bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Möte i teaterrummet
Authors: Edlom Suzanne
Published: October 2024

This article deals with how theatre happens and how meaning is created by the use and experience of theatre. I have experienced two different theatrical performances, on four different occasions, with the purpose of experience and examine the theatrical performance as an event. Four different theatre events and experiences but they all showed how the meaning sprang from the actual event, as it happened, there and then, through an encounter and exchange between the present people in the room. A sensuous and emotional co-operation which created a significant and live exchange between actors and audience. An exchange through human encounter, created by physical presence and sensuous contact.
Om skoluniformen i skolan och scoutskjortan på fritiden
Authors: Westberg Anna
Published: October 2024

The Scout Movement has 38 million members all over the world, most of which wear scout uniforms. In Sweden there are five scout associations. The aim of this article was to study how the uniform is used in one of them. Twenty-eight members of The Swedish Guide and Scout Association were interviewed. The informants were between nine and 54 years old, half of them were women and half of them were men, and they came from three different scout groups in different parts of Sweden. The study has been carried out within the field of child and youth science.
Tillämpad kulturanalys
Authors: Ehn Billy , Nilsson Bo
Published: October 2024

Since 2002 the Department of culture and media at the Umeå University runs a four years undergraduate programme of Cultural Analysis. Besides the conventional academic training in different interdisciplinary courses the students devote a lot of time practicing at the labour market.
One central goal for the programme is that the students learn how to transform theoretical knowledge to practical use in various enterprises and organisations. Another goal is that they shall know how to market their acquired competence as cultural analysers — not precisely an ordinary task in the humanities.
The tensions between theory and practice in this education programme certainly create some conflicts among the students, but contribute also to the development of a more conscious application of cultural analysis in the life outside the academy.
Från tre världar till många
Authors: Palmenfelt Ulf
Published: October 2024

During the last decades the interest in narratives has been increasing within several academic disciplines. Although folklorists have analyzed narratives since the days of the Grimm brothers, we still can use some of the aspects put forward by literature scholars, oral historians, social psychologists, and discourse analysts. Our folkloristic expertise, as I see it, lies in promoting the central role of the fieldwork, in the well-developed methods for meticulous text analyses, and in our focus on the cultural aspects of human life. The three-partite model suggested by Katharine Young gains analytical strength from its ability to join text analysis with performance analysis. In my article, I suggest that Young's model could be enlarged to comprise also geographical, chronological, and emotional worlds, as well as worlds defined by actors and deeds. Another suggestion is to regard each single episode in a life history narrative as located in a taleworld of its own, the narrator assuming the role of a filmmaker, taking his audience abruptly from one cut to the next. Such an approach, to my mind, makes it easier to separate emotions and attitudes embedded at different levels in the narrative and the narrative situation.
Repliker ur det förflutna
Authors: Wallin Eva
Published: October 2024

In this article I analyze role-takings in a life history narrative where manifestations of the narrator emanating from different time segments interact with several actors from different periods of her life. In the epic flow of the narration, quotations from such characters suddenly broke in as dramatic reminders of the original events, where the narrator entered the parts of persons she had met earlier in her life. When isolated from the rest of the conversation, it became obvious that these lines from the past constituted a narrative of their own, a dramatic "grand narrative" of the narrator's experience of a lengthy illness period.
Berättelsens och framförandets olika världar
Authors: Öhman Sara
Published: October 2024

In this article I combine the models of Katharine Young, William Labov, Gillian Bennett to analyse Anna's, a Visby pensioner, story about an event that had great impact on her life — while in Uppsala to study, she fell ill with polio. By observing the narrator's and the narrative's movements between taleworld, storyrealm and the realm of conversation, while at the same time paying attention to both intra-narrative and communicative aspects, it became obvious to me that inside Young's three worlds, we are also able to recognize enclaves of metacommunicative quality. These enclaves are characterised by explanatory, evaluative, and credibility creating functions. As metacommunicative signals they constitute part of the interplay between narrator and listener, facilitating the audience's proper interpretation of the narrator's coding of her telling.
Äntligen hemma?
Authors: Carstensen Gunilla
Published: October 2024

In this article, the process of creating "home" and "belonging" in an academic setting is discussed, through an analysis of how female graduate students talk about how they dress for different situations in the academy. The focus is on how gender, sexuality and research ideals are produced, constructed and created through the symbolic meanings of clothes. Symbols and signs are used differently according to which academic arena the graduate students belong. Symbols associated with "authority" are important in a situation such as teaching, while social activities such as dinner parties dictate another dress code in order to avoid presumed sexual invitations. Knowledge about the importance of the symbolic value of clothing also provides the opportunity to, through a more conscious choice, change a given gender order in the academy.
Hemmastadd i staden?
Authors: Widmark Charlotta
Published: October 2024

