Kategoriarkiv: Disputationer

Thesis defence: Anna Marlene Karlsson. ”The Future is a Foreign Country : The Presence of the Future in Contemporary Norwegian Cultural Heritage Policies and Practices”

Hvilken rolle spiller fremtiden i norsk kulturminnesektor?

Anna Marlene Karlsson disputerer 12.9.2025 for ph.d.-graden ved Universitetet i Bergen med avhandlingen «The Future is a Foreign Country: The Presence of the Future in Contemporary Norwegian Cultural Heritage Policies and Practices».

Tid: 12.9.2025 – 09.30–13.00

Sted: Digitalt (Zoom Webinar)

Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig i BORA.

Denne avhandlingen utforsker fremtidens rolle i den norske kulturminnesektoren. Selv om bevaring av kulturminner ofte fremstilles gjennom et generasjonsperspektiv – som en plikt overfor både tidligere og fremtidige generasjoner – finnes det lite kunnskap om hvordan ulike måter å tenke om fremtiden på påvirker kulturminnepolitikk og -praksiser.

Målet med avhandlingen er å undersøke hvilke verdier, antakelser og fortellinger som ligger til grunn for fremtidsrettet tenkning i den norske kulturminnesektoren. Ved å benytte diskursteori og logikperspektiv som inngang, gjennomfører avhandlingen en omfattende analyse av nasjonale stortingsmeldinger fra Klima- og miljødepartementet, strategidokumenter og rapporter fra Riksantikvaren, samt en kvalitativ spørreundersøkelse blant medlemmer av lokalhistorielag.

Studien identifiserer hvordan fremtidstenkning påvirker kulturminnesektoren, men også hvordan dagens forståelse av kulturminners funksjon og verdi former hvilke handlinger som anses som mulige. Den viser hvordan forestillinger om kontinuitet, ansvar, usikkerhet og endring strukturerer og påvirker bevaringspolitikk og strategier. Avhandlingen observerer at selv om fremtiden ofte implisitt påkalles for å legitimere bevaringspraksiser, finnes det mulige konflikter mellom langsiktige mål og kortsiktige politiske hensyn. En manglende anerkjennelse av dette kan begrense sektorens evne til å møte utfordringer knyttet til klimaendringer, samfunnsmessig transformasjon og fremtidig usikkerhet på en fleksibel og konstruktiv måte.

En sammenligning med perspektiv fra de frivillige viser en større vektlegging av personlige og lokale aspekter ved bevaring og forvaltning av kulturminner, samtidig som mange av de samme logikkene og antakelsene om kulturminner deles med den offentlige forvaltningen.

Avhandlingen bidrar til debatten om de etiske og politiske sidene ved fremtidsrettet bevaring og forvaltning av kulturminner i møte med samtidige utfordringer. Den etterlyser en mer eksplisitt, reflektert og pluralistisk fremtidstenkning i kulturminnepolitikk og -praksis, som avhandlingen viser ofte hindres av rådende forestillinger om kulturminner som et uttrykk for sammenheng, stabilitet og kontinuitet.

Abstract in English: 

This thesis explores the role of the future in the Norwegian heritage sector. While cultural heritage preservation is often framed through an intergenerational perspective – as a duty towards both past and future generations – there is a lack of knowledge about the impact different ways of thinking about the future have on cultural heritage policies and practices.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the values, assumptions, and narratives that underpin future-oriented thinking in the Norwegian heritage sector. Using a discourse perspective and the method of logics of critical explanation, the thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of national white papers from the Ministry of Climate and Environment, strategy documents and reports from the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, as well as a qualitative survey among members of local historical organisations.

The study identifies how future thinking impacts the heritage sector, but also how current understandings of the functions and values of cultural heritage informs what actions are perceived as possible. It demonstrates how notions of continuity, responsibility, uncertainty, and change structure and influence preservation policies and strategies. The thesis observes that while the future is often implicitly invoked to legitimise preservation practices, there are potential conflicts between long-term goals and short-term policy aims. A failure to recognise this can limit the ability of the sector to respond to the challenges of climate change, social transformation, and future uncertainty in a flexible and productive way. A comparison with volunteer perspectives reveals a larger focus on personal and local aspects of heritage preservation and management, while at the same time sharing some of the underpinning logics and assumptions about cultural heritage with the official heritage management.

