This article discusses the use of video cameras in participant observation drawing on approximately 300 hours of video data from an ethnographic study of Swedish family life. Departing from Karen Barad’s post-humanistic perspective on scientific practices, the aim is to critically analyse how researchers, research participants and technology produce and negotiate children’s corporeal privacy. Ethnographic videotaping is understood as a material- discursive practice that creates and sustains boundaries between private and public, where videotaping is ideologically connected to a public sphere that may at times ‘intrude’ on children’s corporeal privacy. The limits of corporeal privacy are never fixed, but open for negotiation; ethnographers may therefore unintentionally transgress the boundary and thus be faced with ethical dilemmas. The fluidity of privacy calls for ethical reflexivity before, during and after fieldwork, and researchers must be sensitive to when ethical issues are at hand and how to deal with them.

When young people are studied in relation to citizenship and education, geographical location is not always considered. When the emplacement of youth is addressed, a disproportional focus on schools and civic youth practices in city settings further mirrors an unreflected urban norm within the field. There is however a burgeoning literature that examines youth, education, and citizenship in rural settings that speaks to issues of the inclusion and participation of young people in society. The current chapter reviews Swedish literature on rural youth and tracks its theoretical and political underpinnings. The areas covered move from stereotypical representations of rurality to rural youths’ experiences and participation in formal and nonformal education to the ways in which neoliberal market logic results in an uneven distribution of educational and employment possibilities for young people on the countryside. The chapter argues that a divided empirical and analytical focus in previous research results in inconclusive arguments regarding the remedies suggested for overcoming geographic inequality. It is posited that a call for the cultural recognition of rural youth’s experiences of marginalization as a remedy for justice needs to be complemented with an argument for economic redistribution.

Research on men who have been violent against women has often shown how these men justify or excuse their violence, minimize their responsibility, as well as construct dominant forms of masculinity. However, as attitudes in support of intimate partner violence are declining around the world, we might expect perpetrators to become less self-righteous and more self-critical about their violence. This article reports data from a qualitative interview study with 14 young partner-violent men in Sweden. While our participants sometimes downplayed their responsibility, more often they condemned violence in intimate relationships, and reflected upon the place of violence in their lives. This included experiences of domestic violence as children, as well as their processes of moving away from violence. Drawing on feminist readings of phenomenology, particularly Heidegger, we suggest that phenomenological conceptualizations of embodiment, consciousness and practice are helpful in understanding the experiences of partner-violent men.

Male Peer Support Theory (MPST) is one of the few principal theories about masculinity and men’s violence against women. The theory foregrounds the role of social networks in encouraging violence. This article offers a critical discussion of MPST, particularly the assumption that social networks primarily support violence. Drawing on a qualitative study of young men perpetrators in Sweden, we suggest that the concept of response is better suited than support in capturing the diversity of social network responses to violence. In our data, there were few stories about unmitigated pro-abuse support. Instead, we found responses that unequivocally condemned violence, as well as ambiguous and transformative responses. We suggest that such responses be understood in relation to changing attitudes concerning violence.

Queer criminology has primarily focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people as victims and perpetrators of crime, as well as on the criminalization of non-heterosexual practices. In this article, we contribute to the emerging discussions on how queer theory can be used in relation to criminological research by exploring desistance processes from a queer temporality perspective. Desistance research emphasizes how and why individuals cease offending and is often guided by a teleology in which individuals are expected to mature and develop new, non-criminal identities. Work on queer temporality, in contrast, has developed thinking that destabilizes chronology and troubles normative life trajectories. In this article, we draw on queer temporality perspectives, particularly the concepts of chrononormativity and afterwardsness, in analysing narratives of young men who have used sexual violence against women partners in Sweden. We demonstrate how criminal identities may develop in retrospect, after desisting, and that identity and behaviour may not necessarily go together.

