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  • 1.
    Hedin, Alma
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    “En brygga mellan människor och resten av samhället”: En antropologisk studie om en ideell verksamhets sociala och praktiska betydelse för människor i social utsatthet2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    I den här studien undersöks vilken social och praktisk funktion en ideell verksamhet fyller för personer i social utsatthet. Syftet med studien är att ge en holistisk bild av vad verksamheten betyder för besökarna, och hur den platsen formas av de som är där. Studien ger dessutom en förståelse för vilken roll delar av det civila samhället fyller för både individer, och för samhället i stort. Empirin som ligger till grund för studien baseras på observationer och samtal som gjorts under ett två månader långt fältarbete på en ideell verksamhet i Stockholm. Empirin analyseras med teorier om socialt kapital, sociala nätverk, fiktiv familj, tid, plats och agens. Studien visar att det är sociala behov som motiverar människor i social utsatthet att besöka verksamheten, och verksamheten som undersöks beskrivs som en social plats med specifika normer och regler som besökarna tillsammans upprätthåller. Dessutom ges flera exempel på hur verksamheten kan öka besökarnas sociala nätverk och sociala kapital. Den ideella verksamheten jämförs med en fiktiv familj, eftersom relationerna som formas där liknar biologiska familjerelationer i fler avseenden. Därtill visar studien att personalen på verksamheten går utanför sina officiella arbetsuppgifter och ger en dold hjälp, vilket innebär social och praktisk hjälp som inte är synlig för resten av samhället. 

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  • 2.
    Saaresaho, Stella
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Ethnographic case study on Feminist commodity networks and sisterhood building in Melbourne, Australia2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines feminist commodity networks through an ethnographic case study of QVWC SHOP in Melbourne, Australia. The work is built through an emic perspective on the understanding of selling, producing, and buying through the QVWC SHOP. The emic perspective is also connected to the larger systems, such as social networks and community building. QVWC SHOP is a store focusing on selling locally made items by women, including cis, trans and nonbinary. QVWC SHOP is part of the Queen Victoria Women’s centre in Melbourne, which is a non-profit building that rents space for different organisations for women’s needs. The centre is also an important cultural space, organizing events and exhibitions around the year. In 2020, the Women’s centre opened the QVWC SHOP, that they promote as a feminist shop selling goods made by women, for women. The focus in this thesis is on understanding how the shop builds a community for the women involved with the store, reflect over what feminist commodities are and what it means to be a producer, employee, or consumer at the QVWC SHOP. The reflections are built through data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews with interlocutors from the field, as well as relevant theoretical works. Furthermore, themes of care, sustainability, attachment, and solidarity are all important in the work. Overall, this thesis focuses on the processes of creating social networks and community building in the context of a feminist shop.

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  • 3.
    Bernal Liller, Gabriela
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Human-Mangrove Entanglements in Shyamnagar, Bangladesh2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines the intricate relationship between mangroves and humans in Shyamnagar, Bangladesh. Mangroves in Shyamnagar are found both in the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest on earth, and in adaptation projects called nature based solutions (NbS), framed by the resilience narrative. The first part offers an introduction to these discourses, including the role of NGOs and governmental institutions, and critically analyzes the ways in which capitalist and modernist worldviews have influenced the establishment of new interaction zones between humans and mangroves through NbS projects, highlighting the omission of power dynamics and histories of dispossession. The second part delves into the nuanced relationships with the mangrove that transcend dominant global and organizational discourses. By emphasizing the agency of the mangrove as an active participant and co-creator of society in Shyamnagar, the boundaries between humans and nature, and communities and non-humans, are blurred. This challenges the notion of human exceptionalism and underscores the interconnectedness of all beings in shaping local landscapes, dynamics, and identities. The final part explores the relationships of care between humans and mangroves, recognizing the significance of care and affect in shaping human subjectivities and relationships with the biophysical environment. This thesis thereby emphasizes the importance of maintaining multispecies care even within practices that introduce anthropocentric, capitalistic, and market-oriented worldviews. By critically examining these dimensions, this thesis offers insights into the complex interactions between mangroves and humans in Shyamnagar, ultimately contributing to a broader understanding of the interplay between nature, society, and resilience. 

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  • 4.
    Bellini, Francesca
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Living in the container: Space and relationships inside Lipa Temporary Reception Center2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    The Lipa Temporary Reception Centre is a transit camp, located in the North-West part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for only single men who cross the Balkan Route to enter the European Union territory through the Croatian border.

    This thesis aims to describe the life inside the camp, combining an analysis of Lipa architecture with the experiences of the people who transited through there. A focus on space and relationships will then drive this thesis, reflecting on how the transit camp features and stylistic decisions affected people's experiences: discussing how places and individuals mutually influenced each other in such a context. More specifically, it will highlight the broad political implications that led to the opening of migrant reception centres like Lipa and discuss their hypothetical temporary nature, studying the roles played by European Union Institutions and non-governmental organizations within the field.

    This research is the outcome of ethnographic fieldwork conducted inside the Lipa Temporary Reception Centre from November 8th until December 19th and from the investigation of the existing literature regarding the design of camps and the Balkan Route. 

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  • 5.
    Svensson, Jennifer
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Love is that I want You to Exist: An anthropologial study of time and crisis2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
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  • 6.
    Nordgren, Ossian
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Multiple Futures, Diverse Paths: A Study of How Vietnamese Blockchain Professionals Imagine, Enact andNegotiate Futures2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis dives into the future imaginaries of blockchain professionals in Hanoi and Saigon. Looking at sites of futures enactment, and constant negotiations around an emerging technology, economy, and start-up ecology. The blockchain industry has risen to prominence in the socio-economic and technological imaginary of geeks, financial speculators, and states around the globe. In this thesis, I investigate a hitherto underexplored context of technological imagination. Based on physical and digital ethnographic fieldwork among blockchain professionals in Hanoi and Saigon and through an amalgamated theoretical lens with nodes in the anthropology of future imaginaries, emerging technologies, digital materiality, and anthropological theories of value, I set out to map and critically engage with the modes by which professionals in and around the Vietnamese blockchain industry imagine the future. These future imaginaries appear not only in speculative, predictive, and hopeful proclamation but too in present enactment; thus, doings in real time become crucial in this investigation. Technologies of imagination often deviate in form and teleology, so consequently, processual negotiations are continually unfolding. Convoluted alliances within actors are often placed at odds, or in line, with broader imaginaries predicated on different levels of social scale. These spaces between imagined future and enacted reality, along with how these are negotiated amongst, ultimately provide complex embedded contexts through which socio-technical assemblages, conceptualizations of value, and emerging phenomena can better be known in ways beyond techno-solutionist or -determinist narratives and critiques of multiple futures.

