| 1. |
- Abrahamsson, Elin, 1983-
(författare)
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Enahanda läsning : En queer tolkning av romancegenren
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis investigates popular romance, a mass-cultural genre with a large female audience. Popular romance is often considered ”lowbrow” and is referred to by terms such as ”porn” and ”garbage”. The female reader of this so called “sentimental trash” is often portrayed as naïve and unworldly. The thesis makes this derogatory view of the genre its point of departure, to investigate what cultural understandings of gender and sexuality the critique against popular romance entails. The thesis further investigates how these conceptions of gender and sexuality deviate from and challenge a culturally promoted and normative sexuality.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter describes the selection of the empirical material and the theoretical and methodological framework. The empirical material consists of the three novels in the popular series Fifty Shades of Grey and the four novels and five films in the popular series Twilight. The thesis places itself within the field of feminist cultural studies and queer theory. It makes use of the concept of masturbation (both literal and figurative) as an analytical entry point and as a method focusing on the “here and now” of romance reading.The second chapter contextualizes the study by defining the term “popular romance” and by providing a brief historical overview of the genre. Previous research on popular romance is presented and discussed in relation to the derogatory view of the genre.The third chapter studies the Swedish media commentaries on Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight to define how the rejected romance reader is conceptualized, and how this romance reader is presumed to be reading. This “romance reader” is thereafter discussed in relation to the Western historical discourse on masturbation, “female illness” and (women’s) private reading. The chapter closes with a discussion on the form of reading that the romance reader is associated with. This self-immersed, excessive and over-invested reading form is defined as “masturbatory”.The fourth chapter explores the act of romance reading when defined as a sexual activity. The romance community is compared to the “second wave” feminism of the 1970s in order to demonstrate how the genre establishes a separatist female community where relations, positions, and identifications are in motion, revealing both homoerotic and autoerotic elements to this homosocial context.In the fifth chapter, a close reading of the material is performed with a focus on the “here and now” of the reading situation. The dichotomy of desiring subject and desired object is problematized in relation to looks and gaze. The thesis argues that the romance text uses detailed and intimate descriptions to instill a sexual charge and to freeze the flow of the storyline in order to make room for constant erotic contemplation. These “frozen moments” and the repetitiveness of the genre are discussed in relation to theories of queer temporality. The romance text constructs a room “outside of time” that privileges the overwhelming pleasures of the “here and now”. This liminal room is not only available for the heroine and hero of the story, but for the romance reader as well.The sixth and final chapter ties together the main arguments of the thesis in an overarching discussion on how conceiving romance reading as a form of masturbation challenges previous research on popular romance and the gendering of and contempt for mass culture.
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| 2. |
- Alnevall, Christina, 1966-
(författare)
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Women’s Discursive Representation : Women as Political Representatives, Mothers, and Victims of Men’s Violence in the Mexican Parliament
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines how Mexican women political representatives are constituted through parliamentary language in the national Chamber of Deputies during a time when compulsory electoral gender quotas are introduced. Women’s political representation has increased considerably worldwide, due to gender quotas or laws requiring guaranteed seats for women. Mexico, which is the case studied in the dissertation, is one example where a significant growth in the number of elected female politicians have increased due to an electoral quota law. However, despite this development women parliamentarians are still reported to face obstacles when in office. Drawing on the ‘representative claims’ theory and critical discourse studies, this study seeks to understand how constructions of women hinder as well as provide opportunities for female politicians. The dissertation develops a theoretical and methodological framework that makes it possible to identify and analyze the representative claims and the subject positions that are constituted by these claims.The empirical section analyzes records of debates in the Mexican parliaments from two periods, one before and one after the implementation of the 2002 electoral quota law, which is a major change in the Mexican political system. The construction of the three subject positions women as representatives, women as mothers and women as victims of men’s violence are detailed. Focusing on the constitutive aspects of representation, as the dissertation seeks to understand how the construction of these three subject positions affect what female politicians can say and do in parliament.Previous research on women’s political representation has offered a rich understanding of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. This study broadens the field further by introducing the discursive representation approach, which contribute to the understanding of the obstacles women politicians (still) meet. The study uncovers how Mexican women are situated in a political context dominated by men, in which they constantly have to negotiate their presence.
