Articles in Journals by Klas Borell
Sociologisk Forskning, 2019
Allvarliga kränkningar av den akademiska friheten förekommer idag i flera av Europarådets medlems... more Allvarliga kränkningar av den akademiska friheten förekommer idag i flera av Europarådets medlemsstater och det är ofta samhällsvetenskaperna som utgör måltavlan. Situationen är särskilt allvarlig i Turkiet där tusentals universitetslärare avskedats. Intervjuer med avskedade turkiska samhällsvetare och samhällsvetare som lever under hot om avsked ger en sammansatt bild: här finns både resignation och motstånd.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 2019
In wide-ranging attacks on academic freedom in Turkey in recent years, thousands of academics hav... more In wide-ranging attacks on academic freedom in Turkey in recent years, thousands of academics have lost their university positions. At the end of 2016 oppositional academics, many of whom were dismissed from their positions for having signed a peace petition, established a Street Academy as an alternative way to reach out to both students and the public in Ankara. In this study we analyse the experiences of these street academy lecturers from the perspective of Social Representation Theory. Our main aims were to explore teaching experience perceptions and representations
and, in addition, also the opportunities and challenges generated by this alternative academy. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews with five female and five male street academy lecturers. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the way participants explained their experiences could be organised into three major themes and several subordinate themes. One of the most salient results was that participating in the street Academy had become a way to defend academic freedom. More generally suggested results demonstrated that teaching in this new setting, outside of the universities and away from customised learning environments, was
quite a novel experience. The possible implications of street academy
lecturers’ experiences are discussed.
Attacks on academic freedom in Turkey have become increasingly systematic in recent years and tho... more Attacks on academic freedom in Turkey have become increasingly systematic in recent years and thousands of academics have been dismissed. This study reflects on the effects of this worsening repression through interviews with academics in the social sciences, both those dismissed and those still active in their profession. Although the dismissed academics are socially in a very precarious position, they are continuing their scholarly activities in alternative, underground forms. This resistance stands in contrast to the accommodation and self-censorship that seem, according to the interviewees, to prevail in university departments.
Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 2018
Social work educators have long struggled with the challenge of finding appropriate strategies fo... more Social work educators have long struggled with the challenge of finding appropriate strategies for fostering cultural awareness among their students. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how a computer-based simulation, SimChild, can be used in teaching
about child protection to enhance cultural awareness among students and expand their insight into how personal biases can affect professional practice. In SimChild, individual students can assume the role of social worker and then collectively discuss the
patterns emerging after their individual assessments have been aggregated. This study, based primarily on focus group data, reflects testing conducted at three Swedish universities.
Geoforum, 2018
It is deeply ironic that the social movement perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to ana... more It is deeply ironic that the social movement perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to analyse local protests against establishments of human service enterprises, as the perspective was originally formulated in just such a context. The social movement approach could inject new vitality into a field of research that has become increasingly marginalised and enable human geographers and other social scientists to reconnect to the key issues of socio-spatial exclusion that were raised 30–40 years ago, but now with theoretically informed perspectives. At the same time, social movement research has much to gain from returning to the study of protest movements opposing the establishment of human service enterprises: they are local and thus typical of most social movements, and their success or failure, which lacks the ambiguity so often noted in social movement research, can be studied from a lifecycle perspective.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2017
Most unattached older persons who would like
an intimate partnership do not want to remarry
or ... more Most unattached older persons who would like
an intimate partnership do not want to remarry
or be in a marriage-like relationship. A growing
trend is to live apart together (LAT) in an ongoing
intimate relationship that does not include
a common home. We address the debate about
whether LAT constitutes a new form of intimate
relationship in a critical assessment of research
on LAT relationships that applies ambivalence
and concepts from the life course perspective.
We conclude that among older but not younger
adults, LAT relationships are generally a stable
alternative to living with a partner, negotiated
in the context of current social institutions and
arrangements. We propose research questions
that address later life living apart together as
an innovative alternative intimate relationship.
We encourage comparative work on the unique
challenges of later life living apart together, their
implications for other family ties, and their connection
to social and cultural arrangements.
