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- Joosten, Sjors, 1993-
(författare)
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100% Swedish : Working for recognition through Hip-Hop from the suburbs of Stockholm
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines the role of hip-hop in shaping identity, immigrant integration, and social belonging in the Swedish context. It discusses how Swedish hip-hop artists with immigrant backgrounds and from segregated suburbs use their art to translate personal narratives, communicate social realities, and imagine alternative conceptions of Swedishness. The research draws upon Civil Sphere Theory (Alexander, 2006) and Recognition Theory (Lamont, 2018, 2023), which focus on symbolic boundaries that are in play in the conception of who “we” are as a society and associated processes of inclusion, belonging, and recognition. The study investigates how hip-hop assists immigrant-Swedish artists to articulate their experiences, construct identities, and navigate processes of integration and instances of exclusion. By describing the impact of the work of hip-hop artists and other key actors in the hip-hop scene, the dissertation considers the implications of hip-hop for immigrant incorporation, social recognition, and belonging within Swedish society. The analysis is based on qualitative data, including interviews with immigrant-Swedish hip-hop artists and other stakeholders of the hip-hop scene related to the suburbs of Stockholm, observations of significant places and performances in the Stockholm hip-hop scene, analysis of lyrics, and interpretation of secondary sources like media coverage. Through the analysis of this data, the dissertation uncovers how hip-hop artists challenge territorial stigmatization, work against racialization and discrimination, and strive for a greater appreciation for cultural hybridity and the multicultural reality of Sweden. The findings provide a nuanced portrait of hip-hop as a site of both empowerment and struggle for immigrant-Swedish individuals and communities. While hip-hop offers a platform for artistic expression, economic advancement, and agency, it also confronts tensions between commercial success and social marginalization that can reinforce stigmatizing stereotypes and social exclusion or support recognition and integration. As hip-hop becomes more mainstream, artists appear on public TV shows, perform on national stages, and enter the finer rooms of the cultural landscape. Hip-hop from the suburbs has become more present and widespread. However, it continues to be seen as produced in symbolically excluded spaces by immigrant-others. A substantial factor in this is the disproportionate attention to gangster-rap, which emphasizes criminality and exclusion, undermining other hip-hop artists that try to convey messages that facilitate belonging and recognition. The dissertation clarifies symbolic boundaries between the construction of a dominant and conventional 'lagom' Sweden and an immigrant-Swedish multicultural suburban 'orten' Sweden, and argues that artists often work towards new forms of belonging and recognition, potentially redefining these symbolic boundaries and contributing to immigrant incorporation on a larger scale. But this depends significantly on the artists’ ability to balance a mastery of knowing how to approach the wider audience through hip-hop and change-making in sharing messages to discuss redefining symbolic boundaries in favor of a more inclusive society. It can be concluded that Swedish hip-hop does not only work on an individual level for creating alternative forms of identities and routes to belonging but also adds to a social critique of how symbolic boundaries are drawn and can work towards imagining a multicultural and inclusive Sweden that is both 'lagom' and 'orten,' thus 100% Swedish. Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to research on immigrant incorporation, belonging, and recognition through the arts and music – specifically popular culture – and demonstrates the value of hip-hop for research on immigrant inclusion and belonging. This dissertation underscores the transformative potential of hip-hop as a catalyst for broader societal change, reshaping conceptions of Swedish identity and challenging existing boundaries of belonging. By identifying translation, communication, and imagination as the key actions of hip-hop artists and other cultural agents, the study contributes to theoretical advancements bridging Civil Sphere Theory with Recognition Theory. Contributing to the sociology of immigrant incorporation by clarifying the interplay between symbolic boundaries and music, the research offers new insights into how immigrant-Swedish artists and their communities navigate processes of integration and belonging.
