Papers by Marita Flisbäck
Journal for the theory of social behaviour, Feb 15, 2024
In the present article, we outline basic assumptions and conceptual tools for a sociology of exis... more In the present article, we outline basic assumptions and conceptual tools for a sociology of existence. First, we address man's fundamental conditions of existence: that life's finitude and encounters with the uncertainty of existence are fundamental experiences that construct social relations. Second, we outline how existential meaning-making and the ability to cope with the unpredictability of life are dependent on power resources , where especially the resource poor may experience 'existential nausea'. Third, we discuss how existential dilemmas may intensify under certain historical eras. Therefore, studying individuals' existential dilemmas is a tool to examine the dominant social issues at a particular time and place. Fourth, we elaborate on the importance of studying turning points during individuals' life courses, as existential meaning - or lack thereof - becomes particularly salient at these times. This includes an understanding that death and rebirth are experienced in the form of various endings and beginnings in everyday life. Fifth, and finally, we emphasize an analysis in which the direction of people's lives is conceptualized in a broad time perspective, where past, present, and future interact and influence life choices and social relations constructed during a lifetime.
Sociologisk Forskning, Feb 21, 2022
Life politics and existential meaning in an alternative rural society. The example of Uddebo. Thi... more Life politics and existential meaning in an alternative rural society. The example of Uddebo. This article explores the existential driving forces to develop an economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable alternative rural space, where circular economy, self-sufficiency and work-critical attitudes prevail. By focusing on 15 individual narratives, we analyze concrete practices and shared efforts as a road to an alternative local community and an existentially meaningful everyday life. The analysis is framed by an existential sociological perspective and by Beck's idea of the Children of Freedom in second modernity. By developing a life-political approach where "less is more", the interviewees both want to achieve a meaningful life in the present and build a sustainable society for future generations. The goal is for everyone to decide for themselves about their time use and finding collective solutions to individual problems, creating a space where existential meaning replaces the lived experience of meaninglessness in the consumer-and working society. However, the attempts to establish an alternative rural society also contain dilemmas and conflicts related to finding independent organizing and financing opportunities.
Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies
The article addresses physicians who work as group supervisors or mentors in a training program a... more The article addresses physicians who work as group supervisors or mentors in a training program after having formally retired. The driving forces to continue to work are analyzed in terms of the development of existential meaning of work at a particular stage of the life cycle. We argue that a deeper understanding of the existential driving forces, that both cause physicians to accept post-retirement mentoring tasks and that is awakened and developed in this specific work, would contribute to a deeper understanding of why individuals continue working into old age. However, in political discussions of an extended working life, similar aspects tend to be disregarded. Understanding the existential driving forces that cause an individual to continue working after retirement may be crucial to comprehending how we can take advantage of the resources of the older workforce and, thus, realize human potential at a later stage of the life cycle.
Sociologisk Forskning, 2022
Artikeln handlar om den betydelse existentiell mening har för utvecklingen av ett ekonomiskt, soc... more Artikeln handlar om den betydelse existentiell mening har för utvecklingen av ett ekonomiskt, socialt och ekologiskt hållbart alternativsamhälle på landsbygden. I artikeln analyseras 15 individers berättelser om konkreta praktiker och gemensamma insatser i formandet av en existentiellt meningsfull vardag på en plats med cirkulär ekonomi, självförsörjning och arbetskritiska attityder. Analysen inramas av ett existenssociologiskt perspektiv och Becks tanke om ”frihetens barn”, som i en andra modernitet försöker att ta vara på de möjligheter som kan uppstå i ett samhälle som i övrigt mest erbjuder risker och osäkerhet. Genom att utveckla ett ”livspolitiskt” förhållningssätt, bortom konsumtionssamhällets överflöd och arbetssamhällets plikter, vill intervjupersonerna både uppnå ett meningsfullt liv i nuet och bygga ett hållbart lokalsamhälle där resurser tillvaratas för kommande generationer. Målet är att till skillnad från upplevelsen av meningslöshet i det kapitalistiska arbetssamhälle...