Community Development Journal, 2018
Current research on local siting conflicts are primarily about environmental threats. Following a... more Current research on local siting conflicts are primarily about environmental threats. Following a boom during the two last decades of the 1900s, research on community opposition to the establishment of human services is a shrinking field with inadequate articulation and comparisons of various approaches. The aim of this research review is to critically scrutinize the first wave of research on local protests against human services and expose and contrast later approaches in order to lay the necessary groundwork for synthesis attempts. The first wave approach is characterized by its far-reaching generalization claims; all local protests against perceived social threats were seen as instances of Not In My Back Yard protests and as a function of general, hierarchically arranged attitudes toward client groups. By contrast, in later attempts to shed light upon neighbourhood protests, real life protests against the establishment of human services – not general attitudinal data – are focused upon. But the degree of contextualizing varies greatly within this more protest-centred research. The indirect approach is based on data that are collected in interviews with human service administrators and concern the extent and duration of neighbors’ protests, while in the direct approach the protests are studied as such, and especially
issues having to do with the local protests’ ability to generate public support. In this article, the alternatives to the first wave of research on siting conflicts have been demonstrated for the first time and contrasted with each other. This is a necessary requirement and a first step for efforts to provide the syntheses that this research area so sorely needs.
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2017
Europe has seen the development of a new research agenda in response to Islamist terror attacks o... more Europe has seen the development of a new research agenda in response to Islamist terror attacks of recent years. Researchers are not only trying to solve the “radicalization puzzle” in order to understand the reasons why young Muslims in Western countries are attracted to extremism, but they are also making proposals for de-radicalizing extremists and creating relationships of trust with Muslim communities. Directly or indirectly, Europe’s Muslim minorities are the objects of the interventions and preventive work under discussion. This study suggests an alternative approach. Rather than regarding Muslims in Europe as more or less passive objects of various anti-extremism interventions, it directs attention toward the strategies developed by European Muslims themselves in fighting Islamist extremism. Using qualitative interviews with leaders of five Sufi communities in Sweden, the study examines a series of strategies for meeting the challenges posed by extremists.
Review of Religious Research, 2013
In the Scandinavian welfare context, the emphasis on cooperation between public authorities and t... more In the Scandinavian welfare context, the emphasis on cooperation between public authorities and the nonprofit sector continues to be a central institutional characteristic. But to what extent have the new Muslim congregations adapted to the Scandinavian tradition of organizational cooperation, and what circumstances-internal or external to these organizations-promote or disrupt the development of such cooperation? This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations in Sweden (n = 105). No support was found for the widespread notion that European Muslim congregations tend to exist as separate enclaves. The powerful discursive emphasis on organizational cooperation in Scandinavia creates vital opportunity structures, but local variations in demographic and socioeconomic conditions also seem to have an impact. Among internal factors that influence willingness to cooperate is not least the degree of ethnic heterogeneity; openness to different Muslim traditions-a precondition for a multiethnic congregation-is seen to correspond to a greater openness to the wider society.
Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 1999
This research note examines some advantages and drawbacks of using Experience Sampling Method (ES... more This research note examines some advantages and drawbacks of using Experience Sampling Method (ESM) for the study of gerontological social work and other related fields of social and health services. ESM typically requires participants to respond to signals from electronic pagers at randomly determined intervals. In response to these, participants are expected to fill out a short self-report about their
Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 2007
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2015
Social scientists have long been interested in the significance of unexpected, dramatic events fo... more Social scientists have long been interested in the significance of unexpected, dramatic events for social change. However, when it comes to research on prejudice and hate crimes, the impact of sudden, dramatic events has been little considered. The purpose of this research review is to survey European data to elucidate the temporal links between unexpected events, Islamophobia, and Islamophobic hate crimes, and also to pinpoint some of the methodological problems faced by scholars studying the impact of unanticipated dramatic events on Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crimes; the significance of unexpected events often leaves researchers without access to relevant baseline data. The studies of Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crimes considered in the present article privilege a dynamic view of time: terrorist attacks instill a sense of uncertainty and risk and Islamophobia and hate crimes are to a large extent event-driven and reactive, and tend to flare up on the heels of dramatic events. The recent attention paid to the role of unexpected, dramatic events represents a new and very promising approach to the study of prejudice and hate crimes; with the earlier, essentially spatial research focus now complemented by a temporal focus, the chances increase of charting the underlying dynamics and causes of prejudice and hate crimes.
This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations (n = 105) and focuses on... more This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations (n = 105) and focuses on the patterns and function of voluntary social work carried out by the congregations. Muslim congregations in Sweden are not only religious meeting places, but also social meeting places and centres for the organisation of a broad range of social welfare services: outreach activities, support to newly arrived immigrants and activities for children and young people. The work is carried out on a voluntary basis at the intersection between the congregation and the community. Muslim voluntary social work appears to be most intensive in smaller municipalities with a large amount of unemployment. The dominant discourse on Islam in Europe has claimed that Muslim social work is part of an attempt to create self-sufficient enclaves that impede the integration of Muslim immigrants into the wider society. Claims of this type seem, however, to be largely unfounded. The Swedish Muslim congregations that carry out the most voluntary social work are those most interested in co-operation with other organisations and with authorities of different types and those that have the most positive experiences of the wider society.