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  • 7.
    Canale, Guadalupe
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Sanctuary: The Lifeworlds of Seaweeds in Loch Hourn2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    As living beings, seaweeds exist at the periphery of people’s awareness, and not much is known about what they mean to people, and the relationships we can have with them. They are useful, versatile commodities, and multitask as foodstuffs for people and other beings, as sources of biofuel and medicinal compounds, and the list goes on... but, what else?

    This work seeks to shed light on the kinds of relations that people can have with seaweeds when relationships of use are purposefully bracketed out, in order to understand their social and symbolic worlds. To this end, during the months of November through January, the author discussed the perceptions of seaweeds with the neighbours of the area of Loch Hourn, a sea-loch (fjord) in the western seaboard of the Scottish Highlands, and some other nearby townships. The present study interlaces participant observation nuanced by the winter and the weather, and interviews, to explore how, through relations of biosociality, companionship, awareness and interanimation of the environment, alternative configurations of knowing, Gaelic tradition, symbolism, and hope, seaweeds embody different aspects of the meaning of‘sanctuary’.

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  • 8.
    Trägårdh, Björn
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Surrender to Dagaa: An ethnographic study of Fishing in Zanzibar2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis explores Zanzibari fishing practices and the fishermen’s relation to the ocean, within the context of the global political economy. The study focuses on catching small pelagic fish, locally known as dagaa, which has become vital for food security in Zanzibar. By combining anthropological theories of phenomenology and political economy, the thesis identifies capitalism and the need for cash as constituting a metabolic rift that alienates fishermen from the ocean, where the ocean is seen as more of an industrial landscape to earn a wage rather than a landscape to dwell with. The thesis further expands the analysis to discuss overexploitation in relation to the global economy with a worldview of unlimited goods.

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  • 9.
    Angwald, Anton
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    The Illumination of Money: An Ethnography of Bitcoin in El Salvador2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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.

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  • 10.
    Asplund, David
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    The Negotiation and Crafting of Identity Among Transnational and/or Transracial Adult Adoptees in Sweden2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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. 

     

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  • 11.
    Niki, Ronàld
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Thrifting: Relating To Places, Second-Hand Practices, And Ethical Considerations: A Sensuous Study Of Contemporary Second-Hand Consumption In The Stockholm Municipality2023Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis engages with the multifaceted socio-material entanglements of thrifting. Its purpose is to focus on how people attach meaning to thrifting, how they relate to thrifted items, and how different second-hand places affect the overall experience of thrifting. It explores the thrifting practice around the Stockholm municipality. Second-hand materials are approached with a sensuous method in order to understand their significance in different spatiotemporal settings. The settings involve the physical thrifting places and items that have been thrifted in the past, thus situating them away from second-hand stores. It focuses on how places affect the thrifting practice and how different material elements affect interlocutors' perceptions. There is an unconscious and conscious classification of socio-material entanglements in regard to items and spaces. This thesis also contemplates the socioeconomic situations involved in the districts and how that affects the perception of different stores. Additionally, it examines research participants' ethical considerations and abstractions regarding sustainability and consumerism attached to the thrifting experience.

  • 12.
    Terceiro, Luciana
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Digital Accessibility in the Making: Introducing new component parts into the assemblage of user experience design2022Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis aims to investigate digital accessibility in the making through the theoretical lens of the assemblage theory. Digital accessibility is a characteristic of digital products and services like websites that allows people with disabilities to access and use them. Although its relevance, digital accessibility is not present in many technological objects. This work intends to describe the adoption of accessibility practices in developing projects and products, focusing mainly on design activities. My leading field site was a tech company located in Stockholm, Sweden, where I observed the “accessibility project” for almost three months, from October to December 2021. During this period, I followed how the company, particularly one of its teams, reacted to new environmental factors, the challenges they faced, and how the process of incorporating these new elements was, from not having accessibility presented in the produced artefacts to incorporating accessibility as a routine. In addition, the study also counted on the participation of Brazilian design practitioners through interviews. The methods were observant participation, semi-structured interviews, and oral accounts. 

    The main theoretical frameworks were the assemblage theory developed by Manuel DeLanda (2016) and the theory of affordances by Jenny L. Davis (2020). I attempt to analyse the organisation and its nested structures as assemblages, and the processes of changes in their parameters, creating new territory and new code through the adoption of accessibility repertoire. I furthermore analysed the relations between the affordances of technological objects produced by the company’s assemblage, as well as the affordance of accessibility frameworks. 

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  • 13.
    Arleskär, Albin
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    “It’s the machine’s fault”: An ethnographic study of the domestication of Swedish production forests2022Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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. 

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  • 14.
    Asshoff, Rasmus
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Welcome to VRChat: An ethnographic study on embodiment and immersion in virtual reality2022Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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

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  • 15.
    Dekavalla, Georgia
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    "Where there is room to fight for your beliefs that is the ideal place": Imagination and agency of Athenians with migratory background2022Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    In the globalized world, border regimes are ambiguous, withdrawn or reinforced based on who approaches them, where and how. Borders are equally the boundaries that permeate spaces of nation-states and cut across them through racialized, gendered, and classed divisions. Following the so called "migration crisis" in Europe of 2015, there has been a wave of research documenting how practices of bordering and othering dehumanize asylum seekers, violating their rights. In this thesis, I proceed from similar observations to see how such practices, together with experiences resulting from them, affect the possibilities of agency and imagination of a common space on behalf of people with migratory background. Employing the idea of hybridity, I maintain that while the responsibility for atrocities related to migration and bordering should always remain on violators, whether official institutions or individuals, their persistence should not be seen as foreclosing agency, imagination, or practices of building a future common space on behalf of people with migratory background. The hybrid position that these people occupy does not necessarily only sustain their disempowerment, but it also equips them with unique possibilities for agency. Neither seems there to be any predefined path from exposure to harsh violations of one's rights to disempowerment. The possibilities for common and welcoming places to which everyone has a right appear through an engaged and equal attention to migrants' own agency, imagination, and capabilities, rather than through an exclusive attention to their vulnerability or a neoliberal celebration of multiculturalism. 