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| 2. |
- Tajic, Denis, 1984-
(författare)
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Mellan policy och praktik : En studie om nyanlända elevers pedagogiska och sociala inkludering i skolan
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of the thesis is to investigate how schools’ formal and informal structures affect the pedagogical and social inclusion of newly arrived students, as well as how newly arrived students in grades 7-9 and school staff themselves understand and handle these structures. Formal structures refer to forms of pedagogical measures for newly arrived students. Informal structures refer to opportunities for and the quality of interactions and social relations between, on the one hand, newly arrived students and, on the other, non-newly arrived students and school staff.The majority of the newly arrived students in this study came to Sweden during or immediately after the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016. This is also a period when an extensive educational policy reform was carried out in Sweden in order to provide better conditions for schools to organize the reception and education of newly arrived students.By using a critical policy analysis, the theoretical focus is placed on a critical and contextualized understanding of how policy implementation can be understood in the relation between local practices and national support measures. The thesis is based on an ethnographic approach, and the empirical material was collected in two primary schools in the Stockholm region during academic year 2018/2019. Besides fieldnotes, interviews with newly arrived students and school staff formed the basis for the analysis.The thesis involves three empirical studies. In Study I, the meaning of inclusion is constructed in relation to three contextual perspectives: the contextual requirements, contextual opportunities and contextual limits. The study shows that organizational and pedagogical "solutions", whose purpose is to include newly arrived students, sometimes have exclusionary premises. The school staff constantly find a way to legitimize their practices in relation to what the policy prescribes.Study II shows that the students and teachers can influence the school's institutional habitus through informal structures. This entails creating places where newly arrived students are accepted as a legitimate part of the school's educational and social environment, in which solidarity comes to the fore through the institutional habitus of multicultural incorporation.In Study III, the analyses show that the schools’ authorized policy actors, such as school leaders, or in some cases teachers, have a legitimate mandate to interpret and enact policy regarding multilingual classroom assistance, which sometimes turns out to be different than what was intended in a certain policy decision. However, there are some actors who do not have a legitimate mandate, but in some cases, they can influence the formal structures and adapt local policy as nonauthorized policy actors.In conclusion, the thesis shows how the school contexts can offer belonging when implementation of formal policy has already created otherness. The outcome is thus not a unilateral distribution of power by principals and teachers, but their power is reduced by the students' relational practices.
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| 4. |
- Lund, Anna, 1969-
(författare)
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Mellan scen och salong : En kultursociologisk analys av ungdomsteater
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyzes youth theatre and how it fares in the interplay between three worlds: the audience of young students and their experiences, interests and values; the theatre as an institution with its ideals and modes of operation; and the school, with its selection and sorting mechanisms. It focuses on what happens when different conditions, relations, tensions and conflicts create meaning and significance. A cultural-sociological approach is used to analyze the social drama that plays out between the ideals of youth theatre and the social contract that regulates the meeting between the stage and the audience. The purpose of the dissertation is to expose this social drama by using an empirical case. The empirical material is drawn from the performance of the play Dear Jelena by the Regional Theatre of Blekinge Kronoberg. The participant observations were carried out in autumn 1997, and approximately 30 performances were studied and followed up with interviews, questionnaires, and analyses of the audiences’ written impressions and reactions to the performances. The dissertation shows that the encounter between youth theatre and its audience takes place in a socio-cultural space of inequality and tends to create further inequality. The young audience experiences, reacts to, and appropriates the performances individually, but in a manner structured by social background, sex, and course of study. Theatre as an institution is based on certain ideals, esthetic as well as others, and assumes a particular social contract in advance of its meeting with its young audience. This takes place in parallel with the school making space available for youth theatre, its ideals and social contract, via selection and disciplining. The ideals of youth theatre and the social contract are not easily upheld in reality, they are often questioned by the socio-culturally heterogeneous audience with its widely varied attitudes and reactions. This means that theatre, as well as the school, is forced, in a tension-filled and conflictual manner, to deal with the disjuncture between ideal and reality. This dissertation focuses on and empirically concretizes this social drama and how the encounter between the stage and audience is dealt with.
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