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This paper examines the increasing interest of Swedish schools to construct, analyze, assess and control the individual progression and social integration of students using biographical registers. I argue that this tendency - involving biography as a form of governance - can be seen as a revision of early 20th-century biographical research by the Chicago School of Sociology. In this paper I consider the theoretical, methodological and political background of the Chicago work in order to compare it to the Swedish use of student biographies. Their current use involves a twofold subjectification of students - as "objects" of assessment and as "relays" for assessment. Finally, this subjectivity is understood in relation to international initiatives in education restructuring where new ways of governing - often labeled as progressive - impose social control, heighten individual responsibility and, not least, create new forms of social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across a crisis-stricken Europe battles rage for post-neoliberal hegemony, with "race" and "austerity" as central signifiers. One of the places where the frontlines are most pregnant is Sweden; long perceived as a role model for its welfare state, cultural equity and social equality. Sweden is, however, facing social conflicts following in the tracks of a deep transformation in terms of welfare cuts, racialization and growing social polarization, targeting in particular a disadvantaged migrant and post-migrant population. On that background, the paper focuses on the upsurge of mutually antagonistic popular movements - "racist" and "anti-racist". We use Sweden as an exemplary case of Europe's present Polanyian moment, reminiscent of the 1930s. Yet, current upheavals expound, the authors claim, a different configuration of crisis and racism as well as a dissimilar utopia for the imagineering of nation and community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the mortality among the Swedish voluntarily insured is described. It is based on calculations of the mortality among the Swedish insured from 2001 to 2005, and in the total Swedish population. The total population data has been used to compute the mortality trend with the Lee-Carter model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is another pragmatic attempt to include women in the comparative study of intergenerational class mobility in France and Sweden, two societies that differ in their political history and in the prevalence of women's activity outside the home. In the main, it addresses two questions: How do the mobility patterns of women via marriage compare with those of men via occupational career? How do the mobility patterns of women via marriage compare with those of women via occupational career? These questions are treated in terms of actually observed life chances as well as in relative terms, which shows the impact of the division of labour by sex on differences in life chances by alternative channels of mobility. An attempt is also made to assess the relative importance of interactions between women's social origin, own occupation, and class position by marriage. The association between the latter two proves to be the strongest by far. Rather unexpectedly, social origin does not appear to affect the association between husband's class and wife's occupational category either in France or in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'social fluidity' is to be understood as intergenerational occupational mobility net of direct structural effects, i.e. effects of differences in the marginal distributions of the mobility tables. Though not entirely adequate in the case of women, the terminology of earlier studies of class mobility is retained to simplify the task at hand, namely to complement the picture of the stratification process in the occupational system obtained from intergenerational mobility data regarding men. In this paper, log-linear models are used to test possible outcomes to the questions: Do men and women in the same nation have the same pattern of social fluidity? Do women/or men have the same pattern of social fluidity cross-nationally? Is the relation of women's to men's patterns of social fluidity the same cross-nationally? On the basis of data from France and Sweden the first two questions are answered in the negative, though one may be impressed by how small differences are and how important structurally induced variation is. The last question may well be answered affirmatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the state of sociology based on observations made at the 9th World Congress of Sociology held 1978 in Uppsala, Sweden. At the opening session of the Congress, Tom Bottomore, president of the International Sociological Association, described the present state of sociology. The reconstruction work of the post-war years had probably helped to create a belief in economic growth, which was clearly reflected in sociology. The belief in a common goal and in one single course of development, however, had been lost. This could be seen in the methodological orientation of sociology. The predominant trends at present are the various Marxian schools and phenomenology, opposed to which are the positivist schools, with structuralism as the fourth trend. Another way of analyzing the state of sociology is to study the papers presented at the Congress and the reception they got, and on this basis look for areas of emphasis in sociological research as regards both subject matter and regional factors. To do this, it is necessary to calculate the number of papers presented in the Congress; then analyze the questionnaires distributed to Finnish participants during in the Congress.

