Aksel Tjora
Biographic Data
| ID | 166235 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aksel Tjora |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aksel |
| FAMILY NAME | Tjora |
| SIGNATURE | TJORA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian University of Science and Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8698-0908 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Lecture or Lager
Since 2013, we have organized an annual Sociology Festival bringing together students, faculty, and local sociologists to share experiences and socialize. This article analyzes the festival as a social experiment based on observations, student‐produced texts and podcasts, and interviews after the 2023 event. Drawing on theories of social interaction, especially Goffman, and research on festivals and fun, we explore how beer, sociology, and studen…
Riding shotgun - Front-seat research and the socio-material considerations of ethnography on the move
In this article, we explore methodological considerations of using the car as space for ethnographic research on police work. With a socio-material perspective, we are concerned about how the car's particular materiality and mobility shapes social interaction that takes place within it. We argue that this affects the researcher role, and that the researcher's spatial position in the car affects the researcher role further. The position's impact o…
Shameful Technological Impertinence
This article is motivated by the excessive success of Apple’s iPad, introduced in 2010, questioning the motives for acquiring the product at the time of launch. The purpose is to understand the decision to buy an expensive product that had a fairly undefined use. On the basis of in-depth interviews of ‘early-buyers’ (‘early adopters’) of the iPad, we examine, in this article, justifications for the acquisition of such an ‘open technology’ use. Us…
Communal Forms
Drawing on a wide range of social theory, as well as empirical inputs from studies of work, neighbourhoods, events, meeting places and online self-help groups, this book suggests that communal forms are constructed on the basis of communicative, material, biographic-cultural, practice-based, and situational layers. The concept of community has long provided an important point of departure for the discipline of sociology, with the conflicting conc…
The Constitutive Practices of Public Smartphone Use
The smartphone has become the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology, giving it significant social importance and sociological relevance. In this article, we explore how the smartphone interacts with and impacts social interaction in the setting of the urban café. Through analyzing 52 spontaneous in-depth interviews related to social interaction in cafés, we identify three categories of smartphone use in social settings: interaction suspens…
Communal invalidation of young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues
This study explores how young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues experience the challenges of belonging to their local communities. The data were generated through qualitative in-depth interviews with seven young adult service users, six of whom were interviewed twice. The qualitative data analysis resulted in three overarching themes: the need to accept one’s own life and the structures surrounding it; being caught…
The symbolic affordances of a video-mediated gaze in emergency psychiatry
Situational Domestication and the Origin of the Cafe Worker Species
Given the pervasiveness of free Wi-Fi zones in cafes, use of laptops, tablets and smart phones supports the transformation of cafes from social spaces to work spaces for many customers. In this article we analyse, on the basis of an ethnographic study of individuals' laptop work in urban cafes in Norway and the UK, (1) what it is about cafes that makes people visit them for working purposes, and (2) how individual laptop work changes the social l…
Musikkfestivalens kollektive effervesens
Festivaler har blitt viktige for formidling av levende populærmusikk og andre kulturuttrykk idet de trekker horder av publikum til byer og bygder hver eneste sommer. I denne artikkelen søker vi å forstå denne populariteten, og samtidig utnytte etablerte sosiologiske teorier for å utvikle en sosiologisk tilnærming til festivalfenomenet. På bakgrunn av deltakerintervjuer på Pstereofestivalen i Trondheim sommeren 2015, identifiserer vi «festivalstem…
To gode bøker om tekstanalyse
Pressens biologisering av ADHD
Sammendrag Diagnosen ADHD er jevnlig gjenstand for offentlig debatt. Siden mediene for mange er den viktigste kanalen til informasjon om helse, blir de kilder til folks oppfatning av hvordan diagnoser og behandling kan fortolkes. I en helsesosiologisk sammenheng er det derfor relevant å undersøke pressens rolle i fremstillingen av ADHD. Den empiriske analysen i denne artikkelen er basert på fremstillingen Aftenposten, Adresseavisen og VG hadde av…
The social rhythm of the rock music festival
On the basis of observational studies in a number of rock music festivals during the period 2004-2012, I ask the following question in this paper: how does the music festival community arise and how is it maintained? With the help of perspectives from interactionist sociology and organisational studies I develop an analysis of how rock music festival 'skills' are collectively produced. A communally acknowledged competence is negotiated and made e…
