| 1. |
- Linghede, Eva, 1978-
(author)
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Glitch i Idrottslandet : en kritiskkreativ undersökning av queeranden inom svensk idrott(svetenskap)
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The dominant story in critical sports research is that sport is characterised by heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity norms. These norms are manifested in sexism, homophobia, homonegativity and racism which affect all athletes, regardless of identity. Although important, this is a story that risks reinforcing ideas of how all sport “is”. The thesis is a response to calls from feminist theorists and sport researchers who argue that we need to move away from a logic of negativity built into critical theory and instead put our analytical tools to the task of constructing alternative possible scenarios. The aim of the thesis is to explore what some major strands within contemporary feminist theory can accomplish in relation to dominating stories about gender, sexuality and scientific knowledge production in sport research. More specifically, I explore how the concepts of figuration and intra-action can open up for other possible sport (science) worlds.The thesis consists of a frame-story and four articles, which in turn are based on three substudies. In the first substudy I interviewed boys and men who engage with horses and in horse riding. By engaging in a sport, equestrianism, that in Sweden is dominated by girls/women and female coded, they transgress and challenge – glitch – ideas of how Real sports boys/men should be, live and act. The interview stories from this study are enacted in various ways in article I and IV. In the second substudy I interviewed elite athletes with experiences of living non-straight and who in that way glitch heteronormativity in sports (sometimes also homonormativity). These stories make up the heart of the figurations presented in article II. In the third substudy, I explored athletic bodies that, due to intersex variations, glitch the idea that the only way of being a body (in sport) is to be male or female. This analysis is presented in article III.The thesis is populated by horseguys who challenge stereotypical masculinity norms, sporting contexts that turn heteronormativity up-side-down and inside-out, athletic bodies that implode binary gender and a researcher I glitching a scientific (writing) genre. The figurations presented in the thesis open up for queering elsewheres, where engaging in sport can serve as a condition of possibility for same-sex attractions/relations and non-normative ways of being a boy/man, and where creative writing – in the form of fiction, poetry and genre mixing – can be used as a method of inquiry.Through the concept of intra-action, the thesis also makes visible that “matter matters”. Firstly, I show how engaging materially with horses allow and encourage boys/men to be less constrained by dominant gender norms – in other words, that human-horse relations are entangled with, and affect, boys’ and men’s doing of gender. Secondly, I make visible how athletic bodies “strike back” in relation to ideas of binary gender, glitching a dominant medico-scientific story (in sport) telling us that the only way of being a body is to be male or female. Thirdly, I enact – in form and content – how the researcher is always already entangled in scientific knowledge production.
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| 2. |
- Svennberg, Lena
(author)
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Grading in physical education
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In the thesis the aim is to investigate different aspects of what teachers value when grading in Swedish physical education (PE) and to analyses how sociological background factors impact students’ grades. Grades in PE have included aspects other than those prescribed in the grading criteria, for instance motivation and effort. Teachers sometimes find their value-setting difficult to articulate and refer to a “gut feeling”. In order to explore both explicit and implicit forms of value-setting, the Repertory Grid interview technique is employed.The thesis includes four sub-studies, three interview studies with Swedish PE teachers and a fourth study based on registry data from the Swedish National Agency for Education. The data of all students leaving nine-year compulsory school in 2014 (n=95317) is analysed to explore how sociological background factors, such as migration background, parents’ education, school provider and gender, affect PE grades.The results reveal aspects of grading that are not detectable in the official description of the grading assignment and highlight problems that teachers need to address when grading. Four themes are discerned in the teachers’ grading practices: motivation, knowledge, confidence and social skills. The implementation of a new national curriculum with specified knowledge requirements seems to improve the alignment with the national criteria, but there is still a gap between policy and practice. The knowledge requirements for movement are often interpreted as performances in competitive sports, even if the teachers try to find other interpretations. The odds ratio for getting a higher grade in PE is greater for the variables migration background and parents’ education than for the other investigated variables. The concepts formulated by Bernstein are applied to explore the relations between teachers’ grading practices and cultural and political influences and to discuss how the tensions between different interests could affect teachers’ grading.The conclusion is that the gap between policy and practice confirmed in this study is related to tensions between the interests and purposes of different agents, all of whom strive to influence steering documents and practice. Cultural and political influences need to be considered and facilitate discussions about how to understand which knowledge is valued in PE and who has better possibilities to assimilate it.
