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- Joelsson, Tanja, 1980-
(författare)
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Space and Sensibility : Young Men’s Risk-Taking with Motor Vehicles
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this ethnographic study of “Volvo greasers” [Volvoraggare] in a peri-urban community in Sweden, risk-taking practices with motor vehicles, such as speeding and drifting, are explored and analyzed in relation to age, gender, class and place. Young men’s risk-taking with motor vehicles regularly generates public debate as a traffic safety issue, often resulting in various policy suggestions, such as curfews or raising of the driving licence age. Seldom are these suggested solutions based on critical ethnographic research where intersections of age, gender, class and place are highlighted. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork, that is, participant observation, and informal and formal interviews, with greaser men and women between the ages of 15 and 19, as well as formal interviews with pupils at the local high school and with youth centre staff in the local community.The study has two overarching aims. The first is empirical: to make visible an under-studied area of contemporary youth culture in Sweden – the (Volvo) greasers. In order to understand how the greasers’ risk-taking with vehicles is manifested, talked about and practised, the thesis critically engages with the contexts of the risk-taking practices and their effects at both the material and the discursive levels. The second aim is theoretical. Through contextualization as an analytical tool, a theoretical contribution of the thesis is the development of a situated concept of risk‐taking. The thesis illustrates how intersecting norms and conceptions around age, gender, class and place are practised at the local level, thus highlighting the social character of risk--‐taking practices. A central analytical notion is the greasers’ negotiation of place, developed through the concept of spatial boredom, which affects their construction of personhood and their social practices. In light of this, the thesis suggests that situated risk-taking with motor vehicles benefit from being formulated as violations, which furthers the understanding of young people’s risk-taking practices with motor vehicles and paves the way for more multi-faceted discussions in theory, as well as in practice and policy-making around traffic safety.
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| 2. |
- Selberg, Rebecca, 1982-
(författare)
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Femininity at Work : Gender, Labour, and Changing Relations of Power in a Swedish Hospital
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Gender scholarship has identified how paid care work reproduces male dominance and reinforces women’s subordination, but also how labour and workplaces provide a critical space for women through the development of new forms of identity and struggle. In this ethnographic study of Swedish nurses’ work, the concept of normative femininity is used in order to explore gender, labour, and changing relations of power in the context of the neoliberal transformation of the Swedish welfare state.The study shows how nursing has undergone dramatic changes in terms of work intensification and new forms of subordination and class boundaries. At the same time, the nursing profession has embraced nurses’ new role as adjunct managers in running clinics and taking on new responsibilities offered by New Public Management.Gendered subjectivities are at the level of the work place produced and reproduced through notions of femininities that shape and are shaped by the labour process. The study is located within the emerging field of ethnographies of neoliberalism and offers an empirical analysis of change and continuity in the relationship between femininity and care work among nurses employed in a Swedish hospital.
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| 3. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-
(författare)
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On Men and Cars : An Ethnographic Study of Gendered, Risky and Dangerous Relations
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is well known that young men constitute a high-risk group in terms of accidents involving both themselves and others. But comparatively little is known about the roles of gender, masculinity and automobility in reproducing or subverting such particularly risky performances of identity. The study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how gender, primarily masculinity, is interrelated with car-related identities, practices and material constructions. Contributing with qualitative insights, this study explores the ways in which gendered individuals and cars co-constitute one another in a particular context, the community of Swedish car modifiers. By using an ethnographic approach, this thesis investigates the lives of young and middle-aged car enthusiasts who invest considerable time, money, skill and passion in modifying, showing and driving their cars. The material stems from fieldwork carried out at car shows, in cars, on online modified-car forums and in garages between 2006 and 2008. In total, 53 men and 14 women between the ages of 19 and 60 make up the informants.The study shows how gender, in particular masculinity, is reproduced and negotiated in the modifiers’ attempts to become “unique” subjects through making their own versions of the car. Cars are not only a means of self-expression and constructing identity, but serve to build community and regulate relations between, primarily, men through competition at car shows and when driving. The study examines the reproduction of craftsmanship as a purified ideal that distinguishes car modifiers as a “special kind” of men, a figure that takes its form through intersecting imaginaries of Swedishness, class and masculinity. To rely on one’s own ideas and hands represented a more authentic way of creating one’s dream car in a heavily commercialised culture. Constructions of masculinity in driving are explored in its profoundly embodied, emotional and dangerous aspects developed in the context of men, cars and risk-taking. The personalised car is shown to generate different forms of risk-taking, which are also productive of counter-discourses on dangerous and risky driving.