The thesis contributes to important debates about the ethical and political aspects of future-directed heritage preservation and management in facing current challenges. It calls for more explicit, reflective, and pluralistic future thinking within the heritage sector, which the thesis demonstrates is often hindered by prevailing notions of cultural heritage as representing coherence, stability, and continuity.

Thesis defence: Satumaarit Myllyniemi. ”Herkistyneen mielen enteet: Etnografinen tutkimus suomalaisten kertomista toisen maailmansodan yliluonnollisista kokemuksista ja kokemusperinnön luomisesta” (2025)

Väitös (folkloristiikka): FM Satumaarit Myllyniemi
Aika: 28.11.2025 klo 13.00 – 17.00
Paikka: Tauno Nurmela -sali, PÄÄRAKENNUS, Yliopistonmäki, 20500, TURKU

FM Satumaarit Myllyniemi esittää väitöskirjansa ”Herkistyneen mielen enteet: Etnografinen tutkimus suomalaisten kertomista toisen maailmansodan yliluonnollisista kokemuksista ja kokemusperinnön luomisesta” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa perjantaina 28.11.2025 klo 13.00 (Turun yliopisto, päärakennus, Tauno Nurmela -sali, Turku).

Vastaväittäjänä toimii dosentti Ulla Savolainen (Helsingin yliopisto) ja kustoksena professori Anne Heimo (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on suomenkielinen. Väitöksen alana on folkloristiikka.

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IN ENGLISH:

Tine: 28.11.2025 klo 13.00 – 17.00 (UTC+2)
Place: Tauno Nurmela -sali, PÄÄRAKENNUS, Yliopistonmäki, 20500, TURKU

FM Satumaarit Myllyniemi will publicly defend her doctoral dissertation titled ”Herkistyneen mielen enteet: Etnografinen tutkimus suomalaisten kertomista toisen maailmansodan yliluonnollisista kokemuksista ja kokemusperinnön luomisesta” [Omens of a Sensitized Mind: An Ethnographic Study of Supernatural Experiences Related to World War II as Told by Finns and the Creation of Experiential Heritage] at the University of Turku on Friday, November 28, 2025, at 1:00 PM (University of Turku, Main Building, Tauno Nurmela Hall, Turku).

The opponent will be Docent Ulla Savolainen (University of Helsinki), and the custos will be Professor Anne Heimo (University of Turku). The event will be conducted in Finnish. The field of the dissertation is folkloristics.

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Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:

Vuosina 2017–2023 etnografisesti muodostamani tutkimusaineisto käsittää 218 suomalaisen kokemuskertomukset toisen maailmansodan yliluonnollisiksi tulkituista kokemuksista. Aineisto sisältää Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran arkiston syksyllä 2017 järjestämän Yliluonnollinen sota -muistitietokeruun vastaukset.

Tutkimuskysymystä ei ole aiemmin itsenäisesti käsitelty ja se innosti ihmisiä avautumaan. Sota herkisti suomalaisten mielet. Tutkimus rikastaa ja haastaa tuttuja tulkintoja sekä avaa näkymää tiedon katveeseen jääneeseen. Viidennes aineistosta perustuu kertojan omakohtaiseen kokemukseen. Suurin osa on läheisille periytyneitä muistoja. Kokemuskertomukset liittyvät enteisiin omasta, läheisen ihmisen tai Suomen kohtalosta sota- ja kotirintamalta sekä evakkoteiltä. Lähestyn kokemuskertomuksia muistitietotutkijoiden tavoin subjektiivisina, moniäänisinä ja hedelmällisinä.

