Gender and Generation in Swedish School Radio Broadcasts in the 1930s : An Exploratory Case Study

• This paper proposes a method for studying historical radio dialogues with participating children. It is an in-depth method focusing on the interaction in dialogues and the aim is to get an understanding of discursive change in a historical perspective, and more specifically how radio dialogues can be understood as sites for negotiations on citizenship norms and values. The focus is on changed notions of gender and generation. Choice of topic, turn taking, and the distribution of questions and answers are analyzed as parts of an ongoing struggle between power relations in which contemporary gender and generational orders were challenged. Thus, the staring point is Critical Discourse Analysis but it is applied on historical material and adapted to radio dialogues. The argument put forward is that the method presented can increase the understanding of how notions of gender and generation have been challenged in everyday practices, here in the form of everyday radio dialogues with participating children. The highly politicized but non-commercial public school broadcasts gave children a voice as competent and active citizens in new ways, and especially in programs produced by female teachers. In particular, these programs transgressed traditional boundaries concerning notions of gender and generation and thus understandings of childhood.

Nyckelord

school radio

gender

generation

child studies

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)