| 1. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-
(författare)
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Backward Youth? Racist Trolling and Political (In)Correctness among Young People in Rural Sweden
- 2022
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Ingår i: Youth beyond the city. - : Bristol University Press. - 9781529212044 - 9781529212068 ; , s. 215-234
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter explores and challenges widespread notions of rural racism and backwardness by engaging with the use of irony and satire among Swedish rural youth. Rather than viewing racism as individualized traits or opinions, ethnographic data is used to show how explicitly expressed racism can be understood as discursive positions in a matrix of moral intelligibility, a position that is ‘humorously’ inhabited or rejected differently with regards to gender, class and emplacement. While Swedish educational policies enforce ‘norm critical pedagogy’ as a way to ‘educate’ youth on tolerance and antiracism, the chapter shows how this reproduces ideas of rural moral inferiority. Analysing instead the (satirical) embodiment of the ‘politically incorrect rural racist’ as ‘trolling practices’ which require youth to be well-informed of contemporary cultural politics, the chapter argues that racist trolling is a way of critiquing national imaginaries of urban progressiveness and rural Otherness.
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| 2. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-
(författare)
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I den moraliska periferin : Ungdomskultur, värden och politisk subjektivitet i rurala rumsligheter
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is centered on the everyday spatial practices, identity work and political subjectivities of Swedish rural youth. It explores and challenges widespread notions of rural backwardness and moral inferiority by studying youth’s navigations and negotiations on a classed, gendered, spatialized and economically produced moral field. The material that the study builds on was produced during a ten month long ethnographic fieldwork with 14-16-year-old youth in their small community in western Sweden. The main method for data collection was participant observations in the local school and in two confirmation groups organized by the Swedish church in the community. In addition, I conducted approximately 70 qualitative interviews with youth and a few adults with insight in the youth’s lives.In the study, a point of departure is the state of ‘depolitization’ that political theorist Wendy Brown (2006a) has argued characterizes contemporary Western societies. Depolitization entails a displacing of a societal phenomenon or conflict from its political origins, and a placing of the solutions to these problems on individuals. This tendency is visible both in the reoccurring Othering of the rural as responsible for increased right wing populism in Sweden, and in the way in which the Swedish state deals with this issue by implementing educational projects directed at raising knowledge and tolerance in (individualized) youth. Making use of neomarxist perspectives on the production of space (Lefebvre, 1974/1991; Harvey, 2009), and postmarxist understandings of subject formation, I explore the interplay between space, identification and political subjectivities (Butler, 1997; Hall, 2011) among youth most often understood as situated in the geographical, economic and moral periphery. In the study, I show how certain political positions where made intelligible on different ideological arenas (Althusser, 1970), and through ideas associated with urbanity and rurality, which in turn affected the youths’ tendencies to identify with them. I explore these political identifications or disidentifications as a form of ‘moral work’ (Uhnoo, 2011) closely tied to the historically produced spatialities in which they occurred. Rather than viewing problematic expressions of racism, sexism or homophobia as individualized traits or opinions of youth, I illustrate how they can be understood as positionings in a matrix of moral intelligibility, positions that are (humorously) inhabited or rejected differently with regards to gender, class and emplacement. While Swedish educational policies enforce norm critical pedagogy as a way to educate youth on tolerance and antiracism, the dissertation shows how this reproduces ideas of rural moral inferiority. By engaging with the reoccurring use of irony and parody among the youth, analyzing the (satirical) embodiment of the politically incorrect rural racist as trolling practices which require youth to be well-informed of contemporary cultural politics, the dissertation argues that racist trolling is a way of critiquing national imaginaries of urban progressiveness and rural Otherness. Theoretically, the study concludes that rural youth politics need to politicize rural identity, experience and marginalization – rather than arguing for a recognition of the same – as well as the economic-material histories of different (rural) spatialities.
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| 3. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-
(författare)
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Rural Failures : Representations of (Im)mobile Young Masculinities and Place in the Swedish Countryside
- 2019
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Ingår i: Boyhood Studies. - : Berghahn Books. - 2375-9240 .- 2375-9267. ; 12:1, s. 76-96
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Critical boyhood scholars have consistently problematized the moral panic directed at boys' educational achievements, for instance, by illustrating how the issue is intersected by power hierarchies such as class and race, but have often not been as attentive to the spatialized dimensions of this discourse. In the Swedish debate, boys in (post)industrial towns in rural regions - affected by decades of deindustrialization - are often pointed out as at risk of becoming unemployed societal liabilities. Documenting the lives, aspirations, and future trajectories of young and rural working-class boys, the television series The School Boys (Skolpojkarna) analyzed in this article reproduces this trope and connects anxieties regarding "redundant" masculinities with rural spaces. Using feminist and post-structural approaches to gender and space, I show how this media production, supplied for educational purposes, mediates normative understandings of young rural masculinities.
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| 4. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Rural youth, education, and citizenship in Sweden : Politics of recognition and redistribution
- 2020
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Ingår i: The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783319679051 ; , s. 779-794
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When young people are studied in relation to citizenship and education, geographical location is not always considered. When the emplacement of youth is addressed, a disproportional focus on schools and civic youth practices in city settings further mirrors an unreflected urban norm within the field. There is however a burgeoning literature that examines youth, education, and citizenship in rural settings that speaks to issues of the inclusion and participation of young people in society. The current chapter reviews Swedish literature on rural youth and tracks its theoretical and political underpinnings. The areas covered move from stereotypical representations of rurality to rural youths’ experiences and participation in formal and nonformal education to the ways in which neoliberal market logic results in an uneven distribution of educational and employment possibilities for young people on the countryside. The chapter argues that a divided empirical and analytical focus in previous research results in inconclusive arguments regarding the remedies suggested for overcoming geographic inequality. It is posited that a call for the cultural recognition of rural youth’s experiences of marginalization as a remedy for justice needs to be complemented with an argument for economic redistribution.
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| 5. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-
(författare)
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Subculture, masculinity and place in young rural men’s resistance to counter-migration
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Youth Studies. - 1367-6261 .- 1469-9680.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the wake of deindustrialization, many rural areas in the Global North face challenges such as an ageing population, declining welfare systems and limited job and educational opportunities, problems that have been enhanced by decades of depopulation. Young people have left the countryside for careers in larger cities, contributing to stigmatization of those who stay in rural areas. In Sweden, however, statistics show a slow but steady trend of remigration to rural areas, which is described in municipal and state discourse as positive and necessary to ‘save’ the countryside. This paper examines the perspective of rural youth who feel differently about such counter-urbanization. Based on a yearlong ethnographic fieldwork with youth, the article shows how young men involved in Swedish greaser culture perceived the influx of urban (re)migrators as a threat to their rural lifestyle and the rural place where they wished to stay. This is interpreted as an expression of subcultural, place-based and temporal resistance towards urban and neoliberal ideals that simultaneously reinforce white, masculine values. As these young men will be part of a rural future, they must be considered in the formulation of sustainable politics for rural areas.
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