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Celebrations of local volunteering as a way to cope with cutbacks are frequent. Not least are such celebrations apparent within the media, where descriptions of local initiatives are sometimes seen as the solutions to downward spiralling trends in Swedish rural areas. The paper explores the media production of meaning around rural resilience as they covered initiatives where rural populations mobilised to 'save' threatened local service for their supposed public interest. Using the concepts of 'patchy resilience' and 'cruel optimism', the paper points at how the representations attach rural areas and identities to a stereotypical rural imagery while also representing a resilience ideal that risks glorifying neoliberal responsibilisation.

Humor har både potential att utmana och att upprätthålla normer, etablerade maktordningar, förgivettagna föreställningar och förtryckande strukturer, inte minst för marginaliserade grupper. I den här artikeln är syftet att undersöka humorns potential att synliggöra och utmana funktionsnormativa föreställningar. Frågan som ställs till materialet är: Hur används humor för att synliggöra och utmana funktionsnormativitet i intervjusamtal mellan personer med egna erfarenheter av funktionsnedsättningar? Materialet till undersökningen utgörs av en svensk podd, där personer med normbrytande funktionalitet intervjuas av poddmakare som också de är rullstolsburna. Podden är ett medium där förutsättningarna för samtal skiljer sig från exempelvis andra traditionella medier eftersom de inte styrs av sändningsregler som traditionella medier gör. I analysen undersöks hur samtalsdeltagarna använder absurditet, över- och underdrifter samt överraskningseffekter för att synliggöra funktionsnormativitet. De tre teman som undersöks är föreställningar om (o)möjliga subjektspositioner, narrativet om det tragiska livsödet samt funktionsfullkomlighet som ideal. En av slutsatserna som diskuteras är att humorn som används indikerar att det finns samidentifikation hos samtalsdeltagarna genom att den både visar på att deltagarna har gemensamma erfarenheter som lyfts fram som absurda, och ibland olika erfarenheter eller inställningar, vilka förhandlas fram genom att de använder humor som ett sätt hantera situationer som skulle kunna bli socialt besvärliga.

Humour has the potential to challenge or reproduce norms, established power relations, preconceived notions and oppressive structures, not least for marginalized groups. The purpose of this article is to explore humour as a potential tool to make visible and challenge normative notions about disability. The question posed to the material is: How is humour used to make visible and challenge ableism in interview conversations between people with experiences of disability? The material for this study consists of a Swedish podcast, where people with different disabilities are interviewed by podcasters who are also disabled. The podcast is a medium where the conditions for conversations differ from other traditional media because they are not governed by broadcasting rules as traditional media are. In the analysis it is examined how the participants use absurdity, exaggerations, and understatements as well as surprise effects which makes ableism visible. The three themes examined are the notions of (im)possible subject positions, the narrative of the tragic life and the able-bodied ideal. One of the conclusions discussed is that the humour used indicates that there is co-identification among the participants which both shows that the participants have common experiences that are joked about as absurd, and sometimes different experiences or attitudes, which are negotiated by using humour as a way of dealing with situations that could be socially difficult.

Humor har både potential att utmana och att upprätthålla normer, etablerade maktordningar, förgivettagna föreställningar och förtryckande strukturer, inte minst för marginaliserade grupper. I den här artikeln är syftet att undersöka humorns potential att synliggöra och utmana funktionsnormativa föreställningar. Frågan som ställs till materialet är: Hur används humor för att synliggöra och utmana funktionsnormativitet i intervjusamtal mellan personer med egna erfarenheter av funktionsnedsättningar? Materialet till undersökningen utgörs av en svensk podd, där personer med normbrytande funktionalitet intervjuas av poddmakare som också de är rullstolsburna. Podden är ett medium där förutsättningarna för samtal skiljer sig från exempelvis andra traditionella medier eftersom de inte styrs av sändningsregler som traditionella medier gör. I analysen undersöks hur samtalsdeltagarna använder absurditet, över- och underdrifter samt överraskningseffekter för att synliggöra funktionsnormativitet. De tre teman som undersöks är föreställningar om (o)möjliga subjektspositioner, narrativet om det tragiska livsödet samt funktionsfullkomlighet som ideal. En av slutsatserna som diskuteras är att humorn som används indikerar att det finns samidentifikation hos samtalsdeltagarna genom att den både visar på att deltagarna har gemensamma erfarenheter som lyfts fram som absurda, och ibland olika erfarenheter eller inställningar, vilka förhandlas fram genom att de använder humor som ett sätt hantera situationer som skulle kunna bli socialt besvärliga.