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| 3. |
- Downing, Charlotte
(author)
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Early specialising aesthetic performers : An investigation of conceptualisation, motivation, and context
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This doctoral research project is situated within the wider debate of talent development in so-called early sports, where early specialisation is often normalised. The overarching aim is to investigate early specialisation within the context of Swedish aesthetic activities. Two research questions guided this research: 1) what characterises early specialisation, and 2) in what ways are aspects of early specialisation related to motivation?This doctoral research project includes four individual papers. The first paper is a systematic review that investigated the contextual underpinnings of recommendations regarding early specialisation and psychological aspects (e.g., motivation, burnout). The second paper outlines the development of a measurement tool for capturing degrees of early specialisation within the context of Swedish aesthetic activities. The third paper is a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study which used this measurement tool to explore the relationship between degrees of early specialisation and motivation (autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, and dropout intentions), and explored perceptions of parental influence as a moderator. The fourth paper is a qualitative interview-based study that investigated reflections on motivation throughout the training history of high-level gymnasts and figure skaters who specialised early. Additional data regarding perfectionism and parental participation in sport, collected in relation to this research but not included within the four papers, is also outlined and discussed in this thesis. Results highlight the complexity of early specialisation in terms of how it is defined, measured, and conceptualised, as well as the possible relationship to psychological aspects (e.g., motivation, perfectionism). Overall, the results do not align with the notion that early specialisation leads to lower quality motivation and an increased risk of dropout. While this research has made methodological, theoretical and empirical contributions to this research area, it is also clear that more research is needed to better understand and explain the possible outcomes often associated with early specialisation.
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| 4. |
- Karlsson, Jesper
(author)
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Barn- och ungdomsidrott till salu : Om begär, immateriellt arbete och kommersialisering
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In recent decades scholars have noted a trend in Swedish child and youth sport, namely that businesses are emerging parallel to the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC), Sweden’s leading ideally driven sports organisation. Despite this recent trend of businesses starting to organise child and youth sport, research on the phenomenon is as yet scarce. This is also true for the overarching research area of the commercialisation of youth sport. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to analyse how commercially driven child and youth sport in Sweden functions and how leading representatives from child and youth sport businesses perceive Swedish child and youth sport.The thesis consists of four sub-studies. Three of the studies are based on data from different child and youth sport business websites, while the other is based on data from interviews with leading representatives from different child and youth sport businesses.The results identify four different commercial de-territorialisation processes that have been established, or territorialised, in Sweden. These four de-territorialisation processes consist of businesses that target their services to different potential customers groups. They also identify how the different businesses produce immaterial values regarding child and youth sport in order to attract potential customers. These values are enunciated differently depending on the kind of de-territorialisation processes the businesses stem from. Furthermore, the thesis illustrates that in their website images the businesses often visually represent their ideal customers as white boys and girls who are actively pursuing some kind of sport. It also shows that the leading business representatives position themselves and their services as passionate sport enthusiasts, child and youth sport actors and actors in a changing society.The conclusion is that the commercialisation of child and youth sport functions in four different ways and creates boundaries between ideally- and commercially driven sport. The challenge for ideally driven sport is to keep control over sport as a social and cultural product. This is especially important in a post-industrial society, where businesses aspire to take control of the social and cultural content of sport and make it profitable
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| 5. |
- Kempe-Bergman, Matthis
(author)
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Man talar om jämställd idrott : Om jämställdhetssamtal med manliga idrottsledare och förutsättningar för jämställd idrott
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- As a result of a historically anchored relationship between the Swedish state and the sports movement, gender equality has been a prioritized area of interest in Swedish sports since the 1970s. Despite long-term work in this field, research indicates a notable gap between what is said and done at the central level and locally. Research also indicates attitude problems; gender equality is often seen as an insignificant or unnecessary issue.This thesis seeks to relate to and analyze this development. Answers are sought via male sport coaches and leaders. This approach is motivated by the fact that gender equality-related sport research in Sweden seldom focuses on men and masculinities. At the same time men have been overrepresented as power holders and decision makers, and gender equality has consequently been constructed as a women’s issue. By means of a post-structural discourse analysis, the aim is to investigate constructions of gender equality in interviews with 47 leaders selected from seven sports. How is gender equality constructed in terms of meanings of and standpoints in relation to the concept, and which discourses set the frames for these constructions? Which subject positions are articulated?Results show that gender equality is given many different meanings in the interviews and that these meanings are produced in line with three discourses: a women’s rights discourse (semi-essentialism, structural feminism, a quantitative and qualitative support for women’s sport), a gender critical discourse (constructionism, structural feminism, “women can”, deconstructions of femininities) and a liberal discourse (“sport for all”, individualism, gender neutrality). Furthermore, four subject positions are distinguished: the skeptic, the cynic, the women rightist and the norm critic position. When the results are related to the production of gender equality policies four aspects are discussed, 1) relations between discourses (the discourses generate contradictory interpretations of sport, subjectivity, gender and equality), 2) men and gender equality, 3) the relatively substantial lack of interest in gender equality in the interviews and 4) sport and pluralism.One conclusion in the thesis is that the women’s rights discourse dominates and that the liberal discourse is marginalized in the interviews. Further, it is suggested that an elaboration and a more frequent practice of the gender critical discourse could be useful in the development of the gender equality project in Swedish sport.