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| 3. |
- Ambjörnsson, Fanny, 1973-
(författare)
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I en klass för sig : Genus, klass och sexualitet bland gymnasietjejer
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Samhällsvetenskaplig forskning har på senare år börjat uppmärksamma unga kvinnor, som tidigare fört en undanskymd tillvaro i skuggan av de unga männen. Syftet med denna avhandling är att, delvis i linje med denna forskning, undersöka hur tjejer i en svensk gymnasieskola skapar genus. Fokus ligger på hur genusskapande alltid sker i samverkan med andra strukturerande principer, såsom klass, sexualitet och etnicitet. Den empiriska utgångspunkten är ett trettiotal tjejer mellan 16 och 18 år på två skilda gymnasieprogram, Samhällsveteskapsprogrammet och Barn- och Fritidsprogrammet. Genom att undersöka hur dessa tjejer förhåller sig till föreställningar om hur man ska vara som tjej, illustreras hur den normativa femininiteten – såväl som deras sätt att hantera denna - måste förstås mot bakgrund av tjejernas skilda klasstillhörigheter. Likaså visar empirin hur det feminina idealet är otvetydigt heterosexuellt. Som en röd tråd genom avhandlingen löper därför en problematisering av de idéer, påbud och sanktioner som säger att det är heterosexuell man ska vara som tjej, inget annat. Genom att kartlägga olika beståndsdelar i den heteronormativa genusordningen, synliggörs hur heteronormativiteten premierar vissa relationer framför andra; hur man som tjej förväntas vara både heterosexuell och homosocial enligt vissa specifika mönster. Omvänt kommer homosociala och heterosexuella relationsmönster att generera två genusmässiga motpoler, killar och tjejer. I avhandlingen undersöks även hur den enskilda kroppen fungerar både som symbol och redskap i skapandet av det heterosexuella kvinnoidealet; hur imperativet att göra kroppen ”naturligt kvinnlig” tycks centralt för tjejernas uppfattning om sig själva och varandra som normala. Föreställningar om normalitet och den normala tjejen är också det raster genom vilket processerna av genusskapande iscensätts. Denna normalitet formuleras till stora delar genom olika utpekade motpoler, det tänkt onormala och stereotypa. Genom att bestämma vissa positioner som mer stereotypa än andra, kommer tjejerna att presentera sig själva som fria och självständiga individer. Med utgångspunkt i tre av de positioner som återkommande skapas som just avvikande och icke-önskvärda – horan, den lesbiska och invandraren – åskådliggörs hur den normativa femininitet tjejerna förhåller sig till, iscensätter och i vissa fall utmanar är en heterosexuell, vit och medelklassbaserad sådan. Vidare diskuteras hur imperativet att vara en fri och obegränsad individ - något som genomsyrar såväl skolvärlden som det övriga samhället – enklast tycks uppnås genom ett förkroppsligande av normen. Därigenom synliggörs hur den förment neutrala uppmaningen att ”vara sig själv” blir mer möjlig för vissa än för andra.
