This is an introduction to a thematic issue on the concept of class, in celebration of Professor Mats Lindqvist, who unfailingly and successfully has argued the relevance of including the social organisation of economic practice and class into Swedish ethnology. In the text, two basic tenets of general class theory are laid out. One drawing from the "historical materialist" and "dialectical", marxist tradition, and the other from a more "scalar" and "situational", weberian canon. These are then used as analytical tools to understand the development of class studies within the discipline of ethnology. While illustrating how Swedish ethnological studies, with their preoccupation with the situational social construction of meaning has come to prioritise the scalar before the dialectical, the author provokingly argues that any substantial critique of the current socio-economical formation that might have existed within the discipline before, has seemingly diminished.

I och med att hästen tar allt större plats i det peri-urbana landskapet sker det en omstrukturering av både det sociala och det fysiska landskapet. Denna ”hästifiering” omfattar ofta en typ av livsstilsmigration, där den peri-urbana landsbygdens nya invånare och inpendlare (hästägarna) omvandlar miljön. Hästarnas ökade närvaro påverkar nämligen både det privata och det offentliga rummet. Med stöd i över 30 intervjuer konstaterar studien att denna omstrukturering av det peri-urbana landskapet skapar konflikter mellan ”nya” (livsstilsmigranter, hästägare) och de ”gamla” som bott där sedan tidigare (jordbrukare och markägare), vilket kan tolkas som motsättningar mellan grupper med olika ideologier och värderingar där rurala förhållningssätt utmanas av en urban norm. En central aspekt av dessa ”kulturkrockar” är att en urban norm om landskapet som yta för konsumtion och rekreation ofta står i motsatsställning till rurala värderingar och praktiker där landskapet i högre grad utgör en källa till försörjning.

The Qualities of Cultural Research.There is a widespread talk of an increasing role for culture andfor transgressing borders, but still interdisciplinary culturalresearch experiences considerable difficulties in the new landscapeof research policy. Having outlined the problematics of measuringquality in general terms a discussion and a series of proposalsconcerning the main dimensions of this problematics follows. First, the dominant scales for measuring publishing are criticisedfor being biased against the humanities, in that a too narrow setof international academic journals are unfairly favoured. Second,when external funding is measured, grants from the Swedish ResearchCouncil (Vetenskapsrådet) tend to overshadow all other and oftenequally important sources, including those from EU and the ESF(European Science Foundation). Third, it is argued that quality ofeducation and of external communication should also be considered,as should the efforts made to create an innovative and productiveenvironment in the institutional collective. Finally, particular attention is given to the specific issuesrelating to evaluating interdisciplinary applications, inspired byUK/US research by Georgina Born and others, as well as from a widerange of Swedish experiences that indicate that the disciplinarystructure seriously hampers the ability to deal with trulyinterdisciplinary work. A list of necessary considerations ispresented, proposing that such a list should be formulated andfine-tuned by the Swedish Research Council, and be anchored amongall those who need to evaluate interdisciplinary work, so that suchevaluation is correct and fair.

In this article, we are addressing the issue of European labor mobility and show that the concept of class is embedded in the EU social policy framework. If the EU provides common rules to protect mobile citizens’ social security rights when moving within Europe in order to promote social cohesion and equality, they resulted in new legal boundaries within Europe between the ones who are protected by law and the ones who are excluded. Thus, the legal framework led to a situation in which law does not apply anymore based on national sovereignty but based on enclaves attached to individuals. Citizens become somehow extraterritorial (embodied boundaries). The analysis of EU policy documents related to the coordination of social security systems and the investigation of the Swedish national regulations for the implementation of free mobility, enable us to show that European free mobility is not a space facilitating free movement for everyone and that citizens might be bordered out depending on their class belonging. We argue that the legal framework has led to a policy of illegalization: the EU social framework far from protecting European workers has favored market predation and the emergence of a new social class of citizens dispossessed of their social rights.

What does discourse theory "do" to ethnology? And complementarily, what does ethnology "do" to discourse theory? In this article, these two questions are approached by investigating how Swedish ethnologists have hitherto described and applied discourse theory. The article identifies a couple of overarching tendencies within Swedish discourse theoretical ethnology, relating these tendencies both to other intra-disciplinary trends and to paralell international developments of applied discourse theory. Specifically, the article will discuss current ethnological interpretations and applications of the concept of discourse as well as the discourse theoretical understanding of the subject, and will furthermore argue that these theoretical ideas still harbour underutilized possibilities, opportunities that, if taken, might serve to further develop discourse theoretical ethnology.

