| 1. |
- Frisell Ellburg, Ann, 1964-
(författare)
-
Ett fåfängt arbete : Möten med modeller i den svenska modeindustrin
- 2008
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is a study of the working life of fashion models in the Swedish Fashion Industry based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork among a network of female and male models in Stockholm. It charts the development of the modelling business in Sweden and locates it within the changing labour market of late capitalism. The study highlights the paradoxes and contradictions of the modelling profession, which provides both extraordinary career opportunities but is also full of risks and temptations, especially for young female models. Unlike many other studies of the model business, the working lives of male models and the particular challenges they face also receive attention. Two main theoretical areas are examined in this book. One deals with the fact that a model’s body is a sexualized commodity in the market. The ability to project a sexual image at work can enhance a model’s career, but this sexualization and objectification is experienced as problematic by male and female models alike, although for different reasons. In the case of women, it involves the need to appear respectable; while for men attempting to live up to heteronormative expectations of masculinity is continually challenged in a profession coded as ‘female’. A solution employed by many models is to create a professional mask or job-persona, that is detached from what they regard as their inner or authentic self. The issue of authenticity emerges as an important concern for many models and is a theme that runs through the entire thesis. A second theoretical area is the power relations that structure the modelling business, including the relationship between fashion models and model agencies, stylists, and photographers. How models manage these power relations in the form of emotional labour, compromises, or even by occasional challenges to authority is illuminated in the study.
|
|
| 2. |
- Johansson, Anna, 1980-
(författare)
-
Självskada : En etnologisk studie av mening och identitet i berättelser om skärande
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis is about people who write about their self-harm on Internet message boards. The aim of the study is to understand how meaning is produced in relation to self-harm, and how this involves particular constructions of self-harmer identity. The empirical material consists of written dialogues from seven Swedish message boards, as well as interviews with their members and a selection of published texts. This body of material is analysed using a poststructuralist discourse theoretical approach. In order to outline a context for the study, the thesis traces the constitution of self-harm in Swedish public debate since the 1990s. It is suggested that several discourses interact when cutting is represented in media, literature and governmental reports. Most noticeable, a psychiatric discourse, a dystopian discourse of contemporary society, a discourse of alternative youth culture, and a discourse of vulnerable girls are drawn on here. These discourses are regarded as resources for the production of meaning and the acts of identification in message board discussions and interviews. The analysis of this material is concerned with four empirical themes: the practice of cutting; the importance of talking as cure; distinctions between authentic and inauthentic cutters; and the paradoxical and antagonistic relationship between self-harming patients and psychiatry. Issues of normality/deviance and victimhood/agency are of great importance throughout the thesis, as the informants constantly negotiate these dichotomies. The thesis demonstrates that cutting is framed on the one hand as a deliberate strategy for managing emotions and demonstrating self-control, and on the other hand as the ultimate sign of helplessness, self-hatred and lack of control. Although the informants have different reasons for cutting, their diverse accounts and approaches are linked together on the message boards through their shared identification with the position of ‘feeling bad’. The thesis further argues that cutter identity in this empirical material is defined through the construction of different constitutive outsides or ‘enemies’. On the one hand, cutters who ‘feel bad’ are posited against less ‘real’ or authentic ones. On the other hand, cutters are also posited against psychiatry and psychiatric care staff. Psychiatry is constituted in particularly contradictory ways and the informants tend to vacillate between the positions of autonomous, rebellious patient and docile victim of disease. I argue that this can be seen as ways of dealing with certain problematics inherent in the asymmetrical power relationship between patient and psychiatry, at the same time as the construction of psychiatry as an antagonist is also essential for the assertion of solidarity and mutual support on the message boards.
