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- Sandberg, Linn, 1983-
(author)
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Getting Intimate : A Feminist Analysis of Old Age, Masculinity and Sexuality
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the intersections of masculinity, old age and sexuality from the perspectives of old men themselves, how they understand and experience sex and sexuality in later life. The study uses qualitative in-depth interviews and body diaries, an exploratory method that asked men write about their bodies in everyday life. Twenty-two men, born between 1922 and 1942, participated in the study. The aim of the thesis is two-fold: firstly, to study sexual subjectivities of old men, how old men articulate and make meaning around sexuality in later life. Secondly, the study aims to explore theoretically what a male body may become in relation to ageing; in what ways the ageing male body could be a site for rethinking masculinity and the male body. This aim was inspired by feminist theories in dialogue with the deleuzian concept becoming. Similarly to gender, age is understood to take shape and become intelligible in social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the thesis stresses the significance of the specificities of the ageing body to the shaping of masculinity, sexuality and subjectivity. The body is therefore discussed as an “open materiality”, beyond the binaries of culture and nature/materiality.This thesis discusses the concepts intimacy and touch as central to how old men’s sexual subjectivities take shape, allowing for alternative conceptualisations of sexuality beyond erection and intercourse. Intimacy and touch are understood and discussed in several different ways. By orienting themselves to touch and intimacy the old men emerged as more mature, unselfish and with more serene sexual desires. This also involved them distancing themselves from the younger man/other men, whom they perceived as more selfish, inconsiderate and with stronger sexual desires. Intimacy and touch could in this respect be understood as resources for shaping desirable heterosexual masculinity. An orientation to intimacy and touch enabled old men to appear as neither asexual nor as “dirty” old men. But the study also suggests that a turn to intimacy and touch may open up possibilities for rethinking and reconfiguring sexuality, masculinity and the male body. The ageing body then need not be understood as an obstacle but as an enabling site that provides opportunities for intimacy and touch. Moreover, the thesis presents affirmative old age as an alternative conceptualisation of old age, beyond both the discourses of successful ageing and the discourses of old age as negativity and decline. As a theory of difference and bodily specificity, affirmative old age may be of interest for further feminist theorising.
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| 2. |
- Arnell, Linda, 1979-
(author)
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Tjejers våld. Våldets tjejer. : en diskursanalytisk studie om våld, kön och femininitet
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- How is girls’ violence constructed and given meaning? In what ways are girls who use violence positioned? This thesis explores how girls’ violence is given meaning within different contexts, with a specific focus on the significance given to notions of gender and femininity. It is based on two studies. The first is based on interviews and creative word-based methods with seven girls/young women aged between 18 and 23. These girls all have personal experiences of acting out and/or using violence. The second study is based on focus group interviews with eleven professionals, three men and eight women. These professionals have various experiences of meeting and working with girls and/or violence. The data from both studies is analysed from a discourse psychological perspective, that is based on interwoven ideas from discourse analysis and social psychology.When the girls and the professionals are talking about girls’ violence the results show that girls’ violence concern more than the issue of violence as a problematic social action. It also concern notions of gender, femininity and girlhood. In most cases girls’ violence is constructed as deviant and different, as an anomaly, which needs to be explained in ways that make it possible to include within understandings of femininity and girlhood. The results also show how notions of gender and femininity are interwoven with class, ethnicity, functionality and ideas about being human. Although a position as a violent girl sometimes appears to be useful or desirable, the girls’ and the professionals’ talk shows that there is a risk that girls who use violence are constructed not only as different and deviant but as so incomprehensible that they will be constructed as “crazy”, or in other words less human, and therefore not possible to help or save. For this reason, it is important to reconsider and deconstruct the current discourses of violence. A wider perspective on girls’ violence would make it possible to understand girls who use violence, those who are exposed to girls’ violence and the help and support that is available from the welfare system in new ways.
