Torbjörn Friberg

Burnout: From Popular Culture to Psychiatric Diagnosis in Sweden

This article aims to understand how burn-out became an object of thought, through the study of certain processes of legitimization. It traces the genealogy of the burn-out concept from the initial article from 1974, via its confirmation as a “disease” in the 1980s, to its appearance as a legitimate diagnosis in Sweden in 1997. The theoretical framework is that of applied metaphysics, which means a study on how a specific phenomenon came into being. Consequently, I take departure from ontology in motion with an approach that concerns the legitimization processes. The conclusion will show the underlying processes of legitimization in relation to the making of a psychiatric object of thought in Swedish society.

Towards a Discovery-Oriented Ethnography in Researching the Professional Context of Higher Education.

Today anthropologists seem to be increasingly studying phenomena in their own societies. Many have a focus on policies in organizations and an interest in explicating cultural phenomena constituted by power and governance. Consequently, a recent interest has emerged in Michel Foucaults philosophy, especially as an inspiration for ethnographic analysis. However, this type of inquiry is problematic, because the Foucauldian perspective contributes to a pre-established idea of social reality, hence distorting essential aspects of the process of discovery. This article aims to provide an alternative to recent trends in Foucauldian-inspired analysis by showing how Eric Wolfs anthropological project can contribute to a more discovery-oriented ethnography. Wolfs concept formation of structural power, tactical power, chain of signification and cultural brokers is closely examined in relation to studying organizational phenomena. In particular, an analysis based upon Wolfs concept can be useful for an increased understanding of policy processes in the field of higher education.

Generating ethnographic research questions: an anthropological contribution to the study of higher education

ABSTRACT As part of recent complex transformations, it seems that higher educational organisations are being forced to reorganise, standardise and streamline in order to survive in the new political and economic context. How are ethnographers in general going to approach these contemporary phenomena? By drawing on the conceptual history of anthropology, the aim of this article is to generate ethnographic-oriented research questions concerned with higher education. The first part of the article provides an ethnographic background, while the second part focuses on Paul Williss reasoning on ethnographic imagination, as a prerequisite for generating alternative research questions. The third part makes explicit anthropologist Maurice Godeliers theoretical imagination, carving out some specific theoretical parts which may be used in the generating process. The conclusion then suggests a number of questions to be asked by future ethnographers of higher education. The questions are followed by a reflection upon the consequences of doing ethnography within contemporary higher education settings, which are increasingly dominated by policy-makers; ethnography is thus to be seen as an intervening instrument.

Constructive alignment: from professional teaching technique to governance of profession

The focus of this article is on changes of epistemic content in evaluating and controlling teaching at universities. Methodologically, in this study, we integrate macro-historical-political configurations with contemporary micro-social situations in contrast to a discursive-philosophical orientation. We strive for integration between historical processes and social practices. From the theoretical point of departure in the concept of epistemic drift, we want to investigate the changes and ambivalences that are the consequences when epistemic criteria developed in one social jurisdiction (research on teaching and learning in the 1970s and 1980s) are used in another social setting (teaching and learning in higher education, or TLHE, in the 2010s). The epistemic content discussed here is the qualitative turn of teaching and learning in the 1970 s and 1980s, a turn that paved the way for the conceptualization of constructive alignment (CA) later in the 1990s, the concept that is the object of analysis. As the text moves on, it will be shown how CA gradually merge with a managerial form of learning outcome, in various policy contexts on European, national (Sweden) and university levels. We describe how CA became institutionalized as the most common pedagogical model in Swedish TLHE courses. Against this background of historical processes – the theoretical pedagogical foundation of CA, Bologna policies in Europe and Swedish higher education policies and national institutionalization of CA – we illustrate ethnographically how CA is received in local, social situations.

A holistic, self-reflective perspective on victimization within higher education in Sweden

In the light of some recent transformations in higher education, a moral governance of university teachers is starting to emerge, suggesting a decrease of professional autonomy. By drawing on the idea of Gilles Deleuze’s ‘clinical analysis’, the aim of this article is to re-problematize the increasingly common moral image of students’ problems in the light of these recent developments in higher education. The first part of the article focuses on students’ victimization, which is followed by an analysis of the rhetoric and practice of transparency. The third part investigates the relationship between widening participation and the entry of the market model in higher education. The findings suggest that university teachers could benefit from applying a holistic, self-reflective perspective – as a contrast to many policymakers’ reductive individual perception. This perspective enables two practices: (1) the critical ethos concerned with the limits and potentials of professional identity and (2) the political mobilization of university teachers as a profession.

From ethnocentrism to policy-centrism

ABSTRACT This article is a response to the methodological problems I experienced during fieldwork. It follows that the article is an experiment of creating alternative possibilities for thinking about ethnocentrism as a phenomenon in transformation in a contemporary, innovative, higher educational setting. Throughout the article, I argue for the acknowledgement of policy-centrism as a phenomenon that has transformed out of classic ethnocentrism. The first part provides a reflective ethnographic background, while the second part focuses on sociologist William Graham Sumner’s classical work in order to disclose the constitutive principles of ethnocentrism as a phenomenon. The three following parts will, thus, discuss the transformation of the phenomenon’s four overlapping principles: conceptual, political, relational and expressional. The concluding remarks problematise policy-centrism as an emerging phenomenon in the new innovation policy research context.

The Academic Contract: From “Simply a Metaphor” to Technology

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the ontological assumptions that underlie the idea of a contract in Academic Capitalism. Far from being “simply a metaphor”, there are now concrete examples of real contracts in Swedish universities, which we here designate “academic contracts”. In investigating the perceived function of academic contracts, we will try to answer this fundamental question: For which problem, in what conception, is signing a contract between a student and an academic teacher a solution? By analysing four existing academic contracts from Swedish universities through the lens of a very influential economic theory of the nature and function of contracts, New Institutional Economics (NIE), we will argue that the implementation of academic contracts is totally at odds with the Humboldtian tradition and the classic university. Our contention is that the introduction of academic contracts does not facilitate, but rather undermines, the academic teaching and learning process.