En kartläggning av interventioner, kunskap och utvecklingsbehov Olika insatser görs för att få män att sluta använda våld mot kvinnor och barn. Under våren 2006 har verksamheterna kartlagts och resultatet redovisas i rapporten. Den konstaterar att det många gånger finns stora brister i verksamheter som är riktade till män när det gäller såväl säkerhet för kvinnor och barn som dokumentation av interventionsmodeller, uppföljningsmodeller m.m. Föreslår ett utvecklingsprogram för dokumentation, uppföljning, utvärdering och fortbildning på området interventioner mot mäns våld mot kvinnor och barn.

This thesis attempts to throw light on the underlying reasons behind the economic ambivalence between EU countries. In this sense, Greece and Sweden will be posted at the center of my research interest. For this purpose, Intersectionality theory as well as Neo liberalism and Neoclassical economics will be used in such a way that will assist me to disclose the deep causes of this inequality and to further examine how intersections of gender, age/generation and class are intertwined and affect the youth and elderly in both countries. Furthermore, both qualitative and quantitative data will be applied in a way that will enable me to compare and contrast the two social groups chosen. Having demonstrated that, I will move a step forward by narrowing down my research focus on how the youth in both countries react against this kind of social exclusion.

Our research applies an intersectional lens to consider how gender, ethnicity and the minority status of immigrants, shape women migrant entrepreneurs’ motivations, measure of success, and barriers at different stages of the entrepreneurial journey, accounting for the sociocultural context. We applied a qualitative approach constructed around a case study strategy and semi-structured interviews with 6 Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs running a business in Ottawa, Canada. 

The results highlighted that there is wide range of motivations for women migrant entrepreneurs to start running a business and they are confronted with different barriers. They may share some similar motivations and barriers, but their socio-cultural context makes each of their situations unique. We came to the same conclusion regarding their definition of entrepreneurial success. This research brings a better understanding of the motivations and barriers faced by an understudied population and it also allowed them to define their own criteria for measuring success.

The results are limited to only one study area and one ethnicity. A larger sample size with more cases from multiple study areas could provide further insights.

Disabled people have a long history of being excluded and treated as the “Other”, as well as being portrayed in films and on TV using negative tropes such as The Villain and The Victim. When one’s identity has been excluded or misrepresented in entertainment media, social media can also be used as a form of self-representation. Social media has become an integral part of society, and is used by many people as an activist tool, to organise protests, participate in global solidarity and educate about specific topics. This thesis explores the ways in which disability advocates are using social media in order to challenge societal norms about disability. Using qualitative surveys, I assess how disability advocates are using Instagram to appropriate the representation of their lived experiences of disability and chronic illness, as well as spreading awareness about both the challenges and joys of being disabled. The study indicates that Instagram provides a space where disability advocates have the power to tell their own story and challenge societal norms about disability. While Instagram is not without fault, and can also amplify certain inequalities, it provides content creators the opportunity to challenge normative ideas about disability that have been pushed by more traditional forms of media. 

This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on community-building in online spaces, specifically the Instagram book blogger community, also known as bookstagram. I will look at how a shared interest in books, and posting about books online can unite people from around the world, creating a global community of book lovers. The data is collected using semi-structured interviews, both online and IRL (in real life), with members of the bookstagram community, of which I am a part. Since I am a member of this community, I have to be aware that my own experiences within the community have potential to influence my analysis, as well as how the interviewees respond to me, so Donna Haraway’s (1988) theory on situated knowledge will be utilised throughout. Through analysing the interviews, I hope to gain some insight into how bookstagram enables community formation, as well as the impact of geographical location on community formation on bookstagram.

When, in 2019, I started planning a conference that would take place in September 2020 at the University of Exeter, my aim was to bring together a wide variety of scholars to reflect on the viral modes of contemporary masculinities. The conference was being planned in the context of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellows grant I had been awarded, thanks to which I had been researching contemporary gay “pig” sex subcultures. That is, a kind of contemporary gay male subculture anchored in the eroticization of bodily fluid exchanges and of the corruption of the whole, self-contained, and impermeable male body hegemonically idealized in modern European thought. In a biopolitical context in which HIV infection had become something one can self-manage through highly active antiretroviral therapies, or otherwise avoid with pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drug regimens, I contended that the twenty-first-century erotic investment in bodily fluids and transgression of the boundaries of the idealized bourgeois body makes gay “pig” subcultures a rich field of practice that can help us think about new and hopefully more capacious ways of relating to the other that no longer require identification and recognition as preconditions. Emerging at the intersection of twenty-first-century sex media, pharmacotechnologies, and sex practices, gay “pigs” are porous creatures that can simultaneously point toward new kinds of relating, of sociability, of ethics, while at the same time still often manifesting and reinforcing some of the traits that have historically defined modern European masculinities (Florêncio 2020). In short, the literal opening up of their masculinity, which I saw—and continue to see—as ethically and politically promising, still often remained dependent on a strengthening of other traits coded as masculine: endurance, athleticism, resilience, heroism, and so on; as if masculinities weren't a static monolith but indeed a fleshy psychosexual reality that manages to survive precisely because it is plastic, adaptable, receptive to change. Diversity ensures the survival of any species, I guess.