This chapter discusses different historical and contemporary approaches to men, masculinity and intimate partner violence. We present radical feminism and its analysis of men’s violence as an effect of patriarchal society, as well as a contribution to its upholding. We then discuss socialist feminist contributions to understanding masculinity and violence where the emphasis instead lies on diversity, historical change and situated action. Next, we turn to ‘accounts research’, which deconstructs how men talk about, explain and justify their violence, and to psychosocial criminology, which instead stresses the psychological history of the perpetrator, albeit within the context of structural inequality. We also consider what we call social network approaches, particularly male peer support theory, which foregrounds the role of the relational setting as a mediator between social structure and individual action. Finally, we discuss intersectional perspectives, which foreground the interconnectedness of different forms of social inequality, such as gender, sexuality, race and class. We conclude by suggesting the need for more dialogue between on the one hand research on gender and violence and on the other contemporary developments within interdisciplinary feminist theory.

During the last decades, new forms of men’s rights activism have emerged, commonly referred to as the ‘manosphere’. This loosely connected, misogynistic online movement particularly attracts young men. Its shared ideology is the Red Pill, a neoconservative ideology that adopts essentialist notions of gender and sexuality, and selectively employs evolutionary psychology to support male supremacy. While the discourses of the manosphere have been mapped, little research exists on how and why young men join and leave such misogynist groups. This article contributes to critical youth and feminist scholarship by analysing the gendered dynamics of online misogynist radicalisation pathways. Based on narratives shared on a Reddit community for former ‘redpillers’, this article explores 30 young men’s experiences of entering and exiting the manosphere and details the essential role of vulnerability in these processes. The stories are synthesised into three phases to illustrate the paths in and out of the manosphere. 

This article explores the challenges that were detected in the first evaluation of the violence prevention programme Mentors in Violence Prevention at senior levels of compulsory schools and upper-secondary schools in Sweden. In particular, we analyse how the gender-transformative dimension and the bystander perspective aspect of the programme played out in the classroom. What are the implications of implementing a gender-transformative violence prevention programme such as Mentors in Violence Prevention when it is carried out by teachers in the school setting? The empirical basis for this study includes classroom observations during all seven Mentors in Violence Prevention sessions in two schools, and group interviews with a total of 14 teachers and 26 pupils (aged 13‐19) from five schools. Our findings suggest that most teachers did not appear to be comfortable with either the Mentors in Violence Prevention programme’s pedagogical model or its theoretical approach. Consequently, they occasionally worked in manners contrary to the programme’s intentions. However, observations and interviews demonstrated that a learning process about gender-based violence had been initiated. It may be necessary to make further adjustments if Mentors in Violence Prevention is to be used in schools in Sweden, particularly if teachers are to be the programme leaders.

Rapporten presenterar resultaten från en utvärdering av det våldsförebyggande programmet Mentorer i våldsprevention (MVP). Programmet Mentors in Violence Prevention kommer från USA och är ett utbildningsprogram som syftar till att förebygga killars och mäns våld. Organisationen Män för Jämställdhet har översatt programmet från engelska, anpassat det till svenska förhållanden och under perioden 2015-2017 spridit MVP i ett antal skolor i Sverige inom ramen för projektet ”En kommun fri från våld”. Det är den version av MVP som Män för Jämställdhet utvecklat och sprider som den här utvärderingen berör. Utvärderingen har genomförts på uppdrag av Skolverket.

Despite significant work on family geographies in recent years, geographers have paid less attention to changes and challenges that may be considered 'family troubles' in diverse contexts. Through this editorial and the special section, we unpack time-space dynamics of ‘family troubles’ in diverse contexts, with a particular focus on care and relationality. Our discussion foregrounds ambiguities and tensions surrounding geographical proximity and propinguity, material-emotional responses, and diverse meanings of ‘family’, ‘home’ and belonging in the context of troubling changes in family lives, intergenerational relations and practices of care. We seek to establish an agenda for future geographical work and interdisciplinary dialogue on ‘family troubles’, vulnerabilities and social suffering in contexts of (troubling) changes and diversity. Such analyses are crucial in our efforts to envision a more relational understanding of our ‘being-in-the-world’, underpinned by care ethics and support for differentially positioned family members throughout the lifecourse and across generations.