Sweden. Her research has primarily focused on career paths and family life in the artistic field,... more Sweden. Her research has primarily focused on career paths and family life in the artistic field, as well as social recognition in low-status occupations. In her current book she analyses how family processes, both regarding parenting and loss of relatives, affect artistic work, self-realization and faith in future possibilities.
Using literature on the professions, the article explores how a new political model for funding a... more Using literature on the professions, the article explores how a new political model for funding and steering may affect professional autonomy. Professional groups' efforts to independently practice their profession during times of political change are elaborated. The professional group in questions is artists, the context is Sweden, and the new model is called the Collaborative Cultural Model. This model entails a shift in the funding and realization of cultural policy from the national to the regional level. From a situation in which civil servants with specific culture knowledge were involved, politicians, representatives of civil society, civil servants and artists are now to work together to create a regional culture plan. In the article, two different outcomes of the new model are discussed as possible. It can lead to de-professionalization process, particularly if the policy on keeping outside influences at "arm's length" weakens. On the other hand, negotiations between different actors could result in artists' knowledge becoming more prominent and receiving more recognition than previously. This, in turn, could promote professional artists' status.
Arbetsliv i omvandling, 2010
Artists and professionalism is a special issue with the overall aim to bring artistic professions... more Artists and professionalism is a special issue with the overall aim to bring artistic professions into the field of professions and professionalism. The issue consists of four contributions that all highlight artistic professions from different perspectives, such as artists’ educational possibilities, professional careers, strategies for inclusion and exclusion, professional logics and boundary-makings, how professional autonomy is affected by welfare states policies and so forth.
Tidskrift för genusvetenskap
Artistic professions may be characterised as risky activities with large investments in relation ... more Artistic professions may be characterised as risky activities with large investments in relation to the rewards that most of the practitioners can expect. Despite investing in long education, artists have a weak position on the work market and risk long periods without income or work, which makes extra jobs largely essential for sustenance. Since the art profession requires a continuous investment of time, it can also be difficult to distinguish clearly from other spheres of life, and thus it influences both one’s economic standard and family life. The field is also pervaded with a romanticism, where one has to challenge the world individually, an idea of artistic self-development as something in opposition to daily life, family life and security. Feministic researchers have claimed that artistic development and family life often have been regarded as mutually opposed phenomena. In this article I discuss what meanings this can have for young women with artistic ambitions. The articl...
Sociologisk Forskning
When the calling is brought to a head: Retirement from an existential sociology perspective In th... more When the calling is brought to a head: Retirement from an existential sociology perspective In this article we analyze how the meaning and value of work can emerge, be defined and redefined in relation to the coming of retirement, by focusing individuals with dedicated work approaches interpreted as a calling. By relying on an existential sociology framework we analyze the retirement process as an existential imperative, e .g. life phases or processes where questions on meaning and life quality become prominent. For the interviewees, the day of retirement becomes a sort of a road sign that-depending on the distance of time to the point of retirement-has intensified existential questions and the meaning of work. The article explores the defining dimensions of a calling as found in the interviewees dedicated work approaches. We address the types of problems and opportunities that arise when the interviewees are soon to retire and their associated strategies: listening to a calling on "standby"; learning not to listen to one's calling, listening to a calling from a private sphere and project the calling's commitment to other activities .
Sociologisk Forskning
Sociologiska institutionen, Göteborgs universitet From general images to individual features: Man... more Sociologiska institutionen, Göteborgs universitet From general images to individual features: Managing lack of understanding and stereotypes in four lowstatus occupations Individuals shape an image of themselves and their surroundings in relation to how they as sume that others regard them. In these situations occupation is essential. Categorizations, valuations and rewards associated with occupations are among the most fundamental in struments used for domination in the social world. Hence it is interesting to study how groups and individuals who experience low occupational status manage their social posi tions. This article, based upon interviews with workers in food industry, waitresses/waiters, storesmen and dustmen, analyzes how the interviewees handle low respect, here expressed as lack of understanding and stereotyping. Three different positions are distinguished, ar guing that one of them implies a stronger identification with the occupation than do the other two, which to a greater extent agree with stereotyped images. In the first position, the workers disagree with stereotypes of lowstatus jobs as apathetic, heavy or simple, and assert that their occupation has specific values such as selfdevelopment, qualifications or advan tage to society. In the second position, low recognition is avoided through little identifica tion with the occupation. The interviewees separate themselves and who they are from their jobs, and find it ridiculous to speak about it in terms of selfdevelopment or qualifications when so many are able to do the job. In the third position, the interviewees emphasize that their own place of work is less heavy than the job in general. Through the third strategy their particular tasks are seen as exceptional and their identification with the occupation is local rather than embedded in a wider occupational identity .
Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv, Nov 26, 2020
Under pågående pandemi vittnar yrkesutövare inom vård och omsorg om allvarliga arbetsmiljöbrister... more Under pågående pandemi vittnar yrkesutövare inom vård och omsorg om allvarliga arbetsmiljöbrister, samtidigt som framställningar av arbetets vidare mening aldrig varit så närvarande. Sociologerna Bengtsson och Flisbäck betonar vikten av att återuppväcka kallbegreppet, vilket varit utskällt i debatter om svenskt arbetsliv
Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift, 2016
I artikeln undersöks tecken som intervjuade målsägande, tilltalade och vittnen berättar att de t... more I artikeln undersöks tecken som intervjuade målsägande, tilltalade och vittnen berättar att de tagit till intäkt för att allianser uppkommit under brottmålsrättegång. Urskiljandet av allianser och intervjupersonernas förklaringar till dessa, i termer av klass, kön, ras och sexualitet, tolkas som strategier för att hantera osäkra bedömningssituationer.
Qualitative Sociology Review, 2014
This article concerns the question of how marginalized individuals at the doorway to the art fiel... more This article concerns the question of how marginalized individuals at the doorway to the art field manage their position of uncertainty, what Bourdieu calls a “cleft habitus,” and in some cases challenge the repressive norms. Bourdieu’s perspective on how historical crisis prompts change at the macro level is used to view how “micro crises” in the lives of individuals leads to resistance against normative requirements. The article suggests that within situations of micro crises individuals assume three strategies to handle the contradictions they are faced with: 1) expand upon their cultural capital (these resources can then be used in opposition to the institution of the field within which they were accumulated in the first place); 2) move to an alternative scene and audience; or 3) create a new or emergent future horizon through which they can reinterpret their past and present situation.
Nordisk kulturpolitisk tidsskrift, 2014
Her research has primarily focused on career paths and family life in the artistic field, as well... more Her research has primarily focused on career paths and family life in the artistic field, as well as social recognition in low-status occupations. In her current book she analyses how family processes, both regarding parenting and loss of relatives, affect artistic work, self-realization and faith in future possibilities.
International Perspectives on Aging, 2022
The capability approach is relevant to gaining a conceptual understanding of individuals’ abiliti... more The capability approach is relevant to gaining a conceptual understanding of individuals’ abilities and motivation to work and to explore the potential consequences that various working conditions have for people when they reach old age. Here, the capability concept is complemented with system theory to understand the multi-component key resources for capability to work among older workers, and also the conversion factors – capability through work – at individual, micro, meso, macro and chrono-levels. The theoretical approach is exemplified by studies from the interdisciplinary field of work sciences. The chapter describes central working-life conditions, conversion factors for crafting capability to work and examples of patterns of interactions between capability to work and capability through work. To support practical applications, we suggest important conversion factors and patterns of interaction between capability to work and capability through working-life resources. In sum, ...
Qualitative Sociology Review, 2021
Current discussions on the importance of retirement are largely built on statistical analyses of ... more Current discussions on the importance of retirement are largely built on statistical analyses of longitudinal data showing that well-being seldom changes from before to after entering retirement, but is rather mainly dependent on the individual’s social resource position. In contrast, qualitatively oriented researchers underline that the retirement process is a complex life transition that needs to be further illuminated. To do this, however, we need to advance new theoretical and methodological perspectives. In this article, an existential sociology approach is outlined, emphasizing the multifaceted spectra of lived experiences and meaning-making in the retirement process. The phenomenological approaches of existential sociology allow us to consider how the exit from working life is created in the processes of motion rather than as expressions of static positions. A merit of this approach is that retirement as an empirical case may say something general about being in transition as...
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Papers by Marita Flisbäck