Inspired by Walter Benjamin-s classical Arcades Project, Consuming Media is a pioneering exploration of the interface between communication, shopping and everyday life. Based on a six-year -intersectional- ethnographic fieldwork by over a dozen scholars on a specific site, it analyses the links between media and consumption in contemporary urban culture and public space. The book is organized into ten chapters. The first two chapters introduce key ideas and theories. In the next four chapters, four large media circuits are scrutinized. The final four chapters discuss the results in terms of intermedial relations, time, space and power. The book thus offers a new foundation for understanding media use, consumption and the fate of urban public space in late modernity

Medier är en stor och viktig del av vårt vardagsliv. Vi tittar på TV och video, läser böcker och tidningar, skickar kort och talar i mobiltelefon, lyssnar på plattor och fotograferar. Men egentligen börjar vår konsumtion av medier redan då vi köper dem i butikerna. Denna bok har sin startpunkt just där, för att sedan följa medievarorna ut i vardagen med sina köpare. I mötena mellan människor och medier avslöjas medieindustrins makt över människorna, men också hur människorna tar makten över sina medier.Hur väljer, köper, använder och avyttrar människor olika typer av medievaror? Hur samspelar olika medier med varandra och vad skiljer dem åt? Vilka medier ingår enligt kronofogden i hushållens normala minimistandard? Hur organiseras tidningskiosken, bokhandeln och fotoaffären för att locka människor till köp? Är affischer konst? Vad innebär samlande, ägande, lån och gåvor när det gäller skivor, böcker eller kort? Hur strukturerar ungdomar, barnfamiljer och pensionärer tid och rum genom bruket av video och telefon? Är det företagen eller människorna som är mest globala? Förs det någon kamp om mediernas makt i vardagen?

Vart man än vänder sig omges man idag av medier, inte minst i ett köpcentrum  gratistidningar, affischer, tv-monitorer, musik, telefoner För att kunna säga något väsentligt om medierna i ett nutida konsumtionsrum är det också nödvändigt att analysera själva ramen, köpcentrumet. I antologin Passager besvaras bl a frågor om vad ortens berömda fotbollslag har där att göra, varför bänkarna hela tiden flyttar på sig, vad ett köpcentrum egentligen kostar, hur gränsen dras mellan vi och dom, varför det aldrig är vinter där. Det handlar om ägandeförhållanden och yttrandefrihet, ljudlandskapets geografi, postmodern arkitektur med historiska rötter, kampen mellan offentlig konst och reklamskyltning, shopping i cyberrymden, människor som älskar eller hatar sitt centrum och om hur hela köpcentrumet kan ses som ett enormt medium.

Starting from the assumptions of feminist perspectives from various forms of re-invented humanities, this chapter approaches the major research question of how better to re-tie the material and immaterial knots between past, present and future generations for heritage research. This is a research question guiding us in our project on deep-time interventions and intragenerational care that we explore here through the multi-temporal site of the Gärstad waste-to-energy plant. This plant resides just outside the town of Linköping in south-east Sweden, a site we often pass by on our way home or to the university. The over-arching intent of our research is to contribute to the sociocultural and material transformations needed for us all to become more gracious ancestors for multispecies generations to come.

Historically, age has been and still is a major organizing principle for social relations and the allotment of resources and power, yet age is very seldom acknowledged as a social categorization in its own right and in intersection with other identity categorizations. While feminist scholarship and activism have deconstructed racist and sexist discourses, in which biology is often used to legitimize social injustice, the presupposed naturalness of ageism is rarely challenged. The aim of the present paper is to explore if and why age relations and ageism are invisible in feminist work by interviewing eleven feminists in a Swedish context. The interviews, which are qualitative and semi-structured, have been thematically analysed to identify patterns in the respondents’ approaches to age as a social categorization in intersectional analysis. A recurring theme is explaining age and ageism in terms of a fluidity of age relations, which make it a complex categorization to include in intersectional analysis. Drawing on theories of ageing and intersectional feminism I explore how the research material can be understood from a social and historical perspective. The thesis builds on a post-constructionist epistemology which underlines the importance of situated knowledges and accountability, and I therefore chose to make myself as the author visible throughout the text by writing the I and including personal accounts related to ageism and ageing.

