Caves, images, and symbols are recurring topics in the work of Mats Rosengren, from his reading of Plato in his dissertation Psychagōgia – Konsten att leda själar, to his investigation of the world of paleolithic cave art in Cave Art, Perception and Knowledge.

While other philosophers might have descended into the cave with the aim of guiding visitors back up into the blinding light of eternal truths, Rosengren seems to be at home in the underworld. Instead of dismissing the paintings that adorn its walls as merely shadowy copies or distorted images, or claiming that the truth of these pictures is readily available to us, Mats Rosengren invites any traveler joining him to understand them as different forms of sensemaking, forms which at first might appear foreign, but that, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves in all their complexity.

In this volume, the contributors take on some of the key themes found in Rosengren’s work, mirroring the stylistic, generic, and topical range that characterizes it. The volume is titled “Shadows in the Cave”, signaling a focus not on eternal truth, but – alluding to Plato – on the shadowplay of our human caves.

"Here are lots of opportunities" and "Welcome to Paradise". Two municipalities' place marketing from an identification perspective. 

This book explores narrative imagination and emotion as resources for learning critical meta-reflection. The author examines the learning trajectories of several students as they engage in learning to think critically through a new approach to creative writing, and details how learning through writing is linked to new discoursal identities which are trialled in the writing process. In doing so, she analyses the processes of expansion and change that result from the negotiations involved in learning through writing. This volume offers a completely new approach to creative writing, including useful practical advice as well as a solid theoretical base. It is sure to appeal to students of creative writing and discourse analysis as well as applied linguistics and language as identity.

This study’s research problem has its starting point in teaching and learning in higher education. The focus is onlearning through writing, particularlythe use of creative writing for critical thinking purposes. Learning is viewed asbeinglinked to identity and to new possibilities for selfhood as writers, thus opening up new ways of thinking from the expansion and changethat result from the identification processes involved in learning. In a writing context, identity is defined as discoursal identity, and it originates and develops in an interplay between the writer and the writing environment, where the writer may reflect upon their own learning and that of others through their writing. The activities of writing and learning by writing are thus viewed as deeply embedded in the social context in which they are situated. My main hypothesis is that creative writing can enhance critical thinking, and the study at handaims totestthishypothesis by means of a writing assignment that I have developed. There are two more specific aims of the study. One is empirical, that of testingthe link between critical thinking and creative writing, to examinedifferent types of reflective writing and the discoursal identities that result from the writingassignment. Another aim is theoretical. I look for an understanding of how texts constitute sites where learning and identity are negotiated by writers in their writing environment. For thisI have constructed a model for analyzing context in text, applying categories fromactivity theory (Engeström 1987) onto various types of textual analyses, mainly thematic and discourse analysis. In this study, the model has been empirically tested in a case study. The results confirm the hypothesis that creative writing can be used to traincritical thinking, but the learning outcomesvaryamongst the writers and areclosely linked to thediscoursal identities they wish to ascribe to themselves. The empirical test of the model shows that it can be used to map texts as “sites of struggle” (Ivanič1998:331f.) revealing where conflicts lie between the learnerand the learning environment.

Högskoleläraren befinner sig i ett spänningsfält som rymmer många perspektiv. För läraren står oftast pedagogiken i centrum. Samtidigt är läraren examinator och därmed en myndighetsutövare med skyldighet att examinera på ett rättssäkert sätt. Hur ska bedömningen gå till? Hur kan den utformas för att ge bästa grunden för lärande? Hur görs examinationen rättssäker? Detta är några centrala frågor som avhandlas i denna rapport.

Fokus i rapporten är högskolepedagogisk utveckling och arbete med kvalitet. Just kvalitetsarbete har blivit alltmer betonat inom den högre utbildningen, men trots det saknas kunskaper om vad kvalitet i högskoleutbildning innebär i praxis. Det finns inte tillnärmelsevis lika mycket skrivet om högskolepedagogisk utveckling som det finns texter om kontrollerande ansatser.

