Research
Research environments at the Department of Sociology
Critical Perspectives in Sociology
Chairmen: Johanna Esseveld and Diana Mulinari
Critical perspectives in sociology seeks to revitalize the discipline of sociology by using its empirical methods and theoretical insights to engage in debates not just about what is or what has been in society, but about what society might yet be. As such, it raises questions about what sociology is and what its goals are or could be, thus connecting to debates concerning science, policy, political advocacy, scholarship and public commitment which a long established in sociology. A re-thinking of the discipline through interventions from (neo-) marxist, feminist, postcolonial and queer understanding(s) of the social is also central to this research environment.
There is no established sociological tradition called œcritical sociology and there is no intention to set one up either in this research environment. Instead, the purpose is to focus on researchers working with multi-perspectives, collectively reflect upon theoretical and methodological traditions and relate these to the actual practices of sociological research. Rather than being defined by a particular method, theory, or set of political values, critical studies in sociology may be understood as a way of doing sociology and a form of intellectual engagement.
Everyday-life and life-world research
Director of research: Ann-Mari Sellerberg
Everyday-life and life-world research examines the things we all take for granted as we go about our ordinary lives. The members of our research group study how people relate to the world around them, a world in most cases not created by them. Our research centres on how people understand and manage their circumstances, circumstances that may well circumscribe their choices, yet can also offer opportunities. True, it is not only a matter of going over individuals' positive everyday strategies or refusal to accept their situation; all too frequently tragic limitations are at work, while people's creative practices can equally well lead to devastating failures. The central idea is that our behaviour in our ordinary lives has consequences for our behaviour in other situations, and for the future.
Criminology Research Network
Chairman: Malin Åkerström
The study of social deviance and social control are classic areas of interest for the social sciences. It includes fundamental issues of cultural understandings what is moral and what is immoral, what is normal and what is abnormal? What is considered crime, punishment and social problems? Which phenomenon is defined as deviant and how are such definitions created and sustained?
Network for Research in Criminology and Deviant Behaviour at Lund University was established in 1993 and has since then been an informal forum and meeting places for students and researchers from various faculties. We have been engaged in a plenitude of various research projects. The lack of fear of crime in the Finnish archipelago, narratives and accounts of bribes and corruption, drug users career, betrayal and treachery, staffs ambivalence towards new rehabilitation problems, crime during war, conflicts as ritual in prisons, nursing home scandals, police work with battered women, illegal immigration, studies of crime victims (victims as social work, victim shelters, etc) ”these are only a few illustrations of projects carried out by researchers associated by this network.
Politics: Categories of suffering
This field of research originally covered the psychiatric field, notably the neuropsychiatric or neurobehavioral diagnoses dominating both psychiatric research and socio-political practice during the past decade. Participants in the group have dealt with questions like the rapid increase in diagnoses and diagnostic practices, particularly in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, and also approached problems among the adult population, such as burn-out. What has been searched for, on another level, is the transition from psychodynamics to biologized psychiatry, often presented as new knowledge. This focus of attention still remains within the group, and new research agendas covering psychiatry are in progress.
Social Policy, Working Life and Global Welfare (SWG)
Chair and coordinator: Antoinette Hetzler
SWG has as its policy to be a research network center of excellence that ties together both an inter-disciplinary and a multi-problem focus over areas of contemporary social change. We have chosen three central areas, which in their turn function as spin-offs for a variety of research interests both theoretically and empirically. Starting with social policy, the mutuality of social policy and labor policy create an automatic emphasis on changes in working life politically, practically, and individually. Concepts such as de-commodification and re-commodification, paid and unpaid work, the nation state as regulator and/or redistributor, work and care, changing families and increased productivity, as well as social rights and the public identity become an intricate part of the SWG research environment. Work with social policy and working life leads inevitably to our third central area, global welfare. Developed welfare states faced with new challenges from globalization are being dichotomized into those that lower wages to keep jobs and those that increase productivity and support a growing group of œoutsiders. Both models are influencing the development of global welfare. The SWG research agenda is deliberately broad in order to contribute to theoretical development and to connect areas of related research.
Sociology of knowledge
Sociology of knowledge can be defined in a broad and a narrow sense. In the former sense, the subject is delineated to studies of the relationships between various kinds of human cognition and the social environment (organization, institution, group, class) in which they emerge and develop. In the broader sense which we employ here, sociological studies of meta-theoretical issues and issues belonging to the philosophy of science are included. This research environment has several purposes. One is to keep the department/seminar members a jour with international sociology of knowledge and sociological theory development. Another is to constitute a forum for examination of the participants research Ph.D. students as well as senior researchers. A third is to identify and develop cooperation that can form the basis for research applications.
Sustainability and Development Studies
Chairmen: Anna-Lisa Linden and Göran Djurfeldt
Administration and communication: Britt-Marie Johansson, Katarina Sjöberg
The development of societies to a large extent are aggregate consequences of peoples decisions and behaviour, while concurrently peoples decisions and behaviour are conditioned by development at global, national, regional and local levels. For our group research on societies as systems is central. This may involve studies of planning of, e.g. economic development, human habitats or infrastructure that are governed by political decision-making and its consequences for physical, social and cultural ambiences, in working life, in residential areas, in urban and rural areas. Politics is not only about decision-making, but also about governance of development. Its outcomes are not only determined by political decisions but also by unforeseen consequences of such decisions, due to circumstances outside the control of decision-makers and often not even transparent to them or to others involved. In environmental policies, for example, attempts at political steering often get consequences for the possibilities of local governments to structure service deliveries, but they may also constrain or deform incentives for actions by groups and individuals, which in turn condition life chances and quality of life for people in general. Seen from the other end, individual and group actions co-determine environmental consequences of production and consumption as much as public opinion, political action and social movements aiming at influencing or changing political decision-making at various levels. These and other developmental and environmental issues are addressed by the group of researchers, both empirically and theoretically and always with a global perspective.
The Anthropology and Sociology of Governance
Chair: Christer Lindberg, professor
In the social sciences the study of political power has invariably taken the form of institutional analysis and classification. In recent years there has been a shift of major proportions. Some anthropologists have begun to study the practice of political power in ethnographic terms, deciphering the forms of sociality involved in power relations. In political science, researchers such as J.F. Bayart have also moved in the direction of ethnographic analysis in the analysis of the state in Africa. While development sociologists and anthropologists were for years engaged in the study of local communities and projects, the state was left by and large to the institutional analysis referred to above. Today this is changing rapidly. The purpose of this program is to develop an approach to governance, the practice of ordering other peoples lives, as a general comparative subject, where the state is a primary but not the exclusive object of research.
Last updated: 2010-11-08
Website contact: Hanna Skoog