Tutkimuksessa selviää, että sotaan liittyvät yliluonnollisiksi tulkitut kokemukset ovat yleisiä ja tavallisten ihmisten kokemia. Kaikki eivät ole kuitenkaan tulleet kuulluiksi ja ymmärretyiksi sodan jälkeisessä Suomessa, ja osa kuulemastani on sellaista, josta on vaiettu. Kokemus on ollut henkilökohtaisesti arkaluonteinen tai tulkinta yhteiskunnallisen keskustelun kannalta vaikea. Monen kertojan kokemuskertomus on perhemuisto, jotkut kertojista avautuvat julkisesti ensimmäisen kerran tähän tutkimukseen.

Laadullisessa analyysissa tarkastelen kokemuskertomusten ominaispiirteitä, teemoitan ne kokemistavoiksi ja kytken tapahtumahistoriaan, vertailen kokemuskertomusten sisältämiä tunteita ja affekteja sekä yliluonnollisen tulkintoja ja liittymistä uskomuksellisuuteen. Jaan aineiston kristinuskoa, kansanuskoa, henkisyyttä ja rationaalista tulkintaa korostaviin. Lisäksi tutkin, millaisia intersubjektiivisia yhteyksiä kokemuskertomusten välillä on.

Tarkastelen aineistoa myös kulttuuriperinnön, kokemusperinnön, lähteenä ja pohdin sen potentiaalia. Kokemuskertomusten avulla on mahdollista vahvistaa emotionaalista sidettä sodan kokeneisiin ja eläytyä luovasti merkityksiä etsivien yksilöiden yleisinhimilliseen kokemusmaailmaan. Kriittisten kulttuuriperintötutkijoiden tavoin haluan voimistaa käsitystä tavallisista ihmisistä kulttuuriperinnön luojina ja kutsua sellaiset ihmiset osallistumaan, jotka on ohitettu. Sodan muistamisen kulttuuri on kertojien näköistä ja moniäänisempää kuin miten se on julkisesti esitetty.

Thesis defence: Aida Jobarteh. Routes and Ruptures of the Mediterranean Backway: An ethnography of Gambian men navigating the European border regime (2025)

Aida Jobarteh defends her thesis in Ethnology ”Routes and Ruptures of the Mediterranean Backway. An ethnography of Gambian men navigating the European border regime” at Stockholm University.

The defence will be held May 28 2025, 10:00 at hörsal 3, hus 2, Campus Albano, Albanovägen 20, Stockholm, and will also be available via Zoom (in english). The opponent is Marie Sandberg (Associate professor in ethnology at the University of Copenhagen).

Read more here.

The thesis can be found open access in DiVA

Abstract:

This thesis examines how Gambian men navigate and assert themselves within the political economy of borders through their migration to Europe. By centering their lived experiences, I analyze how they negotiate, respond to, and resist borders along the Mediterranean Backway, with a particular focus on their arrival and continued pathways in Italy. The study highlights various vantage points along the participants’ migration trajectories – from their departure from the Gambia and transit through Libya to their interactions with Italian state institutions. Particular attention is given to their encounters with the migration and asylum system, the labor market, and the asylum accommodation system in Italy.

Drawing on critical border studies, critical phenomenology, theories of Black masculinity, and racial capitalism, this study interrogates the European border regime from the perspective of those navigating Its’s margins. The concept of border tactics works as an analytical tool to explore how control over mobility manifests in the participants’ everyday lives. These tactics are conceptualized as reactive measures employed by states in response to migratory movements. The central border tactics identified in this thesis are containment, categorization, formal abandonment, and temporal control.

Methodologically, the research draws on ethnographic engagements with eight core participants and nine occasional participants over a period of five to six years. This has involved interviews, conversations, participant observations, video documentation, and collaborative, participant-driven methods conducted across five Italian cities. Grounded in an ethnological and decolonial tradition, the research has been guided by participatory methods that center the co-construction of knowledge between the research participants and the researcher, centering the participants’ own narratives and experiences of migration.