In this article, the process of urban migration and what is considered "home" for migrants in Bolivia is discussed. I explore the meaning of "home" as a sense of belonging and identification connected to social relations rather than to a place or a house in a physical sense. In the process of setting into place, ideas related to the concept of "home" become important. In this process the migrants' embodied experiences from the rural areas are manifested in new ways in a creative process. For urban Aymara speakers, a sense of belonging is formed through new social relations based on traditional ideals and practices in interplay with the values of the dominant society in the city in a continuous process of change.
Att sörja en levande
Authors: Ljung-Hagborg Anna
Published: October 2024

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how different voluntary and professional crises groups for men deal with the grief in relation to divorce related life crises. The different kinds of organisations deal with the emotional aspects of the divorce in different ways, but they share the assumption that grief is a kind of work (either in the sense that the person has to work their way through the grief step by step, or actively engage in changing the way he feels or acts in relation to the circumstances of the divorce). I argue that although grieving people always are a source of cultural distress, this distress is further accelerated in the environments I have explored. The reason of this acceleration is the fact that cultural beliefs of the "dangerous" or problematic emotional lives of men, have deep historical roots, and are constantly emphasized in contemporary representations of masculinities.
In my study I focus on three different aspects of this unpredictability: how the social environment deals with the practical and emotional dimensions of the divorce.
How the men try to cope with a situation where the future is unsure, or where the picture that they have of themselves falls apart.
The strategies used by crises centres can in this meaning be seen as different instruments to create order and deal with uncertainty.
Katastrofens lokala poetik
Authors: Adjam Maryam
Published: October 2024

Justifying its existence and acts as a part of a civilizing and modernizing mission; the colonial order has made a deep mark on definitions of history in colonized regions. Here the history is often described as a series of zero-points, of completed phases on the civilization-ladder for moving on toward a concrete Modernism. In this kind of history general trauma, such as drastic interruption of the modern line of progress, is often a landmark for the zero-point. Individual trauma however is subordinated this process. This article aims to illustrate how the personal trauma is used in the local cultural space, as a continuous form of remembering. Here the trauma is rather fragmented, searching but not for context or meaning. The searching itself, the act of telling and repeating the trauma, produces an own cultural space of melancholic history-telling. In this history the zero-point is rather a continuous breaking up of the linear time and truth. The trauma, the past is rather a process of reinterpretations, of returns. Throughout its traumas a local culture justifies its existence, tells its own history in the shadow of a modern history.
Plocka upp livet
Authors: Wettstein Margrit
Published: October 2024

In this paper I focus on the efforts of people to give life meaning after forced emigration or hiding during the Holocaust, or death of loved ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Could simple material objects be of importance in the process of adjusting to tragedy or a new situation? The experiences of survivors of the Holocaust or émigrés, and those of relatives to 9/11 victims are not commensurable. However, I think a case may be made for a smiliarity in the way victims of both tragedies use personal objects to go on with their lives.
Genus, design och marknad
Authors: Mörck Magnus , Petersson Magdalena
Published: October 2024

This introductory contribution from the editors points to the possibilities of design to question taken for granted notions of gender. Starting from our own project Design, Gender and Organisation, which brings together a multidisciplinary team of ethnologists and also Marcus Jahnke, designer and Lena Hansson, doctor i marketing, we discuss the possibilities of integrating poststructuralism and contemporary conceptual design dealing with gender. The methods have included artistic research in a combination of theoretical work, fieldwork among designers and development of design prototypes that have been used to collect responses from various potential users. The problematic relation between ethnology, as well as feminism, with the market is further addressed and reformulated using new theorizing, without forgetting the misgivings voiced by Spivak.
Gudrun Sjödén-kadern
Authors: Lundstedt Anna
Published: October 2024

This article analyses how an identity of white womanhood is constructed in fashion catalogues produced by Gudrun Sjödén Design 1992-2004. The aim of the article is to deconstruct both the discourses, and the subject positions which have been articulated and performed in texts and images. Travel writings, stories of catalogue photo shoots, as well as the communication between the customers and the designer is studied. Based on Ghassan Hage's theory of White governmentality, and post colonial feminist studies, the article explores the expressed desire of the Other and the idea of enrichment of "ethnic cultures". Colonial conceptions of the Other as authentic textile crafts(wo)man are also being discussed. These fashion catalogues can be seen as an arena where discourses of white multiculturalism and white heteronormativity are materialized. Dressing in the uniform style of Gudrun Sjödén is a way of performing White womanhood. How can White womanhood be problematised and renegotiated? Is it possible to see any shifts in the signs of the discourses?
Försvinnandets kultur och mumifieringen av världen
Authors: Smeds Kerstin
Published: October 2024

