| 1. |
- Ågren, Ylva, 1977-
(författare)
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Barns medierade värld : syskonsamspel, lek och konsumtion
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on sibling interaction and children’s everyday media practices in their homes. Ten sibling pairs, aged four to nine years, have been followed in their homes during a six-month period with media ethnographic methods. The data mainly consist of video recorded sibling interactions.The thesis draws on sociocultural theories, cultural sociological perspectives and insights from social interaction research. The analyses are grounded in the social interaction and meaning making acts that take place in media activities in the home settings. However they also extend to a broader societal context, in order to show how social structure and social action are constantly interwoven in children’s lives.The thesis documents how the media represent an important part of the child's everyday culture. Media create key reference frames and common platforms for the children’s games and play activities. The siblings use media and various artifacts to negotiate, challenge or assume desirable positions. Media artefacts can also be used as a way to present oneself.The younger siblings progressively work their way into the older siblings’ media landscapes, and the elder siblings become guides or role models in handling video games, music, and YouTube activities. In addition to purely practical skills when it comes to handling the technical equipment, the older siblings also mediate local taste hierarchies, norms, and values.The thesis also describes how children are social actors who interpret and reinterpret the constant ongoing movements in the media landscape. Moreover, the thesis highlights how consumption is closely linked to media practices. Mobiles, games consoles and membership on virtual gaming sites become highly valued phenomena and status markers in children’s media worlds.
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| 2. |
- Lorentzon, Ylva, 1982-
(författare)
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Öppna världar, slutna rum : Om status och barnkulturpolitik i scenkonstens vardagspraktik
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis is about child culture and status, power and social relations in everyday practice. The aim is to explore the everyday practice within the production of performing arts and problematize what is at stake in the practice with regard to child culture as an artistic field. The research focuses on how the everyday practice is organized, how status-power influences the practice, and lastly, the potential relevance that the everyday practice within the production of performing arts has for understanding child culture as an artistic field. The thesis ethnographically explores the everyday practice of a theater. The fieldwork was performed in a section that produces performing arts for children and young people. The practice is analyzed and interpreted through the practice theory of Theodore Schatzki, Stephen Kemmis et al.’s methodological concept of practice architecture and Theodore Kemper’s theory on status-power. Other important concepts are child culture, culture and childhood. The analysis shows the everyday practice as organized around an artistic objective that is simultaneously artistically and pedagogically oriented. This split orientation of the objective sets the section apart from the other artistic sections within the theater. The artistic objective generates important status for a production aimed at children and young people. However, compared to other sections within the institution, this section has differing material and economical prerequisites, which complicates, and sometimes obstructs, the process of asserting artistic status within the theater. The weaker material and economical arrangements underlines the importance of positive social relatings (Kemmis’ term), social status and the maneuvering of power-relations within the theater, in order to ensure artistic, technical and material resources. The practice appears organized in a practice tradition that displays a firm artistic hierarchy, and this illuminates how what is understood as artistic rather than pedagogical or technical in nature always carries a higher status within the practice. This is significant in the work of the section, since large parts of their production are presented as pedagogical rather than artistic projects, and therefore generate lower artistic status. Yet, the analysis also shows a third kind of policy related status being generated by the production of the section. The section and its production is a central part of legitimizing the production of the theater regarding cultural policy, state bureaucracy and funding. Its production therefore upholds a kind of policy related status within the institution. The analysis reveals three kinds of status in the practice, one social, one artistic and one related to cultural policy. The weaker power position and lower artistic status of child culture creates dependence of visibility within the theater. It also shows child culture and pedagogy as deeply intertwined phenomena, with pedagogy both diluting and obscuring the production of artistic status while simultaneously generating possibilities for the policy related kind of status within the institution. Thus while pedagogy can generate low artistic status, the analysis shows it can also be understood as creating a radical artistic potential within child culture as an artistic field.