Survival of the project
Interaction Pretext
It has been suggested that community, social cohesion and territorial ties in neighbourhoods may be characterised by three directions: the lost, the saved and the transformed. On the basis of a number of case studies in a Norwegian city, it is found that these three trends exist together, on the basis of various local interactive practices. The concept of an interaction pretext is developed to answer in a more nuanced way how various forms of soc…
Communal Normalization in an Online Self-Help Group for Adolescents With a Mentally Ill Parent
Although implications of parental mental illness are well documented, most children of mentally ill parents are left to manage their family situation with limited information and support. We explored the role of a Norwegian online self-help group for adolescents (aged 15 to 18) with a mentally ill parent. Through in-depth interviews with 13 participants, we found that the online self-help group provided "communal normalization" by which participa…
Café Society
While tracing the historical emergence of the café as a social institution and noting its multiple faces and functions in the modernity of the occident, three themes run like threads of varying textur
Sosiologisk tidsskrift 20 år
Trondheimsredaksjonen takker for seg
Fra sosiologiens tidsskrift til tidsskriftets sosiologi
Sosiologisk skepsismarinade
Vel inne i 2013 m vi kunne unne oss litt godt begrunnet skepsis.I dette nummer er Eirik Frhaug Swensen skeptisk til kunnskapsgrunnlaget som benyttes for s tvil om klimaendringer som menneskeskapte.Bjrn Egil Fl mlbaerer en skepsis til forskernes refleksivitet innenfor den kulturelle vendingen i bygdesosiologien.Johan Fredrik Rye er skeptisk til hvorvidt George Herbert Mead er opphavsmann
From fatness to badness
Obesity (or being overweight) is now considered a by-product of membership of developed societies. Moreover, it is considered a growing 'global' health problem. This article reports on a small qualitative study of adults who fell into one or other of these categories in Norway in 2010, and who have been faced with decisions about lifestyle versus surgical remedies. This decision making is contextualized and the principal criteria examined. Embodi…
Sosiologer på den smale sti
Mot en kvassere sosiologi
Nytt år – nye utfordringer
Getting the aorta pants in place
The evolving nature of surgical treatments creates gaps between evidence-based guidelines and actual clinical practice.This article addresses the emerging clinical practice of the EndoVascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR), a surgical treatment of patients with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). Drawing on a qualitative study across three hospitals, we identified three interplaying expertise traits: the collective, the interpersonal and the technical, eac…
Interaction Pretext
It has been suggested that community, social cohesion and territorial ties in neighbourhoods may be characterised by three directions: the lost, the saved and the transformed. On the basis of a number of case studies in a Norwegian city, it is found that these three trends exist together, on the basis of various local interactive practices. The concept of an interaction pretext is developed to answer in a more nuanced way how various forms of soc…
From fatness to badness
Obesity (or being overweight) is now considered a by-product of membership of developed societies. Moreover, it is considered a growing 'global' health problem. This article reports on a small qualitative study of adults who fell into one or other of these categories in Norway in 2010, and who have been faced with decisions about lifestyle versus surgical remedies. This decision making is contextualized and the principal criteria examined. Embodi…
Writing small discoveries
Taking field notes (or otherwise documenting observation) is at the very core of ethnographic research. However, relatively speaking, this task has hardly been covered in the research methods literature. With this as a point of departure, this article draws on an analysis of 247 short field notes taken in various situations by student observers. It aims to explore the immediate act of taking field notes while doing observation. By inductive analy…
The social rhythm of the rock music festival
On the basis of observational studies in a number of rock music festivals during the period 2004-2012, I ask the following question in this paper: how does the music festival community arise and how is it maintained? With the help of perspectives from interactionist sociology and organisational studies I develop an analysis of how rock music festival 'skills' are collectively produced. A communally acknowledged competence is negotiated and made e…
The symbolic affordances of a video-mediated gaze in emergency psychiatry
Communal Normalization in an Online Self-Help Group for Adolescents With a Mentally Ill Parent
Although implications of parental mental illness are well documented, most children of mentally ill parents are left to manage their family situation with limited information and support. We explored the role of a Norwegian online self-help group for adolescents (aged 15 to 18) with a mentally ill parent. Through in-depth interviews with 13 participants, we found that the online self-help group provided "communal normalization" by which participa…