This thesis addresses gender, masculinities and intimate partner violence in Poland. More specifically, the aim of this study is to problematize how masculinities are represented in Polish anti-violence social campaigns. Intimate partner violence is one of the most common forms of violence against women and is a major problem that affects both  men and women in Poland. The study approaches violence from a feminist position, and considers  men's violence to be an important element constructing masculinities. In the study, social campaigns are considered as policies which have a great potential to influence existing masculinities types and to introduce new, non-violent models of being a man. With the use of Bacchi`s “What`s the problem represented to be?” method and an intersectional perspective on gender and masculinities, Polish anti-violence campaigns are analysed to find out if they reproduce and/or challenge any social assumptions regarding men`s violence. The study found that even though campaigns challenged some of the existing masculinities types,  they also referred to existing discourses of men as protectors, providers and fighters. Final conclusions underline the need for awareness social campaigns directed towards men and with men as role models. Refraining from the use of masculinities connected with heroism and dominance, aggression and violence is recommended.

This thesis contributes with a countryside perspective to queer research by highlighting the countryside as a context where queer lives are lived. In the thesis I problematize the city/countryside divide with a view of the concept of queer as dependent on space and time.  The empirical materials are generated through a workshop on queerness, gathering people living within a countryside context; the materials consist of a discussion and written responses to questions on queerness and the city/countryside binary. Theoretically and methodologically, the thesis is inspired by the notion of agential realism (Barad 2007) and situated knowledge, (Haraway 1988); the use of creative writing, inspired by Richardson (1994 and 2000), has also been central to the development of the thesis. The analysis is carried out within themes focusing on conditions for queerness within city/countryside experienced by people situated in the countryside. The analysis shows how space, time, contexts and intersections are entangled and queering the city/countryside divide.

An intersectionality-based content analysis was done; an eclectic and abductive approach was needed to understand the entanglement of comorbidity and intersectionalities impacting self-identified women transnationally.  The research project is presented in three parts detailing its specific features. For example: Part 1 contains the aim and research questions. The scope is nine transcripts/extracts from the narratives collected from sources of public domain (such as web-based channels and platforms where speakers, either orally or in writing, expressed their experience with types of autoimmune disease. Theoretical framework takes place in this section and it is formed by foundations from theories, social transformation-based arguments and contributions from the authors whose expertise in their fields have made a permanent difference in diverse societal, educational and scientific contexts. Authors such as Butler, Ahmed, Crenshaw, Joyce et al., Olkin, Celinski and Gow, Brinkman et al., and many more are valuable citations included in each of their respective sections. Part 2 describes the methods of analysis, coded collected data material and research design; Part 3 describes the analysis on content material and findings to answer the research questions previously created, to address and understand the studied phenomena. The work-in-progress related to our non-profit association (NPA) is also briefly mentioned as the emancipatory technology I have designed from scratch, where I am the main member and first founder. Based in Linköping, Sweden, it is a space to empower one another to face our unique complexities while sharing a place to strengthen each other through education within transnational environments.

With a growing curiosity in anthropomorphic robots, academics and interested parties have started to examine the ethical implications and social impacts of their (mis)use. Gender in anthropomorphic robots is a field that is slowly beginning to receive attention. Yet, its ambiguity has led to treating gender in anthropomorphic robots in a reductionist fashion, pointing to how stereotypical characteristics make certain gender identities and practices legible. I illustrate that the making of gendered bodies goes beyond the oversimplification of stereotypical readable gender cues. Thus, relational and corporeal ways of connecting people and technological artifacts can help to (de)construct the practices of gendering the human body and the body of anthropomorphic robots. This entails alive genders. By alive genders I am referring to an approach which keeps understandings of gender destabilized and evolving. This not only brings awareness to the interdependence of the human body and the body of anthropomorphic robots but helps designers and roboticists to study the gendering of robots as a part of social practices.

Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion have no issues telling men how they can satisfy women. While WAP is considered vulgar and crude by some, the overall message is about outspoken intersectional feminism based on sex positivity and empowerment. Unapologetic of women’s sexuality, Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion promote women’s right to sexuality and pleasure through power. They reject the male gaze and reverse the societal narrative by describing their standards for men’s sexual performance and stature. While the over-sexualization and objectification of women is societally acceptable in the patriarchy, Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion’s rap in WAP aims to encourage the audience to critically think of how to combat and dismantle the power imbalance between genders in the current societal structure. Presenting women being assertive and demanding as a positive thing, as well as empowering women to own their sexuality places them in a dominant position which is uncommon in popular culture, especially in Hip-Hop. It can be debated that the over-sexualization and objectification of men is just as inhumane as it is for women, but is that not how sympathy is created? By putting oneself in another’s shoes? This tactic has been criticized in the media. Within the patriarchy, it is socially acceptable for men to be open about having their sexual needs met by women. The promotion of women owning their sexuality and therefore, advocating for themselves and their desires so that they can be satisfied by their partner, is actively discouraged. What Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion are aiming to portray in WAP is the double standards enforced by men within the patriarchy which frames power as a positive in men and a negative in women, and make a point of this by extensively critiquing this in their song. While men are comfortable objectifying women and holding power over them, women making men feel uncomfortable when their power is stolen, is a means by which men can be compelled to increase their emotional intelligence and social awareness. There is no shame in taking power from men when it comes to the lyrics in WAP, and for research purposes, this makes an interesting and unique dynamic to thematically analyze through sexual script theory.

Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion have no problem destroying the male gaze to empower women through the female gaze within the WAP music video. They both empower women by creating a whorehouse for women by women as Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion both play the role as the entertainer and the entertained therefore forcing the viewer into a trance. Feeding into the Jezebel trope, Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion play with the idea of stereotypes, by embellishing some aspects of the stereotype such as animalistic and negating others attributes of the stereotype such as slut shaming. Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion deny respectability politics and create a discussion about ratchet respectability including anti-respectability as they are both icons in discussions about these socio-political subjects. Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion empower women by unapologetically exploring their own sexuality and promoting sex positivity throughout various rooms of the whorehouse from the aspect of the viewer and the viewed. Confusion and trickery are employed through a trance which can be witnessed from a visual perspective throughout the whorehouse as Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion rap their lyrics.Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion both create power dynamics of dominance and submission within their dynamic together and with the viewer and the viewed based on the camera angle, time, and space created. Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion create a trance as the viewer is sucked into a dystopian/utopian setting warping a sense of time and space. While the lyrics paint a picture of emasculating men, the visuals completely leave men out of the picture and focus only on the women through the female gaze. The aim of the analysis of this music video is to critically examine how WAP empowers women to explore their sexual identity in relation to other women by denying the male gaze. Furthermore, this paper will illustrate how this music video acts as a political tool for social justice advocacy and equality within Hip-Hop feminism and trap feminism and overall patriarchal Hip-Hop culture. For research purposes, the WAP music video makes for a unique case study to visually analyze through Hip-Hop feminist theory and the female gaze, from an intersectional perspective. 

As an immigrant in Sweden, I connect this study to my embodied experiences in the labor market and reflect throughout this research as I discuss the experiences of other immigrants who struggle with labor market integration. This qualitative study focuses on the phenomenon of the integration of immigrants in the Swedish labor market from an intersectional perspective and from my position as an immigrant which enriches the discussions. I analyzed how immigrants are integrated into the Swedish labor market and how gender intersects with other human factors to influence labor market integration. The study was based on a reflexive ethnography methodology in which interviews and documentation studies were used in collecting the empirical data. A semi-structured interview guide was used during the interviews and the documentation study was focused on scrutinizing integration policy documents in Sweden.

The findings provide a detailed account on the genesis of immigration policies and how they have evolved into integration policies in Sweden. It traces this from the 1950s when integration policies were intertwined with immigration policies. Also it provides an account of how the integration policies are implemented in Sweden focusing on the activities of two main organizations namely Arbetsförmedlingen and the Linköping’s municipality.

Furthermore the findings highlights that, men and women experience labor market integration differently therefore there is the need for this subject to be studied from a heterogeneous perspective instead of a homogenous perspective. It also highlights that women’s gender intersects with other human endowments factors such as education, gender roles, marital status, language and skills that complicate their labor market integration. In addition the findings highlight the transnational lives of some of the participants who hold on to traditional ideologies from their countries of origin. Furthermore, immigrants conceptualized labor market integration according to their own understanding. The results shows that the conceptualization of some of the immigrants was similar to what is common in the literatures but there was one new conceptualization of the term labor market integration that can be added to the already existing conceptualizations.