In the Scandinavian welfare context, the emphasis on cooperation between public authorities and t... more In the Scandinavian welfare context, the emphasis on cooperation between public authorities and the nonprofit sector continues to be a central institutional characteristic. But to what extent have the new Muslim congregations adapted to the Scandinavian tradition of organizational cooperation, and what circumstances—internal or external to these organizations—promote or disrupt the development of such cooperation? This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations in Sweden (n = 105). No support was found for the widespread notion that European Muslim congregations tend to exist as separate enclaves. The powerful discursive emphasis on organizational cooperation in Scandinavia creates vital opportunity structures, but local variations in demographic and socioeconomic conditions also seem to have an impact. Among internal factors that influence willingness to cooperate is not least the degree of ethnic heterogeneity; openness to different Muslim traditions—a precondition for a multiethnic congregation—is seen to correspond to a greater openness to the wider society.
Although the psychological stress created by terror has been extensively researched, little has b... more Although the psychological stress created by terror has been extensively researched, little has been written about the subjective experience of living with terror. How do people perceive risk and how do they adjust their daily lives?
The Lebanese capital Beirut suffered from a wave of bomb attacks following the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. In order to examine people’s reactions and ways of coping with these events, 14 focus group interviews (n = 77) were conducted in targeted areas. The findings suggest that Beirutis could no longer rely on the taken-for-granted routines of daily life. By changing their routes to school or work and avoiding public places, they restricted their daily activities. However, the data also suggest that targeted people attempted to normalize their everyday lives. Two strategies were employed. The first can be described as bracketing in time and space, which means that people tried to benefit from periods they perceived as moments of reprieve, and that they defined business and private space as safe havens. Bracketing can also be described as re-normalization, i.e. as an attempt to return to the previous state of ‘normality’. The other strategy can be described as crisis normalization and means that the new evaluations of the risks and new patterns of action adopted, which originally deviated from people’s established routines, themselves became routinized.
Journal of Community Practice, 2005
Although a substantial body of research on community hostility towards the establishment of human... more Although a substantial body of research on community hostility towards the establishment of human services facilities now exists, researchers as well as community practitioners have identified a need for a more naturalistic and systematic approach to the issue. As a step in that direction, this paper focuses on a nationally representative sample of facilities for residential care in Sweden, with the objective of identifying patterns of hostile NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) reactions and institutional as well as community predictive factors. Approximately 16 percent of these facilities studied experienced NIMBY reactions. In contradiction to many previous studies, which try to explain the neighborhood reactions in terms of attitudes towards special client groups, the findings of this study indicate that the characteristics of the facility itself and of the community in which it is placed seem to be the most significant factors. The study suggests that there is also significant community support for the facilities and that interaction with the community can provide the facilities with positive resources.
LAT-relationships (from Living Apart Together), in which partners retain their own homes although... more LAT-relationships (from Living Apart Together), in which partners retain their own homes although they have a long-term intimate relationship, represent an increasingly acceptable choice among elderly in Sweden. LAT-relationships, unlike marriage or cohabitation, create special conditions that enable an intimate relationship to be combined with autonomy. However, this does not mean that the way in which the balance between autonomy and intimacy is achieved is given. This study examines the home as a resource for women's boundary making, i.e. the process in which boundaries are established around their homes in order to influence their interaction with partners, friends and kin. The study is based on questionnaires to elderly Swedish men and women Living Apart Together (n=116) and on qualitative interviews. There is a broad variety of ways of establishing boundaries in time and space, ranging from having direct control over who has access to one's home to more subtle time-zoning strategies, but all the women studied seem to prioritize the possibility of keeping their various social relations separate from one another.
International Review of Sociology, 2003
This chapter takes a first step toward understanding the development of Living Apart Together rel... more This chapter takes a first step toward understanding the development of Living Apart Together relations following divorce and widowhood in later life. Living Apart Together relations are intimate in the deepest sense of the word, but combine at the same time intimacy with autonomy. Living together under the same roof, as opposed to establishing a Living Apart Together relationship, places radically different demands on the coordination of time, action and resources. By initiating Living Apart Together relationships, elderly women may avoid the burden of what they consider an unfair demand for personal service and care, but at the same time enjoy intimacy.
