| 1. |
- Bornäs, Hanna, 1983-
(författare)
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Subjects of Violence : On Gender and Recognition in Young Men’s Violence Against Women
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation concerns young men’s violence against women partners. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with nine men who have been violent against women partners in their youth, and an additional interview with the mother of one of the young men. The method is informed by Hollway and Jefferson’s psychosocial methodology and Hydén’s teller-focused interview approach. The interviewees’ stories of violence are analysed combining psychoanalytic theories of intersubjectivity with an attention to discourses. The aim of the dissertation is to explore men’s experiences of being violent against women partners in youth and to investigate the gendered intersubjective dynamics of young men’s violence against women partners. Jessica Benjamin’s theories on gender and recognition are central to the analyses, and other feminist, psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories are used in the dissertation’s analysis of the men’s stories of violence. The study highlights the role of early relationships, gendered identifications, recognition, and discourses of masculinity and sexuality in using and desisting from violence. Men’s identifications and disidentifications with violent father figures are particularly significant, as are relationships with male peers in youth and the men’s (denied) vulnerabilities. The temporality and liminality of youth are also explored, as the first romantic relationship poses particular challenges to young men who have been exposed to violence and abuse from a young age, or who lack parental support. The time of youth figures as a porous boundary of old and new dependencies, hierarchies and relationship patterns. It is shown how the men’s definitions of violence are also shifting, and the particular nexus of love and aggression within relationships is thus highlighted. Violent situations are demonstrated to denote a breakdown in mutual recognition, which, using Benjamin’s notions, takes the form of oneness – denying difference and alterity – or twoness – over-emphasizing difference and complementarity. In line with Donald Winnicott, these processes of non-recognition involve failed destruction and survival – the inability on the part of the men to tolerate their partners’ acts of negation without retaliating. Desisting from violence consequently involves striving towards an ideal of thirdness or reciprocal recognition.Another central finding is the prevailing experiences of exerting sexual coercion in youth. In situations of pressurized sex, the men fail to recognize the sexual subjectivity of the woman other. The change in the interviewee’s experiences troubles a linear temporality, and by using the psychoanalytic notion of afterwardsness – it is shown how the men become retroactive perpetrators, which reorganizes their embodied and affective memories and subjectivities. By stressing the nonlinear qualities of temporality and memories, this dissertation destabilizes the idea of childhood and youth, pointing to the unfinished and (re-)constructed nature of these life phases, while simultaneously arguing for their vital importance and ‘real’ influence in the lives of subjects. This is thus a contribution to youth studies as well as an argument for broadening the conception of the youth subject.
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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. |
- Ingrids, Henrik, 1972-
(författare)
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Dilemmas in child custody disputes : the child's best interest in courtroom discourse
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines courtroom interactions involving child custody disputes, exploring how participants during courtroom hearings orient to and manage the task of presenting their own side, while contesting the opposing party, in matters like the child’s best interest, domestic violence, parental neglect and misconduct. Drawing on 42 audio-recorded courtroom examinations of litigating parents by the same side and opponent side attorneys, it examines authentic courtroom hearings. Theoretically and methodologically, the thesis primarily builds on discursive psychology and conversation analysis. It draws on and contributes to studies on institutional talk by explicating the subtle interactional work required by participants in this institutional setting.The overall aim is to examine how interactional dilemmas in child custody disputes, requiring participants to simultanously manage contradictory activities, are handled through discursive practices. A core dilemma concerns the child’s (lack of) participation in the proceeding. In this absence, litigants try to mobilize the child’s voice and experiences in order to support their own claims, in danger of having such attempts dismissed as mere reflections of their own interest. The child’s reported speech and reported affects are important discursive devices for handling this dilemma. Another dilemma arises when litigants blame each other. Although this is necessary to ‘win’, litigants are regularly blamed when doing so, which generates something of a blame machinery of never-ending blame. A final dilemma concerns domestic violence. While implicitly gendered social categorizations are invoked to support mothers' claims of fearing their ex-partners, such discursive work is undermined through contrasting social categorizations.By analyzing child custody disputes on the micro-level of courtroom interaction, this study contributes to an understanding of how disputes are built through participants’ discursive practices.
