Abstract for A Playful time:

The article is a philosophical and literary investigation of the relationship between children’s work, subjectivity and play situatedwithin the history of textile work as recorded in the textile archives.Child labor has been a widespread reality in the European textileindustry and was a major contributing factor in the industrialization of the 18th and 19th centuries. A signpost at Rydal’s Spinnery,a textile factory in Sweden, which urged the workers not to play orfight – “Don’t play, don’t fight – rule out play and fighting at work”– provides a starting point for analyzing children’s play in relationto subjectivity and work. The article use a literary formulation, and draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben as well as Eugen Fink’stheory of play to develop an understanding of children’s play, life, and working conditions in the textile industry.

Abstract for Weaving it togheter:

This volume presents novel research perspectives on the Swedish textile industry’s history, with a particular focus on its international connections. One of the book’s purposes is to cast new light on the transnational connectivity of the Swedish textile industry, particularly cotton textiles. Both cotton and textiles in general have played a key part in Swedish industrialisation according to both academic and popular historical narratives, yet the subject has been treated in national isolation despite the many ways the textile industry has been shaped by processes and circumstances that are international in scope. 

In this book, we try to look beyond the national borders and get some glimpses of how the Swedish textile industry is interwoven with international networks for dissemination of technology, know-how, consumer products and raw material – especially for the cotton textile production. 

Textile is a commodity which has been traded over long distances for centuries. However, the emergence of the industrial production of cotton represents something totally new. The global proliferation of affordable cotton was facilitated by an intricate network of international relations woven by the British Empire, which linked Swedish spinners and weavers, mill owners and consumers to an international system of chattel slavery and colonialism. In other words, the cotton textile industry linked Sweden to the world in brand-new ways. 

Over the past decade, Swedish sloyd educators have grappled with the challenge of integrating aesthetic and cultural expressions into their teaching practice. As part of a larger research endeavor focusing on discourses surrounding sloyd pedagogy, this article examines the evolution of the concept aesthetical and cultural expressions in educational guidelines. The study’s aim is to show how ideas regarding teaching and learning in and about aesthetic and cultural expressions in sloyd emerge in steering documents from 1994 to 2022. Using a social constructionist approach, the material in focus for the investigation are syllabi, commentary materials, and support documents, which are analyzed through Iterative Curriculum Discourse Analysis. The results reveal that various interpretations coexist within and between the chosen policy documents. These differing views may impact opportunities for expressive acts in sloyd creation.

This article is a philosophical investigation of the example's function as a didactic practice. In teaching, it is common to use examples to concretize, clarify and give students a knowability of the taught content, but this knowability also implies something. But this knowability also means something specific. The article specifically discusses religious education and religious diversity in a Swedish school context. In the article I argue, drawing on Giorgio Agamben's understanding of the example, how the example stands for itself, but which also, in its specificity and singularity, moves towards what is visible next to it. The example and its knowledge have a movement between two singularities – and not as a movement between a part and the whole, i.e., not between the particular and the general. It creates something, Agamben writes, which not only involves methodology (and subject didactic questions) but also ontology. The article argues that the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a didactic strategy, which also can have implications for students' subjectivity. Overall, the article is a theoretical contribution which show how the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a vital didactic strategy within teaching.

This article is a philosophical analysis of escapism as a pedagogical possibility, with a particular focus on TV series. Taking my own, as well as students, experience of escapism into TV series as a starting point, that is, their ability take us somewhere far away, something which has become more acute during the pandemic time since we remain more or less self-isolated because of the corona virus Covid-19, the article discusses escapism in relation to distraction and attention in life as well as within teaching, but also in relation to colportage, hope and social justice. According to Ernst Bloch, social justice cannot materialize without regarding things differently. Something that is often dismissed as mere escapism might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, as it can be seen as an "immature, but honest substitute for revolution" (Bloch 1986, p. 368). Drawing on Bloch's understanding of colportage and hope, as well as Walter Benjamin's understanding of mass culture and cinema, the article treats escapism and TV series not as something simple, but rather as possible seeds for a new social order and thus as having pedagogical possibilities (Hallander, 2020).

This book explores the pedagogical possibilities of testimony and witnessing. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, this book highlights the ultimate impossibility of witnessing and testimony: testimonies do not stand outside language, history, politics, or capitalist systems. Through analysis of different aspects of representation, subjectivity and emotions, this book illustrates how testimonies can be used as a way to control student emotions, perceptions and understandings. Testimonies used within teaching can work as a way to reproduce stereotypes of suffering, and can thus consolidate and reinforce exisiting power structures and identities. By exploring these difficulties, the author argues for the value of teaching historical testimonies of suffering that recognize both the impossibilities and possibilities of witnessing and testimony.​