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  • 16.
    Gidlöf, Sandra
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Becoming Raggare: Materiality Through the Car: A Sensory Exploration of Car Phenomenology Within the Raggar Subculture2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Raggare is a unique and rather understudied subculture within Scandinavia that emerged in the 1950s and has been vibrant since. They are noted for their affection towards 1950s American aesthetics and, most importantly, American vintage cars. In Sweden, these cars are known as raggarbilar, and I contend these vehicles are central to how social interactions occur between raggare. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how cars create social bonds by looking at raggarbilar through the lens of raggare and in this way investigating how and why the cars fascinate people. I use sensory methodology to examine how cars are approached and embraced by raggare, arguing that sensuous experiences are fundamental to the perception of the materiality of cars. Theoretically, I use materiality and material culture as guidelines for how objects enforce cultural and social significance. More specifically, Alfred Gell’s notion of the technology of enchantment is utilized to understand the effects and social agency of artefacts and I develop this notion further with what I call the sensory enchantment of materiality. During ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork that took place in different garages in Västernorrland county, along with semi-structured interviews and the usage of visual instruments, I explored the interconnectedness between cars, people, and environment to investigate how cars are objects capable of enchantment and persuasion to raggare. Overall, raggarbilar are multi-sensory objects that are perceived as different from other cars and create certain phenomenological experiences that are shared between raggare, and thus, bring the subculture together. 

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  • 17.
    Vulli, Aliisa
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Environmental activism in the age of digital media: Netnography of Save Bugoma Forest Campaign2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis is a netnographic study of Save Bugoma Forest Campaign and digitally enhanced environmental activism in Uganda. Save Bugoma Forest Campaign is a crusade run by a loose coalition of Ugandan environmentalists who oppose a planned sugarcane plantation project in Bugoma Central Forest Reserve, western Uganda. By examining who the activists envisage as their audiences, what online platforms they use and how, what messages they intend to send, and how the forest is represented in online narratives, I attempt to find out how Ugandan environmental activists use digital technologies as part of their campaigning strategies, and what the digital narratives created in these practices can reveal about their relation to nature. The study is built as a netnography, a research method developed by Robert E. Kozinets, which combines online participant observations, online interactions, and semi-structured online interviews. I highlight how digital platforms, social media in particular, should be understood as a tool for campaign activities or as an infrastructure within which the struggle takes place. I also show how nature receives multiple and dynamic meanings in digital narratives which are affected by the audience of choice. The findings indicate that, in addition to better understanding movements’ online practises, netnographic research methods can also give valuable insights into understanding culturally and socially bound phenomena and lend to a deep and rich reporting of the results.

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  • 18.
    Urlich Lennon, Gabriel
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Making the Imaginary: Worldbuilders, and the Art of Ontogenous Play2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    How we imagine and the potency of alternative imaginings to socio-political concerns are vital questions for social science, and worldbuilding is a particular and understudied method of doing so. It is the creative making of fictional, imaginative worlds, offering a potential alternative method to imagine otherwise. This paper ethnographically explicates this craft through detailing how creators, known as worldbuilders, make their worlds, demonstrating how it is generative and impactful for them emotionally, intellectually, and politically. It is based of three months of online ethnographic/netnographic fieldwork across the multiple online ‘sites’ worldbuilders are active, particularly a forum and chatroom, as well as digital interviews with sixteen individual worldbuilders. I argue that worldbuilding is a process of toying with ontologies, which I call ontogenous play. I explain this through detailing what is dubbed making the imaginary – the worldbuilding process – going through the particulars of the process and the experiences of interlocutors, demonstrating how one achieves situated transcendence through it, and the generativity of that. In light of these observations, I also argue that worldbuilding is an art, attending to the ramifications of that designation. I draw upon anthropological understandings of making, processes, liminality, and ontologies to advance the argument, as well as the emergent scholarship on worldbuilding from ‘sub-creation studies’, and the erudite hypotheses of my interlocutors. 

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    Lennon - Making the Imaginary
  • 19.
    Gygax, Sebastian
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Shedding a Different Light on MGTOW: An Anthropological Exploration of the Emic Perspective of Belonging to MGTOW2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    In contrast to how anthropologists usually study groups that we readily sympathize with, this thesis sets out to create an understanding of one of the most anti-mainstream groups in Sweden: Men Going Their Own Way. Through combining an engaged fieldwork with extended interviews, I aim to explore the emic experience of finding, being, and practicing MGTOW. With the aid of certain theoretical frameworks and concepts concerning feelings of tension and frustration, processes of discipline and exclusion, and acts of everyday resistance, my informants' experiences and accounts are understood and contextualized. In addition to contributing to a very thin field of academic knowledge production around MGTOW, I hope to nuance the polemic debate through which "the other" is perceived.

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  • 20.
    Lorge, Malin
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    The State and the Concept of Public Art: Explored through Policy Assemblage at a Swedish Public Art Agency2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis explores the concept of public art within a Swedish state agency called Public Art Agency Sweden through ethnography conducted at their virtual meetings from the fall of 2020 to the beginning of 2021. With the analytical tool of assemblages, the concept of public art is explored in terms of becoming and contestation through looking at policies within the agencies in relation to employee’s everyday endeavours. I suggest that this gives an insight into the intersection between ideas and practices within a state agency that strives to make public art a meaningful contribution and integral part of Swedish society under the premisses of the Swedish national cultural political goal. As such the contribution of this thesis is analytical attention to public art in broader governance discourses within an area of the state and culture.

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  • 21.
    Spengler, Franz
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Vad kan man göra - The redistribution of a disaster2021Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Doing ethnographic work on the effects of COVID 19, I looked at how food service businesses were affected. I found that the government’s selective distribution of aid and lacking guidance had forced them to prioritize accommodating customers over their own safety. I look at the economic, mental, and physical risks imposed by this policy, and find that people cope with them through solidarity and creativity.

    In this, I draw on theories addressing the state, war, emotional labor, and disaster. My understanding of the state explains how pressure is created for workers to deal with the situation, and emotional labor explains more of the burden, and how they bear it. Vulnerability theory helps explain downward redistribution of the pandemic’s burden, and I develop its core points further to capture the socially deleterious impact of lasting disasters. Theories of war and solidarity explain how normality and everyday life are impacted by the disaster, and how people restore a sense of routine and normality cooperatively. I conclude that long term disasters need to be further studied and better understood because of their capacity to worsen and entrench inequality.

