http://hdl.handle.net/11089/38311 2026-04-09T12:50:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/38409 Illuminating Existential Meaning: A New Approach in the Study of Retirement Bengtsson, Mattias; Flisbäck, Marita 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 a basic social condition. In the article, we discuss how a socio-biographical methodology, based on longitudinal qualitative interviews, helps us capture how existential meaning is formed and reformed in the ambiguous situations which arise in similar life-course transitions. Theoretically, we especially draw on concepts from the existential anthropologist Jackson and the phenomenological tradition of existential philosophers such as Arendt and Heidegger. 2021-02-08T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/38408 Life Strategies of the Parents of Children with Intellectual Disabilities in the Context of Mixed Social Situations Niedbalski, Jakub This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of the managing of the stigma of a child’s disability by their parents. Using the concept of stigma by Erving Goffman, I point to its usefulness in understanding the management of stigma by parents of children with intellectual disabilities in the context of mixed social situations. The research utilizes qualitative techniques with special emphasis on unstructured interviews. The data analysis was performed following the procedures of the grounded theory. As studies have shown, parents of children with disabilities adopt various strategies and tactics during the encounters with other persons and institutions while dealing with everyday hardships. 2021-02-08T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/38407 Continuing Social Constraints in Education Agency: The School Choices and Experiences of Middle- Class African American Families in Albany, NY Knudson, Paul This paper explores the experiences of middle-class African American parents who have enrolled their children in a central-city public school district and the factors that inform and contribute to their school enrollment decisions. Data come from nineteen in-depth interviews with middle-class African American parents in Albany, New York. The paper uses the conceptual framework of empowerment and agency to explore and analyze the findings. Findings suggest that middle-class African American parents possess some measure of empowerment based on their human capital and positive childhood experiences in public schools. The latter denotes the salience of emotions in intergenerational education transmission. Parents’ empowerment, however, does not fully extend to agency. Most parents’ school choices have been structured and narrowed by racial segregation in residence and by the real and perceived racial exclusion in private school settings. Therefore, even for highly-educated, middle-income African Americans, anxieties over racial exclusion act as a strong social constraint on parents’ community and school choices. 2021-02-08T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/38406 Writing Tales of the Future: Five “Balancing Acts” for Globographers Næss, Hans Erik Since the early 1990s much has been written about how ethnographers should do fieldwork of the local in a globalizing world. The challenge of communicating their analyses authentically in a world of information overload is much less debated. To rectify this situation, I argue in this paper that five balancing acts are crucial to those who do ethnographies of the global, or “globographers,” in their writing. Emerging from a review of the history of fieldwork and writing, these balancing acts constitute a template of how a communicative consciousness may assist qualitative researchers in achieving ethnographic integrity. 2021-02-08T00:00:00Z