Welcome to Jan I. Jönhill’s homepage!
In my profession I am a social scientist, docent of sociology. – At the end of 2018, I retired from my position as associate professor at the university. The fact of retirement, however, does not mean that I retire (to typically chores for the elderly) but I continue to work (at my own pace). I participate at conferences, contributes with advice and suggestions to colleagues, review manuscripts for international journals, and so on.
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Outside my profession, I devote myself especially to gardening.
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In my profession, during several years I have worked primarily with one broad theme: Politics in society. In short what politics, viewed as a function system – i.e. a part of society among other parts such as the economy, science, educational system and so on – can make and achieve, and also cannot make and cannot achieve for society as a whole, and thus for the life and survival of us humans and humanity.
Earlier my research, lectures, reports, etc. have in particular put the focus on:
- Issues of inclusion and exclusion in organizations, in groups and other parts of society.
- Issues of cultural diversity, including diversity management (a management strategy dealing on how to manage cultural diversity in organizations especially by recruitment, team building, etc).
- Issues of ecological environment from the global to the local level.
In my previous research I have also worked with matters and issues relating to general theory of society, theory of science and method, historical sociology, education, religion etc.
As a ”perpetual” student when I was young, I studied among other economic history, cultural anthropology, philosophy, ethnography, and sociology. I have taught in cultural anthropology and for many years in sociological theory, in most sociological specialities (i.e. hyphens sociology) and on personell issues (”HR”) and as well I have worked as supervisor, examiner and as a member of assessment committees.
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To gain perspective on matters and issues requires tools, i.e. methods and concepts. In my research I mainly take my point of departure in Luhmann’s systems theory where one starting point is that a theory partly must be generally valid, and partly should have a high degree of practicality in the sense of connectivity to relevant empirical observations and that it can provide society with knowledge that may be useful as to actual central matters and issues.
During the last decade I specialized in organization and management and personell issues. – A central distinction, which I have worked extensively with, is inclusion and exclusion.
Inclusion and exclusion is basically about the relation between on the one hand the human being, and on the other hand society and its organizations, networks, groups and interactions. Basically, in our society we can observe that the fact of being included in certain social contexts have consequences that under normal circumstances may be beneficial to individuals, groups and the entire society. To get excluded may lead to problems and difficulties, or also, in e.g. the case of long-term unemployment, be detrimental to the individual, to her or his group, and to society. In different ways, persons have to go through a process of moving either towards inclusion or towards exclusion as regards citizenship (being a migrant), permanent residence, and also perhaps regarding family, membership in a union, a church, etc. However, the processes involving the move from exclusion to inclusion, or the other way round, have to pass a limit in order to proceed from the one side to the other. Focusing on these concepts as distinctions, and not just as a “more or less”, i.e. as a variable, means paying attention to this very fact and its implications. From this perspective, exclusion ought to be understood in a more complex way than is the usual case within social sciences and social policy studies. Exclusion is always about being excluded from specific relations or systems, and we cannot generalize about “outsider-ship”. The distinction between being inside and outside always has to do with communication opportunities, or lack of communication opportunities, within the actual system. While organizations are able to discriminate they can also, however, relinquish this on different grounds; be it due to the labour market situation, customers or other competition reasons.
Systems theory can be applied across all the social sciences and the humanities. When dealing with matters and issues from this theory approach – whether we might argue that it is about the most crucial issues of our society and in our time or about one or another ”ordinary” research issue – two basic methodological starting points can be recommended. The assumption:
- that the social scientist primarily should perceive and understand him-/herself as an observer of observations (of others or him-/herself).
- that the initial question, in every phase of the discussion or analysis, should be about how to draw distinctions, in other words how to make differences.
Contact: e-mail jan.i@jonhill.nu
For references, See Publications