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This article analyzes how social and ecological sustainability is problematized and given meaning through a norm-critical feminist perspective on masculinities. The study builds on qualitative interviews with both initiators and participants in a Swedish feminist initiative working norm critically with men and masculinity in relation to sustainability, as well as on the instructive materials guiding the initiatives norm-critical workshops. Drawing on a discourse theoretical framework, the analysis illustrates how neoliberal ideals of individualism and self-improvement are reflected and reproduced through norm critique as a discursive practice, even when that critique aims to challenge dominant norms and structures. Furthermore, the article points towards some political implications of this reproduction in relation to both social and ecological sustainability. By considering how ideology ‘grips’ subjects through the aspect of desire and enjoyment, the paper contributes with a perspective on the affective dimensions that are at play in the relationship between norm critique, neoliberalism, and sustainability discourse.

This article offers a critical reading of the concept of norm critique through narratives of its historical development and theoretical framework, especially in relation to its claimed poststructural influence. In Sweden, norm critique has grown into a well-established perspective used within several different disciplines, organizations, and governmental agencies to counteract discrimination and inequality, and has come to be associated with feminist theory and gender studies research. Inspired by Clare Hemmings analysis of Western feminist storytelling, we investigate the political implications of norm critical stories, including the impulse to defend the concept against presumed misunderstandings. Our analysis illustrates that the narrative of norm critique promotes a discourse of consensus and optimism about the possibilities for social change and, as such, a turn away from critique towards identity and affirmation. This, we argue, obscures important differences and conflicts both within feminist theory and gender studies as a field and risks de-politicizing the issues which norm critique aims to address.

This article explores how civil society-based safety engagements are represented in Swedish news media, and how these representations are mediated through emotions. In a political climate where “increased safety” has become a dominant goal, we analyze how media narratives construct emotional regimes around safety and responsibility. Drawing on Stuart Halls work on representation and theories of emotions, we show how news media not only reflect but help (re)produce emotional and spatial geographies of (un)safety through personalized storytelling and emotive language. Focusing on personal portrayals of grassroots safety initiatives, such as women-led taxi services and local volunteer efforts, we demonstrate how emotions such as fear and frustration are articulated as morally productive and politically legitimate responses to unsafety. These narratives represent engagement as a matter of individual initiative and personal responsibility, often along gendered and racialized lines. Women are depicted as self-governing subjects whose emotional investments justify their civic actions, aligning with neoliberal ideals of responsibilized citizenship. Media participates in an emotional politics that valorizes agency and affective community while depoliticizing broader issues of inequality and exclusion. These representations risk obscuring the structural causes of unsafety by recasting safety as a matter of personal duty rather than collective or institutional responsibility.

In recent years, norm critique has emerged as a central framework for addressing social inequalities in Sweden. Norm critical perspectives are widely adopted across educational institutions, workplaces, and organizations as a strategy for advancing feminist political goals, such as gender equality and more broadly for fostering social justice. The concept has also come to be viewed as closely related to feminist theory and gender studies research. By examining norm critique as an empirical example, this thesis explores the limits and possibilities of feminist critique. The aim is to analyze how, and with what effects, norm critique is articulated as a tool for social justice and change through a study of its own practices. To this end, three different fields that engage with norm critique are examined: national gender equality policy, feminist movements, and research practice. Each field represents an area which can be seen as formative for the articulation of contemporary feminist discourse in Sweden.

The study draws on a broad range of materials, including policy material, interviews, participatory guides and instructions, and scholarly publications, all related to the development and application of norm critical pedagogical perspectives. The material is analyzed using a discourse theoretical framework including psychoanalytical theories of subjectification. This way, the thesis not only explore how, but also why norm critique is articulated as a response to contemporary societal challenges. Thus, the study also addresses the driving force behind norm critique and contributes with a perspective on the affective dimensions of norm critique as a tool for social change.

The thesis analyzes how the articulation of norm critique takes place in relation to neoliberal and post-political processes. Unlike previous research addressing how the transformative potential of norm critique may be lost when implemented in a context characterized by neoliberal ideals of individualism and self-improvement, the thesis considers how such ideals are reflected and reproduced through norm critique as a discursive practice. A central conclusion of the dissertation is that norm critique, as a political project, rests on arguments that support the very norms it seeks to resist. The analysis demonstrates how these arguments relate to ideological fantasies of progress, enlightenment, and freedom, which risk obscuring how norm critique, contrary to its intentions, gives rise to new forms of exclusions and power hierarchies.

This article problematizes subjectification through the practice of norm critique. The study builds on interviews with some of the key initiators and participants in a project working norm critically with men and masculinity in relation to gender equality and climate change in Sweden. Through the psychoanalytical framework of enjoyment and fantasy, I develop a perspective on how and why a certain understanding of the norm-critical subject emerges. The analysis makes visible how the practice of norm critique, while challenging hegemonic masculine norms such as emotional stoicism, reinforces neoliberal ideals of individualized self-emancipation and the quest for authenticity and wholeness, which risks de-politicizing the issue of climate change.

In this article, the Swedish gender-equality initiative Men and Gender Equality is analyzed. The goal is to empirically examine some of the affective dimensions at play in the ways in which a ‘norm-critical’ perspective on masculinity is articulated as a solution to gender equality. Our analysis reveals ambivalences operating within the initiative’s use of norm-critical perspectives. Despite the apparent intention to offer men the hope of emancipating themselves from sedimented practices and modes of being men, these end up potentially reinforcing certain assumptions and aspects of extant society. They include (neo-)liberal assumptions about individual responsibility as well as post-feminist and anti-feminist discursive logics and tropes. With a theoretical focus on fantasy, we show how a reformist attempt to reimagine what male identities could be ends up perpetuating certain myths and assumptions that work against the emancipatory vision nurtured within such discourses.

Under de senaste åren har frågor om trygghet tagit allt mer plats i det offentliga samtalet. Det kan handla om att otryggheten breder ut sig, att den måste bekämpas och att vi måste kunna vara trygga på gator och torg. Vissa grupper pekas ut som mer otrygga medan andra blir de som står för otryggheten. Vid en närmare granskning blir det dock tydligt att trygghet är mer komplicerat än så. Att det som är tryggt för vissa kan vara otryggt för andra. Att talet om trygghet kan betyda både hårdare straff och en längtan efter ett eget hem. Denna bok består av två delar som tillsammans tar sig an (o)trygghet från olika perspektiv samhälleliga föreställningar, politiska förändringar och ambitioner att arbeta för förändring. Bokens författare har sin hemvist i olika akademiska discipliner etnologi, folkhälsovetenskap, genusvetenskap, konstvetenskap, kulturgeografi, socialt arbete, statsvetenskap och urbana studier och ger därmed en mångfacetterad bild av vad (o)trygghet betyder i dagens Sverige. 

I kapitlet "Patrullering för trygghet - vakter, nattvandrare och medborgargarden" undersöks mediebeskrivningar och offentliga policydokument kopplat till tre olika former av patrullering för trygghet: privata trygghetsvakters patrullering i kommunal regi, ideella aktörers nattvandring samt högernationalistiska medborgargardens patrullering. Analysen utgår ifrån en förståelse av patrullering som ett görande, en praktik, som bidrar till att forma betydelsen av såväl trygghet som otrygghet. Syftet är att belysa frågor om vems trygghet som ska upprättas eller bevaras, hur detta ska göras, samt vad eller vilka som anses vara orsaker till otrygghet.