The thesis studies the participants’ use of vernacular concepts in their narratives of the Mediterranean Backway, such as the Babylon system, napse, just sitting, and semester. These expressions become anchor points in the analysis to understand how they navigate various border tactics. In doing so, the analysis situates the European border regime within enduring structures of coloniality, racial hierarchies, and capitalist exploitation, highlighting the production of a racialized, exploitable labor pool of migrant workers. By centering understandings of migration, mobility, and border control from the margins, this study challenges Eurocentric knowledge production and foregrounds alternative knowledge of borders and movement drawn from participants’ own narratives. The thesis contributes to an interrogation of the profitability of borders – how borders actively shape the political economy of migration.

Public defence Johanna Latva: Hiuksetko naisen kruunu? Suhtautuminen naisten kaljuuteen ja naisten kokemukset hiuksettomuudesta Suomessa (2025)

FM Johanna Latva will publicly defend her doctoral dissertation Hiuksetko naisen kruunu? Suhtautuminen naisten kaljuuteen ja naisten kokemukset hiuksettomuudesta Suomessa (Is the hair a woman’s crown? Attitudes towards women’s baldness and women’s experiences of hairlessness in Finland) at the University of Turku on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at 12:00 PM (University of Turku, Arcanum, Aava Lecture Hall, Arcanuminkuja 1, Turku).

The opponent will be Docent Hanna Ojala (University of Tampere) and the custos will be Docent Tytti Suominen (University of Turku). The event will be held in Finnish. The field of the dissertation is ethnology.

It is possible to participate remotely.

Read more here

The dissertation is available in the university’s publication archive: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-02-0088-6

Abstract in english:

Is the hair a woman’s crown? Attitudes towards women’s baldness and women’s experiences of hairlessness in Finland

This dissertation examines women’s experiences regarding baldness and the prevailing attitudes towards women’s hairlessness in the Finnish society and culture. The study explores women’s personal experiences of baldness and the public discourse around the matter. The research argues that being bald is still regarded as an abnormal and unbecoming of the gender, despite the increased exposure women’s baldness has gained in the 2000s.

The research material consists of responses to the Finnish Literature Society’s questionnaire regarding bald women as well as digitized newspapers from the collections of the National Library of Finland and Sanoma archives. The temporal context of the research is mainly from the 1990s to the 2020s. The research methods include close reading, thematic analysis, content analysis and cultural analysis. Ethnography and cultural analysis form the methodological foundation for the research. By focusing on the theoretical concepts of embodiment, gender and wellbeing the research contributes to the scientific and societal discussions on cultural health research, body normativity and dress studies.

The research considers both women who are bald by choice and those who have lost their hair due to illness such as alopecia areata or the side effects resulting from cancer treatments. The study confirms that women’s baldness has a strong influence on women´s identity and personal agency. Consequently, the research contributes to discussion on bald women’s life management and how they express their gender identity. Baldness can have an effect on one’s self esteem and relationships while also influencing the person´s clothing styles. It is also a source of various kinds of feelings ranging from shame and sorrow to pride and joy.

The dissertation demonstrates the crucial role of gender in how baldness is experienced and how it influences both the way bald people are encountered and the general attitudes towards baldness. The research also highlights the fact that the reasons behind one’s baldness have no significant influence on the attitudes towards the bald. However, baldness has received more exposure and acceptance over the last few years due to women’s own actions.

Doctoral defence: Terhi Pietäläinen. Monipaikkainen Viipuri – Muistitietotutkimus siirtoväen kaupunkilaisesta karjalaisuudesta

Master of Arts Terhi Pietiläinen will defend her doctoral dissertation on February 14, 2025, at 1:15 PM at the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki. The topic of the dissertation is ”Multilocal Viipuri – An Oral History Study of the Urban Karelian Identity of the Evacuees.” (Original name of the thesis in Finnish: Monipaikkainen Viipuri – Muistitietotutkimus siirtoväen kaupunkilaisesta karjalaisuudesta)

The defense will take place at Athena, room 107 (1st floor), Siltavuorenpenger 3 A.

