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- Bohlin, Anna, 1971-
(författare)
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Röstens anatomi : läsningar av politik i Elin Wägners Silverforsen, Selma Lagerlöfs Löwensköldtrilogi och Klara Johansons Tidevarvskåserier
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to investigate the voice in Elin Wägner’s novel Silverforsen (1924), Selma Lagerlöf’s Löwensköld trilogy (1925–1928) and Klara Johanson’s causeries in the feminist weekly newspaper Tidevarvet 1923–1924, in relation to women’s suffrage. Swedish women were finally granted the right to vote in 1921. The female political voice arroused high expectations of societal change: the female body was supposed to provide a female perspective on politics. However, the connection between the body and the voice was imagined differently by different theorists of emancipation. Therefore, in order to pinpoint the functions of the voice, the functions of corporeality need examination as well. The readings of the novels and causeries by Wägner, Lagerlöf and Johanson reveal striking discrepancies in the functions of the voice in relation to corporeality.The examination of the functions of the voice includes an account of the genre, the mood and the narrator’s voice as well as the characters’ ability to speak and the workings of the voice in the societies established in Silverforsen, the Löwensköld trilogy and Johanson’s causeries. A central argument of the dissertation concerns Wägner’s, Lagerlöf’s and Johanson’s various constructions of identity. Identity proves to be of equal importance to legitimate political action. Though, while Wägner’s notion of identity is based primarily on sex and inspired by the voice of God, Lagerlöf complicates the criteria for identity, featuring nationality, family and social class as primary distinctions. Johanson, for her part, rejects the idea of a shared gender identity all together. She still emphasises the need for politics to voice identity, although identity in her account includes only one single person.Contemporary theories on gender by Ellen Key, Mathilde Vaerting, Rosa Mayreder, Otto Weininger, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alexandra Kollontay and Olive Schreiner form a context for the relations between voice, corporeality and emancipation developed by the novels and causeries. The readings of the literary texts are also, in their turn, intended to shed light on the theories of emancipation. This study proposes a new metatheoretical model instead of the heavily criticized distinction between essentialism and constructivism, by focusing the relation between corporeality and meaning, using the rhetorical tropes to analyse these relations. The tropological model may specify the body of the early twentieth century identity politics.
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| 2. |
- Palmadottir, Valgerdur, 1984-
(författare)
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Perplexities of the personal and the political : how women's liberation became women's human rights
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this dissertation, I analyze understandings and employment of the idea that ‘the personal is political’ and how it appears in feminist politico-theoretical thought and activism in the period from the late 1960s until the middle of 1990s. My focus is primarily on the uses of personal stories in activism at the intersections of politics and legal discourse. The period in question is characterized by an evolving global feminist movement that gradually turned towards the framework of human rights. I explore two events that took place on either side of the human rights turn. These events are two international People’s Tribunals and their respective theoretical and historical contexts. The two tribunals were outspoken feminist initiatives, one held in Brussels in 1976 and the other in Vienna in 1993. They were organized by different actors at different historical moments who nevertheless identified themselves as being participants in a common international or global women’s movement. Their common denominator was both the choice of the form of a people’s tribunal and their aim of transcending national borders. Yet, their frameworks and language differ significantly.The first tribunal, Crimes against Women, held in Brussels in 1976, was planned as a radical feminist grassroots event, an upfront and critical response in opposition to the United Nations Conference on Women held in Mexico in 1975. In Brussels, feminist consciousness raising was fused with the method of a people’s tribunal to contribute to the creation of a transnational feminist political subject. Testimonies included personal stories of oppression and sexual violence, and they were meant to educate and motivate the women themselves in their struggle. There were no judges involved in the ‘trial’ procedures because the organizers and participants claimed that women had had enough of being judged by a patriarchal society. The event was for women only and no media were allowed to attend. Inspired by the tribunal in Brussels, the Vienna Tribunal on Women’s Human Rights, however, was planned in relation to the UN’s Conference on Human Rights in 1993, with the conceptual framework “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.” Testimonies were now directed outwardly, and strategically-selected judges commented and promised to offer support for the campaign to include gender-based violence in the human rights framework.My analytical focus is on three interrelated and overarching threads. Firstly, I identify ideas about politics found in the tribunal texts and the theoretical contexts that I place them in. Secondly, I trace the genealogy of violence against women as an international political issue. This converges with the history of transnational feminist activism, the rise of the human rights discourse and the search for common denominators. Thirdly, I look at the affective dimensions of the personal story as a political mobilizer. I argue that they change significantly according to historical, institutional and theoretical (ideological) context.Although the strategy of using personal testimonies might at first sight seem to be the greatest similarity that links the two events, the ‘method’ underwent some significant changes. I argue that the focus in Brussels was on creating a ‘counter-public’, to cultivate the participant’s own political emotions, notably righteous anger and to forge transnational feminist consciousness and solidarity, whereas, in Vienna, the framework had a more strategic character, as the individual stories were aimed at personalizing the political and motivating the empathy or compassion of an audience.