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| 4. |
- Bengtsson, Elin, 1987-
(författare)
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Perversa tidsligheter : Ageplay och litenhet ur ett queertemporalt perspektiv
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis investigates how temporality is constructed and negotiated in ageplay, a term for practices based on performative, non-chronological age and age differences. The empirical material consists of interviews with adults identifying with littleness. The experience of littleness emanates from assuming the position of a child or adolescent, or from a more abstract feeling of being little and in need of guidance. It is often acted out in a dynamic with someone assuming the position of a caregiving and/or authoritative adult. The thesis explores how ageplay opens up for understandings of time beyond the linear model that dominates Western discourse of temporality, and investigates how ageplay and littleness can add important perspectives to the theoretical field of queer temporality studies. The first chapter situates the thesis within the field of queer temporality studies, as well as within a broader field of critical research on age. It relates the thesis to earlier work on ageplay as connected to BDSM and queer sexual cultures, but also broadens this definition by treating ageplay as a complex cultural phenomenon that actualizes non-normative relations to temporality and age.The second chapter concentrates on how littleness can challenge (hetero)normative life lines. It investigates three different aspects of littleness which appear as “failed” in relation to normative ideals of individual development, and explores how these “failures” give the interviewees access to new, creative ways of being in the world. Queer temporality is often linked to the abandoning of a normative life line and its markers of success, which are closely connected to reproduction and social respectability. Thus, queer temporality is often equated with queer nightlife and public sex cultures. The interviewees’ experiences of being out of time are contrariwise anchored in domesticity and centered around everyday routines. The third chapter explores this friction, discussing how the concepts of home, family and everyday life are given meaning in ageplay, and how a focus on domesticity can contribute to the field of queer temporality studies.The fourth chapter discusses how the interviewees negotiate ideas of littleness as a progressive or “backward” position. It explores how littleness can be theorized beyond linear temporal concepts, such as nostalgia, which is commonly used about adults engaging in “childish” phenomena. The chapter stresses how this discourse creates a misleading image, since the interviewees are not seeking to return to their childhoods in the past, but to construct new possible worlds and intimate bonds in the realm of the here and now. The fifth chapter concentrates on how ageplay is associated with pedophilia. It critically investigates this linkage by exploring how the relation between fantasy and reality is negotiated in the interviews, and demonstrates how the interviewees challenge ideas of ageplay as a cover for underlying, more sinister desires. Working with the theoretical concept of the monstrous, the chapter stresses how ageplay poses a threat to the social order by melting together elements perceived as each other’s opposites, such as childish innocence and perverse sexuality.The final chapter ties together the thesis’ main arguments and reflects further upon the perverse temporalities of ageplay, and upon how experiences of littleness can contribute to the growing field of queer temporality studies.
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| 5. |
- Bengtsson, Jenny
(författare)
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Jag sa att jag älskade han men jag har redan sagt förlåt för det : Ålder, genus och sexualitet i skolans tidigare år
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I denna studie undersöks hur föreställningar kring normalitet kommer till uttryck och förhandlas i de vardagliga praktikerna i skolans tidigare år. I särskilt fokus är normer kring ålder, genus och sexualitet. Det empiriska materialet är skapat genom deltagande observation och intervjuer med elever och lärare i två klasser i två skolor (årskurs 2 och 3). I studien används poststrukturalistiska teorier för att belysa hur makt verkar i det vardagliga, både i att göra begriplighet och meningsfullhet men också att definiera avvikelser och normalisera utanförskap och underordning. Analysen visar hur elever och lärare iscensätter och ifrågasätter olika förväntningar på hur man ska vara och agera som barn, vuxna, elever, lärare, flicka, pojke, etcetera. Detta "görande" av normer kopplas i studien till skapandet av olika tillhörigheter, formella och informella miljöer, skillnader mellan lektioner och raster, klassrum och omklädningsrum eller mellan allvar och skratt. Studien visar att sådana växlingar ger utrymme för förhandlingar och utmaningar i vad som kan betraktas som osäkra ormråden eller gränsland. Genom att rikta fokus mot hur normer samverkar visar studien vidare att utmaningar och ifrågasättanden av normer kring genus och sexualitet riskerar att trivialiseras i relation till elevernas position som barn. Detta innebär att även om normerna verkar som gränser för det möjliga och önskvärda, kan man inte likställa utmaningar och överskridande av gränser med omvandling av normer. Studien hävdar således att pedagogiskt arbete som syftar till att problematisera hur normer upprepas och utmanas i skolan måste överväga tvetydigheter och osäkra som en del av att skapa hierarkiska ordningar.