The focus in this article is on our battling against Time, perishness and death with the aid of preservation, conservation and musealizing our material and immaterial world. A battle which, in the end, is doomed to fail, since "All that is Solid Melts into Air", sooner or later. Criticism against the ever increasing "Archive Fever" (Derrida) and obsession with History and the Past can be traced back to Quatremère de Quincy in the 1820s, and will continue through thinkers and sociologists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor W. Adorno, Jaques Derrida, Pierre Nora, Alexander Kluge, Douglas Crimp and many others. Is Europe in a state of decline, musealizing itself? So what are the options for creativity in building a future? And what should the museums do, when leaving behind the epoch — the industrial society — which gave them birth? Museums should make some adjustments to their attitude to the concept of "eternal preservation".
Det säljande kulturarvet
Authors: Pettersson Richard
Published: October 2024

The topic for this article is the growing "heritage business" in Sweden, with special attention to and example from the visiting area in Västerbotten called Guldriket.
The article starts with an exposé over how the museums and the science around ancient history have motivated its existence in relation to the public community. From initial centralization and public education during the last 200 years has, in the later part of the twentieth century, cultural politic gravitated against decentralization and democratization in the process of making and caretaking of public heritages. In the same time shall cultural politics still act in a direction to keep distance from the commercial market. This results in a message in two directions which is equally confusing for the common public as it is for the antiquarians. This art of dilemma is discussed in relation to a specific case from Guldriket, which highlights value making and issues in preservation in context from both the horizon of the official and the local/layman.
Muslimskt rundabordssamtal om våld mot kvinnor
Authors: Fazlhashemi Mohammad
Published: October 2024

How should Muslims who live in a society like Sweden relate themselves to the laws of Shari'a that stands in sharp contrast to the Swedish laws? For example the verse in the Koran that allows a man to reprove his wife under certain circumstances using forcible means. Are all Muslims united in this matter? To judge by the discussions among a group of Muslim women who participated in a roundtable discussion at a summer camp in Sweden, in the summer of 2008 — we can establish the fact that there are different opinions in the subject.
One group believed Shari'a laws of that kind should be put on ice — i.e. not put into practice when they are in conflict with a modern perspective on humans. Another group maintained the verse of the Koran shouldn't be interpreted as an encouragement to physical assault of women. According to them the verse should be interpreted symbolically not literally. A third group considered the verse of the Koran as God's words that should be carried out without hesitation.
The roundtable discussion among the women in the summer camp is a miniature of the contemporary intern Muslim debate. Muslin organisations in the women's movement in Muslim countries that actively fights against abuse of women, and female and male theorists who believe the women hostile Shari'a laws should be interpreted through a historic-critical perspective, are to be gound as participants in the debate. The latter uphold such Shari'a laws to be seen as an expression for the patriarchal culture. Even here the opinion differ, however the common link is that the criticism is aimed towards the preferential rights of interpretation for men. Representatives for the historic-critical model are of the opinion that it creates distance from the recurring and endless drill on religious dogma and in return creates space for intellectual reflection.
Etnografisk fiktion
Authors: Wulff Helena
Published: October 2024

Ireland's strong literary tradition was created by writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, and literature was a prominent part of the national cultural revival in the late 19th century. It was the poet Yeats who initiated what has been called the literary movement which had a political impact on Ireland's passage into independence. Irish literary theorist Declan Kiberd argues in his Inventing Ireland that it was with this literary movement that Ireland became a modern nation. Now the literary tradition is continued by an acclaimed generation of fiction writers. They tend to reflect on the sudden social change which the so called Celtic Tiger, the economic boom in the late 20th century brought to the Republic of Ireland. In my anthropological study of Irish literature, it was novels and short stories by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (pronounced "Eilish Nee Gwivna" in English) that first pointed me to the concept of ethnographic fiction. The aim of this article is to explore how Ní Dhuibhne's writings on women and girls can be used as ethnography. This also evokes questions about the relationship between ethnography as a method and text on one hand and ethnography and fiction on the other. Ní Dhuibhne collects material for her fiction from the type of ethnographic observation and note taking which originates in anthropology and ethnology. With a doctorate in Irish folklore, she has an eye for ethnographic details especially the predicaments of women in Ireland who are trying to combine traditional family life with modern careers. This leads over to issues on Irish writers and their fiction in the world.
Så barnsligt!
Authors: Ehn Billy
Published: October 2024