Uploads
Articles in Journals by Klas Borell
and, in addition, also the opportunities and challenges generated by this alternative academy. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews with five female and five male street academy lecturers. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the way participants explained their experiences could be organised into three major themes and several subordinate themes. One of the most salient results was that participating in the street Academy had become a way to defend academic freedom. More generally suggested results demonstrated that teaching in this new setting, outside of the universities and away from customised learning environments, was
quite a novel experience. The possible implications of street academy
lecturers’ experiences are discussed.
about child protection to enhance cultural awareness among students and expand their insight into how personal biases can affect professional practice. In SimChild, individual students can assume the role of social worker and then collectively discuss the
patterns emerging after their individual assessments have been aggregated. This study, based primarily on focus group data, reflects testing conducted at three Swedish universities.
an intimate partnership do not want to remarry
or be in a marriage-like relationship. A growing
trend is to live apart together (LAT) in an ongoing
intimate relationship that does not include
a common home. We address the debate about
whether LAT constitutes a new form of intimate
relationship in a critical assessment of research
on LAT relationships that applies ambivalence
and concepts from the life course perspective.
We conclude that among older but not younger
adults, LAT relationships are generally a stable
alternative to living with a partner, negotiated
in the context of current social institutions and
arrangements. We propose research questions
that address later life living apart together as
an innovative alternative intimate relationship.
We encourage comparative work on the unique
challenges of later life living apart together, their
implications for other family ties, and their connection
to social and cultural arrangements.
issues having to do with the local protests’ ability to generate public support. In this article, the alternatives to the first wave of research on siting conflicts have been demonstrated for the first time and contrasted with each other. This is a necessary requirement and a first step for efforts to provide the syntheses that this research area so sorely needs.
The Lebanese capital Beirut suffered from a wave of bomb attacks following the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. In order to examine people’s reactions and ways of coping with these events, 14 focus group interviews (n = 77) were conducted in targeted areas. The findings suggest that Beirutis could no longer rely on the taken-for-granted routines of daily life. By changing their routes to school or work and avoiding public places, they restricted their daily activities. However, the data also suggest that targeted people attempted to normalize their everyday lives. Two strategies were employed. The first can be described as bracketing in time and space, which means that people tried to benefit from periods they perceived as moments of reprieve, and that they defined business and private space as safe havens. Bracketing can also be described as re-normalization, i.e. as an attempt to return to the previous state of ‘normality’. The other strategy can be described as crisis normalization and means that the new evaluations of the risks and new patterns of action adopted, which originally deviated from people’s established routines, themselves became routinized.
and, in addition, also the opportunities and challenges generated by this alternative academy. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews with five female and five male street academy lecturers. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the way participants explained their experiences could be organised into three major themes and several subordinate themes. One of the most salient results was that participating in the street Academy had become a way to defend academic freedom. More generally suggested results demonstrated that teaching in this new setting, outside of the universities and away from customised learning environments, was
quite a novel experience. The possible implications of street academy
lecturers’ experiences are discussed.
about child protection to enhance cultural awareness among students and expand their insight into how personal biases can affect professional practice. In SimChild, individual students can assume the role of social worker and then collectively discuss the
patterns emerging after their individual assessments have been aggregated. This study, based primarily on focus group data, reflects testing conducted at three Swedish universities.
an intimate partnership do not want to remarry
or be in a marriage-like relationship. A growing
trend is to live apart together (LAT) in an ongoing
intimate relationship that does not include
a common home. We address the debate about
whether LAT constitutes a new form of intimate
relationship in a critical assessment of research
on LAT relationships that applies ambivalence
and concepts from the life course perspective.
We conclude that among older but not younger
adults, LAT relationships are generally a stable
alternative to living with a partner, negotiated
in the context of current social institutions and
arrangements. We propose research questions
that address later life living apart together as
an innovative alternative intimate relationship.
We encourage comparative work on the unique
challenges of later life living apart together, their
implications for other family ties, and their connection
to social and cultural arrangements.
issues having to do with the local protests’ ability to generate public support. In this article, the alternatives to the first wave of research on siting conflicts have been demonstrated for the first time and contrasted with each other. This is a necessary requirement and a first step for efforts to provide the syntheses that this research area so sorely needs.
The Lebanese capital Beirut suffered from a wave of bomb attacks following the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. In order to examine people’s reactions and ways of coping with these events, 14 focus group interviews (n = 77) were conducted in targeted areas. The findings suggest that Beirutis could no longer rely on the taken-for-granted routines of daily life. By changing their routes to school or work and avoiding public places, they restricted their daily activities. However, the data also suggest that targeted people attempted to normalize their everyday lives. Two strategies were employed. The first can be described as bracketing in time and space, which means that people tried to benefit from periods they perceived as moments of reprieve, and that they defined business and private space as safe havens. Bracketing can also be described as re-normalization, i.e. as an attempt to return to the previous state of ‘normality’. The other strategy can be described as crisis normalization and means that the new evaluations of the risks and new patterns of action adopted, which originally deviated from people’s established routines, themselves became routinized.