NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research最新文献

{"title":"“I Have Had Myself as Experimental Object”: Ulla Bjerne and the Politics of Female Embodied Experience","authors":"B. Hackman","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1995484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1995484","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The authorship of Ulla Bjerne (1890–1969) is almost forgotten in Sweden today. This essay has the overarching aim of recovering her work and restoring it to the gendered contributions of Swedish twentieth-century literature, and in turn to assert its general importance. The analysis revolves around the significance of the body to literary representation and reception. In order to claim the authority to speak as a woman and outsider, Bjerne performed a new type of woman and testified to her experience. She asserted the significance of the body which devalued her, challenging the false claims to the universalism and transcendence of male subjectivity, and hence the literary values based on them. Bjerne aimed to give literary representation to unrepresented female embodied experience and to render an alternative female subjectivity, making a new type of woman accessible to thought. The analysis of her autobiographical trilogy shows how a feminist critique leads to an affirmation of female embodied experience through the political power of testimony, given literary representation through narrative form and imagery. At the end of the third volume, Botad oskuld (Innocence Remedied), radical non-belonging and constant movement become the prerequisites for the female subject in genesis. This is the foundation of Bjerne’s authorship, devoted to the communication of the unspoken female experience through the experience of her embodied self, in order to write as a woman and make herself, and thus the voice of a new type of woman, heard.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46890125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial","authors":"A. Bach, Charlotte Kroløkke, Dag Heede, J. Herrmann","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.2011040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.2011040","url":null,"abstract":"In this large volume we are happy to present a number of articles covering the fields of sociology, anthropology, literature, media studies and cultural studies representing four Nordic countries: Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. As feminist and gender studies are being challenged, attacked and even forbidden by law at this time by conservative and right wing populist politicians, a demonstration of the variety and scope of the field in the Nordic countries and in the world is more important than ever. Not only have semi-authoritarian regimes in Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary seen efforts to fundamentally delegitimize the production and dissemination of gender knowledge, so, too have progressive countries like Denmark. Ironically, these efforts testify to the importance of feminist and gender studies. Thus, on a positive note there is perhaps no better proof of the significance of these academic and political endeavours than to be considered a threat to the existing patriarchal power structures, structures that authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies often exacerbate. We are, therefore, particularly happy to demonstrate that gender studies is not just alive and kicking; the field is continuously expanding with a variety of research, experimentation and debate across a wide range of academic disciplines. Common to this issue’s very different articles is that almost all of them have intersectional perspectives where gender and sometimes sexuality is connected to ”Norwegianess”, ”Danishness”, ”Swedishness” and ”Finnishness”. The modern Nordic welfare state is typically the main context for these multifaceted explorations. This issue’s opening article, “”Cake is not an attack on democracy.” Moving beyond carceral Pride and building queer coalitions in post-22/7 Norway” by Norwegian sociologist Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, is a critical discussion of the media coverage of the ”pieing” of a far-right wing politician at the Oslo Pride in 2016. The happening not only landed the queer-anarchist band Cistem Failure in jail but also was met with unanimous condemnation by the press across the political spectrum. The incident was generally viewed as a terrorist attack on Norwegian democracy and by implication as ”Non-Norwegian”. Little attention was paid to the political message of the non-binary provocateur and their project. The article questions this massive consensus and how dominant narratives make Cistem Failure’s alter-narratives unintelligible: “An anti-racist, intersectional politics of solidarity and collaborative justice is always already excluded from the mainstay of Pride Politics. In its stead, the one-dimensional discourse of liberal progress within a protective national territory fixes the ministerial pie-throwing as an uncivil aberration with a compulsory carceral consequence.” The next article, ”Gendered care, empathy and (un)doing difference in the Danish welfare state’s care managers approaching female caregivers ","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47175659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Nordic Feminism Reconsidered: Activism, Scholarly Endeavours and Women’s Research Networks at the Nordic Summer University 1971–1990","authors":"Valgerdur Palmadottir, J. Sjöstedt","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1973557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1973557","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the Nordic Summer University (NSU), an independent and migratory scholarly organisation, as a platform for interaction and cooperation for the new women’s movements and an arena for the development of women’s research in the Nordic region. In several accounts, NSU is described as a pivotal context for the development of Nordic women’s and feminist research and frequently appears in memoirs by pioneers in the field, but it has never been the direct object of scholarly focus. In recent years, there has been a scholarly debate about the historical narratives concerning the history of academic feminism in the Nordic region, where both the connection to the new women’s movements in the 1970s and the notion of the ‘Nordic’ have been contested. This article intervenes in these discussions by exploring the ‘women’s circles’ within NSU as they appear in various sources such as historiographical accounts, reports and memoirs and thereby, thereby defending a hands-on archival approach. We argue that focusing on an alternative international institution for knowledge production such as NSU offers valuable insights into how feminism as a social movement and a scholarly project - politics and academic endeavours - have been negotiated.