I mitten av 1980-talet sköt ekologisk odling fart på Gotland. Då hade Bengt och Iris Cedergren vid Flors i Burs redan odlat giftfritt i ett par decennier. Grannarna tyckte inte de var kloka, men pionjärer för ekologisk odling på Gotland blev de. På ett sätt började alltsammans med att två unga finskor åren efter andra välrldskriget längtade bort från det krigshärjade Finland.

This article examines changes during the last 40 years in a smallholder irrigation-farming community in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. Agricultural productivity has increased thanks to improved seeds and the practice of adding manure and crop residues to fields, a very rare occurrence in the 1970s. People’s range of assets, housing conditions and communications have also improved. Development agencies have had limited impact on these developments, particularly in comparison with their ambitious plans for a radical transformation of the study area. Increased yields and improved living conditions are attributed to local initiatives rather than to external interventions.

We studied livelihood changes and poverty dynamics over a 25-year period in two villages in central Tanzania. The villages were, from the early 1990s and 2000s, strikingly poor with between 50% and 55% of families in the poorest wealth groups. 25 years later much has changed: people have become substantially wealthier, with 64% and 71% in the middle wealth groups. The new wealth had been generated locally, from farming, particularly of sunflowers as a cash crop. This goes against a conventional view of small-scale farming in Tanzania as being stagnant or unproductive. The area of land farmed per family has increased, almost doubling in one village. People have made money, which they invest in mechanised farming, improved housing, education of their children, livestock, and consumer goods. Improved infrastructure and local entrepreneurs have played key roles in the area’s transformation. Locally identified wealth rankings showed that most villagers, those in the middle wealth groups and above, can now support themselves from their land, which is a notable change to a time when 71% and 82% in each village respectively depended on casual labour for their survival. This change has come at a cost to the environment. By 2016, the village forests have largely gone and been replaced by farms. Farmers were concerned that the climate was turning drier because of deforestation. Studying the mundane—the material used in roofs, the size of farms, and so on made it possible to trace and understand the radical transition the area has experienced.

En döende glesbygd får nytt liv genom ett omfattande konstprojekt, med nybyggda museer och verk utplacerade i landskapet. Genom konstverken styrs blicken mot en bergssida, en havsutsikt – och samtidigt gäller också motsatsen att verken får förhöjd intensitet genom landskapet. Det är kunnigt, raffinerat, kreativt. Konstpubliken kommer i hundratusental och bygden får nytt liv. Men inte bara ekonomiskt. Den sociala gemenskapen stärks, framtidstron och stoltheten stärks.  

This chapter documents a notable increase in wealth in two Tanzanian villages since the early 1990s. Contrary to widespread views that small-scale farming in Tanzania is relatively stagnant and unresponsive to change, farmers in the studied area have transformed their economies.  The most striking change is that most households can now support themselves on their land, and many do this on a substantially improved living standard, while twenty-five years ago half the number of families survived only with the help of underpaid day labour. Living standards were very low in the early 1990s. By 2016 many people had moved up the local ladder of progress. Our informants insisted that local initiative was ultimately responsible for the change. At the same time, it is noted that the increased wealth has come at a cost to the environment.

Two studies carried out among Burunge small-scale farmers disclosed a striking difference in their relation to the area's natural resources over a period of less than fifteen years. The paper outlines how the Burunge had come to develop essentially trustful attitudes to the world they inhabit. Dramatic changes in official land policies in the 1970s had not changed this by the early 1990s. However, this was also a time when a new mode of farming became dominant in the area, which caused Burunge farmers to move from a view of nature as a reliable provider to become concerned over increased drought, diminishing soil fertility and accelerated soil erosion. Rainfall records did not tally with the perceived increased severity of drought and therefore it is concluded that the Burunge did not relate drought only to meteorological events but also understand drought as a function of a diminishing resource base.

Kommunernas veto är den främsta anledningen till att vindkraftsärenden avslås. Trots detta behöver kommunerna inte enligt lag motivera sitt ställningstagande. Syftet med studien var att skapa en förståelse kring motiveringarna bakom de fem avstyrkta vindkraftsärenden som kommunerna Hultsfred, Ljungby och Tingsryd haft mellan åren 2020–2021. Detta undersöktes genom en dokumentstudie av kommunernas offentliga beslutshandlingar, semi-strukturella intervjuer av tjänstepersoner, en politiker och en projektör samt kompletterades med uttalanden i media. En jämförande analys utgjorde studiens resultat. Studien visade på att samtliga kommuner motiverat sin avstyrkan med att den höga höjden på de föreslagna vindkraftverken inte överensstämmer med kommunernas vindbruksplaner. Motiveringarna i de offentliga handlingarna beskrev inte alltid hela bilden bakom avstyrkan. I flera ärenden vägde vågskålen för nej-sidan tyngre. Motiveringar såsom avsaknad av förtroende för projektören eller inväntande av ännu ej uppförda verk nämndes också. Det lokala motståndet i främst Hultsfred påverkade i hög grad politikerna i deras beslut.