To be called childish is ambiguously; it may mean either immature or spontaneous. Not even children are expected to be childish all the time. Instead they are used by adults as good or bad examples in the construction of norms for desirable behaviour. They are also used as an invocation of the future, as a sort of messenger from our time. What is the message they are supposed to deliver?
Many people are occupied by the question about the meaning of their present age and what it demands from them. Is it charming or awkward to be playful and giggly when you are fifty years old? You could see the concept of childishness as a cultural relay for conflicting ideas about how one should behave and what it means to be a grown-up. In this power-transmitting concept strong ideas about responsibility and naivety are connected in crucial situations where the maturity of the participants is an uncertain circumstance.
"Sekunder förvandlas till år"
Authors: Hyltén-Cavallius Sverker
Published: October 2024

The aim of the article is to explore ways to conceiving and organizing the past in popular music. Empirical basis is observations at music events and internet discussions, and analysis of recorded music, conducted within a current research project. The article develops three retrologies, literally "ways of thinking back". Rebirth is when musicians disappear and after many years reappear. In this case identity — the authority to claim personal continuity — and the capability to represent and manage a lost context, are keys to an authentic performance and central to the musicians' chances to update and develop their sound. Resounding is the use of past sounds, instruments, grooves and melodic fragments that are put together in new ways. These bands are associated to the 70's, and listeners will find a number of historic references yet rarely or never find actual copies. Recreation is the meticulous work characterizing certain tribute bands in their effort to recreate historical concerts. In this case, the identity of the performing artist is erased in favor of the identity of the performed artist, placing authenticity in the matching of detailed performance and audience expectations. Any improvisations would here be regarded as mistakes. To conclude, each retrology points to different conceptions of authenticity, but all place high value in mastering contextual knowledge.
Etnologi bortom humanismen
Authors: Nehls Eddy
Published: October 2024

The article tries to introduce a new thinking in ethnology, a post human perspective. The starting point of the discussion is a reflection on the many battles that has been fought among ethnologists during the 20th century about how to best understand the concept of culture. What is a human being is a good question to start with, if one wants to take on a post human perspective and in this article the answer is (partly) given by Gregory Bateson who says, in the title on one of his most famous books, that Mind and Nature is a necessary unity. The boundary between humans and non-humans is highly problematic because it is restraining the possibility to work in an unbiased fashion. Some main concept of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) is then introduced as one of many possible ways to work with a post human perspective. Actor is understood as everything that can make a difference. Humans are only one actor among others whom all are connected in a network as the acronym ANT indicates. Working with such analytical tools is about finding traceable connections between actors. Society or culture understood in this way cannot be the explanation to anything; it is on the contrary what should be explained. One of the most important points that are made in the article is that this is not fundamentally new thoughts to ethnologists.
Nya medieformer
Authors: Arvidsson Alf
Published: October 2024

Recension av: Dewdney, Andrew & Ride, Peter, The New Media Handbook. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.
Akademiska mästerskap?
Authors: Ehn Billy , Löfgren Orvar
Published: October 2024

This special issue is devoted to the new ways in which cultural research is evaluated, measured and ranked. What happens when the tools from the natural sciences of citation indexes and quantitative measurements are introduced into the humanities and social sciences? Our introduction discusses this impact and the problems of trying to translate styles of measurement and ranking between different academic traditions. There is often a silent knowledge, a kind of academic habitus, hidden in evaluations of research and excellence. We need to analyze and compare such different academic values and aesthetics of what constitutes good or bad research.
Kulturforskningens kvaliteter
Authors: Fornäs Johan
Published: October 2024

There is a widespread talk of an increasing role for culture and for transgressing borders, but still interdisciplinary cultural research experiences considerable difficulties in the new landscape of research policy. Having outlined the problematics of measuring quality in general terms a discussion and a series of proposals concerning the main dimensions of this problematics follows.
First, the dominant scales for measuring publishing are criticised for being biased against the humanities, in that a too narrow set of international academic journals are unfairly favoured. Second, when external funding is measured, grants from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) tend to overshadow all other and often equally important sources, including those from EU and the ESF (European Science Foundation). Third, it is argued that quality of education and of external communication should also be considered, as should the efforts made to create an innovative and productive environment in the institutional collective.
Finally, particular attention is given to the specific issues relating to evaluating interdisciplinary applications, inspired by UK/US research by Georgina Born and others, as well as from a wide range of Swedish experiences that indicate that the disciplinary structure seriously hampers the ability to deal with truly interdisciplinary work. A list of necessary considerations is presented, proposing that such a list should be formulated and fine-tuned by the Swedish Research Council, and be anchored among all those who need to evaluate interdisciplinary work, so that such evaluation is correct and fair.
Några internationella perspektiv på en forskningspolitik i förändring
Authors: Fredriksson Martin
Published: October 2024