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| 4. |
- Kristensson, Anette, 1977-
(författare)
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Barn och djur i den karnofallogocentriska ordningen : En barndomsfilosofisk studie i Jacques Derridas tänkande
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis analyzes the concepts of the child and the animal at the border of the definition of human. This is achieved through an interdisciplinary perspective that combines childhood philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and critical animal studies. Throughout the relatively short history of childhood studies the focus has been on how the concept of the child is stuck within the tracks of a binary thinking, structured around the dichotomy between child and adult. This thesis addresses once again this enduring problem surrounding the dichotomy between the child and the adult, in the hope of rendering their relation more complex, undecidable and ambiguous. The thesis employs Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the binary thinking of western metaphysics to shed light on the stakes of this kind of thinking. Derrida describes the structure of dichotomies, which lay at the foundation of western thought, as a hierarchical relation in which one functions as the master term while the other is defined in its difference to the first. To show how this works, the thesis uses Derrida’s late writings on the animal. In these texts, he describes an abyssal opposition between men and what he calls the animal. The animal is defined by its lack of human capabilities, such as speech and reason. To this I add the concept of the child because the child is often said to lack these same capabilities also. Both the animal and the child are something we, by way of civilization and domestication, are supposed to overcome and therefore repress. Derrida’s late writings of the animal are used in this thesis because the structure of repression is drawn to its extreme with regard to the animal – grown up human beings kill and eat animals just because they are animals. Derrida pinpoints the concept of the animal as a cruel generalization without any nuances of differences between, for example, the protozoon and the chimpanzee. This is not only a cruel generalization of animals but also, on the other side, a naïve assurance for man. Not even the child fits into the description of the human being that is defined through its separation from the animal. Derrida is not explicit about the child, it is not a theme in his written texts, but this explores how the child is present, at least implicitly in his most famous deconstruction of western logocentric thinking. Derrida says, in passing, that the animal is substitutable for the child, or the women or the slave. A key concept in this thesis is carnophallogocentrism, a term that ties together much of Derrida’s relatively diverse philosophical interests – from his early language oriented deconstruction of logocentrism to his late, ethico-political work on the animal. He only mentions the concept a few times in passing and it has not received much exegetical attention in the commentaries on Derrida. This thesis attempts to fill this gap as well as to trace the child in these structures. The child that appears in this thesis’ reading of Derrida has a destabilizing potential when understood to be both inside and outside this human order. It even has the potential to open our eyes to other futures.
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| 5. |
- Neuman, Nicklas, 1987-
(författare)
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Stories of masculinity, gender equality, and culinary progress : On foodwork, cooking, and men in Sweden
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to use foodwork and cooking in Sweden as a way to better understand theoretical questions about men and masculinities. Paper I discusses how an increased public interest in elaborate cooking and gastronomy in Sweden, a country with a cultural idealization of gender equality, could explain why men in Sweden assume responsibilities for domestic cooking without feeling emasculated. Papers II, III and IV draw on interviews with 31 men from 22 to 88 years of age and with different levels of interest in food. Paper II shows how domestic foodwork and cooking are associated with ideas of Swedish progress in terms of gender equality and culinary skills. Paper III demonstrates further that domestic cooking is not only a responsibility which men assume, but also a way of being sociable with friends, partners and children. Thus, both papers II and III challenge the idea that men only cook at home if they enjoy it. The data rather indicate that domestic foodwork responsibilities are a cultural expectation of men in Sweden, ingrained in desirable masculine practices. Paper IV explores men’s responses to media representations of food. The interviewed men responded to these representations with indifference, pragmatism, irony, and at times even hostility. In general, the responses are based on gender and age-differentiated taste distinctions and notions of masculine and culinary excess. Paper V uses a mix of texts (81 online texts and two magazines) and observations from the food fairs GastroNord (2014 and 2016), Mitt kök-mässan (2014) and the chef competition Bocuse d’Or Europe (2014) complemented with pictures and videos. I argue that a Swedish culinary community that promotes Swedish culinary excellence is constructed by drawing on preestablished national (self-)images. This culinary community is constructed as open and tolerant, with ethical concerns for the environment and for nonhuman animals. Its culinary icons are represented by chefs in whites and the leading restaurants. In sum, this dissertation provides empirical and theoretical contributions to both food studies and gender studies that critically scrutinize men and masculinities. Food-issues are permeated by gender, both in people’s everyday life and in the gastronomic elite.