Boken vill bidra med ny kunskap om kvalitetsarbete med examination och rättssäkerhet i fokus, och dessutom tillföra ny kunskap om praxisorientrat kvalitetsarbete i sig. Komplexiteten i sådan verksamhet beskrivs genom ett högskoleövergripande projekt baserat på workshoppar och på vad detta projekt har gett för resultat. Arbetet, som har involverat ett par hundra högskolelärare, har gett insikter om hur examinationens praktik ter sig för högskolans olika aktörer och om hur denna praktik kan utvecklas. Dessutom ger boken perspektiv på hur internt kvalitetsarbete kan fungera – eller inte fungera.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the perception of Sweden as a counterpart to the Israelite people in the Old Testament played an important part in the construction of Swedish nationhood. The widespread use of biblical parallels in the political discourse of the period has been recognized for a long time, but in recent research the significance of the parallels has been questioned by scholars who have described them as merely a kind of commonplace religious phraseology, with no further implications. In this chapter however, I will argue that the parallels must be taken seriously and that the Jerusalem code provided a cornerstone of the rhetorical construction of early Swedish nationhood. Central to my argument is that the identification with the Israelites should be understood as figural in character, rather than genealogical or translational, and that the Jerusalem code offered a rhetorically flexible mode of representation that united past, present, and future as well as the individual and the society.

Political parties use different strategies to convince voters to vote for them, and with the technological evolution of our time short movie clips are used, now more than ever before, to accomplish these kinds of tasks. However, a political movie clip that separates itself from other political movie clips is Jimmie Åkesson – Snart är det val. This clip is not trying to persuade the voter to vote for the Sweden democrats because of their political plans, instead it tries to convince the voter of a threat that can destroy Sweden in the nearby future if the voter doesn’t vote for the Sweden democrats in the coming election.

This essay seeks to investigate how Jimmie Åkesson – Snart är det val constructs this threat, how the threat becomes realistic and in what ways the threat is used in the movie clip to convince the Swedish voter to vote for the Sweden democrats. To investigate this the essay uses a semiotic analysis to dissemble the movie clip in order to understand how the threat is constructed. Furthermore, rhetorical perspectives such as identification, visualizing rhetoric, ethos, pathos, logos and figures of style are used to discuss how the threat becomes realistic and how it is used to win votes.

The conclusion of the essay is that the movie clip constructs two different threats in two different realities by using semiotic resources such as fast shifting scenes, documenting images, music, sounds, environments, characters and a narrating voice in a projecting narrative. More specifically these resources create a true dark reality and a happy delusional reality. In these two realities, the two different threats are found. The first threat is the immigrants that are illustrated as an enemy that destroys Sweden and thus creates the true dark reality where the voters and the Sweden democrats also are illustrated. The other threat is other political parties in Sweden and the Swedish media because they are illustrated in the happy delusional reality and therefore can’t help the voter that is portrayed in the true dark reality. In that sense, the two threats are used to convince the voter to vote for the Sweden democrats because they are the only political party that is located in the true dark reality and therefore are the only ones that understand and can solve the problem that causes the true dark reality. Furthermore, these threats become more realistic by enforcing an emotion of fear for the true dark reality with semiotic resources and also by concretizing this reality with documenting images, characters and sounds. These threats also become more realistic because the semiotic resources create imagistic arguments that allows the mind to take shortcuts when conclusions are made.

Understanding how scholars reason about their own flying habits is important when dealing with the problems of large emissions from academic air travel. This study is based on a travel habits survey with scholars at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. KTH has relatively high emissions from air travel, but at the same time, it has a high profile in matters of sustainability and a lot of research related to this theme. One can therefore assume a high degree of knowledge about the climate crisis and the climate impact of various actions. It is also plausible that KTH scholars meet special expectations to be role models and that practices in conflict with their teaching can have consequences for the public confidence in the university. In this study, we look at how scholars reason about how emissions from their flying could be reduced. Their responses display a spectrum of varying attitudes, from climate scepticism to a commitment to radical transformation, with the majority in between, either suggesting different types of concrete changes or invoking arguments to justify the status quo. The proposed interventions, several of which are ingenious and wise, can guide university managements to strategies that have support from employees. The more reluctant arguments point to cultural and discursive habits that must be understood and met in an empathetic way.

Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.