In recent years, structural changes to the school system, including the introduction of independent schools, have increased school choice alternatives in Sweden. Consequently, a large share of today's students attend a school other than the one closest to home. Since the compulsory school system is designed to be free of charge and to offer the same standard of education everywhere, increasing school choice- hypothetically-should not increase the between-school variation in grades. In reality, however, between-school variation in grades has increased in recent years. The aim of this paper is to test whether increasing between-school variance can be explained by changes in residential patterns, or if it must be attributed to structural change. Using a counterfactual approach, the students' variations in grades are compared between observed schools of graduation and hypothetical schools of graduation. The multilevel results indicate that school choice seems to increase between-school variation of grades.

Nearly all segregation measures use some form of administrative unit (usually tracts in the United States) as the base for the calculation of segregation indices, and most of the commonly used measures are aspatial. The spatial measures that have been proposed are often not easily computed, although there have been significant advances in the past decade. We provide a measure that is individually based (either persons or very small administrative units) and a technique for constructing neighborhoods that does not require administrative units. We show that the spatial distribution of different population groups within an urban area can be efficiently analyzed with segregation measures that use population count-based definitions of neighborhood scale. We provide a variant of a k-nearest neighbor approach and a statistic spatial isolation and a methodology (EquiPop) to map, graph, and evaluate the likelihood of individuals meeting other similar race individuals or of meeting individuals of a different ethnicity. The usefulness of this approach is demonstrated in an application of the method to data for Los Angeles and three metropolitan areas in Sweden. This comparative approach is important as we wish to show how the technique can be used across different cultural contexts. The analysis shows how the scale (very small neighborhoods, larger communities, or cities) influences the segregation outcomes. Even if microscale segregation is strong, there may still be much more mixing at macroscales.

Several studies have analysed the relationships between individuals' commuting distances and individual characteristics, discrimination, societal structure and planning. Largely left unexplored, however, are the long-term relationships between changes in the economic cycle and the effects on individual commuting distances. Using regression analyses, this study focuses on the relationship between changes in GDP and commuters' response reflected in commuting distances. The empirical data consist of records of almost 12 million Swedish commuting events between 1990 and 2006. Results of the analyses indicate that changes in GDP growth rate have an impact on commuting distances, especially for younger workers, the recently unemployed and commuters in metropolitan areas.

Miljömedvetenheten växer idag och med denna medvetenhet ökar även omsorgen om naturen. Funderingar kring hur detta påverkar parkens betydelse i staden väcks. I uppsatsen undersöks parkers identitetsskapande funktion för staden ur ett brett perspektiv genom en kvalitativ fallstudie i staden Gävle, där några centrala parkers värden för dess brukare samt för kommunen utreds genom intervjuer, gåturer och observationer. Den empiriska studien utgör det viktigaste materialet men även litteratur gällande parker och identitet ges en betydande roll.

Uppsatsen visar efter analys och koppling till teorier av bland andra Gehl, Lilja, Grahn och Sorte att parkerna är identitetsskapande för stadens invånare och att varje park innehar en rad identitetsskapande kvaliteter. Då parkerna är mycket värdefulla för dess brukare, ingår i deras identitetsskapande process samt bidrar till starka känslor av stolthet och affektion anses de även vara identitetsskapande för staden.

Due to the increased number of the amount of asylum-seekers that have migrated to Sweden lately, the topic has received increased attention. This has contributed to housing shortage and policy reforms for new migrants to arise in order to ensure that everybody gets housing. Asylum seekers often experience more difficult patterns to housing, and for LGBT asylum seekers especially since they are such a marginalised group in our society already. Housing is an important part in the initial settlement stage and good housing enables successful resettlement and that will help with the integration process. The aim of this thesis is to look at LGBT asylum seekers mobility and what constrains and opportunities they face in that process. To answer these questions qualitative method and semi-structured life story interviews have been performed with twelve LGBT asylum seekers. The result of these interviews has been presented around four different concepts that were factors contributing to their mobility. These four concepts that were found in the interviews was forced migration, homophobia, social network and freedom. These findings should be of interest for further studies in order for LGBT asylum seekers mobility patters to become more safe and secure.   

The Finnafjörður harbour project rests on the idea that shipping routes in the Arctic will become navigable in the following decades. Located on the northeast corner of Iceland, the place is considered a suitable location for a trans-shipment harbour in the future to service Arctic marine traffic. The project would have considerable societal, natural, and economic consequences on the local community, which counts little more than 500 residents. The aim of this thesis is to explore residents’ attitudes towards the Finnafjörður harbour project in relation to sense of place and place based memories by asking how different views and attitudes of Langanesbyggð’s residents towards the Finnafjörður harbour project relate to changes in their sense of place, and how memories of a place form part of resident’s attitudes towards the project. The thesis employs a qualitative research strategy where semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with eleven residents of Langanesbyggð. The findings demonstrate different attitudes towards the project, which relate to changes in both the social and the physical environment. Furthermore, the role of memory is significant in shaping residents’ attitudes towards the project. The thesis addresses the voices of local communities, which have been largely neglected in Arctic studies to this day.