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| 3. |
- Hällström, Catharina, 1953-
(författare)
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Insändare i Kamratposten : Uttryck för villkor i barns kulturella sammanhang
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to elevate children's conditions as they are expressed in the specific genre of letters to the editor column. The empirical material consists of 1054 child writer contributions in the children's magazine 'Kamratposten' 1977-2007. In the thesis the letters to the editor column is considered to constitute a social place wherein a meeting occurs between ideas, norms and values from children's culture and culture for children, creating conditions for how the children writers express themselves. It concerns conditions the children experience, interpret and reproduce from their daily lives, as well as conditions formed by different editors in a magazine for children. Drawing on a theoretical framework of semiotics and culture pedagogy in combination with a methodological approach of hermeneutics and abduction, the concepts 'develomental task' and 'affordance' were initially used to interpret data. During the interpreting process two main phenomena have been conceptualised as prominent conditions in children's everyday life: Belonging and Place. The abductive method used in the study revealed how the dialectics of belonging and place as conditional phenomena create feelings of discomfort, as well as feelings of pleasure. The results show that these feelings are mainly due to a sense of belonging in families, peer groups and romantic relations. The results also illustrate that belonging and place concerns more than being part of different social and cultural settings. It concerns feelings of real participation and involvment, of taking part, in family life and social interaction with peers, girlfriends and boyfriends. The children's written contributions reveal that belonging and place are issues of vital democratic quality in their daily life and world.
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| 4. |
- Janson, Malena, 1972-
(författare)
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Bio för barnens bästa? : Svensk barnfilm som fostran och fritidsnöje under 60 år
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this dissertation is to examine the different childhood discourses permeating Swedish children’s cinema. This is done through close readings of three films that, each in their own way, play an important role in the history of this tradition: THE CHILDREN OF FROSTED MOUNTAIN (Rolf Husberg, 1945), THE CHILDREN OF BULLERBY VILLAGE (Olle Hellbom, 1960) and ELVIS! ELVIS! (Kay Pollak, 1977). Other subjects analysed are media debates about children’s film from the periods in which the films were produced, as well as official reports on the same subject. Taken as a whole, these elements form a significant body of material, describing the notions of children and childhood, as well as ideas around children’s film as medium, that predominated in Swedish society at three given moments in the 20th century. The study shows, that the most striking characteristic is that ever since 1945, when the first film specifically made for children was produced in Sweden, such films have been created with the intention of ‘benefiting’ the young audience. This ‘cinema of best intentions’, in turn, contains a number of attributes that are not always as unequivocally positive as they might initially seem. One of the main starting points for this exploration comes from modern childhood studies, according to which every given time and culture has its own complex of ideas, understandings and representations of children and childhood. Another central theoretical source is Michel Foucault. His ideas of power and knowledge, discipline and oppression, as well as his methodology, permeate this study. From this point of view, there is an aspect of ‘best intentions’ children’s cinema that can be seen as imposing ‘the oppression of benevolence.’ The closing discussion shows how the Swedish children’s film, today as always, is inhibited by factors such as faithfulness to the written original, fear of upsetting the young audience and commercial demands.