Tor Andræ’s I myrtenträdgården is the only comprehensive work on sufism written in Swedish language. The concept ”sufism” is interesting when it comes to conceptual shifts and according to Carl W. Ernst, ”sufism” is a westernised construction of an eastern phenomenon. This study examines Andræ's text in the light of Ernst's theory. The aim is to investigate if rhetoric with its theories on topos, fallacies and identification can help us gain insight into this construction and the discussion of sufism in general, and how conceptual shifts takes place in a specific material. The study tells us that Tor Andræ’s I Myrtenträdgården, despite his good intention, shows a hegemonic picture of a sufism with its roots in christianity, a picture that helps to maintain the confusion surrounding the concept. The study also shows that it is mainly through argumentation and identification that this construction takes place. Rhetorical criticism, with its theories, is therefore a fine instrument for highlighting this construction at work. 

This study critically examines the intense scholarly interest in violence of recent decades. Consequently, the thesis' main objective is to is to answer two questions in particular: why violence? and why now? 

First and foremost, this objective is pursued through three separate but interrelated studies. Prior to these, the thesis sets out to affirm the importance of Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault in thinking violence. First, it is in the literary works of the Marquis de Sade, rather than in Machiavelli or Hobbes, that we find the first traces of a conceptual understanding of violence. Second, drawing on de Sade, it is Foucault who provides the fertile ground from which the field of contemporary violence studies basically springs – in spite of the fact that he himself never devoted any special studies to violence, nor actually developed a specific concept of violence. 

Part 1, “Literature”, provides a brief overview of the contemporary study of violence as well as a discussion of two thoroughly influential texts in the field: Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) and Giorgio Agamben’s “On the Limits of Violence” (1970). This part surveys the questions of violence specifically posed within the field, with the further purpose of identifying and dissecting common tropes and recurring arguments important to its formation. I make the claim that two notions in particular are utilized to construct violence as a new field of knowledge: the notion of technology and the notion of history. 

Part 2, “Experience”, consists of a historical interlude in which one of the objectives is to put the hypothesis of the presumably transhistorical and immutable nature of human violence to the test. This is achieved by a close reading of the philosophical texts of Plato as well as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. In this part I argue that, in a strict sense, there is no true concept of violence as such in classical Greek antiquity. Instead, we find a multiplicity of embryonic “pre-concepts” that, unlike the various concepts of today, are thought entirely on the basis of relations, rather than on the basis of the objects of violence. The question of violence in classical Greece is, in short, approached in terms of who? rather than what? – pointing toward a promising possibility still open for exploration today. 

Part 3, “Concepts”, returns to the European discussions of the 1960s and 1970s investigated in part 1, but rather than examining the questions of immediate concern in the respective texts of the period, I approach today’s heightened interest in violence in light of a set of overarching problems, such as the risk of atomic annihilation, political unrest, the fear of propaganda, and brain washing. By way of these problems, I show that, running counter to the philosophical sources on which it draws, the contemporary concept of violence achieves a surreptitious re- institution of the substantial and autonomous subject otherwise believed to be dead. 

In conclusion, the paradoxical function of the contemporary concept of violence is thus to allow for the return of the kind of subject relentlessly attacked by the radical European thought of the 1960s and 1970s, the same thought which allowed for the invention of the concept in the first place. In this sense our age, in which, it would appear, “everything is violence”, is also an age where a kind of “bia-centrism” provides us, paradoxically, with the last conceptual stronghold for substantial subjects and stable identities. 

This essay in rhetoric examines TV commercials for some of the biggest online casinos in Sweden. The aim is to identify if these gambling companies are targeting young people under 18 years old in their communication. Therefor I analyzed a total of three commercial movies – one from each gambling company – to determine which audience they are directing their communication to. To be able to do this I used Edwin Blacks theory the second persona and Kenneth Burkes theories identification and dramatism. With the use of the pentadic analysis method I found several factors that young people can identify themselves with. According to my results in the analysis I found that the second persona for each TV commercial was young people. Therefor I determined that some of the biggest gambling companies have young people as one of their target groups. I discuss my result in comparison to earlier research about both gambling commercial and children’s ability to understand and trust TV commercials. I also discuss the problematic of these kinds of commercials that targets young people and I’m therefore trying to create awareness about this issue.