This paper explores issues of governing in home-school relations among Swedish middle-class families. The empirical data is taken from a larger ethnographic study of family life and draws on participant observations with video camera in families, interviews with parents, and analysis of school letters written by teachers to parents. Theoretically, the paper departs from Michel Foucault’s and Judith Butler’s discussions on power and subjection, and argues that power and governing is exercised through a complex relationship between norms and the individual’s desire to become the expected subject. In the present paper, I show that home-school relations are characterized by a negotiation about the responsibility for children’s education and rearing. The division between public and private responsibility for children is negotiated in terms of expertise. Teachers understand themselves as ‘educational experts’ and are able to prescribe how parents are supposed to be involved in children’s education. Teachers construct parents as ‘rearing experts’ and ask them to take responsibility for their children’s behavior in school and to discipline them at home, a subject taken up by parents, in particular mothers. The paper argues that teachers homogenize parents and, consequently, obscure gender differences in parental involvement.

This ethnographic study explores parenthood ideals and practices among eight Swedish middle-class couples. A pivotal term in the analysis is involved parenthood, which is understood as a cultural norm prescribing that parents are responsible for their children, that they should spend much time with them, and develop close relationships to them. The study shows that children and their activities structure parents’ daily routines and that childcare is prioritized over the parents’ own leisure activities. A distinction is made between parents’ time with and time for their children. While ‘time with children’ refers to undivided time spent with children, ‘time for children’ refers to childcare and household work that is carried out for the children’s sake. Even though both types of time could be regarded as child centered, parents ideally spend time with their children; however, facing time pressure they argue it is hard to live up to this ideal in everyday life. It is also argued that parental involvement has different meanings for men and women in that the majority of the women  assume primary responsibility for household work and childcare.

Childhood adversities, such as abuse, neglect and parental alcohol and substance abuse, has been linked to higher rates of youth delinquency. Drawing on interviews with 33 young male offenders, incarcerated in Swedish prisons, this paper analyzes how they narrate their experiences of growing up, and particularly how they make sense of their childhood adversities in light of their present situation as incarcerated and convicted of serious crime. Three forms of narratives are identified: stories of childhood adversities affecting the present delinquent self; narratives where the problem child serves as the link between childhood and present self; and broken narratives where childhood adversities are depicted as not associated with the present self at all. The majority of the young men draw upon the latter two of these narrative types. The analyses conclude that in both of them the young men avoid presenting that their childhood adversities have affected their contemporary selves and criminal behavior, but rather emphasize individual responsibility tied both to street masculinity and to a discourse of responsibilization.

Denna rapport granskar utvärderingsforskning kring metoder med genusperspektiv som förebygger mäns våld mot kvinnor på universell och selektiv nivå i Sverige. Den diskuterar även ett mindre urval internationella våldspreventiva metoder som bedöms relevanta i en svensk kontext. Metoderna som bedöms närmare i rapporten är dokumenterade och utvärderade av forskare eller annan oberoende part, i vissa fall endast av metodens ägare.

Metoderna har identifierats genom sonderingar i relevant litteratur och intervjuer med 24 centrala aktörer och forskare i preventionsfältet. Detta har resulterat i 93 initiativ, men efter vidare granskning har endast 16 insatser och metoder identifierats möta rapportens syfte och analyserats närmare. Metoderna delas in i fyra arenor, mot vilka de primärt riktar sig: skola, fritid och kommun, hemmet och institutionsvård. 

Det stora flertalet identifierade insatser är inte strukturerade metoder, vilket gör det omöjligt att utvärdera dess effekt. Många saknar genusperspektiv. Trots en stor mängd initiativ saknas strukturerade preventionsprogram inom en rad olika områden. De flesta program riktar sig till skolungdomar på högstadium eller gymnasium, medan inga riktar sig mot unga på högskolenivå. Endast ett preventionsprogram riktar sig mot arbetsplatsen, men är inte utvärderat. Detta är anmärkningsvärt givet att arbetsplatsrelaterat våld och våld mot unga kvinnor är så vanligt. Inom institutionsvård återfinns få preventionsprogram med genusperspektiv, endast ett har identifierats men är inte en strukturerad metod. Det finns få föräldrastödsprogram med genusperspektiv, eller som har utvärderats specifikt för mäns våld mot kvinnor. Inget strukturerat program som riktar sig mot pornografikonsumtion har identifierats.