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| 5. |
- Lidén, Ellinor, 1978-
(författare)
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Barnteater som händelse : Barnpublik och vuxenvärldar vid Kulturhuset Stadsteaterns scen i Skärholmen
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Professional theatre for children is entirely conditioned by adults, though children are its primary audience. Adults at the theatre produce and perform theatre for child audiences, whereas other adults make the arrangements and escort children to the theatre. Thus, a distinctive feature of children’s theatre, in comparison to its adult counterpart, is that child audiences rarely go to the theatre on their own initiatives. All adults might have the child audiences in mind, though often in different ways and with varying expectations, hence manifesting itself in what I have chosen to call the scenario of children’s theatre, inspired by the American performance studies scholar Diana Taylor (2003). The scenario of children’s theatre forms rather predictable patterns of communicating, thinking and meaning-making, by which the adults and the children within the scenario act and orient themselves, although it holds openings for change.The theoretical framework of this dissertation draws on theories from both theatre/performance studies and childhood studies. Based on the concept of children's theater as event, that is, a notion that a theatre performance can extend far beyond the time and space that the theater performance itself constitutes, this doctoral thesis aims to study child audiences’ experiences of going to the theatre related to five productions at the Stockholm House of Culture & City Theatre’s stage in Skärholmen. Furthermore, this thesis examines how generation is constructed within these children’s theatre events, by adults and children both, as well as how the scenario of children’s theatre is repeated and/or changed.The research material was generated in two rounds, in 2011 and 2013, both in an early phase in the history of the Skärholmen stage. The material emanated from the child audiences (ranging from 6 to13 years of age) consists of logbooks, audio recorded group discussions, notes from audience- and performance observations and children’s drawings. Additionally, a written teacher survey was carried out as well as interviews with adults at the theatre and decision makers at municipal offices nearby.This thesis contributes to the field of children's theater research by further placing children's theater in a wider context, as event. Another contribution is the distinguishing of the scenario of children's theater in itself, highlighting its repeated patterns, but also its shifts and nuances. These changes become strains and displacements within the scenario, which this dissertation shows a number of examples of. The material and psychical milieu at the Skärholmen stage seem to contribute with such possibilities for change, as do sometimes the performances themselves. However, many positionings within the scenario is shown to remain as mere repetitions. The child audiences express themselves in broad terms when it comes to their experiences of a theater performances, many times exceeding the theater performance itself. They show awareness of how they are expected to behave according to the scenario of children's theatre, though they sometimes challenge it. Child audiences carry thoughts that they want the theater to confirm and/or challenge. Furthermore, the child audiences want to be treated by the adults on their own terms and in meaningful ways, that is through horizontal relationships that seem to be beneficial to the whole of the children’s theatre event.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Brinch, Rebecca, 1973-
(författare)
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Att växa sidledes : Tematik, barnsyn och konstnärlig gestaltning i Suzanne Ostens scenkonst för unga
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to highlight and discuss the artistic force, potential and significance of performing arts for children and young audiences through the example of the work by Suzanne Osten. The focus of this research is on themes, notions of the child and artistic expressions and strategies. The dissertation discusses both the aesthetic and the political aspects of Osten’s theatre for young audiences and takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining theatre and performance studies and childhood studies. A fundamental assumption is that childhood is not a fixed or stable phase that manifests itself in one particular way for all children during all times. Another assumption is that theatre is more than what is visually apparent on stage. What is staged does not take place inside a vacuum, but is closely connected to the surrounding society and culture. To study theatre for young audiences as a cultural expression is therefore, to a great extent, also about analysing notions of the child.Five performances have been selected, all for young audiences: Paddakvariet (The Toad Aquarium, 1988, for ages 10 and over), Delfinen (The Dolphin, 1992, for ages 3 and over), Irinias nya liv (Irina’s New Life, 1996, for ages 9 and over), Flickan, mamman och soporna (The Girl, the Mother and the rubbish, 1998, for ages 7 and over), and Lammungarnas fest (The Baa-lambs Holiday, 2014, for ages 13 and over). A model for performance analysis has been constructed, based on hermeneutics and semiotics, complemented by three key theoretical concepts. Firstly focalization, as used by theatre scholar Maaike Bleeker, in order to understand the interaction between the spectator and the visions produced by the apparatus of performance. The reasoning of theatre scholar Gay McAuley about space in performance is used to examine how space is utilized and retained in the performances, while the notion of utopian performative by theatre scholar Jill Dolan provides tools to discuss how moments of ‘feeling utopia’ are a significant part of the selected works which raises questions of the transformative and affective power of theatre. In order to contextualize and historicise the analyses, the response of the performances is also taken into account drawing mainly on theatre reviews.As a whole the analyses show Osten’s theatre for young audiences as an ongoing research project problematizing the situation and position of children in society, as well as the view of art for children. Ostens performances for young audiences exhibit and make possible notions of a child outside of the norm in late 20th and early 21st century childhood discourses both within research and society as a whole. Osten’s theatre and artistry are identified as growing sideways, developing in unexpected directions while disrupting ideas about childhood and adulthood, and also what can be viewed as theatre for children and theatre for adults. The dissertation states that Osten’s theatre for young audiences can be seen as pioneering, not only in the field of children’s theatre, but also for the development and renewal of Swedish theatre in general.