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| 6. |
- Sjöberg, Magdalena, 1983-
(författare)
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Young mothers’ identity work : life course, risk, and good motherhood
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Most studies about young motherhood have focused on identifying how young mothers can be supported or on how notions of young motherhood are produced. However, there is still limited knowledge about the maternal identity work of young mothers. The overarching aim of this thesis was to explore the maternal identity work of young mothers and, as part of this, to study young motherhood in relation to different forms of parenting support.Method: For the first three papers, 17 young Swedish mothers aged 13–25 were interviewed 1 or 2 times each (in total 31 interviews). The interview conversations were analysed from the perspective of discursive psychology. For the fourth paper, three Facebook groups that offered parenting support online to young mothers were studied. Data from the three Facebook groups were analysed through network analysis, online ethnography, and telephone interviews with two administrators. The ethnographical data and interviews in this particular substudy were analysed through thematic content analysis.Theoretical perspectives: The identity work of the interviewed young mothers was analysed in relation to theories and debates about parenting and the life course, the risk society, and the notion of “good motherhood”.Findings: The findings of the thesis suggest (Papers 1, 2, and 3) that whether the interviewed young mothers followed or deviated from their expected life course seemed to have an impact on the degree to which their mothering was seen as “risky”. Furthermore (Paper 2), the mothers appeared to be discursively divided into three different levels of riskiness in their social contexts: less risky mothers, high risk mothers, and mothers seen as too risky for mothering. The mothers’ level of presumed riskiness seemed in turn to have meanings for which dominant and/or alternative motherhood discourses they could access and draw upon in a trustworthy way (or which motherhood discourses they lacked access to) when presenting their maternal positions and making sense of their maternal identity in relation to the world around them. Two emerging motherhood discourses were identified: youthful motherhood (Paper 1) and common-sense motherhood (Paper 2). Support from the young mothers’ own mothers (Paper 3) had contradictory meanings for their identities and functioned as a form of guidance into motherhood while at the same time limiting the young mothers’ possibilities to take on the position as the “main-mother” of her child. Young mothers seemed to prefer peer-parenting support online (Paper 4) in closed Facebook groups above participating in governmental expert-guided face-to-face support groups.
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| 7. |
- Sylwander, Kim R., 1986-
(författare)
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Whores, hijabs and heart emojis : Affective explorations of aggression against girls online
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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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| 8. |
- Björk, Stefan, 1972-
(författare)
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Män möter mödravård : om betydelsen av "vi" i mötet med mödrahälsovård, förlossningsvård och BB-vård
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I dagens Sverige är det en självklarhet att blivande pappor skall vara delaktiga och engagerade i graviditet, förlossning och omvårdnad av det nyfödda barnet. De flesta pappor är med vid besöken på barnmorskemottagningen inklusive ultraljudsundersökningen, deltar i föräldrautbildningen och är med vid barnets födelse. Ändå uttrycker många pappor missnöje med mödrahälsovården, förlossningsvården och BB-vården. När de tillfrågas om saken uppger de ofta att de känner sig utanför, osynliga och ovidkommande. Den här studien är ett försök att bättre förstå de upplevelserna.Studien grundar sig på intervjuer med tio svenska pappor. Pappornas berättelser om mötet med mödrahälsovården, förlossningsvården och BB-vården analyserades med en narrativ forskningsansats där särskilt fokus lades på hur de i berättelsen förekommande personerna framställdes eller positionerades.Avhandlingens resultat kan sammanfattas i tre punkter: (1) Mödrahälsovårdens fokus på de fysiska aspekterna av graviditet och förlossning innebär att den blivande/nyblivna pappan kan ha svårt att finna en meningsfull plats eller position i mötet med mödrahälsovård, förlossningsvård och BB-vård. (2) De intervjuade pappornas berättelser om dessa möten kan grovt sett indelas i "vi"-berättelser där pappan fann en obesvärad position och "jag"-berättelser där han inte gjorde det. Detta har jag tolkat som att papporna i dessa möten eftersträvade en "vi"-position där graviditet och förlossning kunde bli en för mamman och pappan gemensam angelägenhet. (3) Svårigheten att finna en obesvärad position i mötet med mödrahälsovård, förlossningsvård och BB-vård har i första hand att göra med att den blivande/nyblivna pappan inte är gravid, inte att han är man. Det är huruvida kroppen är gravid eller inte gravid som skapar gränsen, inte vilket kön kroppen har. Den sökta "vi"-positionen kan därför betecknas som könsirrelevant.En slutsats är att om mödrahälsovård, förlossningsvård och BB-vård vill göra den blivande mammans partner verkligt delaktig i graviditet, förlossning och spädbarnsomvårdnad är den relevanta frågan: hur kan man bidra till att den blivande/nyblivna mammans partner kan finna en position som bättre inkluderar honom/henne i detta möte? En möjlig sådan position är den i denna studie påvisade "vi"-position där graviditet, förlossning och spädbarnsomvårdnad är en för båda föräldrarna gemensam angelägenhet. Att ge plats för en "vi"-position innebär också att sträcka ut tidsperspektivet från graviditetens här-och-nu förbi den annalkande förlossningen till det som kommer därefter: föräldraskapet -- oavsett vem som har varit gravid.
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| 9. |
- Åkerlund, Nina
(författare)
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Barns relationer i våldets närhet : Respons, positioner och möjligheten till barns röst
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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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