Det stora flertalet av de universella våldspreventiva insatserna har antingen inte utvärderats överhuvudtaget, eller så har utvärderingarna varit av mindre god kvalitet, vilket omöjliggör bedömning av programmets effekt. Ett mycket lite antal universella våldspreventiva metoder har identifierats med effektutvärderingar av god kvalitet. Få utvärderingar kombinerar experimentella eller kvasiexperimentella studier av effekt med kvalitativa metoder som möjliggör förståelse av manualtrogenhet. Endast ett program som används i Sverige har identifierats som strukturerat, våldspreventivt på universell eller selektiv nivå, genusförändrande och effektutvärderat med robusta metoder. Det finns med andra ord behov av våldspreventiva och strukturerade metoder i en rad områ2 den, men inte minst är behovet stort att utveckla och effektutvärdera existerande program och insatser. Översikten har identifierat ett antal internationella metoder som visat på god effekt på olika områden av mäns våld mot kvinnor och som bedöms vara implementeringsbara i Sverige. Även en rad lovande svenska initiativ skulle kunna utvecklas och effektutvärderas. För att göra detta krävs dock systematik och långsiktighet vad gäller programutveckling och forskning. Dessvärre finns idag ytterst få möjligheter för detta, utan de flesta initiativ finansieras av tillfälliga projektmedel och inkluderar inte robust forskning av programmen.

En utmaning kring bedömning av effekt rör manualtrogenhet. De flesta av utvärderingarna mäter oftast före och efter en insats och kan visa på mer eller mindre positiv förändring genom att även studera jämförelsegrupper. Men få utvärderingar genomförs på sätt som gör det möjligt att bedöma verkningsfulla komponenter eftersom de ofta inte kan säga något om hur implementeringen av metoden går till. Etnografisk forskning tyder på att många program har utmaningar vad gäller manualtrogenhet, särskilt de inom skolan.

De flesta utvärderade våldspreventiva program studerar inte våld direkt, utan mäter andra faktorer relaterade till våldsanvändning, som exempelvis attityder till våld. En utmaning när attityder kring våld mäts, i en svensk kontext är att utgångsvärdena kan vara relativt höga eftersom mäns våld mot kvinnor på ett generellt plan ofta fördöms. En initialt hög nivå visar sällan på lika stor effekt av ett program jämfört med initialt låg nivå. Det är med andra ord avgörande att inte enbart studera på attitydförändring, utan också förändring av beteende och särskilt våldsanvändning. Ett alltför stort fokus på attityder riskerar att osynliggöra komplexa processer kring ojämlikhet och ojämställdhet. Mäns våld mot kvinnor är ett samhälleligt problem som inte enbart är relaterat till normer utan också materiella villkor och mäns handlingar i organisationer. Om preventiva insatser ska ha långsikt och djupgående effekt mot våld – och inte skapa nya problem – kan de inte ensidigt fokusera på genusnormer utan även andra sociala kategorier och inte minst andra strukturella utmaningar som ökar risken för mäns våld mot kvinnor.

Rapporten har producerats på uppdrag av Jämställdhetsmyndigheten.

Drawing upon the example of Annie Ernaux’s memoir A Girls’ Story (2020), and conceptualizing affect as working both within and beyond interpretive frames, this chapter presents three useful concepts when exploring affect and gender-based violence: event, atmosphere, and affective memory. Event refers to both dramatic experiences and the “silent cracks” that may materialize in connection with violence; both enable becoming-other and disintegration of sense. Atmosphere is a concept that stresses how collective, spatial moods may envelop both the violent event and the response from the relational setting. Finally, the chapter foregrounds the concept of affective memory to show how traumatic experiences may, at times, reside in our bodies and continue to affect us no matter how we comprehend the event.

Mäns våld handlar om känslor. Våldsamma män är förbannade, kåta, irriterade och frustrerade. De utsatta kvinnorna och barnen lever i rädsla för att det kan hända igen. Men våldet rör också upp känslor hos andra. När mäns våld diskuteras i tidningar, tv och sociala medier framstår de män som utövar våld som motbjudande. De är värda vårt hat och vår avsky. De är kvinnomisshandlare, våldtäktsmän och tafsande killar på festivaler.   