The number of Swedish children conceived through commercial surrogacy abroad are increasing and the media debate on surrogacy is heated. In the wake of this, the Swedish public sphere is being filled with personal narratives of individuals travelling abroad with the purpose of having a child through surrogacy. This article analyses two books written by parents through surrogacy: Jaga storken (Hunt the stork) and Moscow baby, with a particular interest in how these two narratives describe and justify the stark class inequalities between intended parents and surrogate mothers. This kind of personal stories contribute to the normalisation of surrogacy through representing intended parents as ”having no choice” and the surrogate mothers as ”choosing subjects”. Thus, they play a crucial ideological function in the ongoing debate on surrogacy.

In this text we introduce this special issue of Kulturella perspektiv that addresses the relationship between ethnography and fiction. Could ethnographic fiction serve as an alternative way to communicate research results? Can it help us to reach other audiences outside of academia? How can fantasy and fiction help us in the quest for new knowledge? These are the main questions posed and answered in this introductory article where we highlight some important contributions to this field in ethnology and anthropology. Revisiting concepts such as Clifford Geertz 'thick descriptions' and 'faction' the article suggests that ethnographic fiction is part of a tradition in ethnographic work that problematize the division between fact and fiction, reason and affect, as well as objectivity and subjectivity. Scholars that work in the ethnographic tradition has long since acknowledged researchers' interpretations and subjectivity as a part of our knowledge production. Qualitative research in general, and ethnographic research in particular, would be impossible without an active research subject that thinks, feels and engages in the field of research. The article discusses examples of ethnographic research that engages with alternative ways of writing up the results and communicating the findings. We suggest that a creative approach to writing might reach a new and larger audience and help establish the importance of ethnographic work

The article discusses how conflicting logics emanated from different discourses are articulated in parent-teacher conferences in a Swedish preschool. Preschool teachers' reporting of collective learning processes is interrupted by parents' demands for information about their child's individual performance. When parents act as customers in the preschool meeting, pedagogical matters tend to capitulate for the preschool's need to assert itself in a market. The educators express an ambtion to fulfill educational goals. However, in the meetings with parents they are forced to reconcile contradictory logics that intersect preschool as institution in a increasingly competitive education market.

My thesis "Classmates" was published 1987 and was a late contribution to a theory/political debate that was about to lose its place in the academy. When the Wall fell in 1989 and the neoliberal transformation of Eastern Europe gained momentum had the terms "class" and "class struggle" become obsolete in a world that celebrated the victory of the market economy. However, as many researchers have pointed out, class is still a reality. Class should therefore regain its place in the critical analysis. New social critical -isms; were formulated in the wake of neoliberalism's global march forward, including a post-Marxism. Prominent in the genre's are the discourse theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In this article it is asserted that the concept of class in the contemporary social context must be used in line with Laclau and Mouffe theoretical/political achievements. It discusses the possibility to use the concept of class within a discourse theoretical framework. As a tool I use empirical data from "Classmates". How are perspectives and analysis affected if Marxism is replaced with post-Marxism? Among other things, it is noted that in the theoretical discourse perspective there exists no experience with direct access to reality. Knowledge about the world is always mediated by discourses. What makes an experience to a class experience is the Marxist discourse. It positions workers as "classmates". For the post-Marxist there is no "working class" as an objective component in the capitalist system. The antagonism between labor and capital is thus not enrolled in the system of production. Discourses determine what meaning "sellers of labor" should be given.

This article focuses on late modern discursive clashes and contradictions in everyday situations at Flextronics, mainly from the workplace in Karlskrona in southern Sweden. This is a space currently crisscrossed by discourses anchored in two different types of capitalist production systems, which Richard Sennett has described as social capitalism and flexible capitalism (with lean production and customer orientation as guiding principles), the latter beginning to take shape in parallel with the emergence of neoliberal politics in the 1980s. How do individual subjects position themselves in relation to these competing discourses? How is this contradiction articulated and negotiated in the workers´ descriptions about work and their life situation? The result of this study shows that workers feel that they are being squeezed between incompatible standpoints. They express an understanding of the late capitalist companies need for flexibility and just-in-time production, while at the same time not accepting the life in the margin that short contracts in line with lean production compels them to. They are forced to live a life in what they perceive as irregular and abnormal, because society in general is based on the fact that people have secured full-time employment. This applies for example to be able to get a loan in a bank. Therefore they tend to assent to a system that simultaneously relegates them to exclusion.