Oophorectomy prior to menopause is associated with late-life dementia. Memory decline may start within 6 months after oophorectomy in middle-aged women, suggested by lower verbal and working memory performance. Unknown is whether such changes persist beyond 6 months, and whether they are reversed by estradiol. Short-term benefits of estradiol on verbal memory following oophorectomy were observed in one study, but longer term effects remain unknown. In the present study, middle-aged BRCA1/2 mutation carriers with early oophorectomy at least 1 year prior to study onset were tested on verbal and working memory with results stratified by (1) current estradiol use (n = 22) or (2) no history of estradiol use (n = 24), and compared to age-matched premenopausal controls (n = 25). Both memory abilities were adversely affected by oophorectomy, but only working memory was maintained by estradiol. Estrogen metabolite levels correlated with working memory, suggesting a role for estradiol in preserving this ability. Memory decline appears to persist after early oophorectomy, particularly for women who do not take estradiol. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The present study explored whether early midlife bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), a female specific risk factor for dementia, is associated with reduced medial temporal lobe structure and function. Younger middle-aged women with the BRCA1/2 mutation and a BSO prior to spontaneous menopause (SM) were recruited. We determined the performance of women with BSO not taking estradiol-based hormone therapy ( n = 18) on a task measuring object and scene recognition and quantified medial temporal lobe subregion volumes using manually segmented high-resolution T2-weighted MRI scans. Comparisons were made to those with BSO taking estradiol-based hormone therapy ( n = 20), age-matched premenopausal controls ( n = 28), and older women in SM not taking hormone therapy matched for duration of hormone deprivation ( n = 17). Reduced hippocampal integrity specific to the BSO group not taking hormone therapy was observed, reflected by significantly smaller dentate gyrus/CA2/CA3 volumes and lower scene recognition memory performance. These findings show that hippocampal subfield volume may be useful for identifying early midlife changes in women at elevated risk for dementia.

Introduction: Women with early ovarian removal (<48 years) have an elevated risk for both late-life Alzheimers disease (AD) and insomnia, a modifiable risk factor. In early midlife, they also show reduced verbal episodic memory and hippocampal volume. Whether these reductions correlate with a sleep phenotype consistent with insomnia risk remains unexplored. Methods: We recruited thirty-one younger middleaged women with risk-reducing early bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), fifteen of whom were taking estradiol-based hormone replacement therapy (BSO+ERT) and sixteen who were not (BSO). Fourteen age-matched premenopausal (AMC) and seventeen spontaneously peri-postmenopausal (SM) women who were similar to 10y older and not taking ERT were also enrolled. Overnight polysomnography recordings were collected at participants home across multiple nights (M=2.38 SEM=0.19), along with subjective sleep quality and hot flash ratings. In addition to group comparisons on sleep measures, associations with verbal episodic memory and medial temporal lobe volume were assessed. Results: Increased sleep latency and decreased sleep efficiency were observed on polysomnography recordings of those not taking ERT, consistent with insomnia symptoms. This phenotype was also observed in the older women in SM, implicating ovarian hormone loss. Further, sleep latency was associated with more forgetting on the paragraph recall task, previously shown to be altered in women with early BSO. Both increased sleep latency and reduced sleep efficiency were associated with smaller anterolateral entorhinal cortex volume. Discussion: Together, these findings confirm an association between ovarian hormone loss and insomnia symptoms, and importantly, identify an younger onset age in women with early ovarian removal, which may contribute to poorer cognitive and brain outcomes in these women.

Background. Anonymity has been central to medical, psychosocial, and societal practices in organ donation and transplantation. The purpose of this investigation was to explore transplant professionals views on anonymity in the context of organ transplantation. Methods. The study consisted of an electronic 18-item survey distributed to the Canadian Society of Transplantation membership, asking about anonymity vs open communication/contact between organ recipients and donor families. Results. Of the 541 members surveyed, 106 replied. Among respondents, 71% felt that organ recipients and donor families should only communicate anonymously, yet 47% felt that identifying information could be included in correspondence between consenting recipients and donor families. When asked whether organ recipients and donor families should be allowed to meet, 53% of respondents agreed, 27% disagreed, and 20% neither agreed nor disagreed. With social media facilitating communication and eliminating the ability to maintain donor/recipient anonymity, 38% of respondents felt that a reexamination of current policies and practices pertaining to anonymity was necessary. Conclusion. In conclusion, there was no dominant position on the issue of anonymity/communication between donor families and transplant recipients. Further research and discussion concerning the views of healthcare professionals, organ recipients, and donor families on the mandate of anonymity is needed and may influence future policy.

The present study is examining the representation of femicides in a selection of Greek newspapers. The aim of the study is to examine how victims of femicide and their perpetrators are being represented in the selected newspapers, which cases are receiving more attention and if the understanding of femicide as a term and a phenomenon has changed the last two decades. The method of the analysis is a qualitative content analysis of selected Greek newspapers. For the theoretical part, a feminist approach on intersectionality and femicide aided me with my analysis. What I found is the way victims, cases and perpetrators are represented has changed throughout the years. About the nature of the crimes, the term femicide began to be used the most recent years, but the understanding of femicides as a phenomenon has not changed drastically.

Over the last decades inclusive education has emerged as the most effective, transformative way to promote and ensure equitable quality education for all and is totally attuned to the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. This thesis aims to conduct research on how inclusive education in greek educational context is promoted through the school subject of "Social and Political Education" with the lens on discourses focusing on ages eleven to fifteen (11-15), during preadolescence and early adolescence. As a method I will use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on "Social and Political Education" school textbooks in primary and secondary level following Norman Fairclough’s approach in order to examine whether discursive representations spread throughout these textbooks illuminate and foster the values of inclusion in school material.