Humour has the potential to challenge or reproduce norms, established power relations, preconceived notions and oppressive structures, not least for marginalized groups. The purpose of this article is to explore humour as a potential tool to make visible and challenge normative notions about disability. The question posed to the material is: How is humour used to make visible and challenge ableism in interview conversations between people with experiences of disability? The material for this study consists of a Swedish podcast, where people with different disabilities are interviewed by podcasters who are also disabled. The podcast is a medium where the conditions for conversations differ from other traditional media because they are not governed by broadcasting rules as traditional media are. In the analysis it is examined how the participants use absurdity, exaggerations, and understatements as well as surprise effects which makes ableism visible. The three themes examined are the notions of (im)possible subject positions, the narrative of the tragic life and the able-bodied ideal. One of the conclusions discussed is that the humour used indicates that there is co-identification among the participants which both shows that the participants have common experiences that are joked about as absurd, and sometimes different experiences or attitudes, which are negotiated by using humour as a way of dealing with situations that could be socially difficult.

People with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the world (15% or 1 billion). Despite advocacy work and political advances in disability rights such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, they are still marginalized in society and disability is often considered solely a medical condition associated with personal tragedy and exclusion. Since 2016, the European Research Council has funded the DISLIFE project’s proposal to research ‘liveable disabilities’ in Sweden from the 1800s until today. In this chapter, we present the project and its results on how societal circumstances have shaped the opportunities and lives of people with disabilities across time. We discuss the project’s use of the life course concept and from ableist perspectives and propose avenues for future research. Since the project results indicate that there have been little progress over time concerning the life opportunities of people with disabilities, a paramount work is ahead to which research aware of ableism can contribute.

The cultural understanding of what constitutes a disability is connected to understandings of time, aging and the idea of a normative life course. However, research with a life course perspective within disability studies has often focused on possibilities and obstacles to achieve the goals of the normative life such as work, marriage and children. Studies in ableism, on the other hand, has focused on the construction of the normative life course itself. According to Kafer (2012) able-bodiedness as the desirable normal permeates our understanding of time. But, rendering crip embodiments and their challenges to normative time creates an understanding of time that differs from the able-bodied one - as well as presenting a challenge to the construct of time and life courses in a normative ableist sense.

This special section aims to advance knowledge and discussion of the ascribed disabled life course by employing perspectives on disability and time that draws from the understanding of ableist normalcy and crip time, thus contributing to field of ableism studies.

Normative time occupies a prominent place in life course theory. Time intersects with the life course to dictate discourses of appropriate life stage progression in a linear chain of events from birth to reproduction and finally death. Taking crip time and the life course as their focus, the papers in this special section recognize that cultural understandings of what constitutes disability are connected to understandings of time and the idea of a normative life course, which in turn builds on ableist norms. The idea of ability as the desirable normal state creates a realm of compulsory able-bodidness. Everybody that falls outside this hegemonic assumption is culturally deviant and wrong. Crip time creates an understanding of time that differs from ableist time and unravels the social construction of ability. Crip time is approached from multiple perspectives in this special section and traverse a number of disciplines and different methodologies.

As previous research has shown, people with disabilities often have restricted access to adulthood and its corresponding life events (including sexuality, partnership and parenthood), both in society and in popular cultural representations. This article analyzes five contemporary Swedish fiction films with protagonists with disabilities in order to consider how and in what ways they depict romantic relationships, sexuality, and reproduction as manifestations of adulthood in normative time and life course. The aim is to analyze if ableist norms related to time, adulthood, and sexuality is confirmed or challenged in these films. Four of the five films confirmed the ableist norm and used normalizing strategies to assimilate the disability position into normative life course and timeline. One of the films challenged the ableist implications of the normative timeline thus providing the possibility of crip time. Given media representations’ powerful dissemination of cultural values it is of great importance to scrutinize its underlying cultural values.

This article examines self-representations in a social media campaign against the discrimination of people with disabilities. We focus specifically on how these representations are related to various narratives and discourses, and in what ways the representations either adhere to or challenge normative discourses, or whether they offer counter-discourses. Considering that our cultural assumptions are influenced by the representations we are exposed to, we also discuss the possible potential of self-representations for the audience of the campaign. The empirical material consists of a digital activism campaign conducted on Instagram in Sweden that was constructed through self-representations (photos and short texts). The study combines discourse analysis and visual analysis with focus on how the persons present themselves in the campaign, how disability is mentioned and/or displayed, and how a presentation adheres to or challenges a model of understanding disability, such as the medical or social models. We found a diverse set of claims, all with the common goal of acknowledging discrimination, in order to make it visible and bring about change. The narratives identified indicate a variety of strategies for understanding disability and various styles that people adopt to relate to established discourses on disabilities. Through this campaign, the bloggers could find and provide support, but they also took the stage by requesting that the audience listen. The campaign examined in this study can be further understood as an effort and a step towards increased visibility and politicization of disability.