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    Spengler 2021 Vad kan man göra The redistribution of a disaster
  • 22.
    Silva Fortes, Bartira
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    DEMOCRACY, A TRAGIC CARNIVALESQUE HERO: The Narratives of a Transnational Social Movement Against the Coup in Brazil2020Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    The concern that democracy in the largest country in Latin America could drive toward fascism has surfaced as a point of departure for the creation of forms of resistance among Brazilians in the diaspora. This thesis addresses this development by bringing to light the narratives of FIBRA, a transnational social movement created in 2016 to denounce the coup in Brazil. By combining militant, translocal and online ethnography, this thesis explores how FIBRA has constructed its narratives surrounding the erosion of democracy in Brazil. It looks at the experience of Brazilian migrants involved in campaigning against the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the assassination of the activist Marielle Franco, and the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. Anthropological theories on social movement, democracy and narrative are revisited in order to investigate FIBRA’s role in shaping ideas and expectations towards democracy. This thesis also explores ways to bring the artistic practices in the field into the anthropological text. I use elements of Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater, Greek Tragedy and Carnival in my writing and employ these artistic languages as conceptual tools to develop a notion of democracy as a tragic carnivalesque hero. In the spirit of the Brazilian carnivalesque, this thesis celebrates the subversive dimension of the relation between the “playful”, the “political”, and the “academic”.

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    FORTES BARTIRA Master Thesis Democracy a tragic carnivalesque hero
  • 23.
    Lyrefelt, Jonatan
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Echoes of the past: The legacy of the Herero-Nama genocide in Namibia2020Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis explores the legacy of the Herero-Nama genocide that occurred in 1904 to 1908 by examining the descendant’s narrative in contrast to the preeminent state narrative. I investigate both these narratives from the emic perspective of the Herero people in Namibia, who today are a minority group. By following the narrative, I discover the fundamental emplotments and multidimensionality in the genocide narrative imperative which are tribal democracy, nationhood and ancestral land. My informants imply that the genocide is a neglected and buried memory in contemporary Namibia, and I apply theoretical concepts such as Werbner’s immediate memory and anti-memory, but also Trouillot’s notion of silencing to understand in what way the state narrative is being amplified by the ruling government, subsequently silencing the genocide. At the same time, I also want to see how the genocide narrative is being maintained in a milieu of silencing forces. The genocide is still a sensitive topic among the descendants who feel that the dignity of their ancestors has been tarnished throughout the 20th century. In Herero religion ancestor spirits hold an utterly pivotal role as mediators between the living and god.

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  • 24.
    Walmsley, Walmsley
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Masculinity and Dance: Male Dancers, Gender and Society in Stockholm, Sweden2020Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines the conditions for professional and aspiring professional male theatre dancers across two separate field sites in Stockholm, Sweden. By analysing these conditions I aim to discuss how hegemonic masculine social norms inform and affect the lives of these male dancers and the consequences of those norms for the wider male population. Through interview, unobtrusive observation and dance participation I will scrutinise the male experience of dance work and training in order to understand the lives of professional male dancers and their perception of themselves and their work, as part of a very small minority of men in Swedish society. Through a comparative analysis of dance and sport, I suggest that the stark gender imbalance in dance work and training is indicative of a larger pattern of hegemonic masculine social norms that stymie male social development and undermine wider societal efforts towards gender equality.

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  • 25.
    Eikestam, Linda
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Remember Me by My Goat: Stories of Relatedness in More-than-Human Worlds of Maasai Women in Kenya2020Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis explores the lives of Maasai women today in general, and in particular as seen through the lens of one woman, and her social network in Kajiado County, southern Kenya. By using a storytelling approach, I let the women’s own vivid stories, thoughts and priorities stay in focus. While the women’s stories reveal personal details in their lives, I argue that their stories also broaden the perspective of what it is to be a Maasai woman today. Inspired by a framework of multispecies relations, especially the concept of relatedness, I look at the relationships – to both humans and non-humans – which shapes the women's lives, possibilities, decisions, and concerns. As I explore the women's more-than-human worlds, the agency of cows, goats, sheep, and even flies are acknowledged. In combination with inspiration from the framework of feminist political ecology – especially the concepts of resource access and displacement – I bridge understandings about how multispecies relations affect the women, with reflections on education and working situations, and matters of land. With this thesis, I wish to contribute to and broaden the literature and often stereotyped image of what it is to be a Maasai, especially a Maasai woman. 

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  • 26.
    Béthaz, Marzia
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    To Eat an Idea: On the transformative potential of engaging with local cereal in a mountain territory2020Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This study investigates the values expressed and implemented through local cereal and cereal-related products such as bread and flour in the alpine region of Valle d’Aosta (north-west Italy), contributing to the existing body of literature on food values. It is based on anthropological fieldwork among people engaging with cereal both professionally and non-professionally (such as bakers, farmers, agronomists and other categories of people involved in the cereal sector) and on theories drawn from food and economic anthropology, anthropological theories of value and literature on social movements. This research aims at understanding the values that inform cereal-related practices in Valle d’Aosta and that precede the relationships its inhabitants generate around cereal. Such values are intended as moral standpoints from which people engaging with cereal organise their action and conceptualise their own understanding of their practices. Values of tradition, community and individual place identity, health, environmental and socio-economic values serve as spectacles through which to grasp the vision that people engaging with cereal in Valle d’Aosta have of society, of the role of the economy, of the relationship between the community and the individual. Ultimately, cereal-related practices, based on a particular conception of the economy which puts into question the neoliberal system, are represented as tools bridging past, present and future, as the past serves as a source of inspiration to bring about a better future and to materialise it into the present, through a deeply moral endeavour.

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  • 27.
    Johansson, Therese
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Emotions and Bureaucracy at the Border: Seeking Asylum at Migrationsverket’s Service Centre2019Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Migrationsverket’s National Service Centre in Sundbyberg is a borderscape displaced from the outer contours of the nation. This borderscape of the interior, perform bordering and difference-making functions in its deciding of who gets to become a citizen, who is to be considered a legitimate refugee and in a sense who you are.

    Asylum-seekers visiting the Service Centre attempt to make sense of the maze-like bureaucratic organisation they find themselves caught up in. This thesis engages with the materialization and realization of the border, narratives about emotions in the asylum process, and the sensebreaking qualities of the bureaucratic organization of Migrationsverket as a Kafkaesque institution through participatory, narrative and engaged ethnographic methodologies.