Public engagement in crowd-sourced science projects such as iNaturalist or the Audubon Christmas Bird Count is a longestablished practice within environmental studies and sciences. As a corollary to these "citizen science" efforts, "citizen humanities" engages public participation in humanities research and/or with humanities tools such as creative writing, photography, art-making, or conducting and recording interviews. In this essay, we outline our work creating a citizen environmental humanities website, Herbaria 3.0, including our motivations, process, and theoretical underpinnings. This project draws upon the critical understanding within environmental studies of the importance of narrative and storytelling for fostering a connection and commitment to environments and nonhuman beings. Situated within the field of environmental humanities, our website solicits, collects, and archives stories about the manifold relationships between plants and people, inviting visitors to read, share, or write their own story for digital publication. The kind of environmental storytelling that results, we argue, can (1) enrich our conceptualization of attachment to places, (2) expand our notion of what "counts" as an encounter with nature, and (3) help us recognize the agency of individual plants. We conclude that similar citizen humanities projects are crucial to the ongoing work of environmental humanities and environmental studies at large, for it is through such public engagement that we can meet the cultural challenges that seeded, and the societal problems occasioned by, ongoing climate change.

Theory on the Edge brings together some of the foremost specialists working at the interdisciplinary interface between Irish Studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and gender and sexuality studies in order to trace the contemporary development of feminist thinking and activism in Ireland. The collection opens with a contribution from Ailbhe Smyth, the high-profile academic and public activist, whom many of the contributors acknowledge as a formative influence in their own feminist development. Essays utilize theory rooted in material issues, but always ask 'why' rather than just 'how' to draw interesting new conclusions on the depth and variety of Irish feminism.

This thesis explores ‘feminisation’ discourse(s) within the UK veterinary profession, including the ways in which gender stereotypes and biases also influence such discourses and experiences of working within the field. Drawing upon and combining a range of sociological, organisational and feminist theories such as Witz’s (1992) theory of gendered professional projects and Butler’s (1990) highly influential notion of performativity, I am able to contextualise and expand upon the ‘doing’ of the veterinary profession as well as being able to frame ‘feminisation’ discourses as paradoxes, potentially producing the effects they articulate. My analysis is divided into two parts; the first deals with results of a 463 participant survey of veterinary workers regarding definitions, perceptions and observations of ‘feminisation’ and gender difference, highlighting the significance of this subject matter within their professional lives. The second part incorporates a deeper thematic analysis of particular everyday realities, emerging from four semi-structured interviews which also aimed to explore in greater detail individual perceptions and observations regarding ‘feminisation’ and gender biases and stereotypes, encouraging participants themselves to reflect upon their experiences. A number of conclusions emerged during the analysis, including an intriguing insight that those who tended to draw most strongly on gender stereotypes and biases to outline their perceptions and observations were paradoxically those who most vehemently believed gender was irrelevant. Fundamentally however this study concludes that the concept of ‘feminisation’ is a fluid conceptualisation, a cultural process and not just empirical category of ‘empty rhetoric’ as commonly utilised and applied to the veterinary profession; as such it has the potential to be utilised extensively to progress the profession in terms of wider inclusiveness, equality, transformation, in offering reconceptualised ways of considering what it means to be part of a ‘profession’ not predicated on patriarchal structures, and to ultimately reperceive how gender can be (re/un)enacted in transformative ways alongside progressively rearticulated ‘feminisation’ discourses.

The authors encourage a continuous attentiveness to thinking and caring about the challenges medical students will encounter during sensitive discussions. 

This article is about the feelings – affect – induced by the digital rectal exam of theprostate and the gynaecological bimanual pelvic exam, and the care doctors are orare not instructed to give. The exams are both invasive, intimate exams located ata part of the body often charged with norms and emotions related to gender andsexuality. By using the concept affective subject, we analyse how these examinations aretaught to medical students, bringing attention to how bodies and affect are cared foras patients are observed and touched. Our findings show both the role care practicesplay in generating and handling affect in the students’ learning and the importance ofthe affect that the exam is (or is not) imagined to produce in the patient. Ours is amaterial-discursive analysis that includes the material affordances of the patient anddoctor bodies in the affective work spaces observed.

This study is an exploration of the practices of yoga teachers whose approaches are inscribed in social justice. Indeed, it attempts to understand how they find cohesion between a complex and spiritual discipline and their commitment to participate in anti-oppression. Moreover, it looks at the ways they believe yoga can be used for collective liberation. It is autoethnographical, and is based on semi-qualitative interviews which are then analysed thematically. Furthermore, it is analytically framed within theories of intersectionality, affective knowledge and teaching, solidarity and language, and critical future and utopian studies. The analysis then focuses on the teachers’ understanding of yogic practices andphilosophies before unveiling the ways they address and/or avoid issues of oppression and looking at the ways they envision yoga as a tool for collective liberation.

