This thesis forms a study of the work of an investigative intelligence group within the Stockholm police during the 1990s. The aim is to research how a group of detectives worked out their assignments and created a meaningful work situation given the conditions and scope of the police organisation. On an overall level the study examines the social construction of the group, and the way its members saw themselves and each other.

The study is mainly based on fieldwork carried out in the group. Reflexive consciousness was a phenomenon characteristic of those studied and of their environment: the ethnologist researched the investigators who were investigating the suspected criminals, who in their turn wheeled round and observed these investigative police.

An organisation like the police structures its employees’ thinking on certain fundamental practices. The material design of the police station corresponded with the divisions the police made into the categories police employees, the public, and suspect criminals. But within the framework of the organisation there was freedom to develop other ways of thinking and scope for shaping the work. The professional work of the detectives was paradoxical in several ways. These investigators developed strategies for concealing their work, sometimes they appeared to find themselves in a liminal situation between the public and the suspects and it was their duty to watch over others but they themselves tried at the same time to evade the control of superiors. Egalitarian relations between work colleagues were an ideal, while at the same time female colleagues were relatively subordinate to the males. Gender inequality seemed thereby not to exist and legitimated male dominance. The first three factors can be understood in the context of a certain type of competence developed by the detectives in their work. This was there ability to grasp distinctions and thereby differentiate and maintain boundaries. It was through such processes that meaning was created and some conflicting elements in their work were balanced out.

The Swedish debate concerning honour killings has largely revolved around the concept of “culture” – or more specifically, it has revolved around the ways in which different writers have criticized some other debaters for misusing the concept. Hence, this debate sheds light on how the concept of culture has come to occupy a position in something one might call a linguistic quarantine. Cultural explanations are often considered an issue which must be handled with great caution in order not to explode into cultural racism, or to an undesired exaggeration of cultural difference. Moreover, the most serious objections against the con- cept of culture seem to occur in the very field which the concept has traditionally been regarded as most suitable for. Recent controversies around phenomena such as honour killings, structural dis- crimination and cultural racism reveals that it first and foremost is in relation to the “exotic other” that cultural explanations nowadays are becoming questioned. On the other hand, few debaters and researchers are ready to seriously do away with a concept they continue to understand as applicable for their own analyses. The aim of this article is, therefore, to highlight some of the critical arguments in this debate, so as to discuss the ambivalences that distinguish contemporary public disputes about culture and cultural explanations.

keywords: the concept of culture, honour killing, linguistic quarantine, culture racism.

Populärvetenskaplig essä om samlande, med etnografiska samlingar som utgångspunkt. En röd tråd rör kopplingen mellan sätten att ordna föremål och folk och en diskussion om betydelsen av återföranden i ljuset av det.

In 2007, the BMI awarded Peter Gabriel as “Icon of the year”. But how are such icons formed on a day-to-day basis? Youtube, a typical example of web 2.0 products, every day has 90 million visitors out of whom 1 percent actively interact on its platform, sharing and commenting videos. This article analyses different ways of narrating history in members’ comments on a video clip reproducing the song “The battle of Epping forest” from a Genesis concert from 1974. Three major kinds of historiography are discerned. First, the video reproduction in itself and in its relation to other videos from the same channel (tommygun1028) as forms of self-presentations and genre histories. Second, the members’ comments on the video as a form of artist-, band- and genre histories, where certain aspects are mutually agreed upon, while others are debated. And thirdly, these comments as fragments of life histories, claiming both “I was there” and “I wasn’t there” with equal authority, and pointing to links between music, text and personal biographies. To conclude, youtube establishes a platform where popular icons are formed in a polyphony of histories making use of the mythical room created between fans, industry, musicians and youtube members.

Nella ricerca accademica si presta sempre più attenzione al fenomeno del raggiungimento dell’età adulta tra i musulmani di seconda e terza generazione presenti in Europa. Quest’articolo tratta in particolare dei membri delle associazioni islamiche giovanili esistenti in Svezia e in Italia. Presenterò qui un mio nuovo progetto di ricerca, finalizzato allo studio delle trattative sulla pianificazione dei loro matrimoni: con chi, quando, dove e come. Le trattative in questione riguardano l’idea che i giovani hanno del matrimonio islamico, idea che si è venuta formando nel quadro delle emergenti sfere pubbliche dell'Islam. Inoltre, nelle negoziazioni sono coinvolti membri appartenenti a famiglie transnazionali e a network etnici, che hanno orientamenti religiosi diversi e diverse motivazioni nella pianificazione matrimoniale. Poiché i giovani musulmani vivono in Europa, i loro matrimoni sono influenzati anche dagli atteggiamenti e dalle condizioni della società che li circonda. Strutturato in forma di indagine comparata, questo progetto si basa su interviste di carattere qualitativo e osservazioni partecipative tra i giovani attivisti musulmani di due paesi europei: Svezia e Italia. La questione centrale delle trattative di matrimonio, è qui presa in esame a partire da ideali, desideri, obblighi e condizioni dei singoli giovani. Tale questione è intesa come un punto di osservazione strategico per l’esame degli aspetti significativi del cambiamento in corso. Da questo punto di osservazione, si ha modo di vedere come le azioni delle persone nella quotidianità si colleghino a processi societari di globalizzazione e alla riorganizzazione delle relazioni di genere.

Snart tjugo miljoner muslimer lever i Europa, och runt 300 000 i Sverige. Knappt fyra procent av Sveriges befolkning är muslimer, och bara en liten del av dem utövar sin religion, är praktiserande. Men alla muslimer, oavsett grad av religiositet, behandlas ungefär på samma sätt. De möts av fördomar, okunskap och hat. Detta konstaterande låter journalisten och författaren Kerstin Gustafsson Figueroa bli utgångspunkt för en antologi -För Guds skull. Muslimer i Sverige -fylld av personliga samtal med människor bakom stereotypierna.

Sweden is often represented as the land of justice and equality and as one of the few societies with an official multicultural policy. A dominating ideal is that no one should be treated differently because of his or her background. The actual outcomes of these visions are not always in line with the ideals though. This article presents such a case by analysing how visions of equality, equal treatment and blindness to difference related to background are put in to practice in a couple of multi ethnic schools in Stockholm’s outskirts. Using a “soft” poststructuralist and intersectionalist approach for analysing ethnographic material based on field-studies the article makes visible some paradoxical, undesired outcomes of these practices, namely the grading of pupils according to backgrounds. It is argued that the categories “Swede” – “immigrant” takes the form of a normative and hierarchical dichotomy that plays a crucial part in the production of this paradox.

In Sweden multilingualism is regarded as a highly valued asset. This endorsement of multilingualism is often overshadowed by promotion of the Swedish language, though. Using an ethnographic study of ethnically mixed schools in Sweden, the present article discusses this tendency and argues that it can be understood in the light of neo-nationalism and culturalism. With this discussion as a background and a study with former pupils as a starting point, the implications of such culturalism for young descendants of migrants in Sweden today is examined. The article shows how young descendants are placed in different, polarised culturalist positions and how their perspectives on language and self vary in accordance with these. It demonstrates how such positioning create shared conditions across ethnic and gender boundaries and illustrates how these conditions contribute in shaping shared attitudes towards language as well as shared identifications among young of different background and sex.