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| 6. |
- Dolk, Klara, 1979-
(författare)
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Bångstyriga barn : Makt, normer och delaktighet i förskolan
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In recent years, feminist research in education has put an increasing emphasis on the relationship between children and adults, mostly connected to a critique of gender pedagogy and other forms of so-called “fundamental values education” (värdegrundsarbete). This study looks at the power relations between children and adults in preschool in the context of educational activities intending to increase gender equity, social equality, and participation. The study’s aim is to examine the tensions and conflicts that occur in this context. How are the power relations between adults and children expressed and negotiated? Which possibilities do children have for participation, for resistance, and for creating something new? On a more general level, the study intends to examine democracy in the context of the educational work in question. It hopes to contribute to a discussion about the democratic implications of our understanding of “children” and “adults”, both in the preschool context and in society at large. This also concerns children’s and adults’ possibilities to step outside of preconceived frames and engage in processes of transformation.As a methodological approach I have followed fundamental values education in a selected preschool for one school year. I did an ethnographic field study, in which I observed the preschool’s regular activities. I also had separate meetings with the teachers, during which we discussed the children’s possibilities to participate in fundamental values education, drawing inspiration from action research. As a theoretical departure point, and in order to investigate the power relations between adults and children, I use poststructuralist and feminist theory, with a particular interest in power, norms, and participation. I put the focus on children’s resistance and on “unruly children”, who, I argue, challenge us to revisit and improve our educational aspirations in gender equity, social equality, and participation.
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| 7. |
- Liliequist, Evelina, 1982-
(författare)
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Digitala förbindelser : Rum, riktning och queera orienteringar
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Internet has been available for the public during the past thirty years, and is perceived as having radically changed the terms of LGBTQ peoples’ possibilities of connecting with one and other, especially for LGBTQ people in rural spaces. With a queer phenomenological approach, the overall aim of the thesis is to analyze how people come to find their way in life from a non-heterosexual position. The aim is more precisely to study LGBTQ peoples’ use of social media and how this relates to queer orientations.The main material consists of fifteen interviews with LGBTQ people from the north of Sweden, focusing on the usage of digital environments and its importance for the informants’ queer orientations. The material also includes online observations from Facebook and Qruiser, as well as observations of two rural and queer themed Facebook groups and two rotating curated Instagram accounts. From one of these Instagram accounts, the entries of three informants living in the north of Sweden were collected. The material also includes press material and marketing of the app Grindr available at Grindr.com, App Store and the related site INTO.In the thesis, questions about when experiences are made, and where they are made are of importance. Particular interest is thus focused on time and geographical location, mainly focusing on the north of Sweden. With inspiration from actor network theory, it is taken into account how digital materiality, together with time and space, co-create conditions for use of social media and the understanding of these types of digital spaces. The thesis is centered around themes that came forth in the material: significance of digital environments in LGBTQ peoples’ lives, problems and possibilities in relation to openness and visibility, and how social media platforms are used to bring about change and re-negotiate notions of geographical space and sexual orientation. The thesis shows the significance of digital, geographical, human as well as non-human relations and norms that are of importance regarding queer orientations and its bearings.
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| 8. |
- Norsted, Kristian Sandbekk, 1991-
(författare)
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Subjects of Feminism : The Production and Practice of Anxiety in a Swedish Activist Community
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Anxiety is a zeitgeist of our time. The range of themes to which anxiety attaches today are truly vast, but anxiety arises and is cultivated in specific ways among different groups of people. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, in 2017 and 2018, this thesis explores the role that anxiety plays in contemporary feminist activist culture. The thesis focuses on several salient features of that culture: the cultivation of safe spaces and separatist rooms for women and nonbinary people; the place and role of male feminists in the community; how the activists translated the academic concept of intersectionality into an activist practice; and some of the creative ways in which individual feminist activists dealt with anxiety. Theories emphasizing how safety has become a primary cultural value, as well as how we have collectively unlearnt to live with uncertainty, shed light on the anxiety that proliferated in the feminist activist community I discuss. Contemporary anxiety is also partly explained by theories stressing the ways in which society has become uncertain in novel ways in the wake of neoliberalism. Among the feminist activists I came to know in Stockholm, collectively devised strategies to do good cultivated a particular social dynamic that rendered individual feminist activists anxious. How might they take personal responsibility for the revolutionary ambitions of feminism? How can they avoid excluding any potential subjects of feminism? What happens if they say or do something that upsets or offends other feminist activists? This thesis examines the relationship between collectively devised strategies to do good and the resulting production of anxiety.