We asked give former guest scholars to send us a short report on the current situation for cultural research in their home countries. This article is an attempt to summarise these reports and it touches on questions of funding, evaluating and conducting cultural and interdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zeeland, the United Kingdom, Finland and Israel. All reports tell of a situation where it is hard for cultural research to compete for funding with the social and natural sciences since the methods used for evaluating research quality tends to favour the latter. The current trend to allocate funding to research that is regarded as socially and economically useful is yet another disadvantage for cultural research whose outcomes might be hard to measure.
Interdisciplinary research is affected by those general conditions, but it is also subject to specific conditions that vary in different countries. In some countries, such as Finland, interdisciplinary applications are met by a certain lack of understanding in a system of funding that is structured around a traditional order of academic disciplines. In other countries, such as New Zeeland, research funds look favourably upon interdisciplinary research. The main problem for Cultural studies seems to be that it has no natural place in the disciplinary landscape and that it is dispersed among many different departments. The main conclusion that can be drawn is however that both the disciplinary landscape and the systems for funding and evaluating research are currently under reconstruction in many parts of the world, but that the outcome of this process is still unpredictable.
Kulturforskningens möjligheter i det nya forskningspolitiska landskapet
Authors: Brändström Dan
Published: October 2024

This article positions Swedish cultural research in a wider, European context. It shows how cultural components are growing in importance in the European Union, and that this trend for cultural policy also makes greater space for cultural research. Brändström argues that the Swedish debate tends to lag behind the European trends, but sees positive signs in the increasing collaboration between universities. He predicts that the competition between universities for skilled researchers will further increase, that there will be even more cooperation, and that older, established units will have an advantage in this process. A conclusion is that open and flexible organisations like the ACSIS, with its transdisciplinary networking, are well suited for the new situation.
Populärkulturella ikoner
Authors: Klinkmann Sven-Erik
Published: October 2024

In this special issue questions of how to interpret popular-cultural icons are addressed by several researchers. These kinds of icons are understood as highly enigmatic, representing a middle ground between mimesis and fantasy making theory and research about them especially tricky. Icons are played out in a space involving changing media technology, visibility, storytelling and reception (by fans and others). Several popular musical icons — Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, Beatles, Morrissey, Pete Doherty, Genesis and Spice Girls — are discussed, using a variety of theories and methods in order to bring more light on this complex phenomenon.
Spice Girls som mallar
Authors: Saarikoski Helena
Published: October 2024

This is an ethnographic and cultural-analytic study of the pre-adolescent Finnish fandom of the Spice Girls in late 1990s. The research material was collected for the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society in 1998. The field material introduces a media-ethnographic perspective on the subject — media culture is studied as the experiences, acts and narratives of viewers and listeners. Some of the embodied practices of the fandom described include children's play, singing and dancing along to the music, dancing to a set choreography in mimed Spice Girls shows, dressing and making-up in the style of the idols and consuming. The stereotyped image of a "horde of fans" is reinforced but it also gains facets and nuances when I describe the activities of groups of friends among girls and their significance for fandom. The narrator of the play and dances of the girls is typically a first person plural "we" narrator, which points to the collective nature of the fans and the peer groups of pre-adolescent girls. I also describe differences among friends, the differentiation of individuals and the breaking points of collectivity. The "reckless consumer" is given the counter-image of a consumer with a pastime, studying to be a citizen of the consumer society. The performer roles and narrator voices of fandom are techniques the appropriation and use of which construct a multidimensional girl actor in fandom. They are micropolitical practices of experience in which the fanlike style in particular is playful and carnivalistic.
Från bepälsade provrör till en ny arbetarklass?
Authors: Ideland Malin
Published: October 2024