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| 3. |
- Almgren, Nina, 1970-
(författare)
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Kvinnorörelsen och efterkrigsplaneringen : statsfeminism i svensk arbetsmarknadspolitik under och kort efter andra världskriget
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis has analysed the relations among the women’s movement, the state and the labour market policy during and shortly after the Second World War and to what extent this period can be characterised as a formative phase as regards gender relations. The aim has been to study women’s strategic actions in order to influence the Swedish Government’s labour market policy in the period from 1939 to 1947. The thesis shows the conflicts of interest that manifested themselves between Statens arbetsmarknadskommission (SAK, ‘the National Swedish Labour Market Commission’) and its advisory women’s group, experts on women’s issues, concerning the planning and utilisation of female labour. SAK thought that the work of the experts on female issues should only focus on the short-term labour problems caused by the national crisis situation, while the experts on women’s issues were of the opinion that they should also work with long-term labour-market issues for women. These different ways of thinking and understanding the problem originated in different views on women’s work. The experts on women’s issues wanted to strengthen women’s position on the labour market by abolishing the wage differences between the genders, breaking the gender segregation in education, and broadening the occupational choices of girls. They had three strategies for achieving this: a strategy of professionalisation, a strategy of change, and a strategy of state feminism. The strategy of professionalisation was aimed at raising the value of traditional female work, in terms of both status and wages. The strategy of change was aimed at creating new opportunities for women to leave typical low-wage jobs and gain access to better paid jobs in male-dominated areas. The strategy of state feminism was aimed at paving the way for women in new and expanding occupational areas beside the traditional male occupations. Can the period during and shortly after the war be characterised as a formative phase of the issue of gender relations? It is evident that this period did not involve a revolution of the societal gender order. The idea of women as reserve labour did not disappear. The post-war planners considered that, in the transition to peace, the women who had replaced men who were called up should be redeployed or retrained for employment in household work, in hotels, restaurants and cafés, in shops and in health care. In spite of the great shortage of labour in the post-war period, leading politicians and economists stuck to old ways of thinking. A clear indication on the part of the Government was that the women’s movement’s demand for long-term planning in order to utilise female labour was turned down. One important difference from the First World War was that the Government produced peace plans for women’s work during the Second World War. The period also led to ideological and institutional consequences that could be the beginning of a change of the societal gender order. From her central position in Kommissionen för ekonomisk efterkrigsplanering (‘the Commission for economic post-war planning’), Karin Kock could see to it that women’s demands for greater occupational mobility and a loosening up of the gender division of labour had an impact on the post-war planning of the war years. The experiences of women in male industries in the Second World War, both in Sweden and abroad, showed to some extent that it was possible to change the gender division of labour. The modern welfare state also came to correspond to a great extent to the state feminist strategy of the experts on women’s issues. With the historical formation of the welfare state a new type of occupational groups developed, the so-called welfare state professionals.
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| 4. |
- Styrke, Britt-Marie, 1952-
(författare)
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Utbildare i dans : perspektiv på formeringen av en pedagogutbildning 1939-1965
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis describes and theoretically illuminates perspectives on the formation of a dance teacher education in Sweden during the period 1939–65. The process is explored mainly through the visions and activities of Svenska Danspedagogförbundet, SDF (The Swedish Dance Teacher Association). Particular attention is paid to specific instances which eventually could lead toward the establishment of a government-sponsored educational program. The work is both chronologically and thematically arranged in order to enlighten time specific turning points that also encompass three major themes which can be seen as initiation, expansion and establishment. These themes summarize the problems my investigation zeroes in on. The chronological framework is bounded by the foundation of the SDF in 1939, and the first year of classes at the new pedagogical section of Koreografiska Institutet, KI (the Choreographic Institute) in 1964–65. The study focuses on the intersection of aesthetic, educational, and professional transformative processes which also includes the international field of dance. More specifically the study explores the initial process gathering practitioners in a professional association, which could lead both to unionization and the establishment of an education. As far as professional and educational questions are concerned the process toward establishing a system of dance teacher education followed a general growth and organization of the Swedish educational system as a whole. The educational alternatives which evolved between 1959 and 1965 corresponded to both internal and external needs, especially by exposing the lack of a competent corps of teachers. The study examines how these alternatives collaborated and competed with one another for a relatively short time. Though lines of contention were drawn between leading actors this work also illuminates how the profession and the art itself acquired increased status in a broader cultural context. The vision of modernizing the art of dance along with its pedagogy is shown to be as much about pedagogic matters as about aesthetic ideals. Regardless of actual differences and approaches to aesthetics and education the process was guided toward the establishment of a dance teacher education.
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