Denna bok bygger på mäns och killars berättelser om sitt fysiska och sexuella våld. Den ger unika inblickar i hur de tänker kring våldet, deras skam och rädsla för vad andra ska tycka, deras frustration och ilska när de blir uthängda som våldsverkare. Boken analyserar också hur mäns våld förstås i medier, inom politiken och bland unga.   

Ett centralt tema är hur våldsamma män förstås som något annorlunda än vanliga, hederliga, jämställda unga killar och familjefäder. Boken handlar också om vad våldsamma män kan lära oss om föreställningar om manlighet. Om att gränsen mellan vi och dem kanske inte är så skarp, och att vi alla är en del av att upprätthålla en kultur där mäns våld mot kvinnor kan fortsätta, trots att det fördöms.    

Den italienske filosofen Giorgio Agamben ser i leken en kraft som kan smula sönder tiden och demolera strukturer. För barnet kan vad som helst som det får i händerna bli en leksak, även det heliga. Barnet har inget annat mål än att leka och leva i sig självt. Därför menar Agamben att barndomen utgör en risk för samhället.

This chapter explores the relationship between brain, media technology and young heteromasculinity by analyzing contemporary discussions about boys and pornography addiction. While concerns about these issues have been raised in many Western societies for some time, my starting point is recent debates in Sweden, where neuroscience has become a dominant way of framing pornography consumption. I further my discussion by analyzing Gary Wilson’s Your brain on porn, which has been influential to anti-pornography activists and young men desisting from pornography. Central to his claims about pornography addiction is plasticity, which presents the brain as becoming, but also reduces subjectivity and corporeality to mere brain processes. While pornography addiction discourse may make young men to passive recipients of mediated sex, constituting themselves as cerebral subjects also enables a neuro-based care of the self where they are encouraged to abstain from pornography.

The role of shame in feminist activism has been debated lately, where scholars particularly have discussed whether shame could enable individuals with privileged positions, such as heterosexual men, to align with vulnerable groups or prevent them from political action. Drawing on written stories submitted to a feminist anti-violence campaign, this paper explores young men's shame of having been sexist or sexually violent. Through displaying shame, they distance themselves from problematic past violent or sexist actions, producing or reconstructing a respectable masculine subjectivity. In their narratives, the young men at times embrace and adopt a "chafing masculinity", that is, an uncomfortable and troubling heteromasculine position. Drawing on these narratives, the paper discusses how shame - by exposing heterosexual men's uncontrolled discomfort and helping men to unlearn privilege - may be a politically progressive emotion and contribute to pro-feminist politics.

På kultursidor larmas om ett könsgap och att Instagramfeminister polariserar genom att häckla män. Men det är överdrivet och historielöst. I själva verket samarbetar män och kvinnor bättre med varandra än på mycket länge, skriver professor Lucas Gottzén.

Shame has been identified as a pivotal emotion in order to understand men’s violence, that repressing shame generates men’s aggression and violent behaviour, or that the community may make the man desist through communicating how shameful his violent crime is. In contrast, and inspired by affect theory, I argue that shame is a resource for perpetrators managing the boundaries produced between ‘normal’ and deviant men. Drawing on interviews with 44 Swedish men that have physically abused their female partners, the chapter explores how partner-violent men experience and communicate their feelings of shame. I analyse how the men display shame in order to manage anticipated and actual responses to their violence from friends, family, colleagues, and others. 

This chapter provides an overview of how the work of Michel Foucault has been discussed within masculinity studies and feminist theory, and re-reads Focuault’s work as theories about men and masculinity. Two masculine figures that illustrate key components of his conceptual framework are discussed: the masturbating boy, where Foucault introduces the concepts dispositif (or apparatus) and biopower; and the free man in Greek and Latin antiquity, where he develops notions about the technologies of the self and the caesura of masculinity. These concepts are understood as technologies of gender that are useful to critical studies of men and masculinities.