Transgenic animals are organisms that have been genetically altered on purpose: genes are knocked out, knocked in or reinforced, and the effects can thus be studied in a living (or dead) whole animal. Above all, it is mice that are being usedd, and since the early 90s, the practice has spread like wildfire. A lot of hope is invested in the technique, through the mice scientists expect to understand diseases as well as treat them. But animal experimentation is fundamentally a dilemmatic enterprise and all research including animals has to be reviewed by an animal ethics committee.
This paper explores metaphors used when members of animal ethics committees talk about transgenic animals. Its aim is to analyze possible discursive effects from metaphors concerning a) how the transgenic animals are considered and treated; b) how members in animal ethics committees position themselves against each other. The paper analyses meanings of talk about transgenic animals as models, instruments and individuals.
A third aim of the paper is to discuss how so called extendable metaphors can be used to bring in further perspectives into the debate, how to put more focus on humans' responsibilities to laboratory animals. By using Donna Haraway as a theoretical framework, the author analyzes possible meanings of talking about the transgenic mice as cyborgs and workers.
Äldre glesbygdskvinnor, bortglömda offer eller centralgestalter i lokalsamhället?
Authors: Liliequist Marianne
Published: October 2024

This study, based on participant observations and interviews, concerns the present situation of the elderly women in Frostviken, a sparsely populated mountain-area in the north of Sweden. What resources do these women have in order to achieve life-quality? Elderly women living in this part of the country is often described as victims in the periphery. In my study the elderly women have a central role in their community and in their network of relatives. They have high status because they stand out as symbols of the regional identity of Frostviken. The widows who choose to stay at the farms after their husbands have passed away, are resources to their families and relatives. The farm with all it's assets — for example the built-up week-end cottages, the hunting- and fishing licences connected to the farm and the roots way back to the culture of the first settlers — is central to the ideal of life in Frostviken. As the owner of the farm the elderly women exist in the middle of a large network of relatives who come visiting from time to time. Her role as a story-teller with great knowledge of local- and family history further promotes her central position.
I en monarki är det en vanlig familj som sitter på tronen
Authors: Ljuslinder Karin
Published: October 2024

In this article I discuss the symbolic representations of the "family"-concept within the media reporting of the Swedish royal family which, I claim, trivialize and disguise political-economic dominance. The material consists of a recurrent TV-series, The Year with the Royal Family, 1978-2008. Like Michael Billig (1998) I mean that media representations of the royal family are stories about much more than only a celebrity-family. They are also symbolic representations of the nation as a family, unity, integration and national identity and thereby contributions to the reproduction of existing cultural values of these concepts. Through the trivial depictions of the royal family as an ordinary family the general public is daily reminded, in a subtle way, that they are members of a nation and what kind of values are important in the Swedish nation. I agree with Billig (1998) that the reason that this, so called banal nationalism, have survived is because the royal family has awaked very little academic interest. Thereby the media representations have been unchallenged.
Prinsessan på alerten
Authors: Svens Christina
Published: October 2024

The Princess of Haga is a play about the Royal Family in Sweden during 1940-1970. Christina, one of the princesses, is critical about her position and the demands that she is expected to fulfill in order to perform the role of princess. The article discusses her relation to this role, to her royal family and how she handles being a princess and at the same time being presented as an ordinary woman in an ordinary family. She does her job but reveals at the same time how meaning about representing role models for people to identify within an ideal social order is created.
Att bli kunglig
Authors: Lundgren Anna Sofia
Published: October 2024

In 2002 it became known to the public that the crown princess of Sweden had a new boyfriend. A native from Ockelbo, a small community in the county of Gästrikland, Daniel was soon described as "a man of the people" and class-difference was made the prime topic of much media-coverage. Was Daniel worthy? Would he be accepted by the king? Would he be able to learn to behave as part of the royal family? This article aims at describing and analysing the way the category of "the peopl" was used and reproduced in the articles and notices in Svensk Damtidning, on of Sweden's largest women's magazines describing itself as the royal weekly. Using concepts of postmarxist discourse theory as it has been developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the article shows how the categories of "people" and "royalty" were constructed in relation to characteristics of normative ideas of gender and taste, but also of hard working entrepreneurial spirit and everydayness.
"Den anonyma, laglösa kreativiteten i det offentliga rummet" — att kommunicera med världen
Authors: Jacobsson Roger
Published: October 2024

Recension av: Eva Londos (red.), Rondellhundar och schablonspindlar: Folkkonst i tiden. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag, 2009.
Jourhavande etnograf
Authors: Löfgren Orvar , Jacobsson Roger
Published: October 2024