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  • 28.
    Palaiorouta, Eleni Zoi
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Organizational Precarity: An Anthropological study of a Civil Society Organization in austerity-ridden Greece2019Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This study examines a Greek civil society organization, which is struggling to cope with the precarity caused by the environment of crisis. By looking into the austerity that prevails in Greece, I aim to discuss the connection between the Greek society and the organization, as both of them are struggling with the consequences of the crisis which brings them into a precarious position. The methods used during the fieldwork were mainly participant observation in the space of the organization, and interviews as well as informal conversations with the members and recipients of the Solidarity Association. By analyzing their discourses introduced in the thesis through ethnographic stories, I claim that the interplay between precarious labor and precarious life transforms the organization into a space of silence. I suggest that this deadening of life should not only be seen as an outcome of the long period of living under harsh conditions, but also as one of the factors which brings the organization into dissolution. By looking at the disintegration of the Solidarity Association, I discuss that its solidarian culture turns into a philanthropic one due to individualistic behaviors which I argue are one of the outcomes of people’s precarious living. This thesis focuses more on what precarity does rather on what it is and it should be seen as a contribution to the understanding of the influence that precarity has on an organization placed in the context of contemporary austerity-ridden Greece. 

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  • 29.
    Rönn, Victoria
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    "Att bli sedd är att finnas": En studie om den involverade, men ofta bortprioriterade anhörige2018Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
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  • 30.
    Linder, Elin
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Food: A Sensuous Matter of the Everyday: A sensorial exploration of material and bounded natures of mundane food practices2018Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines everyday food practices such as sensed by seven households in the city ofStockholm, Sweden. By sensuously exploring the acts of acquiring, preparing, cooking, eating,and wasting food, I analyze how food is a matter of olfactory, gustatory, auditory, tactile, andvisual significance, as much as matter per se. More specifically, I address relational andbounded aspects of food, looking at how ambient surroundings, presences of material andimmaterial factors, sensuously influence everyday experiences of food. Intrigued by the at onceinter-, extra-, and re-corporeal matters of food, I analytically position myself alongside Latour,Ingold, Douglas, and Bennett. In entertaining their theoretical lines of thoughts, using them asanalytical springboards, this thesis explores socio-material dimensions of food practices, as wellas corporeal dynamics of human-material encounters. Methodologically carried out by meansof sensuous ethnography, following Pink’s notion of participatory practice, I have during tenweeks of fieldwork—in people’s homes and in their frequented grocery stores—engaged mysenses to experientially sense the world of food, such as lived by them. In our conjoint sensorialexploration, taken-for-granted mundane understandings of what food constitutes and whatconstitutes it, have emerged as domestically diverse, bounded to sensuous perceptionsderivative of the past, carried out in the presents, and cor(po)related to the future. By surveyingsituated meanings of what is smelled when savored, tasted when flavored, seen when looked,and felt when touched, simultaneously as accounting for nonhuman matters salient to coursesof actions, the thesis remarks context-sensorial-imbued figurations of everyday food.

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    Food: A Sensuous Matter of the Everyday
  • 31.
    Askersjö, Signe
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    "I'm not a nationalist but"...: On mobilisation and identity formation of the Scottish independence movement2018Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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.

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    "I'm not a nationalist but"...
  • 32.
    Karlsson, Richard
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Mining the City: Urban Transformation and the Loss of City Space in Kiruna, Sweden2018Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines the urban transformation and deformation caused by the expansion of the local Kiirunavaara mine in Kiruna, Sweden. In 2004, the local mining company, LKAB, announced that rapid ground deformations had been discovered in central Kiruna and that buildings and residents would have to be relocated in order for production to continue. This thesis is an attempt to analyze the way that local relationships to space and place become relevant during processes of intense urban loss and renewal. By analyzing discourses and statements by residents, planners and officials, I aim to highlight the historical contingencies and responses to the loss of the urban environment and the implementation of the new city centre designed to replace the old one. More specifically, I argue that a social and economic dependency on mining preclude official contestations and alternatives to the transformation while residents find alternative ways of expressing concern. I analyze residents’ relationship to the built environment and the mining company through focusing on discourses of affect and enactment. I furthermore discuss the elite visions of the new city that despite widespread dissatisfaction emphasize shared governance and sustainability and the ways they contribute to a depoliticization of the experience of displacement. Through ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviews, this thesis contributes to an understanding of mining towns and urban anthropology of space and place in the northern hemisphere.

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    Mining the City (Thesis)
  • 33.
    Backman, Aina
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Courtroom atmospheres: Affective dynamics in court sessions of criminal matter in Vienna2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    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. 

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  • 34.
    Rodineliussen, Rasmus
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Divers Engaging Policy—Practices of Making Water2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    In this thesis I discuss how divers in Rio de Janeiro and Arraial do Cabo, Brazil, are part of a process of making water (Barnes 2014). This I do by examining the relationship between the policies of the non-governmental organization Project Aware and these divers. These policies under question concerns the growing issue of marine debris, asking divers to directly act towards a solution by removing debris, and inform about the issue. I employ the concepts habitus and the entrepreneurial self as heuristic think-tools in order to illuminate the structuring aspect of this relationship, how it affects the way policies are negotiated, embodied, and practiced in regard to society and the environment (e.g. Bourdieu 1990; Rose 1998; Gershon 2016). My argument is based on observations, interviews, and media analysis. I show how my interlocutors are engaged in making water, in hands on actions of removing debris, and in discourse making where the issue is forwarded, emphasized, and discussed. Further I illustrate the impact that local power structures hold on practices of agents (Barnes 2014; Karlsson 2015).

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  • 35.
    Tina, Vikor
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Not for me: Exclusion and self-exclusion from democracy2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Disinterest and feelings of alienation from politics keep many citizens away from active participation in the democratic process. Based on interviews with inhabitants in Skogås, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, and on participant observation at local meeting places, this thesis explores various aspects that shape people’s willingness and ability to exert power in the democratic political system, and identifies the political culture as well as personal encounters with fellow inhabitants and political representatives as two key factors. The study presents the perspectives of various inhabitants - teenagers, single moms, senior citizens, local leaders of associations and other locals with different backgrounds and lifestyles - as well as places and practices that foster political interest, know-how and solidarity, such as a tenants union and a dog park started by local dog-owners. Because politics is often studied through influential and organized agents such as activist groups and public officials, this study intends to offer an alternative approach by examining politics from the point of view of ‘ordinary citizens’ and their immediate vicinity.

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    Not for me
  • 36.
    Lindh, Kristofer
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Performance at the Edge of Apocalypse: An ethnographic study of collective identity construction in a neo-nationalist social movement in Sweden2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    In several countries of the Global North, right-wing parties are successfully mobilizing public support, influencing political debates and introducing arguments and rhetorics that draw on xenophobia, populism and ethnocentrism, ostensibly with a purpose to amplify the “national order of things” (Malkki 1992). This thesis addresses this development by providing an ethnography, based fieldwork, of the Swedish social movement Folkets Demonstration, which arranges anti-government manifestations on squares most usually in Stockholm. Drawing on classical theories on performance by Victor Turner and Erving Goffman, I investigate how the demonstrations of the movement facilitate the construction of a collective identity of “the people”, which also includes exploring the world view of the demonstrators.