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47896638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gendered care, empathy and un/doing difference in the Danish welfare state: care managers approaching female caregivers of older immigrants","authors":"S. L. Sparre","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1978541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1978541","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores how municipal care managers negotiate tensions in policy logics and state discourses in encounters with ethnic minority families in Denmark. It focuses on the “self-appointed helper arrangement”, an option in the Danish Social Service Act under which municipalities can employ family members to care for older citizen at home. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the consequences of this care arrangement from the perspective of care managers, focusing on gender dynamics and state-family divides in need assessments and care provision. I demonstrate how care managers slip in and out of their roles as administrators, health professionals and morally concerned citizens in encounters with different caregivers. While they focus mainly on equal access to care for all older citizens, sometimes they shift perspective and focus more on the wellbeing of the self-appointed helper in question. These shifts in moral registers are triggered by empathetic encounters with young ethnic minority women. However, care managers’ empathy is double-sided and ambivalent. Although striving to undo difference and include these women in a community of independent Danish female citizens, they also tend to place them and their families in a different category than the majority population and thus risk further marginalizing them.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47079351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Control through Compassion: Legitimizations of Surveillance, Dynamics of Power, and the Role of the Expert in the Finnish Makeover TV Shows Jutta and the Super Diet and Jutta and the Half-Year Super Diet","authors":"S. Ritter","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1939782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1939782","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Disciplinary practices on the gendered fat body are a central aspect of weight-loss makeover TV shows; however, they are subtle and hard to identify. I ask how surveillance and control are legitimized as appropriate methods for achieving bodily change in the Finnish makeover shows Jutta ja Superdieetit (Jutta and the Super Diet) and Jutta ja Puolen Vuoden Superdieetit (Jutta and the Half-Year Super Diet) and how the experts reinforce unequal power structures. The ethos of equality is very strong in Finland, which is also apparent in the special construction of the expert as “one of the team”. The research material is examined in light of Michel Foucault’s theories of power and the concept of docile bodies, and as part of postfeminist media culture in which the ideas of “freedom of choice” and “submission as empowerment” are crucial. The choices for the participants of the makeover shows are, however, very limited, leaving just enough freedom so that they accept the power dynamics they are entangled in. I argue that control and surveillance are legitimized as means of helping participants achieve their ideal body and life. Instead of breaking existing power dynamics, the construction of the expert as attentive and caring works to reinforce these structures since discipline is enacted in the “best interest” of the participant. The dynamics of (disciplinary) power are thus subtle and work in a particularly hidden way.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1939782","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59566396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Affective Intimacies","authors":"Marjo Kolehmainen, Kinneret Lahad, Annukka Lahti","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1948724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1948724","url":null,"abstract":"This Special Issue offers a novel platform to rethink intimacies through the lens of affect theories. In particular, it introduces new ways of understanding affective intimacies, encompassing explorations that tap into the questions of what affect theories and methodologies can provide in terms of their theoretical and methodological potential to renew feminist debates concerning intimacy. The authors of the six ground-breaking articles of this Special Issue offer alternative ways of researching and understanding these topics by not only grasping affective intimacies as a locus of their inquiry, but also by developing analytical tools to reassess the entanglements of affect and intimacy—in particular by considering affective intimacies through their multiple matterings and by carefully locating their studies in different disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings. As a whole, this Special Issue on Affective Intimacies maps the potential of affect theories in renewing feminist debates concerning intimacy. Such meaningful questions as those introduced above originally lay at the core of the Academy of Finland-funded research project ‘Just the Two of Us? Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships’. The final event of the project was an international workshop entitled “Affective Intimacies: A Workshop with Sasha Roseneil and Kinneret Lahad” which was held at Tampere University on 18– 19 November 2019. It consisted of two public keynotes by Professor Sasha Roseneil (University College London, UK) and Dr Kinneret Lahad (Tel Aviv University, Israel) followed by commentaries from the project’s principal investigator Tuula Juvonen (Tampere University, Finland) and Professor Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku, Finland), principal investigator of the research consortium Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture. The event also entailed a two-day workshop where participants’ workin-progress papers were commented on by the keynote speakers, organizers and fellow participants. This Special Issue also has its origins in the abovementioned event, as Marjo Kolehmainen and Annukka Lahti were members of the organizing team, and Kinneret Lahad was a keynote speaker. During the preparations, we three decided to edit a Special Issue dedicated to the challenge of recognizing and utilizing the potential to imagine intimacy and affect in alternative ways, without starting from the already familiar terrains, theories and conceptualizations. Bearing this challenge in mind, we sought