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Both early and more contemporary feminist utopias and dystopias present us with alternatives that are both disruptive and transgressive of the existing order, making us aware of the unequal power relations embodied in society that interlock in producing urban space and the subjectivities available to women and other ‘Others’. They highlight the normalizations of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity in the city that produce some bodies as ‘normal’ and ‘in place’ and others as ‘out of place’. We discuss the possibilities these utopian/dystopian imaginings reveal for what feminist urban spaces can be, challenging taken-for-granted power relations, hierarchies and systems of exclusion/inclusion. Finally, we consider how envisaging feminist utopias and/or dystopias encourages thinking outside the box and offers a way of contesting dominant discourses: how, by developing a critical approach to what exists, such imaginings may open up changing cities physically, emotionally, environmentally and democratically by picturing (an)other future city.

Visions of the good future city are important in futures studies and urban planning. However, these visions have been criticised for reflecting Western, masculine, heteronormative values rather than diversity, and only allowing some voices to speak and be heard. This highlights the need to develop methods for bringing in 'other' voices and enabling alternative visions to be articulated that contest the 'straightjacket' of accepted meanings and ways of being in the city. Here, we present one such attempt using transgressing alternatives of imagining the city drawn from feminist science fiction and utopian writings. These were presented to focus groups of women from different backgrounds in two Swedish cities. The aim was to create a welcoming and safe space for meaning-making that encourage the women to re-imagine their subject positions, challenge the accepted ways of being in the city and picture an 'other' future city. This was partially successful in that, in their discussions, the women both accepted and contested the city's gendered norms and power relations. This reflects the difficulties involved in questioning the existing power relations and norms from a subordinate position, emphasizing the importance of further developing this type of approach in efforts to foster more inclusive cities.

Existing research explores safety among young adults as a complex phenomenon in diverse social spaces. Nonetheless, it largely approaches perceptions of unsafety and safety strategies as discrete individual action. In this paper, we show how safety is created through the social interactions between young activist groups and their main target or audience, young adults. Our study aimed to explore how young adults created meanings and actions of safety within their activism. Grounded Theory method was use to collect and analyze qualitative interviews with young adults often social change groups located in two medium-size cities inSweden. To interpret our findings, we drew upon interactionist concepts of shared definitions and joint action [Blumer, Herbert.1966. “Sociological Implications of the thought of George Herbert Mead.” American Journal of Sociology 71 (5): 535–544]. Shared definitions challenged narrow notions of unsafety by identifying uniform categories and harmful stereotypes as the source of the problem, and thereby locating constraints upon the capacity ofdifferent groups of young adults to define situations as (un)safe. Joint action combined an immediate response of moving to where young adults were with an enduring response of being there for young adults. Combined, these constituted an overarching social process of collective caring, which we linked to Isabel Lorey’s [2015. State of Insecurity. London: Verso] concept of practices of caring.

Gender-equality work in Sweden is increasingly carried out by private consultancy firms. In this article, we explore the rationalities that govern Swedish market-based gender-equality policy through an analysis of the subject positions that are made available to gender-equality consultants. The article is an adapted version of our published work in Swedish. We analyse what types of agency these positions enable and preclude, as well as how they shape the meaning of gender equality and the content of gender-equality work. While market logics constrain the space for critical analysis and cause gender equality to be subordinated to other goals, consultants nevertheless find ways to resist these tendencies in pursuit of transformative change.

In recent years, bureaucratic and market-based tools such as certifications have become common tools for addressing complex, gendered and power-related issues such as discrimination, gender equality and, in this case, safety. Drawing on a discursive understanding of policy and politics, this paper examines how safety in public space is being addressed and given meaning in nine Swedish cities, working with a safetycertification entitled ‘the Purple Flag’. Our analysis shows that in the work with PurpleFlag, safety is represented as a technical problem, requiring a standardised method, and as a tool for growth, focusing on the commercial potential of safety for the city. These representations position the safety worker as mainly administrative and competitive, while the recipients of safety become visitors and consumers. Purple Flag also gears local safety measures towards urban business areas, rather than towards places with high levels of crime or unsafety, and primarily target those disturbing the order of the market in the city centre as problematic. Our conclusion is that the method of certification creates major difficulties for politicising safety and instead enables an “economisation of the political”,producing safety for the urban market rather than for urban citizens.

Sverige betraktas ofta, av andra liksom av sig själv, som ett av världens mest jämställda länder och hamnar också alltid i toppen av FN:s och OECD:s jämställdhetsrankingar. Sedan mitten av nittiotalet har jämställdhetsintegrering varit den officiella strategin för det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet, men trots detta startas det fortfarande projekt för att komma igång med detta arbete. I denna artikel problematiseras det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet mot bakgrund av politikens förändrade styrformer där marknadsstyrning i hög utsträckning kommit att dominera det offentliga och där «den rätta kunskapen» allt mer har kommit att ersätta politiska intressemotsättningar. Syftet är att utforska vad som händer med jämställdhetspolitikens innehåll när den inordnas i marknadsbaserade former för styrning och detta görs genom att studera jämställdhetskonsulters arbete. Det empiriska materialet består av elva telefonintervjuer med jämställdhetskonsulter, samt en genomgång av ett tjugotal konsultföretags hemsidor. Intervjuerna fokuserar hur intervjupersonerna upplevde arbetet som konsult; deras drivkrafter, motiv och argument; samt hur de såg på arbetets effekter, möjligheter och begränsningar. Materialet har analyserats med inspiration av governmentalityanalys och med ett särskilt fokus på hur jämställdhetskonsultens position samt jämställdhetsbegreppets betydelse konstrueras.