The opponent will be Professor Anne Heimo from the University of Turku, and the custos will be Pia Olsson.

The dissertation is sold by the Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys.

The dissertation is also available as an electronic publication and can be read on Helda.

A link to the stream can be found on University of Helsinki’s website

From the abstract:

This oral history research deals with the reminiscences and urban Karelianness of those who were evacuated from the city of Vyborg and its surrounding areas when it was ceded to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

I also analyse Vyborg and its inhabitants’ multi-locality and their experiences of war in relation to the hegemonic narrative, which has influenced Karelian culture and the narrative identity of these evacuees to this day. The study is based on data from interviews undertaken over the period 2000–2002 in the From Karelians to resettled Karelians project, which was implemented in cooperation between the Department of Ethnology at the University of Helsinki and the Karelia Association. The interviews included about 330 former residents of the parishes and municipalities of ceded Karelia. Of these, 40 interviews with people who originally hailed from Vyborg were used in the research material. In my data, the persons from Vyborg and its districts were a catalyst for, and a shaper of, the peer community.

Disputation: Maria Björklund, Psykiatri och pastoral makt: En etnologisk studie av samtida psykiatrisk heldygnsvård (2024)

Disputation

Datum: fredag 29 november 2024

Tid: 11.00 – 13.00

Plats: Hörsal 7, våning 2, hus 4, Albano, Albanovägen 12

Fredagen den 29 november försvarar Maria Björklund sin avhandling i etnologi, ”Psykiatri och pastoral makt. En etnologisk studie av samtida psykiatrisk heldygnsvård” vid Stockholms Universitet.

Opponent: Martin Gunnarson, docent och lektor vid Södertörns högskola

Den här avhandlingen handlar om samtida psykiatrisk heldygnsvård.

Det är snart 30 år sedan de sista stora mentalsjukhusen stängdes ner. Från att ha bedrivits i stora komplex är den psykiatriska heldygnsvården idag decentraliserad och kraftigt nedskuren till förmån för öppnare former av psykiatrisk vård. Idag är det endast de allra sjukaste som vårdas inom psykiatrisk heldygnsvård. Platserna är få och vistelsen idealt sett kortvarig. De psykiatriska heldygnsvårdsavdelningarna utgör på så sätt tillfälliga platser avsedda för att stabilisera och behandla akuta psykiatriska besvär.

Utifrån ett omfattande etnografiskt material ger den här etnologiska avhandlingen inblick i vardagsliv och maktrelationer vid en avdelning för psykiatrisk heldygnsvård. Observationer och intervjuer med patienter och personal ligger till grund för detaljerade beskrivningar och analyser av platsen med dess olika rum, tidsdimensioner och vårdmetoder och sociala relationer som belyser de komplexa sätt på vilka makt utövas, utmanas och omförhandlas.

I avhandlingen diskuteras balansen mellan autonomi och autonomibegränsningar, vilket utgör en grundläggande problematik inom vård och omsorg, inte minst den psykiatriska. Denna balans ställs på sin spets i ett samhälle där patienters självbestämmande kommit att betonas alltmer. Centralt för den psykiatriska heldygnsvården är att personalen ständigt måste balansera mellan att främja patienters delaktighet och autonomi och samtidigt begränsa dessa aspekter i syfte att främja hälsa. Genom att begreppsliggöra vardaglig ”omsorgsmakt” i termer av pastoral makt, undersöker studien hur vården hanterar detta dilemma.

Avhandlingen finns i DiVA

Disputation: John Björkman försvarar ”Healing springs and haunted woods: Sacred sites of folk belief and spatial order in Southwest Finnish village societies” (2024)

FM John Björkman disputerar den 22 november 2024 i nordisk folkloristik vid Åbo Akademi med avhandlingen Healing springs and haunted woods: Sacred sites of folk belief and spatial order in Southwest Finnish village societies.

Opponent är docent Sonja Hukantaival, Åbo universitet och kustos är professor Lena Marander-Eklund, Åbo Akademi.

