In lieu of an abstract:

In this editorial material, we sum up our three years of editorial work for the international peer reviewed journal NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research and discuss the publishing situation for gender scholars.

In this issue of NORA we present three original articles on three diverse topics by authors from three different countries. The first article in this issue concerns popular therapeutic culture, such as self-help books, TV programmes, and Internet resources, that help us make sense of the ideal of “the good couple”. In this article, Sara Eldén argues that the cultural narratives of “the good couple” both reproduce and resist stereotypes. This is true not least with reference to gender and gender inequality. The second article, an Icelandic piece by Anna Karlsdóttir and Audur H. Ingólfsdóttir, maps out the demographic changes in a rural Icelandic village and the gendered outcome of such socio-economic rearrangements. The third article, by Ingrid Guldvik, grapples with the pros and cons of the introduction and adoption of gender quotas. She explores and evaluates the criteria that form the basis for a strong  gender quota regime in the Norwegian context of local politics.

This issue’s Taking Turns text, “Feminist Theory and that Critical Edge”, by Icelandic anthropologist Kristín Loftsdóttir, highlights the need for self-positioning in feminist theorizing and research in order to nourish the critical edge that remains so essential to feminist studies. In her text she underlines the importance of being careful with how we use central concepts, such as “gender equality”, especially in relation to fields such as international development and peace-keeping, as well as research addressing multiculturalism. These are all fields where Loftsdo´ ttir sees profound risks of reproducing colonizing discourses and relationships, not least in the Nordic countries, which have often been misperceived as standing outside the history of colonialism.

This issue of NORA brings together three articles that could be seen as addressing the question “What is normal?” in three very different ways. These articles demonstrate that this seemingly simple question opens up possibilities for an immense variety of inquiries. All three could be said to be dealing with the making normal of certain heterosexual practices. Two of them explicitly address how heteronormativity (a term well known for the NORA readers versed in queer feminist theory) and personhood are co-constituted, while the third one is a much-needed cartography of assumptions within research on violence and gender.

This issue of NORA is dedicated to quite diverse narratives of survival and the feminist politics of rescilience and endurance. In this editorial (editorial survey) we discuss such recent research.

In the land of feminist scholars no wo/man is a scholastic island, entire unto herself. We would like to start with the above paraphrase. We devote this editorial piece to an important theme in contemporary feminist ethics: how we as feminist scholars can be accountable for how we are (always already) becoming with others in various scholarly and political constellations. More precisely, we would briefly like to zoomin on the matter of how we work together in the power-saturated academic settings inorder to create purposeful social change of a feminist kind.

Prata med plantor – går det? 6 juli 2023Artikel från forskning.seÄmne: Miljö & klimat, Natur & teknik - ABIGAIL SYKES

I naturen pågår ständiga samtal – som människor inte lärt sig uppfatta. Men det går att kommunicera med växter och vi gör det också hela tiden, säger forskare. De senaste åren har forskning visat att tomatplantor ”skriker” när de klipps av, att växter lär sig att en del beröring inte är farlig samt att de varnar varandra för hot. Är växter smartare än vi trodde, och vad betyder det i så fall för hur vi behandlar dem?

Växter, träd och andra organismer kommunicerar med varandra genom ljud, ljus, beröring samt framför allt kemiska signaler som dofter både ovan och under jord. Genom sammankopplade nätverk av rötter och svamptrådar sänder exempelvis starkare träd näring till svagare träd .

Nyligen kom en studie från universitetet i Tel Aviv som visade att tomat- och tobaksplantor avger högfrekventa ljud när de utsätts för torka eller klipps av – ljud som forskarna först spelade in med ultraljudsmikrofoner och sedan upp i ett långsammare tempo så att människor kunde höra dem som ett klickande.