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| 6. |
- Larsson, Bengt, 1953-
(author)
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Ungdomarna och idrotten : tonåringars idrottande i fyra skilda miljöer
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main aim of the study is to generate increased knowledge about young people’s leisure time sporting habits in a contextual perspective. The intention is to highlight the circumstances in which young people pursue and participate in different activities, with a particular focus on sport in terms of one’s own life circumstances. An essential point of departure of the study is regarding sport as an important pedagogic environment of norms and values.The perspective of the study is mainly cultural-sociological. In the analyses, Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts habitus and capital have been used as research tools together with gender. The data on which the thesis is based is collected from young people from school year 9 living in four different milieus and comes from three different collections, conducted in 1996, 2002 and 2007. In each data collection about 1200-1500 pupils replied to a questionnaire.Sport occupies a central position in young people’s life on the recreational field. The results show that sport culture can best be understood in the local perspective. Young people’s sporting habit development can be said to be a result of a complex interplay between personal preferences, the home environment, local traditions, what is on offer, living conditions and the prevailing laws of gender and status.For the group of teenagers as a whole the proportion of members, as well as those who pursue personal sports, increases with higher educational capital and higher economic capital. When it comes to organised sport outside the sports club milieu no such connection can be determined.The thesis has shown that sport is not accessible for all and opportunities for participation are curtailed for large groups of young people in our society. This is especially true for sport organised in sport clubs, i.e. sport mainly supported by public funds.
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| 7. |
- Svender, Jenny
(author)
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Så gör(s) idrottande flickor : Iscensättningar av flickor inom barn- och ungdomsidrotten
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The context of this thesis is a four-year sports initiative called the Handshake which was launched and funded by the Swedish government and specifically targets girls. The Special Sports Federations were assigned the task of distributing the money to the local sports clubs. The clubs could apply for funding in order to carry out local projects. In the study, project applications from eight different sports were collected; both female- and male-dominated, and gender equal sports. This thesis focuses on the dominant ways of talking about girls and girls’ sport as well as the processes that shape them. Inspired by feminist post-structural theory and Foucault, the aim of this study is to examine how a special initiative for girls’ sport frames girls and their sport. The aim is also to analyze possible conditions of discourse for constructions of gender in texts specifically focusing on girls’ sports participation. The central questions are: How are girls and girls’ sport represented? In what ways and with which form of power, technologies, and techniques are girls constructed and positioned? The analysis shows how the regulatory and disciplinary processes operate in the government initiative. The identification of a specific group of girls in the Handshake initiative is an important component in the exercise of power, not least because it will inevitably convey and produce “truths” about the girls’ group. The initiative produces a number of ideas about girls and their sport, which girls are in need of special projects (and which are not) and in what way. The constructions of girls are not neutral, but normative. The position the sports movement gives itself, namely, a good and significant social force, implies that the problem lies elsewhere. Girls, and not the sport, become bearers of problem characteristics, they are obliged to change and improve. The norms, structures, and processes that cause normalization remain unchanged.