The groove in the box
Even though electronic and computer-based technologies are commonly used in music composition, performance and recording, this field of technology use has, with a few exceptions, remained fairly unexplored within social studies of technology. In this article, the role of technology in music production is investigated by applying the notion of script (Akrich 1992) to an empirical study of users of the Roland MC303 Groovebox, a self-contained instr…
Situational Domestication and the Origin of the Cafe Worker Species
Given the pervasiveness of free Wi-Fi zones in cafes, use of laptops, tablets and smart phones supports the transformation of cafes from social spaces to work spaces for many customers. In this article we analyse, on the basis of an ethnographic study of individuals' laptop work in urban cafes in Norway and the UK, (1) what it is about cafes that makes people visit them for working purposes, and (2) how individual laptop work changes the social l…
Survival of the project
Square pegs in round holes
Riding shotgun - Front-seat research and the socio-material considerations of ethnography on the move
In this article, we explore methodological considerations of using the car as space for ethnographic research on police work. With a socio-material perspective, we are concerned about how the car's particular materiality and mobility shapes social interaction that takes place within it. We argue that this affects the researcher role, and that the researcher's spatial position in the car affects the researcher role further. The position's impact o…
Making sense of patient expertise
The Constitutive Practices of Public Smartphone Use
The smartphone has become the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology, giving it significant social importance and sociological relevance. In this article, we explore how the smartphone interacts with and impacts social interaction in the setting of the urban café. Through analyzing 52 spontaneous in-depth interviews related to social interaction in cafés, we identify three categories of smartphone use in social settings: interaction suspens…
Getting the aorta pants in place
The evolving nature of surgical treatments creates gaps between evidence-based guidelines and actual clinical practice.This article addresses the emerging clinical practice of the EndoVascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR), a surgical treatment of patients with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). Drawing on a qualitative study across three hospitals, we identified three interplaying expertise traits: the collective, the interpersonal and the technical, eac…
Between asset and process
Competence and competence development are ‘buzz words' widely used in organizations in Norway, as well as in other countries. Competence, as the company's most important and valuable resource, is constantly highlighted. But what does this imply for the organization and for the employees? What are comprised in the concept of competence? In this article we present different understandings of competence among employees in a large Norwegian oil compa…
Communal invalidation of young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues
This study explores how young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues experience the challenges of belonging to their local communities. The data were generated through qualitative in-depth interviews with seven young adult service users, six of whom were interviewed twice. The qualitative data analysis resulted in three overarching themes: the need to accept one’s own life and the structures surrounding it; being caught…
Between asset and process
Competence and competence development are ‘buzz words' widely used in organizations in Norway, as well as in other countries. Competence, as the company's most important and valuable resource, is constantly highlighted. But what does this imply for the organization and for the employees? What are comprised in the concept of competence? In this article we present different understandings of competence among employees in a large Norwegian oil compa…
Writing small discoveries
Taking field notes (or otherwise documenting observation) is at the very core of ethnographic research. However, relatively speaking, this task has hardly been covered in the research methods literature. With this as a point of departure, this article draws on an analysis of 247 short field notes taken in various situations by student observers. It aims to explore the immediate act of taking field notes while doing observation. By inductive analy…
Making sense of patient expertise
Square pegs in round holes
The groove in the box
Even though electronic and computer-based technologies are commonly used in music composition, performance and recording, this field of technology use has, with a few exceptions, remained fairly unexplored within social studies of technology. In this article, the role of technology in music production is investigated by applying the notion of script (Akrich 1992) to an empirical study of users of the Roland MC303 Groovebox, a self-contained instr…
Nytt år – nye utfordringer
Getting the aorta pants in place