    As I argue, through the socio-emotionality of the demonstrations, the movement conducts a cultural performance of national cohesion vis-à-vis the Swedish national community, cosmologically perceived as on the edge of an apocalypse due to immigration and the alleged cosmopolitanist agenda of the government. In addition, I argue that the demonstrations can be understood as strategically managed towards idealized performances of democracy. Hence, the demonstrations can be considered regressive-utopian performances of a national-democratic community, furthermore embedded in a polarization between “the people” and “the elite” and through which the collective identity of “the people” is constructed.

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  • 37.
    Birnudóttir Sigurðardóttir, Júlía
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Practicing creativity: Landscape architects make future Stockholm2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Green urban spaces are a vigorous part in cities development, all over the world (Swanwick, Dunnet, & Wooley, 2003). These spaces are persistently constructed and negotiated over a creative process, which includes a network of actors, such as clients, designers, constructors, and users. This thesis addresses this process - with a case study of landscape architects in Stockholm, and their practice of creativity. The landscape architects present one group of actors involved in the process, where they design urban spaces for the future through their creative work. It begins with a mental image, an idea, and ends with a built site, a designed space.

    In reference to practice theory (Ortner, 1984 and 2006) and the biosocial becomings approach (Ingold, 2013), I analyze how creativity as a practice is socially produced by history, culture and power, through the biosocial growth of the creative agent, the landscape architect. Referring to Hallam and Ingold ́s definition (2007, p. 3), I understand creative practice as an improvisational process. I argue that creativity is accumulated, i.e. a becoming practice amongst becoming creative agents. While investigating the practice of creativity through a traditional participant observation, I primarily focus on sounds, where I listen to the practice, and use it as a method of collecting empirical data. With that method, I enrich the registration of sensor impressions (Borneman & Hammoudi, 2009, p. 19) during my fieldwork, providing a sonic dimension to the knowledge of creative practice amongst landscape architects. 

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  • 38.
    Pipinis, Justas
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Art as Infrastructure2016Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This paper seeks to describe and explain the social efficacy of art by addressing it as contemporary western infrastructure for social cohesion. Social cohesion refers here not to teleological status quo, but to pluralistic, yet fairly peaceful co-habitation, allowing for gradual change while preserving continuity of the group identity.

    Employing Actor-Network Theory, this paper views artistic practice as actor-network assemblage process making connections and vehicles that enable movement of ideas, values, visions and dissents throughout the community. Parallel memberships of the same actors in artistic and non-artistic actor-networks create conditions for artistic meanings to “bleed over” also into other spheres of the social life where they can gain efficacy far beyond the “art world”. Art infrastructure operates under particular “regime of art” that suspends some of the “real world” rules and sanctions ambiguity, facilitating less confrontational reconciliation of diverse and contradictory meanings than is customary in e.g. science, religion, politics, economy, railways, sewage or other infrastructures that also have impact on social cohesion.

    Debates about the definitions of “art” or particular objects’ belonging to “art” emerge in this perspective as debates on the scope of applicability of the “regime of art”, as it may have significant social consequences.

    By outlining an infrastructural theory of art this paper seeks to fill a theoretical gap in a rather fragmented field of anthropology of art and to propose novel ways to deploy insights from anthropological engagements with infrastructure. Empirical data of this paper come from a five weeks fieldwork in Alaska.

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  • 39.
    Ulloa, Silvia
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Diaspora Roles and Integration in a Host Country: A Study of the Swedish-Assyrian Community in Stockholm2016Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Assyrians are members of a stateless nation with roots in the Middle East, although due to conflict, persecution and instability a majority of Assyrians now live in diaspora in many different countries. The Assyrian community in Sweden now numbers approximately 100.000 individuals, of which approximately 18.000 to 25.000 live in the greater Stockholm area. This thesis utilizes the example of the Swedish-Assyrian community to analyze two research topics: the political engagement of a diaspora within a host country; and diasporic efforts to maintain a distinctive culture and contribute to its own nation building while residing in diaspora, a particularly pressing question for a stateless nation, such as the Assyrian nation.

    This thesis utilizes ethnographic data acquired via personal interviews with Swedish-Assyrian individuals and participant observation to discuss these research subjects. With regards to diaspora political engagement, the thesis finds that Swedish-Assyrians utilize their rights as Swedish citizens and their voices as Assyrians to engage with both Swedish politics and Assyrian causes. They are motivated by both Swedish political issues and by the Assyrian national cause. The ethnographic data is further used to analyze the discourse on identity and nation-building among the Swedish Assyrian community, including the impact of the host country’s culture and policies on the diaspora group and attempts to create a unified nation through education and placing emphasis on an ethnic, rather than solely religious, identity. These efforts bring Assyrians in Sweden closer together by helping to bridge differences in language and culture, but as Assyrians internationally now find themselves also affected by the cultures of their new nations, new differences and divisions simultaneously appear.

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    Assyrian Diaspora Roles in a Host Country
  • 40.
    Haaland Pers, Jonas
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    I gränslandet mellan statsrepresentant och privatperson: En etnografisk studie av svenska privat-twittrande poliser2016Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Denna masteruppsats behandlar gruppen privat-twittrande poliser – individer som i egenskap av privatpersoner skildrar sitt förhållningssätt och sina åsikter kring sitt yrke som polis genom sociala medie-forumet Twitter. Studien är baserad på etnografiskt fältarbete utfört under hösten 2014. Sedan den svenska Polisens officiella intåg på sociala medier under början av 2010-talet har fler och fler yrkesverksamma poliser börjat använda digitala plattformar såsom Twitter, Facebook och Instagram för att skildra en egen syn på den polisiära yrkesrollen samt diskutera Polisens samhällsfunktion och verksamhetsförfarande. Till skillnad från officiella myndighetsrepresentanter på Twitter står de privat-twittrande poliserna fria från det direkta representativa ansvar som det innebär att professionellt företräda staten och behöver således inte enbart handla i enlighet med den officiella verksamhetsagendan. Trots friheten från direkt ansvar upplevs dock många av individerna, av allmänheten, som polisrepresentanter i och med deras primärt yrkesrelaterade kommunikation. I gränslandet mellan statsrepresentant och privatperson upprättas en säregen maktposition vilken, med hjälp av Twitter som socialt verktyg, förstärker de privat-twittrande polisernas möjligheter att prägla och nyansera den samhälleliga föreställningen om det polisiära varandet.