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| 8. |
- Tidén, Anna
(author)
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Bedömningar av ungas rörelseförmåga : En idrottsvetenskaplig problematisering och validering
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall purpose of this thesis is to investigate, discuss and problematise different aspects of movement ability. The four sub-studies of the thesis deal with various issues concerning assessment of movement ability. First, the focus is on how the concept of physical literacy has influenced the steering document of the subject physical education and health (PEH) in Sweden. The question is: What kind of tensions and conflicts arise when different approaches and interpretations of movement ability are used in an educational context? Second, a structural validation is conducted of the NyTid test, an assessment tool developed to assess basic and complex movement skills at the ages of 12-16 years. The question is: Which categories of movement skills are identified through the validation of the NyTid test? Third, the study examines how ‘ability’ is conceptualised, configured and produced in movement tests and movement assessment tools. Finally, an investigation of how or whether an assessed low or high movement ability at the age of 15 matters for developing an interest in, or taste for, sport and physical activities nine years later, in young adulthood.Movement ability is studied from different perspectives, including a multidisciplinary sport science approach using mixed methods. The theoretical standpoint in the sociocultural analyses is inspired by Bourdieu’s theories and concepts of habitus, capital, field and doxa, which are used as analytical tools. Different theories relating to the evaluation of movement abilities as product- or process oriented assessment are also made use of.Movement abilities tests and assessment tools are also found to construct a specific and narrow form of physical capital strongly related to traditional sports. Accordingly, the social construction of movement ability through assessment tools is far from neutral and could affect how children see themselves and their sense of ‘ability’. Furthermore, the assumption that an acquired high level of movement ability plays a central role for being physically active is challenged in the thesis. Even though pupils at the age of 15 had a low level of assessed movement ability, it did not prevent them from acquiring a taste for sport and physical activity later in life. However, more studies on movement ability and the underlining mechanisms and factors for engaging in physical activities are necessary.
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| 9. |
- Waerner, Thérèse, et al.
(author)
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Participation Rights in Youth Sport: Voices of Young Swedish Equestrians
- 2024
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In: Young - Nordic Journal of Youth Research. - : Sage Publications. - 1103-3088 .- 1741-3222.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children and young people have the right to have a voice in matters concerning them, in accordance with age and maturity. In the endeavour to make youth sport a safe place free from abuse and harassment, it is crucial to ensure that young athletes can exercise their participation rights. Drawing from an online study involving over 550 Swedish young equestrians aged 15–17, the aim was to investigate whether and in what ways young equestrians can make their voices heard. The results show that the possibility to have a voice is conditioned by sociocultural factors such as what type of stable the youths are active in. The results are analysed from ‘The ladder of participation’. In sum, social interaction and access to horses are important conditions for how young equestrians experience the possibility to have a voice.
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| 10. |
- Agergaard, Sine, et al.
(author)
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Children's Rights to and in Sport : A Comparative Analysis of Organizational Policies in the Scandinavian Countries
- 2024
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In: Social Sciences. - : MDPI. - 2076-0760. ; 13:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- It has long been stated that children have the rights to protection from, e.g., abuse and to the provision of age-appropriate leisure, play, and recreational activities along with participation in all matters that concerns them. Yet, the full range of children's rights to and in sport has not yet been explored in detail. To do so, it is relevant to turn to the Scandinavian countries, which are praised for promoting children's rights and well-being, with organized sport forming part of the daily lives of many children and youths. In this paper, we examine the organizational policies in Scandinavian sport in order to develop foundational knowledge about how the range of children's rights to and in sport may be supported. Comparing key policy documents of the major sports confederations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, these analyses identify great variety in the following: 1. when and how children's rights to and in sport have been made explicit in the three countries; 2. whether the emphasis is on protection and/or provision of sport to children and youths or their participation in shaping sporting activities; 3. the degree to and ways in which such rights are regulated. In sum, our findings reflect a disparity between organizational policies in the three countries, with a more liberal and individualistic approach to public policy in the Danish context, providing some explanation of the only recent development in and scattered enaction of regulations to support children's rights to and in sports. Furthermore, we identify that political attention has mainly been drawn to the protection and provision of sports to children and youths, while their participation in shaping sport is a shared challenge for sport confederations in the Scandinavian countries and beyond.
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