The article argues that transnational adoption and surrogacy from South Korea and India are shaped through US and British imperial and colonial histories in Korea and India respectively. We focus on the reproductive labor of “native companions” in early British India and kijich’on (camptown) women in post–World War II Korea. The management of native women’s sexuality was crucial for maintaining social order, political stability, and for consolidating capitalism through the commodification and devaluation of colonized reproductive labor. The configuration of historical legacies is unpacked through the idea of coloniality, the constitutive dark side of modernity, which reproduces subalternity and exploitation of racialized bodies. The reproductive labour of Korean birth mothers and Indian surrogate mothers is formed and shaped by the colonial and imperial formations of gender, sexuality, kinship and family, in which white supremacy and exploitation of Indian and Korean women was at the core. We argue that these formations are re-configured in the present through three mechanisms that enable contemporary practices of adoption and surrogacy: the transformation of waste into profit, the erasure of non-white mothers, and the trope of the white savior.

Previous research has addressed questions of reproductive justice and the stratifications of Indian women’s reproductive lives in terms of class position and economic status. However, the question of caste has received little attention in the literature and there has been a lack of research on assisted reproductive technologies and caste along with the absence of Dalit feminists speaking out on reproductive technologies. This paper attempts to begin exploring the significance of caste by drawing on in-depth interviews with Dalit feminists who challenge dominant understandings of surrogacy in both international and national debates on reproductive technologies. It highlights how an insistence on the wider socio-economic context of women’s lives challenges notions of reproductive rights, replacing them by reproductive justice.

The relationship with place has been recognized as a significant dimension of rural youth leisure, both through the discursive constructions of place, but also as affective and embodied dimensions. This study captures these processes by applying the concept of place-making as a set of recurrent discursive processes, analyzing how girls in Northern Sweden engage in place-making alongside, beyond, and in contrast to dominant discourses on leisure, rurality and wellbeing. The study draws on data from photo-elicited focus groups with girls from two sports organizations. The discursive psychology analysis resulted in three interpretative repertoires. The first repertoire describes the sharp contrast between discourses of the ‘rural dull’ and how stressful the participants constructed their own places of leisure. The second illustrates the gendered discourses around what is considered to be productive and respectable leisure. The third shows how the participants are made responsible for the survival of their leisure. Through place-making, the participants shape places of leisure, affecting both themselves and their rural community. They engage in, conform to, and challenge place-making within discourses of responsibility and precariousness, creating space for their own initiatives, which are simultaneously shaped by the material conditions under which these practices take place.