The evolving nature of surgical treatments creates gaps between evidence-based guidelines and actual clinical practice.This article addresses the emerging clinical practice of the EndoVascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR), a surgical treatment of patients with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). Drawing on a qualitative study across three hospitals, we identified three interplaying expertise traits: the collective, the interpersonal and the technical, eac…
Sosiologer på den smale sti
Mot en kvassere sosiologi
Café Society
While tracing the historical emergence of the café as a social institution and noting its multiple faces and functions in the modernity of the occident, three themes run like threads of varying textur
Sosiologisk tidsskrift 20 år
Trondheimsredaksjonen takker for seg
Fra sosiologiens tidsskrift til tidsskriftets sosiologi
Sosiologisk skepsismarinade
Vel inne i 2013 m vi kunne unne oss litt godt begrunnet skepsis.I dette nummer er Eirik Frhaug Swensen skeptisk til kunnskapsgrunnlaget som benyttes for s tvil om klimaendringer som menneskeskapte.Bjrn Egil Fl mlbaerer en skepsis til forskernes refleksivitet innenfor den kulturelle vendingen i bygdesosiologien.Johan Fredrik Rye er skeptisk til hvorvidt George Herbert Mead er opphavsmann
From fatness to badness
Obesity (or being overweight) is now considered a by-product of membership of developed societies. Moreover, it is considered a growing 'global' health problem. This article reports on a small qualitative study of adults who fell into one or other of these categories in Norway in 2010, and who have been faced with decisions about lifestyle versus surgical remedies. This decision making is contextualized and the principal criteria examined. Embodi…
Interaction Pretext
It has been suggested that community, social cohesion and territorial ties in neighbourhoods may be characterised by three directions: the lost, the saved and the transformed. On the basis of a number of case studies in a Norwegian city, it is found that these three trends exist together, on the basis of various local interactive practices. The concept of an interaction pretext is developed to answer in a more nuanced way how various forms of soc…
Communal Normalization in an Online Self-Help Group for Adolescents With a Mentally Ill Parent
Although implications of parental mental illness are well documented, most children of mentally ill parents are left to manage their family situation with limited information and support. We explored the role of a Norwegian online self-help group for adolescents (aged 15 to 18) with a mentally ill parent. Through in-depth interviews with 13 participants, we found that the online self-help group provided "communal normalization" by which participa…
Survival of the project
To gode bøker om tekstanalyse
Pressens biologisering av ADHD
Sammendrag Diagnosen ADHD er jevnlig gjenstand for offentlig debatt. Siden mediene for mange er den viktigste kanalen til informasjon om helse, blir de kilder til folks oppfatning av hvordan diagnoser og behandling kan fortolkes. I en helsesosiologisk sammenheng er det derfor relevant å undersøke pressens rolle i fremstillingen av ADHD. Den empiriske analysen i denne artikkelen er basert på fremstillingen Aftenposten, Adresseavisen og VG hadde av…
The social rhythm of the rock music festival
On the basis of observational studies in a number of rock music festivals during the period 2004-2012, I ask the following question in this paper: how does the music festival community arise and how is it maintained? With the help of perspectives from interactionist sociology and organisational studies I develop an analysis of how rock music festival 'skills' are collectively produced. A communally acknowledged competence is negotiated and made e…
Musikkfestivalens kollektive effervesens
Festivaler har blitt viktige for formidling av levende populærmusikk og andre kulturuttrykk idet de trekker horder av publikum til byer og bygder hver eneste sommer. I denne artikkelen søker vi å forstå denne populariteten, og samtidig utnytte etablerte sosiologiske teorier for å utvikle en sosiologisk tilnærming til festivalfenomenet. På bakgrunn av deltakerintervjuer på Pstereofestivalen i Trondheim sommeren 2015, identifiserer vi «festivalstem…
The symbolic affordances of a video-mediated gaze in emergency psychiatry
Situational Domestication and the Origin of the Cafe Worker Species
Given the pervasiveness of free Wi-Fi zones in cafes, use of laptops, tablets and smart phones supports the transformation of cafes from social spaces to work spaces for many customers. In this article we analyse, on the basis of an ethnographic study of individuals' laptop work in urban cafes in Norway and the UK, (1) what it is about cafes that makes people visit them for working purposes, and (2) how individual laptop work changes the social l…
Communal invalidation of young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues
This study explores how young adults with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues experience the challenges of belonging to their local communities. The data were generated through qualitative in-depth interviews with seven young adult service users, six of whom were interviewed twice. The qualitative data analysis resulted in three overarching themes: the need to accept one’s own life and the structures surrounding it; being caught…
Political science (15 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Education, Healthcare and Sociology Research (5 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Knowledge management (4 works)