|
|
| 3. |
- Gustavson, Malena
(författare)
-
Blandade känslor : bisexuella kvinnors praktik & politik
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avhandlingen undersöker bisexuella kvinnors praktiker i de maktrelationer som reglerar föreställningar om kön/genus, kroppar och sexualitet. Det är den första fördjupade studien om bisexuella liv i Sverige och fyller ett glapp inom kritisk queerforskning och feministiska studier. Syftet är att dokumentera och undersöka föreställningar om kön och sexualitet i vardagslivet och i kunskapsproduktionen från ett bisexuellt perspektiv och lyfta fram bisexualitet som en analytisk kategori.Utifrån bisexuella kvinnors intervjuberättelser belyser studien deras olika perspektiv och subjektspositioner i svensk samtid. Flera av kvinnorna var också engagerade i dragkingperformance, vilket inspirerade till att söka samband mellan bisexualitet och dragkings.Med avstamp i de teman som framkommer i intervjuerna, t ex monogama och icke-monogam relationer, kroppens materialitet, bisexuell feminism och dragkingframträdanden undersöks hur ett normativt bisexuellt mellangrund omförhandlas och hur bisexualitet opererar som en alternativ strategi i den sexuella och könade geografin. Jämfört med den etablerade kunskapen, både äldre och samtida, både approprierar och avvisar kvinnorna det bisexuella medelgrundet. Studien diskuterar nödvändigheten av ett perspektiv som härrör från bisexuella subjektspositioner och att ett bisexuellt perspektiv är användbart som analytisk kategori inom feminismen och i queerstudier.
|
|
| 4. |
- Tollin, Katharina, 1974-
(författare)
-
Sida vid sida : En studie av jämställdhetspolitikens genealogi 1971-2006
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The history of gender equality policies is part of the modern heritage in Sweden. The contemporary narrative contains milestones such as female suffrage, anti-discrimination legislation, equal representation and parental leave. And yet, ambivalences also imbue this modern contemporary saga. While all political parties from left to right claims to be in favor of gender equality, it seems as if the goal is never fully attained. This thesis examines the conditions for gender equality policies in the Swedish parliamentary debates during the period from 1971 to 2006. The ambition is to trace the (historical) agreements, conflicts and erasures upon which our contemporary understandings of the gender equality policies are based. What political actions are favored when the contemporary history seems enigmatic and incomprehensible? What forces and power relations are obscured by our current historiography? The theoretical framework is informed by genealogy, feminist theory and discourse theory. Rather then representing the struggle for women’s interests the analysis seeks to investigate the historical present and emergence of gender in this specific political context. The main contribution is a reworked understanding of contemporary history with an emphasis on how neoliberalism and class politics constitute the political space for gender equality. One overall conclusion of the analysis is that a confined narrative on feminist waves as showdowns between male resistance and women’s struggle or party political competitions tends to obscure the fact that the political process in relation to gender equality policy has evolved closely with neoliberalism.
|
|
| 5. |
- Warkander, Philip, 1978-
(författare)
-
"This is all fake, this is all plastic, this is me" : An ethnographic study of the interrelations between style, sexuality and gender in contemporary Stockholm
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates the processes and effects involved in the production of styles in contemporary Stockholm. Particular focus is given to materialization processes regarding gender and sexuality. It is an ethnographic study, organized around three different research methods: participant observation, semi-structured interviews and organic wardrobe studies, carried out during the duration of two years and mainly delimited to Stockholm, often focusing on but not limited to the queer-orientated downtown club scene. The study is centered on ten participants, but is also concerned with the events, situations and relations the participants become part of during this time. In this way, the analysis gives equal attention to the specificity of garments and the spaces and places of social interaction.Drawing on a combination of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, it analyses how styles are produced and maintained through interactions. The concept of style operates as a tool of analysis, approaching the subject matter from three different perspectives: verbal communication and politics of naming, the wheres and whens of sartorial practices, and lastly bodily matters as a point of intersection, where styles are constituted as bodily materializations through gestures, movements and orientation in space. Furthermore, this thesis engages in an on-going discussion within fashion studies on how the articulation of matters regarding sexuality, gender and identity projects can be theorized through the concept of style. In this way, it also challenges and furthers the definition of this concept by proving its productive qualities through ethnographic fieldwork.
|
|