This special issue on ”experiments in ethnography” is published in honour of ethnologist Billy Ehn. The introduction uses his research during four decades to capture major changes in ways of doing and writing ethnography. What happens when the classic long fieldworks are replaced by a bricolage approach, where very different kinds of materials are combined? How do ethnographers handle the ways in which interviews and observations are mixed with netography – blogs, images and YouTube sequences?
En kulturanalytisk medieforskning
Authors: Arvidsson Alf , Liliequist Marianne
Published: October 2024

In this issue of Kulturella Perspektiv we want to present some examples of media research with a more qualitative approach than the traditional mass communication research with its quantitative sociological orientation.
Den infantiliserade björnen
Authors: Dofs Sundin Monica
Published: October 2024

The children's programme Björnes Magasin is known to several generations of children. The questions posed in the article concern how this TV-programme has succeeded in becoming so popular amongst children, how they use it, and what it may mean to their development. Is Björne a transition object similar to other cuddly toys and security blankets, as well as fosterer and compensation for other human intimacy? The article tries to work out how Björne is constituted and how he most likely is perceived by a TV-watching audience.
Anmälningar och notiser
Authors: Holstein Lars , Liliequist Marianne
Published: October 2024

Recension av: Per-Markku Ristilammi: Rosengård och den svarta poesin. En studie av modern annorlundahet. Lund/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1994. (Diss.)
Minou Fuglesang: Veils and Videos. Female Youth Culture on the Kenyan Coast. Stockholm: Stockholm Studies of Social Anthropology. 32, 1994.
Den obegripliga fysiken
Authors: Jonsson Kjell
Published: October 2024

Natural science can both have a profound influence on and be itself influenced by other aspects of culture, even those which at first seem far removed from the laboratory. The present essay discusses the way in which modern theoretical physics may be treated from precisely such a cultural perspective. At its centre stands Albert Einstein and his theories of relativity and how they were presented to the Swedish public, primarily in the daily press, at the beginning of the 1920s.
"Et lys i denne verdens mørke"
Authors: Torp Eivind
Published: October 2024

Læstadianism is an evangelical and fundamentalist movement within the Lutheran Church, located primarily in northern Fenno-Scandinavia. In a historic perspective, the movement's stronghold is to be found in Saami- and Finnish-language communities. Thus in several studies the movement has been analyzed in light of theories of millenarian movements with the onus on the ethno-political aspects of the movement. The present article provides an example of how local political demands from the Saami are rejected by the Læstadian movement. Against that backdrop the author argues that the Læstadian movement, with the development of Saami political organizations, has lost its previous function as an oppositional ideology and nowadays functions simply as a religious sect.
Svensk malerkunst 1900—1940 — et led i forsvenskningen af Sverige
Authors: Kayser Nielsen Niels
Published: October 2024

The article deals with the contribution to make the Swedes Swedish among some early twentieth-century Swedish painters. These naivist and expressionist artists are regarded as being part of a new democratic-national culture. By means of two distinct styles: a cool, analytical and aristocratic one and a warm, synthetical and popular one they also represent a characteristic Swedish double matrix elsewhere seen in e.g. sport. This double representation of modern Swedishness function, the article argues, as an interpretation of crucial features in Swedish self-knowledge in the twentieth century. This double matrix is finally analysed as being epitomised in the paintings of Sven "X'et" Erixson, who due to this is seen as the most distinctive painter of the "heroic" social-democratic era in the inter-war period in Sweden.
Fotbollen, vetenskapen och mötet med den Andre
Authors: Vallström Mikael
Published: October 2024

The starting point for this article is the questio of whether I, as a rationally thinking scientist, can understand my emotional involvement as a football spectator. My suggestion is that the question at issue is problematic, as modern science cannot handle that which is emotional, "unreasonable" or "irrational". This inability is connected to modern man's relationship to his body, his feelings and to the so called Other. It is a relationship distinguished by splits and contradictions, by discrimination and hierarchical principles of order. By differentiating, e.g. between thought and feeling, body and soul, rational and irrational, one can be made superior to the other: thought is made superior to feeling, the body superior to the soul, and the rational superior to the irrational. In the same manner the masculine can be made superior to the feminine and the modern superior to the primitive, as the feminine and the primitive are associated with the emotional and irrational.
There is, however, always an element of contradiction, since it's really about two sides of the same coin. The rational, like the unreasonable and emotional, requires its opposite to exist. The football spectator always has a rational and sensible side, as the scientict always has an emotional and unreasonable side to him. Therefore, the question of whether the scientist can understand the football spectator is really a question of the scientist's relationship to the Other; about the Other within himself, and the distinction and ranking which follow. In order to "understand" the football spectator, the scientist must see both sides and acknowledge the irrational and emotional as part of himself, science, and the modern.
Hackordningar och andra ordningar
Authors: Lundgren Anna Sofia
Published: October 2024