ABSTRACT The conflicts between protecting the environment and pursuing conventional political objectives concerned with rising GNP, employment, etc. are increasingly influencing decision-making processes and scientific debate. For sociology this results in a new area of research that focuses on the consequences and impacts of environmental concerns. One basic aspect of an Environmental Sociology is concerned with the re-ordering of societal alliances. In order to do so, the article introduces some elements of a cognitive network approach. Environmentalism, advanced by collective actors such as environmental organizations, promotes alternative models to productionist politics. By doing so, these actors are challenging the alliance between labour and capital. In an empirical study of the debate on nuclear energy the paper focuses on the challenge that environmentalism has posed to the consensus between labour and capital in Sweden and Germany. The results show striking differences between both countries. Moreover, the analysis arrives at the conclusion that environmentalism may not only challenge the consensus between labour and capital but may also lead to a new cleavage within the labour movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article characterizes aspects of the sociopolitical climate in Sweden, as of 1993, that seem of particular relevance in a management context. The paper then attempts to describe certain of the important features of organizational life within the two economic sectors: the public and the private. A five-year interdisciplinary research program entitled the Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden could be seen as having performed the task of peaceful burial of the Swedish model. In the final report of the program, the Swedish model was given a definite form and farewell treatment. The basic argument was that a half-century-old package of solutions cannot be expected to function unchanged and that new solutions are in sight, together with new problems. One of the basic assumptions of the Swedish model was the interplay between the parties on the labor market--free from state intervention. As perceived by executives in multinational companies, the structure of Swedish corporations is ambiguous. A series of studies conducted in leading Swedish companies concluded that there has been a change of doctrine in management thinking. SAS, Ericsson, and Eka Nobel are examples of the change in orientation from production to markets, of the shift in attention from inside to outside the organization, and of focusing on customers' needs as defined by the customers themselves. In terms of the new doctrine, consultants play an important role in the production of knowledge, and leaders in top management provide charismatic performances in the media. It has been pointed out that change often starts and seemingly ends with a change in rhetoric. There are definite rules for introducing change, and organizational change is strongly institutionalized.

In this study we examine the long-term impact of second chance education (SCE) on incomes of poorly educated individuals who live in Sweden but were not born in a Nordic country, using data on income changes from 1992 to 2003 compiled by Statistics Sweden. Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses show that participation in SCE increased the work income of non-Nordics by a higher percentage than that of Nordics. The results also indicate that much of the effects of SCE on non-Nordics are related to increases in “Sweden-specific” human capital, rather than increases in their educational level per se, which seems to provide a form of ‘endowment insurance’ that improves their labour market position in Sweden. Relying on the theoretical framework of the Capability Approach, we conclude that such effects are related to the instrumental economic value of individuals’ capability to be educated, as well as the value of material well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite concerns about stress levels in young people, research about stress and stressors among boys and girls that apply an intersectionality approach is scarce. This cross-sectional study explored gender, class (indicated by academic orientation) and multi-group (gender/class) patterning of perceived stress and reported stressors in a sample of 1,663 17-year-old Swedish students. The students, especially girls, were highly stressed. No class differences were found. Performance-related stressors were predominately indicated by students in academic programmes and girls (regardless of class). Looks-related stress was more common among girls than boys, whilst economic and relational stressors were mostly indicated by vocational programme students, particularly girls. There was a complex gender and class patterning of stress due to demands and lack of money. The interplay of gender and class should be acknowledged in identifying determinants of stress in young people. Possible implications for mental health are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of engagement and efforts to bring about gender equality in Swedish universities, gender division paradoxically appears in both old and new degree programs and academic disciplines. In recent years there has been a tendency for higher education students to enrol in degree programmes rather than in single subject courses. Due to the decreasing number of students taking subjects like sociology, Halmstad University College has constructed a degree programme, Sociologi och socialt utvecklingsarbete [Sociology and social development], focused on community development and social action; sociology is the main specific subject here. In the autumn of 2007, 95% of the 61 students were female, compared to the 75% of female students in sociology degree courses that Sweden has had in the past seven years. The problem of skewed gender representation in sociology is discussed here, and its consequences for educational practices in sociology as well as for the contents and status of the discipline in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to understand how nanotechnology can contribute to the development of a more