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| 8. |
- Forssell, Jonas
(författare)
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Textens Transfigurationer
- 2015
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the opera text enlightened from four different perspectives: the translator, the librettist, the composer and finally the singer, based on the author’s thirty years of professsional practice, in the spirit of Donald A. Schön’s study from 1983: The Reflective Practitioner; How professionals think in action. The method is basically hermeneutic and the esthetics inspired by Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (”The Open Work”) from 1962. Questions from within the perspective of the translator are: In what ways does opera translation differ from other forms of translation, and how does an opera translator work? What is the history of “opera in the ver-nacular” compared to “opera in original language” and are singable translations needed whatsoever in the modern era of subtitling? The perspective of the librettist examines the opera form’s SWOT-analysis, the differences from other “storytelling” art forms, the task of making an adaption compared to choosing to create an original plot, the matter of taste and building the form from dramaturgical principles, the shaping of aria texts, the importance of tight collaboration and cutting, cutting, cutting (“a libretto cannot be short enough” Edgar Istel, 1922). The composer’s perspective contains practical and theoretical words of advice and examples from practice, together with a so ”think aloud”-study from within a composer’s thought process while working. The final chapter, from the singer’s perspective, focuses on whether modern vocal ideals and singing “in original language”, with subtitles, together with expanding performance halls, have made opera text harder to perceive, and rendered earlier established texting techniques forgotten or obsolete. The answers to all these questions are complex. This thesis concludes that the opera form is still expanding, but not necessarily in the direction of creating a new, contemporary canon. “There are about 600 opera houses in the world, all are ‘National Galleries’, none is the Tate Modern” (Per-Erik Öhrn, 2012), but there are also opportunities. Almost all successful new opera productions in recent years have their librettos written in English, a language traditionnally regarded as “weak” in the field of opera. Opera audiences worldwide are nowadays accustomed to hearing and understanding sung English words and comprehending a dramatic context when expressed in English, thanks to 100 years of Anglo-American dominance in popular music and about 50 years of dominance in television and films.
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| 9. |
- Hald, Niklas, 1963-
(författare)
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Skådespelaren i barnteatern : utmaningar för oss som spelar teater för barn och unga : en doktorsavhandling i praktisk kunskap
- 2015
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Konstnärligt arbete (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Syftet med denna avhandling är att visa på den komplexitet som skådespelarens arbete med teater för barn och unga innebär. Avhandlingstexten utgår från en kritisk granskning av min egen professionella erfarenhet av att spela teater för barn och unga. Den grundläggande forskningsfrågan är: Vilka är de utmaningar vi som spelar teater för barn och unga ställs inför och hur förhåller vi oss till dem? Genom att lägga tonvikten vid uppsökande teater för skola och förskola blir utmaningarna extra tydliga. Dels måste skådespelaren förhålla sig till yttre omständigheter i en miljö som inte är tänkt för teater och en stark exponering av skådespelaren som privatperson. Dels måste skådespelaren hitta ett sätt att fungera i relation till publiken, där åskådarna består av en ålderspecifik och stundtals ovan teaterpublik som känner varandra i egenskap av klass- och skolkamrater och som oftast inte själva valt att se den föreställning som spelas för dem. Samtidigt skall skådespelaren relatera till den pedagogiska koppling som ofta förmodas finnas där. Avhandlingen består av egna berättelser, intervjuer med skådespelande kolleger och en teoretisk genomlysning av materialet. Den teoretiska grunden är fenomenologisk och hermeneutisk med ett sätt att betrakta teorin som en grundhållning i arbetsprocessen snarare än en referensbank som de berättade erfarenheterna skall mätas emot. Det dialogiska tilltalet genomsyrar skådespelarens arbete med teater för barn och unga. Både i det att jag som konstnär kommunicerar med min publik genom mina verk, men