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| 9. |
- Ryberg, Ingrid, 1976-
(författare)
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Imagining Safe Space : The Politics of Queer, Feminist and Lesbian Pornography
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- There is a current wave of interest in pornography as a vehicle for queer, feminist and lesbian activism. Examples include Dirty Diaries: Twelve Shorts of Feminist Porn (Engberg, Sweden, 2009), the Pornfilmfestival Berlin (2006-) and the members-only Club LASH in Stockholm (1995-).Based on ethnographic fieldwork designed around these cases, the purpose of the thesis is to account for, historicize and understand this transnational film culture and its politics and ethics. The fieldwork consists of interviews, questionnaires and participant observation, including participation as one of the filmmakers in Dirty Diaries.The thesis studies queer, feminist and lesbian pornography as an interpretive community. Meanings produced in this interpretive community are discussed as involving embodied spectatorial processes, different practices of participation in the film culture and their location in specific situations and contexts of production, distribution and reception.The thesis highlights a collective political fantasy about a safe space for sexual empowerment as the defining feature of this interpretive community. The figure of safe space is central in the fieldwork material, as well as throughout the film culture’s political and aesthetic legacies, which include second wave feminist insistence on sexual consciousness-raising, as well as the heated debates referred to as the Sex Wars. The political and aesthetic heterogeneity of the film culture is discussed in terms of a tension between affirmation and critique (de Lauretis, 1985). It is argued that the film culture functions both as an intimate public (Berlant, 2008) and as a counter public (Warner, 2002).Analyzing research subjects’ accounts in terms of embodied spectatorship (Sobchack, 2004, Williams, 2008), the thesis examines how queer, feminist and lesbian pornography shapes the embodied subjectivities of participants in this interpretive community and potentially forms part of processes of sexual empowerment.
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| 10. |
- Sotevik, Lena, 1981
(författare)
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Barbiebröllop och Homohundar. Barn och barndomar i relation till queerhet och (hetero)normativa livslinjer
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates relations between sexualities, children and childhoods by examining the following questions: How are heteronormativity and normative life courses repeated, negotiated and challenged by children? How are norms of age, children and childhood given significance in relation to heteronormativity and queerness? How is the child featured in contemporary discourses regarding sexualities, normative life courses and possible futures? The study is based on the discourse analysis methodology of Foucault (1972, 1980, 1993, 2002) and inspired by Marcus’ (1995, 1998) ’multi-sited ethnography.’ Children’s play and meaning-making during the school day are studied using participatory observations. Preschool policy documents are analyzed to investigate in what way ‘sexual orientation’ is discussed in relation to discrimination and equal treatment, and teachers are interviewed on the subject of working with lgbtq certification and norm criticism in preschool. Sources within children’s culture, showing representations of same-sex love, provide another entrance for investigating how queerness is presented, and how this is discussed among adults. Critical perspectives from queer theory and childhood studies, where sexuality and age are considered simultaneously discursive, material and performative (Butler, 1990, 1993; Castaneda, 2003, Foucault, 2002; Lee, 2001), are combined theoretically. How age (childhood) norms and sexuality norms interact is investigated using queer-temporal theories (Ahmed, 2006; Dyer, 2014; Edelman, 2004; Halberstam, 2005; Stockton, 2009). The results of the included articles indicate that children normalize heterosexuality by (re)producing heteronormative family and couple discourses in their family play and wedding play. This emerges as age-coded heteronormativity, where norms of children and adults become visible through the way in which heteronormativity is repeated. At preschool, representations of ‘sexual orientation’ are primarily focused on families and family constellations, rarely mentioning interactions among the children. Queerness in relation to childhood emerges, at the same time, as something that is demanded and questioned. The child is used as a space for negotiation of society values, disguised as the question of what is good or bad for children. A conditional queerness emerges, at the intersection of lgbtq+ questions, as an increasingly desirable symbol of a democratic, modern and urban society, and as the expected absence of childhood sexuality, particularly queer sexuality. Queerness is made conditional through, for instance, desexualized love and family discourses. Age norms, in this case norms of children and childhoods, are significant for how, when and with which arguments queerness is represented.
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