This article examines different narratives of feminism in the Nordic region, drawing on a variegated material collected during ethnographic fieldwork with feminist actors. At first, we examine how women and lgbt feminists of color navigate and negotiate everyday space in a struggle against racism, transphobia, misogyny and islamophobia, and suggest that these enactments shape a narrative of feminism around a logic of interconnections. Then, we explore the logic of a current influential developmental narrative of Nordic feminism as a forerunner on a global arena. Here, we offer a set of autoethnographical vignettes to highlight and explore the key logics such a narrative relies upon. We propose that a feminist narrative of interconnections illuminate another narrative logic than the developmental logic currently influential in narrations of Nordic feminisms. Creating linkages to historical memory and to the present multiplicity of relations of power, we suggest that a feminist narrative of interconnections opens up new political questions and new feminist agendas in this context. We use these discussions to illuminate a shift in the relationship between civil society and the state in this context and suggest that a methodology of histories as connected fruitfully can capture these changes, due to its possibility to bridge, and attend to, the ambivalence inherent in history as multiple.

The body – or, more specifically, women’s bodies – has long been one of feminism’s central topics. This discussion has ranged from explorations of the cultural meaning of biology to the challenging of classification systems regulating bodies not only culturally coded as female or male but also understood through race regimes. This article seeks to explore the location of bodies within Swedish feminism, examining how women’s bodies are understood, designated and acted upon in feminist agendas. Our focus is on the location that bodies take in political conflicts among and between feminists. In particular, we explore the impact of the presence of black bodies within the field of Swedish feminism. On a theoretical level, this article bridges decolonial feminist contributions of Black, Chicano and Latin American feminist thought on the body. The research methodology combined autoethnography with feminist ethnography, including an analysis of 25 narratives of young feminist activists engaged in public resistance against, and confrontation with, the growing presence of right-wing xenophobic social movements and political parties in the public sphere. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Med utgångspunkt i ett två-årigt etnografiskt fältarbete med feministiska aktivistiska grupper i Sverige har vi undersökt vilken förändring feministiska aktivister syftar till att åstadkomma, vilka frågor de driver och hur de utövar och stärker sin kamp. Genom sina heterogena protester riktade grupperna vårt intresse mot två dominanta narrativ i Sverige idag: nyliberalismen och nationen. Feministiska aktivisters mångfacetterade kritik av dessa narrativ går att förstå som ett tänkande och handlande från gränsen, där geografiska, kunskapsmässiga, politiska och sociala gränser synliggörs, förhandlas och omförhandlas i en feministisk dekolonial kamp mot modernitetens och kapitalismens kontinuerliga expansion. I sin kamp utmanar och förändrar feministiska aktivister samhället, men de förändrar även våra förståelser av makt och våra relationer till varandra. Som ett resultat av fältarbetet publicerade vi under våren 2016 boken Hoppets politik (Makadam förlag). I boken ifrågasätter vi det rådande antagandet om feminism som en fragmenterad och/eller försvagad rörelse och visar istället hur feministiska aktivisters sammansatta protester mot kopplingarna mellan sexism, cis/heteronormativitet, rasism och kapitalism gör det möjligt att bygga allianser inom feminism, samtidigt som gränsdragningar, liksom viljan att överskrida gränser, fortfarande har en central funktion inom feministisk kamp. Mot bakgrund av analyserna i boken vill vi i den här presentationen ge några exempel på hur detta tänkande och handlande från (den andra sidan) gränsen kommer till uttryck inom feministisk aktivism idag.

Earlier research has shown that power relationships at workplaces are constructed by power structures. Processes related to power always influence the working conditions for (in this study in elderly care) the working groups involved. Power structures are central for intersectional analysis, in the sense that the intersectional perspective highlights aspects such as gender and ethnicity (subjective dimensions) and interrelates them to processes of power (objective dimension). This qualitative study aims to explore in what way an intersectional perspective could contribute to increased knowledge of power structures in a nursing home where the employees were mostly immigrants from different countries. By using reflexive dialogues related to an intersectional perspective, new knowledge which contributes to the employeés well-being could develop. Narrative analysis was the method used to conduct this study. Through a multi-stage focus group on six occasions over six months, the staff was engaged in intersectional and critical reflections about power relationship with the researchers, by identifying patterns in their professional activities that could be connected to their subjectivities (gender, ethnicity, etc.). The result of this study presents three themes that express the staffs experiences and connect these experiences to structural discrimination. 1. Intersectionality, knowledge and experiences of professionalism, 2. Intersectionality, knowledge and experiences of collaboration, 3. Intersectionality, knowledge and experiences of discrimination. The result demonstrates that an intersectional perspective reinforces the involved abilities, during the conversations, into being clear about, for example, their experiences of discrimination, and consequently developing a better understanding of their professionalism and collaboration. Such deeper reflections became possible through a process of consciousness-raising, strengthening the employee’s self-confidence, in a positive way. © 2016 M. Cuesta.

El objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar sobre la narrativa feminista decolonial como testimonio de prácticas feministas transnacionales. Poniendo particularmente foco en que tipo de preguntas se priorizan y que tipo de alianzas se establecen en marcos de solidaridad transnacional.  El texto parte de una mirada dialéctica basada en el discurso de análisis crítico como metodológica, a través del cual se interrelacionan referencias teóricas y relatos de prácticas feministas concretas (textos y contextos), en forma interdependiente.  De esta manera se puede afirmar que el feminismo decolonial revitaliza la narrativa feminista desde un planteo transgresor y pluralista. 

Students’ cultural capital plays a major role in their success in higher education. In Sweden today, many students come from diverse cultural, social and educational backgrounds. Knowledge of requirements in academic systems differs widely. Some students feel insecure about how to interpret academic codes, thus weakening these students’ opportunities for academic success. The major goal of this project was to lay the groundwork for a more equal educational system. Using social media, in this case conversations (e.g., chats) in a closed forum on Facebook monitored by a tutor, we aimed to improve student integration into academic culture. We differentiated two central themes related to student conversations on Facebook: (1) Access to academic habitus – cracking codes and (2) Emancipation by co-learning – extended academic codes. It was found that students participating in study groups created on Facebook learnt to better crack and extend the codes extant in university studies. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

The aim of this article is to show examples from a study, and reflect on, how teaching with a gender perspective (gender conscious pedagogy) in higher education can support students to be confident about gender matters and as a consequence of this, become gender actors outside the university and in private and working life.