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to investigate school staff's attitudes towards sexual education for young people with disabilities, within special needs education in Sweden. The rhetorical analysis aims to include answers to what school staff members consider to be adequate sexual education, what obstacles and opportunities they see as well as how they experience their own and their students' rhetorical agency. The study was done through a qualitative focus group method and individual interviews, inspired by appreciative inquiry. They were held after RFSU Stockholm hosted a sexual education lesson for the students. The theoretical framework is based on Sonja K Foss and Cindy Griffin's invitational rhetoric, an intersectional understanding of power structures and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's definition of rhetorical agency. The results, developed through a thematization of the staff's responses, show that the staff have a positive attitude towards sexual education. Significant aspects within sexual education are consent, relationships and identities. The staff are aware of their position of power and that they influence students. It's important for them to have similar common ground in regards to the subject, leading students to gain correct information about HBTQI. They want to increase students' rhetorical agency in relationships, by building up students' self- esteem. 

This essay examines how the picture book characters Mamma Mu and Kråkan are presented in text and illustrations. The purpose is to analyze how the interaction between the characters play out and how it can be interpreted from a critical gender perspective, and how picture books can set a scenery on how children perceive the world. The analysis is based on three entries from the book Mamma Mu bygger koja. Through a social semiotic theory approach and a multimodal method, the essay examines how the book’s various semiotic resources may reproduce gender norms. The essay discusses the differences and similarities in how Mamma Mu and Kråkan are presented. The analysis shows several differences, partly in how their facial expressions and mood are expressed, how detailed their actions are visualized, and in attitudes towards each other. The conclusion is that Mamma Mu has a calm and friendly demeanor and approach towards Kråkan. Kråkan, on the other hand, has a harsh, heated and diminishing demeanor and actions towards Mamma Mu. The author states that the way the female and male characters are portrayed in this picture book could replicate outdated and problematic gender norms and therefore should be problematized and questioned. 

This article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two levels. The first is the national level, focusing the national debate on education, and the second is the local level, investigating the local schools and the school setting. The main result is that the conceptions of citizenship in the school context were formed along two major lines: an inclusive social and civil citizenship and an exclusive, active and political citizenship. Consequently, the emerging Swedish school system simultaneously fostered these two citizenship conceptions, which coexisted in an educational system that was able to cast pupils as either subjects (comprehensive citizenship) or agents (designated citizenship). 

I januari valåret 2010 publicerade Svenska Dagbladet en gruppbild av alla åtta partiledare. Bilden är ett exempel på planerad fotojournalistik, men också ett exempel på hur bilders betydelse kan förändras och ges nya tolkningar jämfört med den ursprungliga avsikten. Artikeln analyserar arbetsprocessen bakom bilden utifrån observationer och intervjuer, dess iscensättning och relation till bildjournalistikens normer och traditioner. Det utgår från teorier om pseudohändelser och ikoniska bilder, och analyserar fotografiets estetiska och retoriska kvalitéer. Resultatet visar att processen bakom bilden inrymmer en rad ambivalenser i bildjournalisternas självförståelse och syn på pressfotografi. Det visar också att den process som skapar ikoniska bilder är komplicerad och oförutsägbar. Mediernas representationer av politiker kan planeras, men också omtolkas i mötet med publiken.

Henry Jenkins has coined the term civic imagination to emphasize the political dimensions of imagination. Civic imagination is the capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; one cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. The question is to what extent literature more generally, and a children's book about Pippi Longstocking more specifically, can appeal to the reader's imagination and show new possibilities in such a closed society as the GDR. In a totalitarian society like GDR, children's literature was not a harmless genre, because it contained criticism that could not find expression in fiction for adults. The aim of the paper is to examine to what extent the stories about Pippi could have contributed to the capacity to see one’s self as a civic agent capable of making change and as empathetic to the plight of others different than one’s self. In this context, we will investigate the inherent possibility of aesthetics to enable acts of negotiation despite all the asymmetry of power which the bureaucracy of the party brought with it.

Literature: Glenn, Phillip. Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Jangbar, Sakina. Rhetorical Silence: An Emerging Genre. Dissertation. He University of Texas, 2018. Jenkins et al. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination. Case Studies of Creative Social Change. New Zork Press, 2020. Joosen, Vanessa. “Just listen? Silence, silencing and voice in the aesthetics, reception, and study of children's literature”. Silence and silencing in children’s literature. Ed. Elina Druker. Stockholm: Makadam, pp. 24–41. Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Langstrumpf. Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag Berlin, 1975

What might a rhetorical theory approach look like that extends its hand to the field of intermedia studies? Based on this question and murals against the war in Ukraine, I emphasise the importance of developing an ontological understanding of rhetoric. Such rhetoric is no longer orientated along the axis of sender/receiver, speaker/audience, artist/viewer, but takes into account the communicative exchange we are all part of in our everyday lives. Such rhetoric is no longer just about strategic choices but allows the affective enactments to play a greater role in our understanding of communication.  