Disputationen äger rum i Argentum, Aurum, Henriksgatan 2, Åbo

Disputationen kan också följas via videolänk, länken publiceras här ungefär en vecka innan evenemanget.

Disputation: Lenita Kefala försvarar ”Inget riktigt hem: Kvinnors erfarenheter av den tillfälliga bostadsmarknaden i Stockholm” (2024)

Den 15 november 2024 försvarar Lenita Kefala sin avhandling i etnologi vid Stockholms Universitet ”Inget riktigt hem: Kvinnors erfarenheter av den tillfälliga bostadsmarknaden i Stockholm”.

Opponent: Professor Anna Sofia Lundgren, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper, Umeå Universitet

Datum: fredag 15 november 2024
Tid: 10.00 – 12.00
Plats: Hörsal 9, hus D, Södra huset

En trygg bostadssituation är en grundläggande förutsättning för att kunna verka i samhället, upprätthålla sociala relationer, känna trygghet och stabilitet. Idag saknar många i Sverige en egen bostad. I städer med bostadsbrist och höga bostadspriser tvingas många att hyra tillfälliga andrahandslägenheter, korttidskontrakt utan besittningsskydd eller nöja sig med att hyra ett rum som inneboende. I väntan på en permanent bostad väcks frågor om vad hemmet egentligen betyder och hur en bostad kan fyllas med mening under omständigheter präglade av tillfällighet och osäkerhet.

Boken kretsar kring frågan om vilken roll kön spelar på en alltmer ojämlik bostadsmarknad och varför just kvinnliga hyresgäster är så eftertraktade. Utifrån feministisk teori och etnografiskt fältarbete skildrar denna bok kvinnors utmaningar och strategier på Stockholms svårnavigerade bostadsmarknad. Läsaren får ta del av de utmaningar kvinnorna möter i sin strävan efter en egen bostad. I berättelserna framträder möjligheterna att skapa ett hemlikt liv ofta som svårt och begränsat. Dessa begränsningar påverkar i sin tur flera aspekter av vardagslivet såsom att upprätthålla rutiner, relationer och det handlingsutrymme vuxna individer förväntas ha. Avhandlingen väcker vidare frågor om privatlivets gränsdragningar, normer kring feminina förväntningar samt hur autonomi upprätthålls och utmanas genom klass, kön, ålder och rasifiering.

Länk till avhandlingen i DiVA

Läs mer om Lenita Kefala och hennes forskning

Health in Negotiation : Cultural Analytical Perspectives on Health and Inequalities in the Swedish Asylum Context (2024)

Talieh Mirsalehi will defend the thesis in ethnology at Lund University Health in Negotiation: Cultural Analytical Perspectives on Health and Inequalities in the Swedish Asylum Context on 24 May 2024. Opponent is Jenny Gunnarsson Payne.

The thesis can be found here.

Summary:

Health inequalities are a persistent and growing issue in different countries worldwide. Sweden, despite being one of the scandinavian countries with internationally recognized welfare system is no exception. The issue of health disparities and its increase among some groups, including those who are categorised as migrant have been acknowledged. Emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, revealed the gravity of the situation when groups of people who had migrated to Sweden from countries mainly within Africa and the Middle East were on the frontline experiencing disproportionate impacts of the Coronavirus. Although the effect of structural factors on health vulnerabilities among these groups have been identified, there is still little knowledge about how individuals who are placed into migrant categories have experienced and responded to health risks caused by the pandemic. This dissertation aims to provide a cultural analytical account of the ways in which people who undergo an asylum process in Sweden relate to, navigate, and negotiate health. By empirically investigating a group of asylum seekers’ perceptions of health, body, and risk, this study demonstrates how the participants make meaning of their embodied experiences of generating health and practicing self-care while living in a transitional state. In a health care landscape where taking responsibility for one’s health is a sociocultural norm, protecting health and preserving body is seen as a moral percept, expected from all members of society. Disparities in health, from this view, may be perceived as avoidable by leading a healthy way of life and avoiding exposure to health risks. By focusing on a group of asylum seekers’ experiences of navigating health and care before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, this study reveals how perceptions and practices of health and care are situational, contextual, and negotiable in relation to the conditions within asylum processes. While being expected to actively participate in the society they want to be a part of, those who joined this study revealed how uncertainties about the state of their ‘at-risk’ bodies clash with performances of membership.While making meaning of notions of health and care in the new society and turning it to projects of familiarization, those who joined this study shared challenges of building a fit and equally immune body that matches new parameters of health and well-being under unqual circumstances. However, it may not be translated as passivity and lack of initiation among ‘vulnerable’ groups when it comes to generating health. The notions of health, care, risk, and immunity, from this perspective, are boundary concepts and open to interpretation. In order to access the experiences, perceptions and practices of health among ‘inaccessible’ migrant populations, more emphasis needs to be put on methodological considerations in health research among different groups.