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| 4. |
- Biricik, Alp
(författare)
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A Walk on Istiklal Street : Dissident Sexual Geographies, Politics and Citizenship in Istanbul
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Building upon ethnographic material and literature dating from the early 1970s until the 2010s, this thesis is about the production and transformation of dissident sexual geographies through the interplay of sexual politics and citizenship in Beyoğlu and Aksaray, two districts of Istanbul, Turkey. In particular, the interdisciplinary inquiry is composed in the form of a walk on Istiklal Street in Beyoğlu district, historically a central location for cruising activities, finding sexual communities and organising political events among LGBT circles. Throughout, the study focuses on the generational use of three interconnected areas: places, such as gay and transgender bars and clubs (1970s–2010s); politics, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) sexual identity politics (1980s–2010s), and virtualities, such as cyberspaces produced through internet and webcam technologies (1990s–2010s).As such, this study contributes to the literature in an under-researched area: the academic study of the production and transformation of dissident sexual geographies between the early 1970s and the early 2010s in Istanbul. Furthermore, it advances current debates on contemporary LGBT identity politics in relation to place-making processes and their role in subverting the assumptions of heteronormativity in the Turkish context. Lastly, the empirical material on three interwoven areas (places, politics and virtualities) contributes to theoretical debates on the construction of intimacy and privacy in the Turkish context.
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| 5. |
- Sandberg, Linn, 1983-
(författare)
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Getting Intimate : A Feminist Analysis of Old Age, Masculinity and Sexuality
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the intersections of masculinity, old age and sexuality from the perspectives of old men themselves, how they understand and experience sex and sexuality in later life. The study uses qualitative in-depth interviews and body diaries, an exploratory method that asked men write about their bodies in everyday life. Twenty-two men, born between 1922 and 1942, participated in the study. The aim of the thesis is two-fold: firstly, to study sexual subjectivities of old men, how old men articulate and make meaning around sexuality in later life. Secondly, the study aims to explore theoretically what a male body may become in relation to ageing; in what ways the ageing male body could be a site for rethinking masculinity and the male body. This aim was inspired by feminist theories in dialogue with the deleuzian concept becoming. Similarly to gender, age is understood to take shape and become intelligible in social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the thesis stresses the significance of the specificities of the ageing body to the shaping of masculinity, sexuality and subjectivity. The body is therefore discussed as an “open materiality”, beyond the binaries of culture and nature/materiality.This thesis discusses the concepts intimacy and touch as central to how old men’s sexual subjectivities take shape, allowing for alternative conceptualisations of sexuality beyond erection and intercourse. Intimacy and touch are understood and discussed in several different ways. By orienting themselves to touch and intimacy the old men emerged as more mature, unselfish and with more serene sexual desires. This also involved them distancing themselves from the younger man/other men, whom they perceived as more selfish, inconsiderate and with stronger sexual desires. Intimacy and touch could in this respect be understood as resources for shaping desirable heterosexual masculinity. An orientation to intimacy and touch enabled old men to appear as neither asexual nor as “dirty” old men. But the study also suggests that a turn to intimacy and touch may open up possibilities for rethinking and reconfiguring sexuality, masculinity and the male body. The ageing body then need not be understood as an obstacle but as an enabling site that provides opportunities for intimacy and touch. Moreover, the thesis presents affirmative old age as an alternative conceptualisation of old age, beyond both the discourses of successful ageing and the discourses of old age as negativity and decline. As a theory of difference and bodily specificity, affirmative old age may be of interest for further feminist theorising.
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| 6. |
- Callerstig, Anne-Charlott
(författare)
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Making equality work : Ambiguities, conflicts and change agents in the implementation of equality policies in public sector organisations
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the implementation of equality policies in public sector organisations. This is achieved through the development of a theoretical framework of feminist implementation studies. It involves the study of influential factors that impact upon the implementation process, with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the outcome of implementation processes within the equality policy field. The methodology used is based on qualitative case study research combined with a meta-analysis that allows for comparisons across cases. Four initiatives in the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategy were studied in different contexts, namely, two local municipalities and one government agency in Sweden. The main questions asked are: How was gender mainstreaming implemented? What were the main factors influencing the implementation process and why? What was the impact of change actors working to implement gender mainstreaming? The case studies were conducted using an interactive research approach where the different dilemmas encountered by the gender mainstreaming practitioners are used as a starting point for developing a joint learning process. The thesis comprises an introduction and five published papers. The main findings of the study include how the implementation process developed over time and the impact of the micropractices of the “gender mainstreamers” involved. The study provides insights into the factors influencing the implementation process, and how these factors change over time. Different types and levels of conflict, together and interlinked with different ambiguities, affect the practical work where dilemmas inherent in the concepts of “gender”, “equality” and “change” become central. Overall, the study shows how the specific preconditions for implementation of gender mainstreaming make the local arenas of implementation crucial for understanding the outcomes.
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