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De senare åren har det gått mode i tal om att sätta individen i centrum inom socialtjänsten. Självbestämmande och delaktighet är hörnstenar i Lag om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade (1993:387). Men är brukarens behov styrande i praktiken? I uppsatsen studeras LSS-processen utifrån ett slags organisatoriska ideologier, s.k. professionella logiker, och hur de tar sig uttryck i praktiken. Sedan tidigare är det känt att professionella logiker som domineras av hierarkier respektive av klassisk kompetens konkurrerar med varandra. I det teoretiska ramverket deltar även en brukarmandatslogik.I denna etnografiska kvalitativa fallstudie studeras tre kommuner som i huvudsak har en välskött LSS-verksamhet. Huvudaktörer som studeras är biståndshandläggare på beställarenheter och baspersonal på utförarens boenden men också andra aktörer som filtrerar logikerna studeras. Logikernas principer och praktisk applicering av dessa analyseras utifrån kunskapsbas, kontroll, auktoritet och handlingsutrymme samt dokumentation. I analysen har jag kommit fram till att olika logiker visar sig olika starka i processens olika faser. Ett tydligt exempel på nyinstitutionell särkoppling är den formella uppföljningen handläggare ska göra av hur arbetet faktiskt genomförts i den boendes närmiljö. Här ser vi att den röda tråden som är tänkt att gå från beställare via utförare och tillbaka ibland tar en annan väg eller klipps av någonstans på vägen. Den informella samverkan pekar på större dynamik än den formella i samspelet mellan logikerna. In the last few years, the idea of person-centered care within social services has grown in popularity, seen from a public discourse driven by the National Board of Health and Welfare. Inclusion and empowerment are cornerstones in the Swedish Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS). But is the individual’s mandate the ruling principle also in practice? In this essay, the municipal LSS process is studied from the viewpoint of professional logics and how they manifest in practice. Previous research has been carried out in the fields of classical professional logic and the competing organizational professional logic. Together with these, I examine a user-mandate professional logic. By using the qualitative methods of ethnography and case study, I study agents from three municipalities with an overall well-managed care for the target group. Principal agents are care managers and care givers’ staff working close to the residents. These functions are organizationally separated into different units where the manager investigate the individuals’ needs, forward investigations, and decisions to care givers and then review the given social services. Also studied are other agents that have a filtering function of the logics. The principles and practical application of the logics are analyzed from knowledge base, control, authority, discretion, and authority. In the analysis, I have concluded that the occurrence of the different logics varies in strength in the different phases of the process. One distinct example of an organizational decoupling is the formal review where the thought order of the process could be viewed as a “red thread”, running from manager to care giver and back. The empirics show that the read thread takes another route or is cut off somewhere along the route. The informal cooperation, rather than the formal, indicates greater dynamics in the interplay between the logics.

This chapter examines the relationship between creative pursuits in later life and personal empowerment. Unfortunately, the relationship between creativity and ageing remains to this very day highly vague and ill-defined. Society tends to have a negative view of ageing, believing that old age brings a decline in adults’ intelligence, and hence, less ability to provide an original solution to a problem or challenge at hand. As a result, research on creativity has generally focused on relatively younger cohorts rather than adults who are in the latter stages of the life course. Moreover, the centre of attention has been largely on the relationship of creativity to intelligence, rather upon the possible linkages between creativity and empowerment. To achieve its goal, this presentation reports upon reminiscence sessions conducted with older adults in Malta in July 2012. Although reminiscence is not typically considered a creative activity, it actually entails cognitive and emotional processes involved in the conception of meaningful solutions to past problems. Research findings demonstrate clearly that creative engagement in later life leads to improved levels of personal empowerment. First, by bringing about changes that enhance more positive attitudes toward life, better problem-solving skills, and greater emotional control (intrapersonal empowerment). And secondly, by stimulating changes in attitudes and skills related to interacting with other people, such as appreciation of other people’s merits, willingness to seek help from others, and eagerness to care for others (interpersonal empowerment)., peer-reviewed

This thesis is about birth control, gender and sexuality during the Swedish fertility transition (1880-1940). The aim is to study birth control at both an ideational and a practical level, as well as to analyse the ways in which birth control was constructed and realised through different notions of gender. The ideational level includes studies of the Swedish morality debates, norms and ideals concerning both gender and birth control, and the radical socialist propaganda for birth control. The practical level analyses how ordinary people experienced birth control and how they motivated their decision to limit childbearing. The thesis is grounded in post-structuralist gender theory. Gender is seen as a process with separate implications for men and women. Respectable women were supposed to demonstrate shyness, humility and sexual passivity while respectable men demonstrated responsibility, attentiveness and sexual knowledge. A respectable man should also protect his wife from pregnancy by abstaining from sex. These norms were to some extent challenged by radical propagandists who promoted mechanical birth control, rather than abstention, as a means to control fertility. In doing this they also recognised that women’s sexual needs were similar to those of men. The second half of the thesis studies birth control at the individual level. Through a collection of letters, written by ordinary men and women and sent to the Swedish Association of Sexual Education, individual experiences and attitudes to birth control are analysed. It is concluded that preventive birth control was a male responsibility. Prevention of pregnancy intervened with sexuality and was therefore an area difficult for women to enter. The most commonly used contraceptive methods during the 1930s were withdrawal and condoms – two methods which required male responsibility. The only birth controlling method that did not intervene with sexuality was abortion. This was a traditionally female responsibility and remained within a female sphere throughout the fertility transition. When people motivated their decision to apply birth control they referred to either the economic situation of the family, the reproductive health of the mother or the fact that they were not yet married. An overriding motive for the two first was a wish among the correspondents to remain respectable. Having a small family was in itself considered respectable by the end of the fertility transition. Acting responsibly in relation to ones children was another sign of respectability. For fathers this meant being able to support the family financially while mothers’ claim to respectability depended on the time they spent at home, with the children, as well as the appearance of both the children and the home. The thesis concludes that the perceptions and experiences of individual men and women are of great importance when the fertility transition is studied. Reproductive decisions were made by individuals, and changes in fertility are therefore the consequence of many people deciding to alter ther sexual life in order to control reproduction. Research on the fertility transition would therefore gain credibility from integrating sources of a more qualitative character into the study.

The societal norms of ageing and old age are changing in society today, due todemographic changes that favour a pedagogicalization of society, focusing on the management of human resources throughout the entire lifespan. The discourse on active ageing mot only reveals ‘better’ ways of ageing but it also raises questions as to what constitutes a ‘good’ and ‘active’ life in all societies. The conflicting aspect of the discursive battlefield on active ageing constitutes a fight for authority: Who has the ‘right’ to define the meaning of being ‘active’ and how can ‘activity’ be identified? ‘Active’ is to be understood according to the interpretations available in different knowledge perspectives in order to discipline the future knowledge production of ageing and control the processes of subjectification in later life as the disciplining of ‘Population Ageing’: Becoming a subject to active ageing. Dominant discourses on ‘active ageing’ are challenged by the focus of museums and archives on using heritage and participatory arts as an arena to performAGE in later life by craving creativity as a notion of age and opportunity.