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| 3. |
- Sylwander, Kim R., 1986-
(author)
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Whores, hijabs and heart emojis : Affective explorations of aggression against girls online
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This netnography studies the interactions of 150 interconnected users aged between 11 and 15 years old on a popular social networking site (SNS) among youth in Sweden. More specifically, the thesis explores articulations of and responses to aggression that target young girls online. Adopting an affect theoretical approach inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophy and feminist materialist scholarship on youth, the thesis examines how bodies, objects and technologies encounter and affect each other identifying how girls’ capacities are limited and increased through aggressive exchanges online. This compilation thesis consists of an introduction and three empirical articles. The first article draws on the concept of affective atmospheres to explore the users’ articulated experiences of aggressive practices in this online space. The findings suggest that what the youth framed as ‘hate’ worked through an affective regime which hinged on temporalized norms tied to notions of age and bodily growth, that is, through heteronormative expectations of femininity, masculinity, sexuality and age-appropriateness. The article details how affordances such as anonymity facilitated and intensified the circulation of hate, feeding into an atmosphere of constant risk. In this specific online context, sexualized aggression seemed to be normalized and expected, but was nonetheless also troubled and fiercely resisted by the girls that were targeted and their peers.The second article explores the affectivity of the sexualized epithet ‘whore’ in the users’ interactions. The findings illustrate the ambiguous, messy and entangled ways that slut-shaming and sexualized name-calling worked to inhibit girls’ affective capacities, and how acts of individual and collective resistance opened up new potential sexual subjectivities. The analysis depicts how users’ counter-aggression to sexualized name-calling adopted a ‘post-feminist logic’ that supported the continued policing of girls.The third article traces how racial minority girls and their peers responded to and resisted racialization and racist aggression. The findings elucidate how racist events affectively worked to limit racialized girls’ capacities to act, but also sparked various forms of resistance that were facilitated by the materiality and affordances of the SNS. The analysis further illustrates how users rejected, re-appropriated and renegotiated racist assemblages where differing racialized figures were affectively produced and enforced in direct and indirect ways. The article thus sheds light on resistance not as a conscious act by an individual agent but as being contingent on the assemblage relations within which users were embedded.In conclusion, this thesis illustrates how the intensification of affect in this online space hinged on intersections of identity categories such as sexuality, gender, age, class, race and religion, which limited and enhanced the girls’ capacities to act, feel and affect in various ways. The thesis further shows how technological affordances facilitated the circulation and intensification of aggression but also how they worked to facilitate counteraggression, resistance and a culture of support. The thesis thus sheds light on how online contention works to condition girls’ everyday lives online across a range of social categories and inequalities in temporalized ways, yet also how violent practices are inextricable from love and friendship.
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| 4. |
- Åkerlund, Nina
(author)
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Barns relationer i våldets närhet : Respons, positioner och möjligheten till barns röst
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Syftet med denna avhandling är att utforska barns perspektiv på respons i samband med att de upplever våld i nära relation. Särskild betoning ligger på barnens egna, deras syskons, mor- och farföräldrars och andra vuxnas handlingar och reaktioner. På så sätt är målet att undersöka det relationella sammanhangets betydelse för våldsutsatta barn. Avhandlingens teoretiska ansats utgörs av barndomssociologi, sociologin om detpersonliga livet och positioneringsteori. Avhandlingen består av fyra delarbeten. Artikel I analyserar hur barns röst används i kvalitativ forskning om barn som upplever våld. De följande empiriska artiklarna, som bygger på analyser av kvalitativa intervjuer med 20 barn (11–19 år), undersöker barns erfarenhet av respons i samband med våld. Barnens berättelser visar att det ofta finns personer som känner till våldet och undersöker hur barnen själva, deras syskon (artikel II), mor- och farföräldrar (artikelIV) samt andra vuxna (artikel III) positionernas i barnens berättelser. Resultaten visar att barn upplever och responderar på våld på en rad olika sätt. Även personer i det relationella sammanhanget reagerar olika gentemot det utsatta barnet, vilket kan förstås utifrån att relationer omges av olika förväntningar och att respons är ett interaktionellt fenomen – individer i barnens närhet anpassar sin respons efter hur barnen responderar.Omgivningens respons beskrivs av barnen som hjälpsamma eller ohjälpsamma beroende på hur lyhörd, tillgänglig och nära individen upplevs. Avhandlingen visar vidare på att barnen har ett begränsat handlingsutrymme och endast ett fåtal positioner finns tillgängliga när de upplever våld. De primära positioner de våldsutsatta barnen erbjuds är de som ”sårbart offer”, ”sårbar men kompetent aktör” samt ”vuxenlik och omsorgsgivande aktör”. En nyckelfaktor för att barnen ska få hjälpsam respons är att de positioneras som både sårbara offer och som kompetenta aktörer.
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