Starting in an ethnographic description of a classroom situation, this article deals with questions concerning power, violence, and gender. It is important not to use overly simplistic or determinative concepts when analyzing asymmetrical power-relations of the kind discussed. At the same time, however, it is just as important to be aware of the overall structures which always inform human interaction and the violence so often attached to it.
Att vara svensk och muslim
Authors: Månsson Anna
Published: October 2024

The narratives of Swedish women who have converted to Islam bring up issues concerning identity and the multicultural society. These narratives play an essential and urgent role in the larger context of representations of Islam since they are told from a divergent perspective. They reflect not only post-modern aspects of uprootedness and increased reflexivity but also an existential need for stability and continuity.
The transcultural identity of these women involves a dynamic process of combining different cultural values in everyday life, which compromises as necessary. Their identities and self-presentations as Swedish Muslims are formed in everyday encounters with friends, relatives and social institutions. It is of importance to study how they experience themselves in these encounters and how they develop social and cultural strategies in a complex world.
Populärkultur under omprövning
Authors: Grossberg Lawrence
Published: October 2024

In this article Lawrence Grossberg reflects on his own work concerning cultural studies and the formation of rock music. He discusses the social effects and logics of popular culture, especially rock music and youth culture, and a commitment to the possibilities of cultural studies as a form of progressive intellectual work. Cultural studies is an intellectual practice which claims to belong within a collective intellectual enterprise. It challenges not only the boundaries between the disciplines, but more importantly, the boundary between the academy and the world outside.
Pensionärer och pensionärskultur
Authors: Ronström Owe
Published: October 2024

This article attempts to discuss culture-building among Swedish pensioners. The number of pensioners is constantly growing, and they are healthier and wealthier than ever before. In pensioners' activity centres, clubs, associations of many kinds, the aged are now in the midst of creating a culture of their own. An ethnographic study of the activity centre at Mariahissen, Stockholm, where a large number of pensioners from all over Stockholm meet regularly, shows a preoccupation with activities relating to the body and the senses, with emotional, sensual and aesthetic qualities, such as dancing, singing, gymnastics, playing cards and weaving. This can be understood as a kind of aesthetic compensation for the loss of power and status following retirement, or as a way of reclaiming areas of life that have been denied for many years of hard work. An interesting find, with strong support from other studies, is that a central standpoint among the pensioners to their activities, and to themselves as a socio-cultural category or group, is one of ambivalence. Another find is that most of what pensioners do, is done during day-time, or former work-hours. The activities in general can be seen, and are indeed often looked upon among the pensioners themselves, as a kind of "work". This contributes to the aforementioned ambivalence, by creating a clear-cut border between two types of leisure activities, the old (fritid) and the new (fri tid), with different content and meaning.
Att mötas i mediet
Authors: Erson Eva
Published: October 2024

The aim of the article is to convey how women and men in a local computer-mediated discussion, a so called newsgroup, act linguistically. International research has shown that women's participation in similar mixed-sex discussions is very low and furthermore that the women often get squeezed out of the conversations through certain intimidating and silencing strategies. The women and men in the study are taking courses together within a technological education. Since they are all experienced computer specialists the working hypothesis was that the women would have a greater chance of making their voices heard. The material points to various personal communication strategies, but one can also see that the women as a group are more sharp in their argumentation and keep to the matter at hand — in this case discussing sexistic "customs" within the working community — while the men to a larger extent assert themselves personally and are more attacking and impressionistic in their style. Nevertheless the result here also is that the women fall silent when their contributions are countered with unserious strategies and irrelevant arguments.
Sexism som symboliskt våld i skolan
Authors: Hägg Kerstin
Published: October 2024

In this paper sexism as a symbolic violence in school settings is discussed. A short and general introduction about the construction of gender in education and tendency in society to exploit sexuality as a market is followed by a discussion of the use of language. Traditional "bad language" in Sweden has been connected to the devil and to hell. Among young people today the influence from the English is obvious. "Fuck" as well as Swedish words related to sex are frequently used both as expressions of anger or annoyance and as sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment in school has not been discussed and investigated in Sweden as has been the case concerning harassment in workplaces. It is obvious that it is a phenomenon that has existed long before it was head lighted by researchers especially from USA and Canada. The situation might be different in Sweden but we do not know if and in what ways. Research about sexual harassment in schools might give valuable contribution to our knowledge about what young girls and boys have to cope with when growing up and about the construction of gender in Sweden today.