Lively debate on societal concerns at last week's seminar with Anna Tyllström

Last week postdoctoral fellow from Uppsala University Anna Tyllström visited the CBS Public-Private Platform and the cluster of Shifting Forms of Public Governance for a seminar based on her current work in the project 'Organizing Freedom - Governance and Organization of Swedish Higher Education and Research Under the Autonomy Reform'. The seminar focused on how Swedish politicians and corporations interact at the Almedalen Week and how this process has changed from a soft-corporatist model towards lobbying directly on politicians. Anna has shadowed PR consultants working on corporate lobbying campaigns in Almedalen. Her findings are presented and discussed through the lenses of the three “meta-processes” of 1) de-corporatization but also 2) marketization and 3) mediatization.

The seminar was well attended and took in interesting debates. Susanne Boch Waldorff, Associate Professor at CBS and one of the organizers of the seminar elaborated afterwards:

'Anna presented data from her recent ethnographic study of the Swedish politicians' week in Almedalen. During this 'Arena of possibilities' many politicians and stakeholders meet to discuss issues of societal concern, such as bio fuel energy and munition. However an increased number of professional PR-consultants also partake in - and shape - these debates, and so we discussed how to understand this development and what it is a case of'

Find chapter 1 and 7 from her thesis work on the theme here: tyllstrom_chapters_1_and_7.pdf

And learn more about Anna here.