Before the trains of thought have been firmly laid down, we ask in this article about the very nature and histories of the speculative of the speculative-materialist turn. We do this from the intertwined interfaces of curious feminist materialisms, foregrounding sexual difference, post-positivist critique and posthumanist performativity such as is being done in various strands of feminist theory today (new materialist feminism, new feminist science studies, feminist posthumanities etc.). The question of speculation plays a constitutive role in feminist critique and in several new or neo-materialist traditions. In fact, many interesting materialisms—Marxism, French feminism—can be named ‘speculative’. We argue that in spite of what the recent ‘speculative turn’ professes, speculative materialisms have a complex genealogy. Speculation functions transversally in a materialist genealogy (dis)-connecting the archive of feminist approaches in particular. In order to be able to imagine a different (feminist) world we need to think through a stifled and sexually differentiated present from which a qualitative shift and political breakthrough can be formulated, and hopefully achieved. However, in what is currently called ‘speculative realism’ or ‘object-oriented ontologies’ neither speculation nor the speculative are reflected upon as a heritage from and alliance with feminist and politically materialist positions. What are the onto-epistemological stakes of this body of work? And what ethico-political horizons are drawn here? We stand speculative before such turn.

 What does it mean to be adopted and of colour and growing up in a white family? This scientific report provides a feminist social perspective and critical insight on how young, adopted adults renegotiate their collective, multiethnic and individual identitity in Dutch society.

Forskningskommunikation kring klimat och hållbarhet måste också förmedla kunskapen och känslan av att framtiden går att påverka. Det skriver Cecilia Åsberg som lett ett tvärvetenskapligt projekt (RECLAIMING FUTURES) som vänt sig till gymnasieungdomar. Nu ska erfarenheterna från projektet omsättas i undervisningen.

This piece introduces the research topic of philosophy of technology, especially ethics, and it is done in the light of climate change.

     Opublicerad rapport från den vetenskapliga uppföljningen av SeniorITa projektet 1997-1998.

Mitt bland sop-bergen på Gärstadverken i Linköping så berättar Prof Åsberg och prof Fredengren om miljöhumaniora och varför det behövs en mindre snäv (mer-än-mänsklig) etik för att vi alla i samhället ska kunna ta oss an plaster och annat miljöskräp som vi för vidare till framtida generationers människor - och till hela ekologier på land, i hav och i kroppar.

- Hur kan vi bli bättre förmödrar till framtida generationer i Antropocen-åldern? Först måste vi, argumenterar Åsberg, sätta människor inte bara i kulturell och samhällelig kontext utan också i vår ekologiska kontext. Sedan måste vi ta ombord icke-mänskliga krafter, som plastens effekter, djur och teknik i den kulturella kontexten - göra det icke-mänskliga och det mer-än-mänskliga del av den kulturella analysen och samhällsförståelsen. Det är ju inte bara vissa männskors handlande så får effekter i världen, utan många krafter samverkar. 

I Reclaiming Futures - Storying Change möts ungdomar och forskare för samtal om klimatförändringar, miljöfrågor och vårt förhållande till naturen. Projektet har bland annat resulterat i ett antal kortfilmer. Nu presenteras delar av arbetet på en vetenskapsfestival med ett gediget program skapat och producerat av ungdomarna i samarbete med forskare och kulturaktörer. 

The Posthumanities Hub round-table workshop On "Creative with concepts"

Speakers: Prof. Nanna Verhoeff (Utrecht University), Prof. Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University), Dr Janna Holmstedt (Sweden’s Historical Museums), Prof. Christina Fredengren (Uppsala University), Prof. Paola Ruiz Moltó (Universitat Jaume) & Prof. Cecilia Åsberg (LiU) with friends.

11th May, 2023 on-location workshop at Linköping University

Engaging with what concepts can do, we explore in this experimental round-table workshop what happens in the arts and creative humanities when "theory words" (concepts) work across different research practices. We move through a set of concepts, like, "assembling", "cartography", "curation", "dirt", "following", "micrology", "unlearning" and "wonder" (all from Iris van der Tuin & Nanna Verhoeff's (2022) Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities, see below how to download it!). Such concepts are put to work differently across the invited speakers' various research projects. Come meet artistic research on soil and sustainability; museum ecologies and heritage research on past and future waste sites of the present Antropocene; imaginative teacher education with art, science and tiny, tiny critters, as well as other forms of blue/ environmental/ feminist/ more-than-human and creative humanities.