| 1. |
- Sjöstedt Landén, Angelika, 1979-
(författare)
-
A Fantasy of the "Ambitious Young Girl" as Flexible Knowledge-worker Subject
- 2012
-
Ingår i: NORA. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0803-8740 .- 1502-394X. ; 20:4, s. 249-265
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the paradoxes of the so-called flexible work environments of late capitalism is that, at the same time as tribute is paid to organizational and work-force flexibility in terms of increased empowerment and freedom for workers to make their own decisions, there is also a strong emphasis on controlling their work. These ways of governing and controlling work have been problematized within critical organizational studies and analysed and conceptualized as audit regimes and audit cultures. Furthermore, feminist research highlights how the hegemonization of flexible work ideologies may result in declining health for employees and increased gender inequalities in the labour market.This article contributes to these critical strands of research by examining some of the gendered aspects of the ideological forces that work to install everyday work practices of "flexible subjects". The analysis is done by studying the means of knowledge-work fantasies, and especially the ideological forces behind the fantasy of the "ambitious young girl".I draw on feminist critiques of neo-liberalism and neo-liberal practices and, more specifically, theories of the professional investment that is supposedly common in neo-liberal discourses. The source material that laid the foundations for this article was gathered from within a more extensive ethnographic study where I followed the relocation of a knowledge-intensive civil service agency from the capital of Sweden to a smaller town northwest of the capital.The analysis shows that, in the process of moving work-place, employees became invested in a fantasy of "ambitious girls", a fantasy that entailed certain expectations of flexible and mouldable civil service workers in neo-liberal times.
|
|
| 2. |
- Sjöstedt Landén, Angelika, 1979-
(författare)
-
Fantasi som diskursteoretiskt begrepp och etnologiskt blickfång
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Kulturella perspektiv - Svensk etnologisk tidskrift. - Umeå. - 1102-7908. ; :3-4, s. 77-83
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article reviews the possibilities for utilizing the concept of fantasy in studies combining discourse theory and ethnology. It considers the Lacanian concept of fantasy that has been worked into socioeconomic and cultural analysis by Jason Glynos, David Howarth and Joan Wallach Scott. The author suggests that the concept of fantasy could make analytical contributions for answering questions of why subjects get caught up in, and are gripped by, norms and social rules that they might not agree with. It could also contribute with a theoriza tion of the critical practices of creating counternarratives and revealing contingencies.
|
|
| 3. |
- Sjöstedt Landén, Angelika, 1979-
(författare)
-
Moving central knowledge to a northern periphery : exploring logics of public sector job relocation in Sweden
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 0435-3684 .- 1468-0467. ; 94B:4, s. 333-350
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Through the means of Swedish relocation politics, the capital of Stockholm has been constructed as a governing centre with the ability of giving something to a periphery thought of as unable to survive on its own. The relationship between centre and periphery, furthermore, produces images of what kind of knowledge can be located to central or peripheral regions. In this article I research the move of a knowledge-intense government agency from Stockholm to Ostersund, a smaller inland town in the north. The data were collected through an ethnographic case study of a government agency. I adopt a discourse theoretical approach that provides a clear ontology of identity and processes of identification. This enables research on how ideological images of places create geographical identity positions. The aim of this article is to explore how groups of professionals at the government agency identified with geographical identities dependent on whether they were seen as experts or generalists. In conclusion, identity positions became important for how the relocation was organized. The establishment of the two identity positions functioned to stabilize the social environment during the move, a time when many things at work seemed to be in turmoil. At the same time the positions worked to exclude other ways of identifying with (work)place, and in this way sustained asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination between centre and periphery.
|
|
