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- Tolvhed, Helena
(författare)
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Kropp, idrott och feministisk teori
- 2009
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Ingår i: Programbok, KULTUR-NATUR Konferens för kulturstudier i Sverige, Norrköping, 15–17 juni 2009;5. - : ACSIS, Linköping University. ; , s. 92-93
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Den feministiska forskningen har belyst hur kroppar har konstruerats som olika och därmed som biologiska (legitima, eviga, naturliga) grunder för sociala skillnader (t ex Grosz 1994, Gatens 1996). På idrottens kulturella arena ställs frågor om kroppen som naturlig eller skapad och om ”naturliga” könsskillnader på sin spets. R. W. Connell (1987) har diskuterat idrotten som del i ett socialt upprätthållande av kön, något som hon menar är nödvändigt på grund av att biologin utgör en alltför bräcklig grund. Samtidigt kan idrotten just i egenskap av kroppslig praktik utgöra en arena för utmaning och omförhandling av diskurser om kropp, kön och biologi, vilket Judith Butler diskuterat i sin artikel ”Athletic Genders”. I avhandlingen Nationen på spel analyserar jag hur idrottande kroppar representeras i svensk veckopress (Bildjournalen, Idun, Se, Vecko-Journalen och Vecko-Revyn). Med kropp och nation som intersektionella analytiska nav utvecklar jag en metodologi som syftar till att generera en djupare problematisering och förståelse för det historiska sammanhanget. I denna presentation diskuterar jag hur representationer av kvinnors idrottande – som utmaning av de diskurser som knyter kroppsligt arbete, ansträngning, aktivitet, muskler och kroppskontroll till kön – förstås och förhandlas kulturellt. En av avhandlingens bärande frågeställningar handlar om de sätt på vilka den mediala iscensättningen av kroppar och av det svenska struktureras av samspelande maktdimensioner – kön, sexualitet, ”ras”/etnicitet, klass och ålder/generation. Materialet från olympiska spel är, genom att såväl kropp som nation här hamnar i fokus, särskilt lämpligt för att utforska dessa aspekter.
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| 2. |
- Tolvhed, Helena
(författare)
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Popular Culture and Social Change : ACSIS Kulturstudiekonferens i Norrköping 2007
- 2007
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In my PhD-project I analyse coverage of the Olympic Games 1948 – 1972 in the popular press, combining a text-oriented analysis with social history's attention to historical context. In my conference paper I will focus upon how, in a "Cold War" context, Soviet athletes were represented in ambiguous ways, emphasizing alternately their distance and closeness, difference and similarity to "us". Furthermore, I argue that fears of sport's masculinizing effect on the female body and mind were negotiated by displacing images of unsexed, mannish women onto Soviet athletes. A specific conception of "Swedish femininity" was constructed: western, white, heterosexual and middle-class.
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| 3. |
- Tolvhed, Helena
(författare)
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Sporting the Nation : Gender, Ethnicity and Whiteness in Swedish Media Coverage of the Olympic Games, 1948 – 1972
- 2007
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- My forthcoming dissertation is a study of how Swedish national identity is constructed culturally, in which I analyse coverage of the Olympic Games 1948-1972 in the popular press. Media representation (text and images) of sport was selected as an interesting basis for exploring ideas on “natural differences” between people and bodies, based on gender, “race” and nationality. Ideas of difference between people have historically been used to explain and legitimize power relations and to (re-)create the nation as an “imagined community”. The method seeks to combine a text-oriented analysis with social history’s attention to historical context. The study shows that representations of female athletes display a passive female body and uphold the boundaries between the sexes. Fears of sport’s masculinizing effect on the female body and mind were negotiated by displacing images of unsexed, mannish women onto Soviet athletes. In the Cold War context, a specific Swedish femininity was constructed: western, white, heterosexual and middle-class. A Swedish masculine ideal, on the other hand, was made clear by contrasting comparison with femininity, but also with subordinated masculinities such as the “black” male athlete. The study show that the athletic achievements of the “black” body had to be explained and presented as restricted to the area of sport. I argue that although Sweden had not been a prominent colonial power, whiteness was nevertheless an important aspect of Swedish national identity in this time.
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| 4. |
- Svensson, Daniel
(författare)
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Rational training : Science and experience in the training of male and female skiers in the Swedish national team, 1954-1975
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When cross country skiing was established as a sport in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was asport heavily dominated by men. Training was something that was done on spare time, but the mainbulk of physical training was due to heavy physical work, from forestry or farming. In Sweden, forest workers were common on the national team well into the 1970s. Cross country skiing was tightly linked to rural areas, and gender coded as male (Sommestad 1992). Especially in Norway, women’sskiing was not easily accepted (Wigernaes 1967). Female skiers in Scandinavia were depicted verydifferently than their male colleagues (Tolvhed 2008). After poor results in international competitions in the early 1950s, the Swedish Ski Federation sought to improve performance of skiers by scientific means. They turned to physiologists at the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics (GCI) in Stockholm. GCI had previously been the center for physical culture and Swedish gymnastics in Sweden, but had shifted towards a more scientific, rational approach to physical education and training (Svensson, 2013, Yttergren 2010). During the 1950s and 1960s, GCI physiologists like Per Olof Åstrand and Bengt Saltin were involved in testing and scientifically advising the national team (both men and women). Did the reception of scientific advice differ among male and female skiers? If so, how and why? Preliminary results suggest that female skiers, lacking the connection to forestry and long tradition in the sport, were more open to new training methods, while their male colleagues followed the tradition of training from predecessors and forestry. Female skiers, by adapting scientific advice more easily than male colleagues, may have functioned as change agents in the sport of cross country skiing. This indicates a strong connection between the (gendered) culture of a certain physical activity and the training conducted.
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