Disputation: Caroline Ärleskog

Abstract

This thesis is about sustainability work, which is a highly topical issue in social and political arenas. It is associated with many challenges and contradictions, partly because the vagueness of the concept opens up to a variety of interpretations. The overall aim of the thesis is to increase our knowledge of how ideas about sustainable development are translated into local practices. More specifically, the aim is to increase knowledge about the sustainability work conducted within municipal housing companies that struggle with the conditions that exist in rural areas. I examine how sustainability work is incorporated into one particular housing company’s various local practices, but also how sustainability work has been characterised by being conducted in rural areas. This is an ethnographic case study, based on meeting observations and field studies. The empirical material includes practices enacted at two organisational levels: the governance practices of management and the daily work practices of employees. Through the theoretical lens of translation theory, this thesis investigates how the company’s managers understand sustainability work and explores the governance that takes shape when sustainability work is introduced into companies’ operations. The thesis also investigates how employees react (and act) when management delegates responsibility to engage in sustainability work. The results show how the housing company’s management conceptualised the sustainability work as something that requires balance between continuity in existing operations and development of the company’s sustainability work. The idea of continuous sustainability work was characterised by an economic logic, stemming from an increasingly depopulated countryside. The management found it difficult to deviate from this logic, which ultimately meant that they largely devoted themselves to maintaining established ways of thinking and acting. The results show how the economic logic has contributed to the centralisation of operations over time. By referring to strengthened profitability, management continued to have an ambition to concentrate operations in the municipality’s central location. As part of developing the company’s sustainability work, employees were delegated responsibility for engaging in the development of various operational activities. The results show how sustainability work was translated in various ways, as employees adapted sustainability work to their daily work practices. Accordingly, this study also identifies how they engage in several different modes of subject formation, characterised by different rural areas and their different conditions. The variations reflect tensions between the centre of the municipality and the lower priority peripheries (implying the impact of local urbanization). The results also show how greater community involvement (described as a communitarian citizenship) and responsibility for the locality have emerged in more peripheral areas that lack the stable prosperity of the central town.

Keywords: Translation, Sustainability work, Welfare organisations, Housing, Rural areas, Local urbanization, Communitarian citizenship