, patient satisfaction and impact on caregivers during the 2-year period were investigated. Paper IV was a qualitative study. Participants were interviewed at 2 years after onset of GBS. An interview guide was used with three thematic areas: experience of onset of GBS, thoughts regarding the diagnosis and illness experience during hospital care. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using content analysis. Results: Mean age of the 42 patients was 52 years. Twenty-four patients (57%) were male, 16 patients (38%) had a pre-existing illness, 36 patients (86%) had immunomodulatory treatment in the acute phase, and nine patients (21 %) required ventilator support for 5-287 days (Papers I-III). Most significant improvement in muscular speed and strength occurred within the first year after onset of GBS, especially in the first 6 months. For some individuals there was a continuing improvement during the whole study-period. At 2 years after GBS onset 55% of patients had reduced muscle strength in the lower body, 31 % had reduced grip strength, 48% reported paraesthesia, 33% experienced pain, and 40% fatigue (Paper I). Most significant improvement in ADL-capacity occurred the first 6 months after GBS onset. There was no significant change in social/lifestyle activities at 2 years after onset compared to a retrospective measure before onset of GBS. Seven patients (17%) were on sick leave or had. retired due to residual deficits of GBS at 2 years after onset Regarding health-related quality of life, the physical dimensions of the Sickness Impact Profile showed significant improvement the first year after onset and the psychosocial dimensions the first 6 months. Scores on the Sense of Coherence Scale were stable over the 2- year period (Paper II). Duration of in-patient hospital stay was more than 3 months for 26% of patients. Rehabilitation accounted for the major part of care after GBS. Visits to physical therapists in primary care or day-visits at rehabilitation centers accounted for 74% of the outpatient care during the 2-year follow-up. Patient satisfaction with the received care was overall high. Dissatisfaction was reported regarding cost of care and disease-specific information. Several patients had informal help from an informal caregiver during the 2 years. Spouses of the patients expressed a heightened concern and responsibility (Paper III). Thirty-five of the 42 patients participated in an interview. They described their experiences of the onset as either an incomprehensible, prolonged deterioration or as a frightening rapid onset. Regarding the diagnosis, the theme confidence in recovery dominated. They relied heavily on the reassurance of a positive prognosis. As illness progressed during the initial hospital care the participants described fear and insecurity in a vulnerable situation, a hopeful improvement but also an alarmingly slow recovery (Paper IV). Conclusions: During the first 6 months after GBS onset the primarily recovery occurred. Rehabilitation must therefore start early and the prognosis of recovery can be estimated on the grade of recovery at 6 months. During the period from 1 year to 2 years recovery was evident in a few patients. These patients need continuing rehabilitation. Disability was seen in about 25% of patients at 2 years after onset. Psychosocial support should be included early in the rehabilitation for patients identified to have a slow, incomplete recovery. GBS may have widespread impact in several life areas over time and suggest that health professionals need to have a broad, longterm perspective when treating patients with this disorder

Kamp för bygden : En etnologisk studie av lokalt utvecklingsarbete

When collective action for community is defined as local development or as a struggle for survival different understandings are in focus. Politically, this kind of community action is defined as local development and understood in terms of growth and economics. An economic approach to community action is also emphasised in the EU-programmes that support local development groups and projects. On the other hand local groups describe their activities as a struggle for community and community survival. Inspired by feministic research approaches and with an interest in human aspects and values this study investigates meanings of community action as experienced and expressed by rural inhabitants and activists. The study is based on fieldwork that was carried out in a small rural community in the northern inlands of Sweden: Trehörningsjö. Since the middle of the 1990s, the women in Trehörningsjö have driven collective action to uphold the community. With its point of departure in the community and expanding into the arenas of reserach and politics, the study takes on the form of a reflexive research process in which the researcher's former knowledge and new understandings are made visible and discussed parallel with the interpretations made. The main focus of the study is the activist's demand of voice, visibility and worth. The first chapter presents the local community and provides a background to the study. The chapter includes an account of the reflexive approach that widened the field of research from a local to a translocal study of community action. In chapters two, three, four and five the struggle for community is reflected through fieldwork experiences in Trehörningsjö and other arenas beyond the village. Situated events and instances of collective action such as the fight for the local health care centre, are analysed as symbolic expressions of community values and rural importance. From chapter two and onwards, the study follows the footsteps of the leading female activist in and beyond the community itself; that is, the day-to-day work, meetings, conferences and other places where community action is acted out. The struggle for community is proven to focus on translocal rather than local action. In chapter six the fieldwork experiences - that tell about resistance and a struggle for community values and perspectives - are placed in the wider context of the rural development movement, local development research and governmental rural policy in Sweden. On all these arenas community action tend to be interpreted as local development in line with a growth perspective, rather than as community protests and struggles that expresses other meanings. Chapter seven takes the analyses and discussion further, and relates community struggle to concepts such as civil society and social economy. Anthony Giddens concept of life politics and Alberto Meluccis concept of collective action are used to deepen the analysis on how humane meanings and relation based aspects of community action are made invisible on the political "growht and development" agenda. Community struggle presents a possibility for rural inhabitants to (re)define and reclaim their community and themselves as important and valuable. However, to be able to understand what the concept of community struggle expresses, and demands, it needs to be acknowledged as a form of action that has the potential to challenge established bureaucratic and political defintions, which, in practice, proves to be difficult