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    IGMSOP
  • 41.
    Nyman, Fredrik
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    From Deadly Disease to Chronic Condition: A Study of the Gay Casualties in the 'War on AIDS' in Sweden2015Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Every society in the world has its own AIDS story. A story of uncertainty, moral panic, and social persecution of sexual and ethnical minorities. Sweden is no exception. However, what makes Sweden an exceptional case worthy of anthropological attention, is the fact that even though Sweden in retrospect never experienced an ‘actual’ AIDS epidemic, Swedish AIDS politics were still characterized by severe political coercion and social governance other European nations failed to live up to. This thesis deals with the implementation of public policy and legislative regulations, put into force as to ‘combat’ the new threat of AIDS in Sweden. By engaging as a moderate participant, and conducting interviews with and amongst state agencies, as well as NGOs working with the issues of HIV and AIDS in Sweden, I sought to examine the bureaucratic processes of producing and negotiating knowledge surrounding HIV. Considering that certain groups, such as women, gay men, and migrants, always have been the targets of AIDS education, while leaving (white) heterosexual men exempted, I turned my focus to the depiction of gay men found in bureaucratic artefacts and past legislative debates. When it comes to HIV prevalence in the West, gay men have always been overrepresented. Yet, they have failed to become one of the most prioritized prevention groups. The depiction of the “gay man” during the AIDS crisis was hugely ambivalent, as ‘he’ was seen as both an unfortunate victim and a dangerous perpetrator. With this study, I hope to make the issues of HIV and AIDS visible again.

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  • 42.
    Lindblad, Jenny
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Metro barriers in the making: The political and sociotechnical milieu of public transport in Stockholm2015Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines processes through which the barriers in the Stockholm metro are continuously rearranged. The barriers are in place with the purpose of securing income, while simultaneously enabling the flow of passengers into the metro. First, I examine the technical components and capacities of the barriers. Second, I outline a variety of actors involved with planning, manufacturing, and maintaining them, and analytically link these actors as comprising an ‘apparatus of public transport’. More specifically, this study focuses on how metro users’ practices are both influenced by, and influence how the barriers are rearranged. I show how this dynamic is enacted in the barrier milieu in metro stations, where also the tension between the purposes of securing income and allowing mobility is negotiated. The ethnographic material includes encounters with metro users, technicians, officials, and politicians in metro stations and other settings, as well as written documentations.

    In public discussions, the barriers are commonly at issue in relation to fare evasion. From a standpoint where technical, social, and political dimensions are understood as intermeshed, this study casts attention to a variety of practices occurring in the barrier milieu. By exploring how a technical arrangement influences social relations, I aim to raise questions of responsibility with regards to technology.

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    Metro barriers in the making
  • 43.
    Nygren, Victor
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Capital of Resistance: Occupied Hebron as Heterotopia2014Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines the processes of production, consumption and representation of the old city of Hebron, West Bank, Palestine as an ‘other space’ or heterotopia, that is, as a space that deviates from normality and is tainted by contradictions, shifting meanings and notions of “otherness”. I argue that there are several representations of space present in these processes as different actors and agents relate to, make use of and accumulate different kinds of capital from the old city. Previous studies on Palestine often focus on occupation and resistance but fail to problematize the ways in which these concepts are classed, gendered, localized, globalized and involved in several interrelating systems of meaning. Having done fieldwork with Palestinian and international NGOs, volunteers, activists, tourists guides and tourists I now aim to relate their representations of the old city to that of old city residents and discuss how space and power might be understood in a process of capitalizing from an occupied zone and the emplacement of a ‘deviant’ population within it. I suggest that to better understand the everyday life of occupation we have to deconstruct romanticized notions of Palestinian and Hebronite resistance and occupation and trace the ways these concepts are socially and spatially (re)created. 

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    Capital of Resistance
  • 44.
    Strömberg, Isabella
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Det krympande klassrummet: En studie av högstadielärares förutsättningar i ett reformerat skolsystem2014Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Since the 1990’s the Swedish school system has undergone major and recurring structural reforms. Two of the most comprehensive changes has been the shift of primary schools as an integral part of the welfare state to the responsibility of the municipalities as well as the introduction of free school choice for the students. Through two months of participant observations and semi-structured interviews this thesis seeks to answer the question of how these reforms has come to effect the work of teachers in a medium sized public school in a small municipality in the outskirts of Stockholm. Earlier research has shown that public schools in socio-economically vulnerable areas are disadvantaged due to the reformation of the school system (Beach & Sernhede, 2011; Östh, Andersson, & Malmberg, 2013).  This thesis is thus seeking to find the vantage point of primary school teachers in one such school, in order to grasp how these policy changes has come to impact their perceptions of a professional self and the amount of professional autonomy in their work.     Through the theoretical concept of audit culture (Shore & Wright, 1999) I show that these reforms have changed not only the structure of the school system but also how actors within the school setting relate to their work and professional role. On the basis of my fieldwork and previous research in the topic (Apple, 2005; Shore, 2008; Karlefjärd, 2011), I argue that the reformation of the school system has brought a shift in the relations of trust within the system, where the growing amount of confidence in measurement, optimization techniques and control has resulted in a lack of trust in teachers as professionals. The voices of teachers, as actors in the educational environment, has to a great extent been missing in the public debate surrounding the Swedish schools as well as overlooked by research in the field. This thesis therefore calls for a growing anthropological attention to primary school teachers and the workings of audit culture in the lower levels of the educational system.

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  • 45.
    Webb, Jane
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Gender Diversity and the City: Softly, Softly Feminism among London's Business Leaders2014Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    In 2011, advisors to the British government recommended against introducing a quota for women to corporate boards in the UK. The advisors instead set an aim for the UK’s 100 largest companies. They recommended company leaders take action to increase female representation on boards from just over 12 per cent in 2011, to a minimum of 25 per cent by 2015. The threat of government intervention remains. The EU Council is currently discussing the European Commission’s proposal for a minimum of 40 per cent of each sex amongst non-executive directors by 2020 across all EU member states. Using material from ten weeks of fieldwork in the City of London, I examine how a loose network of business leaders, lobbyists, journalists and researchers are shaping ideas about gender and business. This network intends to show that a quota is not needed to increase the numbers of women in business leadership. I relate my discussion to ideas of markets and marketing, and to ideas of gender differences and gender equality. I first analyse the ideas set out in the business case for gender diversity and in the term gender balance. I then explore how London’s business leaders enhance personal, employer and corporate brands by publicly demonstrating their commitment to gender balance. Through this commitment, leaders also prove themselves members of the collaboration that unites against a quota. I focus particularly on how senior businesswomen are expected to be role models for other women. I show how role models urge other women to ensure they remain recognisably feminine.

