Media and communication studies in Sweden

Media and communication studies is a comparatively young academic discipline in Sweden. The subject’s establishment began with the 1960s—a time when the expansion of mass media led to a bigger demand for analysis, education and critical reflection. Along with that, political and commercial interests in more knowledge led to commissioned research, another considerable factor in the subject’s development and institutionalization. The field was brought forth by humanistic and social-scientific strands, and some actors conveniently travel between these two since the demarcation lines are less pronounced in the North. Currently, roughly around 250 scholars are active in the field, with about 200 of them organized in DGPuK’s Nordic sister organization FSMK. Media and communication research in Sweden is also greatly oriented towards the broader Nordic context, institutionalized for instance through the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom). For scholars, the labour market is comparatively open, not only for other Nordic academics but also for entries from countries outside Scandinavia. For students, the field provides a rich smorgasbord of general and highly specialized programmes or stand-alone courses of variable length offered in both Swedish and English. This article aims to inform about the history and the contemporary conditions of Swedish media and communication studies, with a personal note based on own experiences.

The New Rural Home

After World War II, France’s rural Catholic youth associations (Jeunesse agricole catholique [JAC] and its sister organization, Jeunesse agricole catholique féminine [JACF]) organized a traveling home expo for agrarian families. The Rural Home Expo promoted a vision of rural modernization that drew on gendered models of postwar consumerism, economic development, and Catholic teaching on the family. The new rural home envisioned by JAC helped popularize and advance policies to industrialize French agriculture. By the mid-1950s, female activists resisted the gendered division of labor on which this vision was based. In 1957, JACF shifted its mission to promote women’s participation in the agricultural profession.

Teaching for America Across Two Hemispheres: Comparing the Ideological Appeal of the Teach for All Teacher Education Model in the United States and Brazil

The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teacher education and certification. In this article, I draw on two parallel ethnographic studies of the experiences of participants in variants of one particular alternative teacher education model, developed by Teach For America in the United States and spread internationally by Teach For All. Through analysis of interviews with recruits from Teach For America and its Brazilian sister organization Ensina!, I explore the thinking processes that leads young people to join these organizations, as well as how that thinking changes after 2 years of teaching in the classroom. I find that while participants in these studies joined because they admired the Teach For All teacher education model, many left their 2-year commitment questioning the underlying theories of change driving it.

Bolt cutters and the politics of expropriation: Homes Not Jails, urban squatting, and gentrification

Chapter 6 looks at the response from the Jordan administration on Food Not Bombs’ sister organization, Homes Not Jails, which illegally housed the homeless in abandoned buildings. In interviews with people involved in both Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails, I was often told stories of police leniency with the squatters, something that was unheard of for Food Not Bombs’ actions. This differential treatment concerns the political nature of space and the city’s desire to hide the homeless from public view. Because the city wanted to push the homeless into private space, Homes Not Jails, by illegally housing the homeless in abandoned houses, ended up unintentionally working to help the Jordan administration achieve part of his public space goal. This chapter argues that city agencies react to autonomous political projects differently depending on whether they erupt in what the state defines as public or private space.

Kurdish Women in Rojava: From Resistance to Reconstruction

In 2010, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, declared, “The freedom of the Kurdish people can be viewed as inseparably bound to women’s freedom.”1 This statement emphasizes a core tenet in the reinvention of the PKK’s ideology as articulated by Öcalan: the understanding that freedom can only be achieved through the defeat of the patriarchal system. The women of the PKK and its sister organization, the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD), represent the embodiment of the PKK’s new ideology, attracting international attention following Kurdish efforts to establish an autonomous region of governance in north-east Syria. This article focuses on a case study of the PYD’s Syrian Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ), and their defence of Kurdish-dominated enclaves in Syria. The analysis demonstrates the agency behind their engagement and the ideology that motivates their resistance to patriarchy in the Middle East. In so doing, the article compares the YPJ’s understanding of agency to media representations of YPJ fighters’ engagement, in an effort to see beyond the traditional victim/peacemaker articulation of gendered engagement, arguing instead for the need to recognize the politics behind Kurdish women’s participation as combatants in the Syrian civil war.

Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia

Emerging from a 2005 conference at the University of Passau (Germany),Susanne Schroter’s edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary groupof scholars, from anthropologists and historians to literary scholars and Muslimfemale activists, to examine this complex subject. The book is organizedinto four country-specific sections on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,and Thailand, respectively. The fifth and final section, consisting of only onechapter, adds a transnational dimension by analyzing the Tablighi Jama‘at.Despite the volume’s breadth of disciplinary and geographic contributions,its authors share a common project: the recuperation of Muslim women’s history,and especially female Muslim agency, amidst the rise of Islamization inSoutheast Asia.In her introductory essay, Schroter works to unite the country-specificcontributions under a broader regional framework. She argues that whereasIslam in Southeast Asia has traditionally been “moderate, especially with regardto its gender orders” (p. 7), the recent “upsurge of neo-orthodox Islamposes a threat” (p. 37) to women’s rights. With characterizations of conservativeMuslims as “religious zealots” (p. 16) and “hardliners” (p. 19), shepresents Islamization as a process in which “orthodox” Muslims, often withinternational ties, have imperiled the moderate Islam of traditional SoutheastAsia and the liberal Islam of Muslim reformers. The majority of the volume’scontributors embrace this framing narrative. On the one hand, this globalstory enables them to shine new light on the region’s pressing debates overIslam and gender. Yet, on the other hand, the framework consistently placesfemale agency in absolute distinction with so-called orthodox Islam, therebyeclipsing a more complicated landscape of ethical contestation and culturaldifference.Building on Schroter’s framework, the book’s opening section on Indonesiafeatures four chapters, each of which emphasizes challenges Muslimwomen face in asserting their rights an identities in various Indonesian Islamicspheres. To begin, Nelly van Doorn-Harder investigates the Harmonious FamilyProgram of ‘Aisyiyah, Muhammadiyah’s sister organization, as “a tool totransmit the reformist views on gender and women’s position within marriage” ...

The View from the Top: A Century of PS Presidents' Perspectives on the Paleontological Society and Paleontology

The Paleontological Society was founded in 1908, as a section of the Geological Society of America, for the purpose of promoting the science of paleontology. Although disciplinarily inclusive, our founders were an elitist, demographically limited group. Constitutional revisions over the past century trace the evolution of the PS, including increased democratization (with a setback during the McCarthy Era, but accelerating following the turmoil of society as a whole during the 1960s), internationalization, independence from the GSA and our sister organization SEPM, and broadening of our activities and concerns. Comments by Paleontological Society presidents, in their presidential addresses and/or a survey I conducted, reinforce these conclusions. In addition, the presidential addresses demonstrate the shifting concerns and interests of paleontologists over the past century: emphasis on stratigraphic paleontology during the early years of the Society; avoidance of the topic of evolution during the antievolution movement of the 1920s – 1950s; lack of participation in the debates over continental drift; development of paleobiology. Many presidents focused on the identity of paleontology, either praising our potential for contributions to science and society or bemoaning our status and recommending remedies for our situation. Despite some predictions of impending extinction of paleontology and the PS, both our Society and our field remain vigorous as we begin our second century.

Community Context and the Underutilization of Mental Health Services by Minority Patients

An organization applying the principles of “community context” had 20 dropouts among 111 African American and Hispanic patients in its mental health services. Its sister organization applying conventional psychiatric service approaches had 114 dropouts among 167 African American and Hispanic patients.