The Impact of Grief : Experiences of participating as a mourner in the news

The aim of the thesis is to investigate the experiences of mourners of participating in news reports about grief in connection with crime and accidents. There are two overarching research questions. How do the bereaved experience their encounters with, and treatment by, journalists - what do they think of journalists’ motives, strategies, methods and ethics? How do the bereaved use journalism, i.e. what are their motives and strategies for participation, and how do they perceive their relations with journalists and the consequences of having been interviewed? The theoretical underpinnings are provided by scholarship on source relations, (encounters with and negotiations between journalists and news sources), news constructions (narrative components and patterns in grief journalism) and journalistic ethics, with a particular focus on an ethics of proximity, i.e. the ethical dimensions of people’s relations and encounters. The empirical material is comprised of qualitative interviews with 22 respondents who featured, in their capacity as mourners, in Swedish news reports of deaths connected with crime and accidents. A strategic sample was made with the aim of attaining as much variation as possible among respondents above all in their relationship to the deceased and cause of death, but also in terms of the attention given to the event in the media, the number of contacts with journalists, and how contact was made. The perception of the respondents is that journalists wanted to talk to them because the event had news value and was of general interest. In dramatic cases, the victim’s next of kin, in particular, felt that journalists also had commercial motives. As the respondents see it, the strategies used by journalists can involve trying to persuade the bereaved to participate, and steering them so that the news interview and text can be shaped in accordance with established narratives of grief journalism. Some respondents said journalists had shown them respect, while others felt they had been treated with a lack of consideration. The findings are ambivalent in that journalists’ methods were experienced positively by some respondents and negatively by others. Involvement in news reporting can offer redress, giving respondents a chance to pay tribute to the deceased. It can also provide comfort, as it can be incorporated into the mourning process and make it possible to share one’s grief both with people one knows and with strangers. The study also found that respondents have strategies of their own. In their dealings with journalists, they can negotiate for control by insisting on reading the text before publication or favouring journalists they perceive as more sympathetic and resisting those they dislike. Respondents’ relations with and perceptions of journalists can be conflictual or consensual, and characterized by a passive or active attitude. Journalists can be seen as allies and potential assets, or as enemies and a source of insecurity. If the death was dramatic and attracted considerable media attention, relations become more conflictual, with respondents who feel cornered liable to ‘attack’ journalists. This can be triggered by shock. However, shock can also numb close relatives emotionally, making them indifferent and their attitude one of passive acceptance

Kamp för bygden : En etnologisk studie av lokalt utvecklingsarbete

When collective action for community is defined as local development or as a struggle for survival different understandings are in focus. Politically, this kind of community action is defined as local development and understood in terms of growth and economics. An economic approach to community action is also emphasised in the EU-programmes that support local development groups and projects. On the other hand local groups describe their activities as a struggle for community and community survival. Inspired by feministic research approaches and with an interest in human aspects and values this study investigates meanings of community action as experienced and expressed by rural inhabitants and activists. The study is based on fieldwork that was carried out in a small rural community in the northern inlands of Sweden: Trehörningsjö. Since the middle of the 1990s, the women in Trehörningsjö have driven collective action to uphold the community. With its point of departure in the community and expanding into the arenas of reserach and politics, the study takes on the form of a reflexive research process in which the researcher's former knowledge and new understandings are made visible and discussed parallel with the interpretations made. The main focus of the study is the activist's demand of voice, visibility and worth. The first chapter presents the local community and provides a background to the study. The chapter includes an account of the reflexive approach that widened the field of research from a local to a translocal study of community action. In chapters two, three, four and five the struggle for community is reflected through fieldwork experiences in Trehörningsjö and other arenas beyond the village. Situated events and instances of collective action such as the fight for the local health care centre, are analysed as symbolic expressions of community values and rural importance. From chapter two and onwards, the study follows the footsteps of the leading female activist in and beyond the community itself; that is, the day-to-day work, meetings, conferences and other places where community action is acted out. The struggle for community is proven to focus on translocal rather than local action. In chapter six the fieldwork experiences - that tell about resistance and a struggle for community values and perspectives - are placed in the wider context of the rural development movement, local development research and governmental rural policy in Sweden. On all these arenas community action tend to be interpreted as local development in line with a growth perspective, rather than as community protests and struggles that expresses other meanings. Chapter seven takes the analyses and discussion further, and relates community struggle to concepts such as civil society and social economy. Anthony Giddens concept of life politics and Alberto Meluccis concept of collective action are used to deepen the analysis on how humane meanings and relation based aspects of community action are made invisible on the political "growht and development" agenda. Community struggle presents a possibility for rural inhabitants to (re)define and reclaim their community and themselves as important and valuable. However, to be able to understand what the concept of community struggle expresses, and demands, it needs to be acknowledged as a form of action that has the potential to challenge established bureaucratic and political defintions, which, in practice, proves to be difficult

Inhyrning av arbetskraft under företrädesrättsperioden : är detta ett kringgående av LAS?

Validerat; 20101217 (root

Det rättsliga skyddet mot invasiva arter : vid införsel av gnagare som sällskapsdjur

In this essay I have examined the legal protection against the threat to the biological diversity that the import of pet animals and the releasing of them into the environment can result in. I’ve focused on non-indigenous rodents as they are being imported to Sweden to be kept as pet animals. There are regulations for import of pet animals within the EU and from countries outside of the EU, but these mostly regulate the import of common pets, for example dogs and cats. The main objective of the regulations is to provide animal welfare, not protection of the biological diversity. Notwithstanding the fact that non-indigenous rodents could mean a serious threat to the biological diversity if being introduced in the natural environment, the regulations in principle permits free import of up to five rodents. Furthermore there are no prohibitions concerning the release of pet animals into the environment which conduces to a weak legal protection for the biological diversity.Validerat; 20110615 (anonymous