Setting of from the concept of the silencing discussed by Cheryl Glenn in her book Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence (2004), we discuss Astrid Lindgren’s children’s book Pippi Longstocking in East Germany (GDR). The GDR-edition is particularly interesting because of its creative and anti-authoritarian approach to the Swedish original from 1945. Parts of the text were deleted so that the stores would better reflect the ideological ideals of the time. For example, Pippi decides not to leave the small village for a trip to the South Sea, realising the benefits of being part of a larger social community. The book is also interesting because of the negotiations that preceded its publication to position Pippi within a socialist framework. Pippi does not resemble a typical GDR hero like Gerhard Holtz Baumert's Alfons Zitterbacke or Peter Hack's Meta Morfoss. The presentation will focus on changes in the text, but also on the strategic negotiations that preceded the publication. In this context, we want to develop a concept of censorship as a dispositive of political rule in the field of cultural production that not only follows the top-down direction, but also has inherent acts of negotiation despite all the asymmetry of power. Silence can be linked to what is left unsaid, what is explicitly censored. In other words, which subjects are tabooed and banned. But it is not just a discursive practice for silencing. It can also be a tool for empowerment (see Glenn 2003, Jangbar 2018, Joosen 2021). 

Street artists have demonstrated their condemnation of Russia’s invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these artists is Banksy. On a wall of what was oncea kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly far more powerful opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artists in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children area common theme – often a girl with two stiff braids. Some of these works are presented in this essay, considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appro-priation and reconfiguration of public space.

Street artists have demonstrated their discontent with Russia's invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these is Banksy. On a wall of what was once a kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly overwhelming opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artist in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children are a common theme - often a girl with two stiff braids. In this essay, I present some of these works while considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appropriation and reconfiguration of public space.

The chapter investigates how ecological sustainability and ecocriticalagency are made explicit in Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish curricula for primaryand lower secondary school. The study shows that the concept of sustainability isvaguely dealt with in the Swedish and Finnish curricula. What all the curricula have incommon is that the teachers’ agency is omitted. The pupils, on the other hand, areexpected to learn and act according to their newly acquired knowledge. They are hence expected not just to understand, but also to participate in public debates onsustainability. 

Graffitikonstnärer har protesterat mot Rysslands invasion av Ukraina. På en vägg till det som en gång var en förskola har Banksy exempelvis sprayat bilden av ett barn som i en judokamp med en till synes övermäktig motståndare. Lyssna till ett samtal om några av dessa verk och konstens roll som protest och återerövrande av staden som rum.

The purpose of this study is to examine the rhetorical function of mental illness regarding the way it constructs the public view of individuals with mental illness. The study is based on the following research questions: What is the rhetorical function of mental illness during the time period 1951-2016? How has the language used to describe mental illness changed over time? How does language use construct and deconstruct the public view on mental illness? Methods based on theories about ideology, genre and discourse have been used to disclose the view on mental illness in medical discourse. The results indicate that the rhetorical function of mental illness is to construct what is normal or deviant. The results also suggest that language use changes the public perception of mental illness. This study shows that the medical discourse is a powerful tool to decrease stigma related to mental illness.  

This rhetorical study aims to investigate how gender constructions are produced and reproduced through linguistic and symbolic expressions. Thus, there has been interest in analyzing recruitment films from the state authority – The Swedish Employment Service – primarily regarding male- and female dominated professions to gain knowledge of how they work to maintain or challenge perceptions of gender and gender equality in the labor market. In order to examine this, I have used Kenneth Burke's theory of identification, Judith Butler's theory of gender and performativity together with Mats Landqvist's terms, social categorizations and intersectional perspective. I found that gender is constructed differently depending on whether it is male- or female constructed. In addition, the analysis shows that women are associated with values ​​such as health, care and looks while men are represented with attributes as tough, muscular and elderly. The comparison between the artifacts showed that all recruitment films create identification bases that appeal to young people and usually to both genders regardless of occupation. The overall purpose of the essay and what I hope to convey is knowledge of how gender-dominated professions differ and work to change the view of gender.