Artikeln utforskar förkroppsligade dimensioner av interkulturellt lärande, genom gruppintervjuer med sju svenska gymnasieelever som deltagit i ett dansutbyte med en kenyansk kulturskola. Med begreppet ”förkroppsligat lärande” betonas att interkulturellt lärande i dansutbytet sker i mötet mellan kroppsliga erfarenheter och diskursiva inramningar. I studien analyseras hur eleverna tillsammans navigerar, förhandlar och skapar mening kring olika samexisterande lager av skillnader och likheter i berättelserna om dansmötet. I berättelserna framträder betydelsen av det gemensamma intresset för dans för att konstruera en gemensam tillhörighet som ”dansare”. Samtidigt lyfter eleverna fram skillnader i dansstilar och i inställningen till koreografi som påtagliga. Genom att dansa tillsammans har de även fått en konkret, kroppslig upplevelse av dansens olika rumsliga och materiella förutsättningar. Slutligen visar analysen hur erfarenheten att dansa tillsammans skapar förutsättningar för upplevelser av samhörighet och visar hur unga människors förkroppsligade dansmöten rör sig längs med, över och bortom ”vi” och ”dom”-gränser.

This article focuses on the hierarchies inherent in the Swedish version of whiteness and shows how these hierarchical structures are challenged by subjects placed within the category white. Passing as white is often presumed to be something sought after. The aim of this article is however to empirically explore the other side of the coin, that is, negative experiences and undesired effects of passing as white. With theoretical inspiration drawn from critical race- and whiteness studies, interview narratives from 31 women and men in the rarely researched area of descendants of Polish migrants in Sweden, are examined. The analysis shows that the descendants in various ways contested racialized ascriptions of whiteness, Swedishness and sameness. They furthermore voiced a dissonance between the sameness they were attributed and their own perceptions of otherness, thereby illustrating that betweenship can also be experienced by descendants that pass as white.

Based on an analysis of interviews with women and men who grew up in Sweden with one or two polish parents this article argues that ethnologists can and should contribute to the research on class by using constructivist theory and illuminating processes in which class is done. Leaning on Beverly Skeggs poststructuralist writing on class it analyses how the interviewees make class with help of the capital they possessed and in relation to class as a system of classification and of judgement. Most positioned themselves as middleclass by using socially upgrading criteria’s in the system of classification, such as higher education and dedication. While most lacked economic capital, these was the types of capital many of them had within reach and used. The whiteness the interviewees where ascribed in turn proved to upgraded them socially. It furthermore functioned as a cultural capital as it ensured their passing as majority members ant thereby the use value of education as well as the ability to convert other forms of capital. It made their making of middleclass positions possible.

Genom min vän Marcus mamma Agneta får jag tillgång till hans journaler och obduktionsprotokoll. Agneta och jag har den dagen i januari 2019 mötts upp hemma hos henne för en pratstund. Hon har nyligen gått i pension, något i förtid, för att kunna ägna sig åt annat som hon länge velat göra. Arbete med utsatta kvinnor. Alternativmedicinsk hjälp till personer med utmattnings- och traumaproblematik. Sådant som Agneta kanske själv hade behövt hjälp med i sitt liv gör hon nu istället för andra. Hon bjuder mig på frukost och vi pratar i flera timmar. Innan jag ska gå frågar jag om hon kan tänka sig att låta mig se Marcus journaler om hon har dem kvar. Jag säger att hon inte behöver bestämma sig med en gång, men hon vill genast hämta dem. De ligger i källarförrådet, säger hon, och vi går dit tillsammans. Väl där visar hon två svarta sopsäckar där Marcus kvarlåtenskap finns förvarad. Hon säger att hon ännu inte orkat gå igenom sakerna. I den ena av säckarna finns ett vitt och ett brunt kuvert. I det vita, som är öppnat, ligger obduktionsrapporten. I det bruna, som är oöppnat, finns en tjockare pappersbunt med alla anteckningar från det sista vårdtillfället inom psykiatrin. Agneta säger att hon inte har klarat av att öppna det än, att hon inte orkar läsa. Jag frågar igen om hon är säker på att jag får läsa trots att hon inte har gjort det, det känns som att dessa papper är oerhört privata. Hon propsar på att jag ska ha dem, men att jag får lämna tillbaka dem sen. Jag känner att jag har fått ett stort förtroende och lovar att hantera dem med respekt.

In this article the methodological consequences of studying difficult fields of research is discussed, using the concept of dirty ethnography as a point of departure. Being dirty as a researcher has two implications; firstly it refers to the process where the researcher is positioned in an ethnographic field where different positions, subjectivities and/or identities are merged together, sometimes causing conflict or anxiety. Here the dirtiness is something inevitable that is a necessary part of every research process. Secondly, dirtiness refers to the more specific research that takes place in contexts where we feel uncomfortable or where our ethical standards are more difficult to uphold. The etnographical example discussed here is compulsory care of problematic teenagers with various behavioral and psychosocial difficulties. The analytical focus is directed towards institutional staff working in this environment. Here the different kinds of dirtiness that research in this field invokes is discussed as important methodological and analytical tools to further develop ethnological conversations on self-reflexivity.