För att sammanfatta denna utvärdering av KSM-programmet utifrån genusperspektiv så är programmet inte vare sig så genusmedvetet eller har anlagt genusperspektiv i den utsträckning som skulle vara önskvärd. Det mest framträdande utifrån genusperspektiv sett, att vissa studenter –och framför allt dem som ingår i seminariegrupp 3 på P4 –aldrig någon gång under de tre åren som programmet pågår får en grundläggande genomgång av vad genus och genusperspektiv är och kan vara. Visserligen kommer genus in i mer eller mindre avancerade och ofta också komprimerade formerunder de tre åren, vilket torde göra det svårt för de studenter som själva inte tidigare studerat genusvetenskap att på djupet kunna tillgodogöra sig detta. De nuvarande genomgångarna verkar helt enkelt för avancerade och för komprimerade för att kunna tas in. Helst borde en mer grundläggande genomgång ligga tidigt i utbildningen, så att studenterna kan få en chans att dekonstruera könsstereotypt tänkande under programmets gång. Här borde de delar av seminarieserierna i seminariegrupperna i P4 som innehåller genusmedveten litteratur, men som i dagsläget inte är obligatoriska för alla, formas till en grundläggande, allmän och obligatorisk kurs i genus. I nuläget finns i programmet en lättillgänglig och helt utmärkt del som behandlar HBTQ-frågor. Detta är naturligtvis viktigt och bra. Men HBTQ-frågor är bara en del av de genusperspektiv som skulle kunna appliceras på området. Men, som sagts ovan, skulle ett liknade behövas när det gäller genusperspektiv i allmänhet, t ex utifrån seminariegruppernas lättillgängliga genuslitteratur i P4. En stor svaghet med HBTQ-föreläsningen är dock att det är en gästföreläsare som håller i denna föreläsning, vilket borgar inte för en framtida kommande kontinuitet. Detsamma gäller den publika föreläsningen med Anja Hirdman. Här bör det i båda fallen vara personer som är knutna till KSM eller i vart fall LiU på långtidsbasis ta sig an detta. Med gästföreläsare vet inte den program-och/eller kursansvariga om det kommer att finnas någon lärare att tillgå för detta centrala moment nästkommande år. En kontinuitet i lärarbefattningarna är nödvändig. I nuläget verkar genus överlag vara en underkommunicerad kategori. Vid de två tillfällen då obligatoriska moment för alla där genus ingår så har genus kommit att i det första fallet kallas ”Omgivna av det förflutna -om att göra kulturarv”(P1) och i det andra fallet ”Att göra familj”(P4). Dessa rubriker säger ingenting per se om genus, utan det är först när man klickar fram texterna som det står klart. Genus borde artikuleras tydligare. Ytterligare en minuspoäng är att det inte heller verkar som om alla studenter får hjälp att grunda genusperspektiven ide empiriska områden som programmet behandlar. Hur begreppen och teorierna ska knytas till och omvandlas i de specifika konkreta empiriska sammanhang som studenterna kommer att möta i sitt kommande arbetsliv förfaller inte finnas många svar på och inte heller har seminarierna övningar som skulle kunna leda till en ökad förståelse av dessa mekanismer. Vad kultur i vid bemärkelse, samhället och medierna har med genus att göra förefaller minst sagt ligga i en dunkel skugga. Allt detta borde ingå i programmet på ett tidigt stadium och följas upp under programmet kontinuerligt. I seminariegrupp 1, i P4, får emellertid studenterna pröva att relatera genusmedvetenhet till en utställning, vilket med fördel skulle kunna integreras i en lättgänglig kurs i genus som jag talade om strax ovan, precis på det sätt detta integrerats i P4 seminariegrupp 1.Programmets förefaller framför allt att ha en förmåga att på ett konkret och grundläggande sätt knyta an till ”de Andra”. Inte bara till ”de sexuella Andra” som ovanvisats, utan även till ”de etniska Andra”. Flera bra artiklar på detta tema finns med. Men i ljuset av att genus i allmänhet inte har ett sådant fokus i programmet och att resonemangen sällan knyts till det samhälle som studenterna lever och verkar i, finns det en risk att detta framför allt blir en angelägenhet för just ”de Andra”, men inte nödvändigtvis för ”oss”. En sådan tolkning kan undvikas t ex genom att rikta sökarljuset mot studenterna själva och fokusera mer i början av studierna på genus i allmänhet och att studenterna får pröva att applicera teorierna på något välbekant, som t ex utställningar som nämnts ovan. En hel del av litteraturen känns inte up-to-date, i vart fall inte när det gäller genusperspektiv. Jag tänker här främst på den stora andel av androcentrisk litteratur och den som dessutom i flera fall måste be traktas som rent misogyn. Dessa delar uppfattar jag som obsoleta. De androcentriska arbetena är i många fall just skrivna för så pass länge sedan att det vid denna tidpunkt kanske inte fanns något som i dag kallas genusperspektiv eller genusmedvetenhet.

36Det kan också vara så när det gäller de äldre texterna att det inte funnits några kvinnor inom fältet som man skulle kunna referera till. Tänkvärt är dock att i Marx och Engels tankegångar visar de trots allt en medvetenhet om problemet, medan senare tiders tänkare inte alls tycks bekymra sig över saken. Här bör man naturligtvis väga betydelsen av varje enskild text mot det faktum att de saknar genusperspektiv. Men i nuläget torde det stå klart att alldeles för många misogyna idéer tillåts komma fram och att en viss begränsning borde göras. En ansats som jag saknar helt i detta program som har ett tydligt fokus på visuell och bildlig analys, är att inte någonstans står att läsa något om Bechdel-Walacetestet, som slagit igenom på stor front inom filmvärlden. Det börjar också att publiceras vetenskapliga artiklar på detta tema som borde tas upp på allvar i programmet.

The dominating discourses and configurations/representations within museums today are usually presenting the past in very reduces stereotyped manners, especially in relation to gender. Even if the contexts are different, the stories are often told in the same way they have always been narrated.

This way of narrating the past has broadly been identified as the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) by the critical heritage scholar Laurajane Smith (2006). The AHD is conceived as an ‘official’ way of understanding heritage and is, according to Smith, a particular way of understanding heritage which stresses the importance of expertise knowledge, and privileges the cultural recollection of a limited social stratum, including a limited scope on gender relations and representations.

One way of challenging this AHD is to critically analyse the curatorial practices from an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw 1991, Lykke 2010, Grahn 2011). This means to ask questions of how exhibitions configure and shape our remembrance of the intertwined relations of social identities such as gender, class, age, sexuality, dis/ability etc., which this presentation will do.