Essän skisserar historiska och samtida mansrörelser, diskutera deras förutsättningar samt presentera två analytiska begrepp användbara för att förstå mäns könspolitiska aktivism: remaskulinisering och identitetspolitik

This chapter discusses how we could understand the affectivity of violence as a form of atmosphere, as moods and feelings that are not only experienced by individuals or collectives but also move around and coalesce places. The concept of atmosphere provides methodological tools to understand key questions in social work, such as domestic violence, and explore how they also include spatial and affective aspects. Two cases are analyzed that illustrate how the concept of atmospheres could be a useful tool for exploring men’s domestic violence and to highlight relations between affect, violence and materiality. The cases are drawn from two qualitative studies on men’s violence against women and children in Sweden.

När framtiden ter sig osäker eller dyster blickar många tillbaka på det som man tror har varit en gång. Högern projicerar i dag sin nostalgi på en efterkrigstid präglad av etnisk homogenitet och stark välfärdsstat. Det finns nostalgi även på vänsterkanten, men där är melankolin mer framträdande. Vänstern har förlorat sin framtidsvision och har svårt att komma vidare. Men varken nostalgi eller melankoli innebär apati.

Den som lockas av idén att logga ut från sociala medier för gott hittar många anledningar till detta i Jaron Laniers bok. Men även om författaren nyanserar förståelsen av internet spär han på den moderna myten om algoritmer som formar och kontrollerar oss.

Mansrörelsen har genomgått en rad förvandlingar sedan 1970-talet, från rätten att vara mänsklig till rätten att vara manlig. Lucas Gottzén borrar sig in i retorik och tankevärld hos sexterapeuter och opinionsbildare som Alexander Bard och Jordan B Peterson.

In this chapter, I discuss children’s consumption and becoming, but avoiding the particular teleology of traditional developmental theories— that there is an adult final stage in children’s consumption socialization. Instead, I will propose a different way of understanding children’s consumption departing from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Fèlix Guattari. This poststructuralist framework helps us to understand children (as well as adults) as incomplete and developing “becomings,” where their identity, agency, and consumption are created in relation to and in dependence of other humans and non-humans. 

From its origins in the LGBTQ community, coming out has become a narrative genre describing the experiences of recognizing and disclosing a variety of other stigmatized positions, including that of male perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Drawing on interviews with forty-four partner-violent men in Sweden, this paper explores how closets and outcomes are both discursively and spatially produced. It analyses the affective spaces of men’s coming-out stories, particularly how and where they disclose their violence, and how friends and others respond to their abuse. Violent men’s coming-out stories have similarities with those of other stigmatized groups. Since they experience their violence as shameful, they find it difficult to share their experiences with others and are careful not to be seen when seeking therapeutic help. At times, rumours about their violence circulate in their workplaces and cities, which affects the men’s feelings and movement in urban space. Their narratives have some unique aspects. While disclosing their violence, the men distance themselves from being categorized as violent men and their coming-out stories are not narratives of embracing a fixed identity. In addition, their narratives obscure their abuse and oppression of their victims. 

Den överväldigande majoriteten inom våldsbejakande extremistiska miljöerär män, ett faktum som sällan tas i beaktande i arbetet mot våldsbejakande extremism (VBE) eller ses som analytiskt viktigt inom den etablerade forsk- ningen inom området. Män, maskulinitet och VBE är ett växande, men jämförelsevis litet, forskningsfält. Det saknas kunskapsunderlag kring hur maskulinitet påverkar VBE-relaterade problem. Syftet med denna rapport är därför att ge en översikt av forskning kring män, maskulinitet och VBE. Genom att analysera refereegranskad, internationell empirisk forskning publicerad mellan 2000 och 2022 utforskas grundläggande ideologier och praktiker kring män och maskulinitet i extremistiska miljöer och fördjupar den samlade forskningen. Syftet är vidare att belysa kunskapsluckor och behov med bäring på förebyggande arbete mot våldsbejakande extremism. Rapporten redogör för forskning kring maskulinitet och våldsbejakande högerextremism, vålds- bejakande vänsterextremism och våldsbejakande islamistisk extremism samt våldsbejakande misogyni, vilket inkluderar grupperingar där kvinnohat är drivande i det politiska våldet.

Unga pojkars problem beror på feminismen. Det säger den kontroversielle psykologen och författaren Jordan B Peterson. Maskulini- tetsforskaren Lucas Gottzén mötte honom för en intervju inför de utsålda föreläsningarna i Stockholm den 5 och 10 november.