submissions that address the embodied, affective and psychic aspects of intimate entanglements. We invited submissions that may include but were not limited to the following themes: affect, intimacy and power; collective becomings; emerging intimacies and queering affects. The call proved highly popular with 57 abstracts submitted in total. Unfortunately, we were only able to accept a small portion of the most promising abstracts for further processing, and even had to exclude several of high q","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1948724","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41858514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Special Issue on Nordic LGBTQ histories","authors":"A. Bach, Dag Heede, J. Rydström, Niels Nyegaard","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1951521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1951521","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1951521","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48651859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Material Intimacies and Black Hair Practice: Touch, Texture, Resistance","authors":"Sweta Rajan-Rankin","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1912172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1912172","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the socio-materiality of Black hair care practice as an affective surface through which we can understand Black women’s experiences of intimacy and belonging. Texture of hair has often been overlooked in the examination of racialized presentation, even as shade or skin colour has been over-determined. By paying attention to the centrality of touch in negotiating grooming practices in Black hair care, a multi-layered appreciation of the material entanglements in Black intimacies can be explored. Hair is more than part of the body, it is both highly visible, as well as intensely personal and political in terms of the ways it is worn and seen by the observer. Drawing on a sensory ethnography of Afro hair salons in the UK and biographical narrative analysis, this article explores Black women’s relationships with their hair in everyday life, alongside a parallel reading of the classic text “Cassie’s hair” by Susan Bordo. This layering of narratives allows for a new form of listening to emerge, an attunement that forefronts the habitual practices of hair dressing and hair making as ways of “becoming black”. In every twist, braid and weave, these biographies highlight the intimate entanglements by which the ambivalence of black belonging is negotiated. Touch in particular, both nurturing and hostile, represents an important socio-cultural ritual through which collective belonging is experienced: evoking memories of inter-generational and transnational intimacies with black communities in another time and another place. This paper offers a novel way of reimagining the role of affect in understanding collective intimacies and sustaining black identity in diasporic contexts.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1912172","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44628687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“F*** this shit” - Negotiating the Boundaries of Public Expression of Mother’s Negative Feelings","authors":"Armi Mustosmäki, Tiina Sihto","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1921844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1921844","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 2017, Finnish celebrity Sini Ariell published a blog post titled “F*** this shit” in which she revealed her difficult feelings as a mother of a newborn baby. Attracting attention from Finnish media, the post went viral. Through the empirical analysis of affective reactions to the post on an anonymous online discussion board, we explore how the limits of the public expression of negative maternal feelings are negotiated and maintained, but also challenged. Our results highlight the normative, even punitive dynamics of the digital intimate public, as commenters on the discussion board often argued that struggles and unhappiness during motherhood should not be made public but dealt with in private. However, ambivalences and supportive comments suggested the possibility to challenge norms surrounding motherhood and widen the discussion of difficulties and inequalities in motherhood and family life. Based on our analysis, we argue that affective articulations of anger, anxiety and exhaustion may challenge the digital intimate public’s “infrastructure of happiness”, and they thus have political potential to disrupt the ideals of good motherhood and address the affective struggles that mothering often entails.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1921844","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48602191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Glass Ceiling to Firewalls: Detecting and Changing Gendered Organizational Norms","authors":"S. Andersson, Dag Balkmar, Anne-Charlott Callerstig","doi":"10.1080/08038740.2021.1931438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1931438","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is based on an empirical case study with an interactive research approach focusing on gendered norms in a Swedish truck Company. It discusses the combined value of using the metaphor of a firewall for (1) analysing how organizational constraining gendered norms are done in everyday organizational life, and (2) as a practical tool to facilitate the processes aimed at improving norm awareness. The metaphor embodies an understanding that makes it possible to visualize relational ongoing organizational processes and power dimensions. In addition, the firewall is useful for emphasizing variations and complexity. Variations and dynamics are manifested in the ways that employees need to fulfil varying “codes” in order to be accepted. The possession of certain codes (norms) that are required to pass through the first layer of the firewall (employment), and give access to some networks, does not automatically ensure acceptance and integration into more influential networks (referred to as the informal and inner layers of the firewall). The results furthermore show that the firewall metaphor is fruitful when facilitating reflection processes amongst employees to improve norm awareness and to discuss strategies for change. The conclusion is that the firewall metaphor facilitates an analysis of the relational and complex doing of constraining norms, and that it also can be used to initiate change.","PeriodicalId":45485,"journal":{"name":"NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08038740.2021.1931438","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44811668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}