sustainable society in general, and to investigate Swedish nanotechnology in particular. On the one hand, the research interest is on how nanoscience can be turned into used products, that is, innovation. On the other hand, we acknowledge that innovation itself is the main producer of risk in modern societies. Inspired by sociology and economics of innovation, we try to capture this by introducing the term 'reflexive system of innovation' to denote a system made up of heterogenous elements, such as discursive components (expressions of knowledge and normative and regulative stands) and organizational components (actors and knowledge), evolving in a non-linear way through external influences as well as self re-enforcing and self-regulating processes. We present the evolution of a Swedish nanotechnology system from the 1980s to the present, as it moves through phases characterized by different kinds of discourse and organization. Evaluating the Swedish case against the concept of a reflexive system of innovation, we find advanced academic knowledge production but a lack of interconnectivity between actors, few actors outside the research community entering the system and a weak function of anticipation, guidance and risk handling. Broad national nanotechnology initiatives (NNIs) may be important for the crystallization of the desired processes, but because neither innovation nor risk can be fully contained, an NNI may only be part of the input to a fully fledged reflexive system of innovation in nanotechnology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work is held to be interdisciplinary in character, meaning education, practice and research need to import knowledge from other disciplines. The aim of this article is to investigate conceptions like interdisciplinary, knowledge import and paradigmatic openness and thereby discuss the potential contradiction between import and theoretical development within the discipline. This is done through the description and analysis of the use of theory in dissertations so far produced in social work in Sweden and, for comparative reasons, in theses written on undergraduate and master's level courses in 1977-97. On the whole, the discipline displays a great deal of knowledge import, theoretical pluralism and a high level of paradigmatic openness. Results show a very strong position for sociology in dissertation research and a strong position for psychology in the educational system. References to social work research are more concealed but in growth. The article closes with the prediction of a change in relation between borrowed and domestic theoretical knowledge. Finally, reasons for the erosion of the contradiction are presented.

This article attempts to outline the prospects of disabled persons to gain and retain employment within the Information Society by presenting and discussing the results of a labour market policy programme in Sweden based on information technology. The effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for unemployed and employed persons with disabilities can be assessed on the micro, as well as on the macro levels. Technological optimism has given rise to expectations about the great potential of ICTs in creating employment opportunities for disabled persons. Technological optimism, however, derives from a deterministic point of view, i.e. ICTs are regarded as an independent variable. This article suggests that ICTs must be regarded as a variable dependent by the economic, social and cultural order. Its effects on disabled persons employment opportunities are not independent by the power relations at a given time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings about English, French, and Swedish mobility tables from the early 1970s. The reanalysis shows that the vertical dimension of mobility is stronger and more autonomous than one would conclude from earlier analyses. It is necessary to introduce several parameters for class inheritance in order to fit the data, and such parameters account for more of the association between class origins and destinations than does the vertical aspect of mobility, but income and occupational prestige do not help to explain it. The findings suggest complementarities between vertical and non-vertical models of class mobility. The data for England and Wales and Sweden were rendered comparable in terms of a nine-category class schema developed by the classification of English occupations. Social Fluidity in Industrial Nations developed models of class mobility that assumed nominal measurement, while Vertical and Nonvertical Class Mobility combined a model of vertical mobility. The constriction of the English, French, and Swedish classifications initiated a round of comparative mobility analysis, based upon national surveys of the early 1970s. Such tables were constructed from unit record data, yielding greater detail and stronger claims to comparability than many cross-national comparisons.

The article explores the compulsive character of mainstream sociology in Sweden. This character is marked by a pedantic concern for orderliness, a character trait that on the one hand may help the individual to get much done because of its accompanying thoroughness but on the other hand also reduces the working capacity because it precludes any rapid change and adaptation to new situations. Swedish sociology defined its subject matter in terms of neopositive epistemological principles. The academic community may have been sceptical but the enthusiasm for sociology was rampant in the extramural intelligentsia. As a member of a government commission on the state of the social sciences Torgny Segerstedt had cast sociology in a more humble part. The party's committee for cultural matters depicted sociology as the key to a democratic socialist society. A dominating political issue in the fifties was the supplementary pension. Sociological opinion research and attitude scales were looked upon as a potential weapon in the ideological struggle. It is possible that the impersonal voice of the applied researcher armed with a battery of figures is more congenial to the compulsive character than the insistent rhetorics of the theorist.