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    Gender Diversity and the City
  • 46.
    Navratilova, Hana
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Good Times in Buenos Aires: Being an "Expat" in the City of Foreigners2014Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    The following discussion concerns the emergence of and interrelations between the concepts of expatriation, migration, and “othering” in present Buenos Aires. The arguments rest on my fieldwork in Argentina, as well as other studies from around the world. The research on expatriates is usually based in Asia or the UAE, and the region of Latin America is still quite understudied in this respect. Buenos Aires as the “city offoreigners” represents an anthropologically interesting fieldsite. Next to the mostly quantitative research on expatriates, anthropology can give us a better understanding of their practices and experiences. Furthermore, it challenges our ideas of these concepts weuse to describe different groups of people (e. g. expatriate, immigrant), and allows us tounderstand how they are socially constructed. Hence, my study offers a new view on expatriation in a broader context of post-colonialism and current trends in globalization.The city's historical context must be considered as well in order to understand the complexities of terms such as foreigner or immigrant.

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  • 47.
    Nyrén, Emma
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    “The Voice of the Voiceless”: News production and journalistic practice at Al Jazeera English2014Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Abstract

    This thesis explores how the cultural and social media environments surrounding the journalism of Al Jazeera English are shaped by and shape the channel’s news practices. Al Jazeera English has been described as a contra-flow news organization in the global media landscape and this thesis discusses the different reasons why the channel is described in this way by looking at its origins, aims, characteristics and ideals. Based on interviews with Al Jazeera English journalists, news observations and two field observations in London, I argue that Al Jazeera English brings cultural and social sensitivity to its news reports by engaging with multiple in-depth perspectives, using local reporters and integrating citizen generated material. The channel’s early adoption of online technologies and citizen journalism also contributes to a more democratic news direction and gives the channel a wider spectrum of opinions and perspectives to choose between. By applying a comparative analysis built on similar studies within anthropology of news journalism differences and similarities within the journalistic practices can be detected, comparing Al Jazeera English’s journalism with journalism at other places and news organizations. These comparisons and discussions enables new understandings for how news is produced and negotiated within the global media landscape, and this gives the global citizen an improved comprehension of why the news, which shapes our appreciation of the world, looks like it does. In conclusion, this awareness opens up for a discussion towards a societal transformation that gives space for a more multifaceted journalism distancing itself from one-sided perspectives and institutional censoring.

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  • 48.
    Sjövall, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    Dance to Buss: An Ethnographic Study of Dancehall Dancing in Jamaica2013Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Dancehall is an influential space of cultural creation and expression within Jamaican society. This study is about how Jamaican dancehall is being performed, and what this performance means to its participants. Dancehall is mainly practiced by lower-class Jamaicans. This thesis focuses on dancers as a specific group among these participants. During 15 weeks I lived in Kingston and participated in dancehall culture daily. The fieldwork was focused on one dance group called “The Black Eagles”. The dancehall is gender structured and most dancers are men who organize in male crews. Practicing dancehall can be seen as a cultural resistance to structural injustice, while it also works to enforce oppressive ideologies. Dancehall culture is criticized for being immoral, inappropriate and violent. Dancehall is a survival strategy for many lower-class Jamaicans and an alternative to a life in crime. The Black Eagles dance because they love it, but the main motivation for initiating a career as a dancehall dancer is the hope of getting a better life. Digital technology and social media have helped dancers to reach this goal. Through social media, the dancehall dance has gained international popularity. This thesis relates to broader themes such as development, poverty, globalization, gender and identity. 

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    Johanna Sjövall - Dance to Buss
  • 49.
    Lazoroska, Daniela
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.
    The Suburb United Will Never Be Defeated: Youth Organization, Belonging, and Protest in a Million Program Suburb of Stockholm2013Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 80 credits / 120 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This thesis examines the continually reconfiguring response of a youth organization towards a renovation project, Järvalyftet, run by the City of Stockholm in the Million Program suburbs. By analyzing this relationship, I aim to discuss how the youth organization works to mediate inclusion in political and representational spheres. More specifically, I will discuss the intersections between Järvalyftet’s development and the claims of belonging made by the youths upon the particular suburb, Husby, where they resided. My interest lies in understanding the conjuncture and disjuncture of claims that have been made to community, locality, and local knowledge in the interaction between the youth organization and the project Järvalyftet. I argue that the forms of community instigated by the youth organization, which were based on locality and “blackness”, allowed them to position themselves as key proponents of social and political change, as well as mobilize allies in others who identified with those experiences.

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    The Suburb United Will Never Be Defeated -Youth Organization, Belonging, and Protest in a Million Program Suburb of Stockholm
  • 50.
    Oliveira e Costa, Sandra
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Human Geography.
    "BÄTTRE BALANS I BOENDESAMMANSÄTTNINGEN" - FÖR VEM?: En studie om boendes upplevelser av social mixing i tre bostadsområden i Köpenhamn2012Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Social mixing går ut på att ’mixa’ befolkning av olika klasser i ett bostadsområde med syfte att förändra områdets sociala sammansättning. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka social mixing som urban utvecklingsstrategi i Köpenhamn utifrån boendes egna upplevelser av sina bostadsområden. I Danmark definieras 29 bostadsområden som ”ghetton” utifrån kriterier rörande de boendes anknytning till arbetsmarknaden, ”icke-västliga” härkomst samt kriminalitet. Semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med 16 invånare i tre av Köpenhamns marginaliserade bostadsområden och genererat empiri kring deras erfarenheter av social mixing. Empirin samt bostadspolitiken som avser att ”skapa en bättre balans i boendesammansättningen” diskuteras mot bakgrund av tidigare forskning som anammar ett revanchistiskt alternativt emancipatoriskt förhållningssätt till social mixing och gentrifiering. Studien identifierar komplexa aspekter av social mixing; majoritetsbefolkningens än mer privilegierade ställning och ”resurssvagas” försämrade situation på bostadsmarknaden; majoritetsbefolkningens försprång i den lokala maktens rum; minoriteters upplevelser av vissa segregerade rum som fristäder; kampen om rummet när fristäderna utmanas; samt flera aspekter som försvårar möten mellan boende och gentrifierare. Alternativa förhållningssätt identifieras från de boendes berättelser. De empiriska fynden nyanserar dessutom tidigare forskning om betydelsen av ’det egna valet’ i relation till bosättning i marginaliserade bostadsområden. 

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