också i ett rent praktiskt perspektiv i det att jag i stunden, innan, under och efter föreställningen, måste vara öppen för att jag kommer att hamna i dialog med publiken. För att möta dessa utmaningar på ett kreativt sätt krävs det att jag som skådespelare har ett uppriktigt intresse för den publik jag möter, samt en stark tillit till teatern som konstnärligt medium. Utöver det måste jag också medvetandegöra mig själv om min egen hållning till det uppdrag jag har. I det som jag valt att kalla en insikt om min position, ingår en medvetenhet om var jag är, varför jag är där jag är, för vems skull jag är där samt vem jag är i publikens ögon. Strävan är att genom en realistisk förståelse för de villkor jag arbetar under, skapa ökade förutsättningar för lyckade möten med min unga publik.
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| 10. |
- Olsson, Eva-Kristina, 1961-
(författare)
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Att vara någon annan : Teater som estetisk läroprocess vid tre 6–9-skolor
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The licentiate thesis focuses on young people’s dramatisation and reflections on the reception of theatre in schools as part of aesthetic learning processes. Its main objective is to describe and analyse how theatre can be used in teaching as a means to create meaning and knowledge in practice. The theatre’s relation to the Swedish subject is discussed from different aspects.The empiric survey was conducted at three 6–9 schools in the south of Sweden, referred to in the study as Österskolan, Norrskolan and Söderskolan. The survey is designed as a multiple case study. Two cases consist of individual classes with supplementary work based on the students’ reception of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the other two on stage productions that include acting. The material consists of video recordings of teaching processes, rehearsals and performances; notes from observations, interviews with teachers and pupils, a questionnaire regarding theatre habits, as well as documents such as theatre programmes and home pages. The cases are contrasted in order to extend the analysis, distinguish between mutual and contrasting patterns, and to some extent also to explain concepts used for description and analysis.The thesis aims to answer the following questions:• What is required in order for theatre to create meaning and knowledge in practice within a school’s framework?• How do form, content and use, and also production, reception and reflection cooperate in various media in the aesthetic learning processes and what didactical potential is the result of this cooperation?The result of the survey shows that a teacher’s patterns for verbal and physical interaction and his or her media specific competence strongly influence the terms for the aesthetic learning processes. The nature of the theatre culture’s meeting with the school culture at the individual school determines the possibilities for the participation in creation of meaning and knowledge in practice that are offered to pupils. Financial conditions, support from the school management, collaboration between subjects, functioning rooms, and the school’s gender practice are other important factors.The conditions for the theatre’s creation of meaning and knowledge differ significantly between the three schools included in this study. At Österskolan the theatre culture is a fairly unfamiliar element in the school culture. The teacher who supervises the supplementary work for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, however, possesses good media specific competence in the theatrical field and is able to generate possibilities for reflections on experience pedagogy based on the theatrical performance and actual participation in the theatrical practice for the pupils. For a number of years, the theatre culture at Norrskolan has been included in an integrated part of the school culture. A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes the basis for verbal, dialogue-oriented discussions in the classroom. The pupils’ performance at the school strengthens the school culture and the pupils learn how to cooperate and take responsibility. The cultural profile at Söderskolan collaborates with professional cultural workers and regional cultural institutes in a theatrical project that invites both schools and the general public. In this case, all media is integrated in the creation of meaning and there is great didactical potential.In the intended doctoral thesis the analysis of the terms and the design of the aesthetic learning processes will be further discussed.
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