This article is about ethnographic knowledge production, and is an investigation of the forms that knowledge production can take. The text consists of two separated parts; a contextualising introduction and a short story based on the material of ethnographic fieldwork. The aim is to highlight parts of human life that are hard to depict with traditional scholarly genres.

   In the first part of the article – the introduction – the relation between subjectivity and objectivity in ethnographic research, and the blurred lines that often exist between the two, is used as a point of departure to argue for the use of ethnographic fiction in research processes. Concepts such as thick description and self-reflexivity are used in the discussion. Ethnographic fiction can have multiple meanings and is here understood as fiction based in ethnographic knowledge. This genre can be a means to highlight aspects that are excluded or toned down in more traditional academic texts. Ethnographic fiction can also be a means to communicate research results to other audiences than the ones that normally reads scholarly works.

   The second part of the article consists of an example of ethnographic fiction in the form of a short story. The story is about a young boy named Issa, who grows up in a marginalised community and who leads a destructive life that eventually results in him being subjected to compulsory care. Issa is a fictional character with a real life role model in one of the authors’ research persons that were shot and killed only sixteen years old.

Etableringsinsatserna för nyanlända1 i deras nuvarande utformning kan förstås som en del av förskjutningen från välfärd till arbetssamhälle, vilket brukar benämnas workfare (Wacquant 2009:6; Rueda 2015:299). Detta handlar framförallt om att välfärdsrättigheter blir alltmer villkorade och kopplade till krav på motprestationer i form av arbete eller annan aktivering. I etableringen märks detta t.ex. i ett ökat fokus på att nyanlända snabbt ska komma i arbete. Det statliga integrationsinsatserna för nyanlända omfattar sedan reformeringen 2010 (SFS 2010:197) språkundervisning (SFI), individanpassade arbetsmarknadsåtgärder (praktik, validering av utbildning etc.), och en samhällsorienterande utbildning. Förändringen var en del av en större reformering som föregicks av en rad utredningar, vilka konstaterade att introduktionen av nyanlända i Sverige gick för långsamt och var passiviserande. Lösningen var att etableringen av nyanlända nu skulle inlemmas i arbetslinjen och integrationspolitiken skulle ta steget från ”omhändertagande till ansvarstagande” (prop. 2009/10:60; s. 24). I ett pågående forskningsprojekt undersöker vi etableringen av nyanlända, med ett särskilt fokus på hur man arbetar för att främja socialt deltagande och psykisk hälsa hos personer som är nya i Sverige. Fokus i projektet ligger på tjänstepersoner och frivilliga inom detta område – och hur de tänker kring hur det som brett kan benämnas integration fungerar – men även på dokument som är centrala för att förstå etableringens politiska och praktiska kontext. I den här artikeln analyserar vi dokument kopplade till samhällsorienteringen för nyanlända – en av tre delar som omfattas av etableringslagen. Eftersom hälsa är ett centralt fokus i vårt projekt har det även utgjort ett särskilt empiriskt fokus i vår analys i den här artikeln. Syftet är att undersöka vilka idéer som präglar samhällsorienteringen för nyanlända, och hur de kommer till uttryck i relation till hälsa. Vårt analytiska fokus är hur hälsa i samhällsinformation till nyanlända konstrueras diskursivt i det kursmaterial som används i samhällsorienteringen.

The concept of flight shame has raised awareness in Sweden under the year of 2019. It is closely linked to climate debates and knowledge about climate change and footprints due to flying. This has consequently led many Swedes to opt for train travel instead of plane flights. In relation to this, an internet forum called Tågsemester.nu has been launched where people can exchange train traveling ideas and get inspiration for holiday resorts from one another. This article analyses these narratives on train holidays with a particular interest in how they can be understood in terms of the perspectives of class and place. The concept of flight shame is discussed in relation to respectability. In support of the empirical material, I argue for an understanding of the train traveling practices, not only as climate active but also in particular practiced by an urban middle class. Traveling habits tend to get a biased understanding if only understood in terms of individual choices.

This article uses examples from the media debate on higher education in Sweden, as well as from a research project on independence in higher education, to discuss the significance of class and social background in relation to higher education. The article takes as its starting point how higher education in the media debate tends to be described as being in a severe crisis, and how the roots of the perceived problems in higher education are described to lie in deficits or incompetence of the individual students, but also within higher education itself. The discussion of what role class and social background may play in this, relates these examples to the assignment given to Swedish higher education institutions to promote widening participation and to the claims within the field of academic literacies that academic writing is not only a question of writing skills as such, but also a question of epistemological understandings, meaning making, and students’ background, identity and self-perception.