Public defence with Paul Sherfey: Cultivating Responsible Citizenship: Collective Gardens at the Periphery of Neoliberal Urban Norms (2024)

Paul Sherfey defends his thesis ”Cultivating Responsible Citizenship: Collective Gardens at the Periphery of Neoliberal Urban Norms”

When? 22 March 2024 15:00-17:00

Doctoral thesis: ”Cultivating Responsible Citizenship:
Collective Gardens at the Periphery of Neoliberal Urban Norms”
Research area: Historical Studies
Research school: The Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
External reviewer: Katarina Saltzman, docent in Ethnology , Institutionen för kulturvård, Göteborgs universitet
Language: English

Abstract
As the growing human population becomes concentrated in urban environments across the globe, these environments have increased in both overall population and population density (OECD, 2020). Consequently, political debates and social movements concerned with urban planning and land use have become ever more pertinent. One way of problematising and scrutinising dominant rationales of urban land use is to examine in them in relation to activism and collective action by which they are challenged.

Among the many such examples available are what proponents in some countries refer to as collective gardens, a subset of community gardens distinguishable by their explicit emphasis on collective management and publicly oriented educational and cultural programming – typically with an expressed intent or mission involving social change and environmental stewardship (cf. Rosol, 2006; Villace, Labajos, Aceituno-Mata et al., 2014). Geographically situated in social environments shaped by capitalism, they can be considered pericapitalist places, “simultaneously inside and outside capitalism” (Tsing, 2015, p. 63) to the extent that their use of urban land and collective forms of social organisation appear inconsistent with the proclivity towards privatization and a free-market economy characteristic of neoliberal capitalism (cf. Mouffe, 2018). Studying collective gardens in relation to neoliberal capitalism thus has implications for understanding how these places represent political forms of sensemaking, expressing grievances and demands that respond to the dominant political-economic context of contemporary urban life.

Based on this understanding, the aim in this study is to explore discourses about what collective gardens signify politically as places where alternative norms of urban life are nurtured. What sense of place can be understood to be nurtured in relation to collective gardens, and what does this convey about citizenship and experiences of urban life in the context of neoliberal capitalism? This question is investigated through the application of a political discourse framework, supplemented by discursive theories of aesthetics, narratives, and sensemaking to learn about the meanings attributed to collective gardens and how these are constituted in relation to their social contexts. The aesthetics of collective gardens are explored through multi-sited research undertaken at gardens across Germany and Sweden, in order to analyse how the materials and design of these gardens reimagine urban space.

The study then turns to individual case studies in both nations to explore a range of narratives – first to understand how the history of each garden sets up a problem that is solved by the establishment of the garden, and later to analyse how each garden is situated in discourses about contemporary urban development, as well as work and social life. Through these multiple perspectives on the construction of their meaning and relevance as places of political activity, the study offers an interpretation of how collective gardens represent a particular ethos of democratic citizenship through the social critiques being fostered in these places. Additionally, it provides an exploration of complex relationships and different interpretations of responsibility, whereby collective gardens can be seen to resist neoliberal capitalist rationalities while also fulfilling or contributing to their objectives.

Read more about the event here

The thesis can be found in diva-portal