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has put applicants searching for work in a different position. Due to the pandemic restrictions, job interviews are held digitally at home where most body language comes out of sight from the camera.  The aim of the thesis is to determine how the new situation affects an applicant’s ability to establish a legitimate ethos non verbally. With a qualitative method, three recruiters were interviewed after observing an applicant’s actio in a pre-recorded digital interview and their attitudes towards the applicant were later analysed. The result show that the applicants non verbal behaviors affected the recruiters’ final idea about the applicants ethos. Wanted characteristics such as eye contact are still wanted although it is hard to achieve in the digital format. This leads to ethical dilemmas when for example rather small gestures or dull private backgrounds affect an individual's chance of employment. Conclusions show that improving skills in actio for digital meeting purposes will become a desired rhetorical competence as it will become a future requirement for employers. 

Vi, 1 620 forskare samt lärare vid universitet och högskolor, är eniga med de unga bakom Auroramålet: De drabbas och riskerar att drabbas allvarligt av klimatkrisen under sin livstid. De klimatåtgärder vi vidtar i närtid avgör deras framtid. Sverige måste ta ansvar och göra sin rättvisa andel av det globala klimatarbetet. 

I strid med Parisavtalet ökar utsläppen av växthusgaser i en takt som gör att 1,5-gradersmålet kan överskridas om några år. De globala effekterna blir allt mer synliga med ständiga temperaturrekord, smältande isar, havshöjning och extremväder som torka, förödande bränder och skyfall med enorma översvämningar, som i Pakistan nyligen. Försörjningen av befolkningen utsätts för allvarliga hot i många länder.

Minskningen av den biologiska mångfalden är extrem. Klimatkrisen är enligt WHO det största hotet mot människors hälsa i hela världen och barn utgör en särskilt sårbar grupp. Med Sveriges nordliga läge sker uppvärmningen här dubbelt så fort som det globala genomsnittet. Det förskjuter utbredningsområden för växtlighet och sjukdomsbärande insekter och ökar förekomsten av extremväder såsom värmeböljor, skogsbränder och översvämningar samt av många olika sorters infektioner och allergier. När extremväder ökar, ökar även stressen och risken för mental ohälsa. Värmeböljor ökar risken för sjukdom och död hos sårbara grupper som äldre, små barn och personer med kroniska sjukdomar. De negativa effekterna på hälsan kommer att öka i takt med klimatkrisen och barn riskerar att drabbas av ackumulerade negativa hälsoeffekter under hela sina liv. Redan i dag är mer än hälften av unga mellan 12 och 18 år i Sverige ganska eller mycket oroliga för klimat och miljö. Detta är förståeligt när våra beslutsfattare inte gör vad som krävs.

Den juridiska och moraliska grunden för arbetet mot klimatförändringarna är att varje land måste göra sin rättvisa andel av det globala klimatarbetet. Centralt i det internationella klimatramverket är att rika länder med höga historiska utsläpp, däribland Sverige, måste gå före resten av världen. Dessa länder måste också bidra till att finansiera klimatomställningen i länderna i det Globala Syd, som är minst ansvariga för klimatkrisen men drabbas hårdast. Denna rättviseprincip är tydlig i Parisavtalet och var en het diskussionsfråga under COP27 i Sharm el-Sheikh, men lyser med sin frånvaro i det svenska klimatarbetet. 

Sverige har satt mål för att minska sina utsläpp. Men de är helt otillräckliga: minskningstakten är för låg och målen tillåter samtidigt att åtgärder skjuts på framtiden. Dessutom exkluderas merparten av Sveriges utsläpp från de svenska nationella utsläppsmålen; bland annat utelämnas utsläpp som svensk konsumtion orsakar utanför Sveriges gränser, utsläpp från utrikes transporter och utsläpp från markanvändning och skogsbruk, exempelvis utsläpp från förbränning av biobränslen eller utsläpp från dikade våtmarker (Prop. 2016/17:146 s.25-28).

Sverige saknar dessutom ett eget mål för att öka upptaget av växthusgaser genom utökat skydd och restaurering av ekosystem, något som krävs för att begränsa de värsta konsekvenserna av klimatkrisen (IPCC s.32). Trots dessa låga ambitioner misslyckas Sverige med att nå sina utsläppsmål, konstaterar både Klimatpolitiska rådet och Naturvårdsverket. En klimatpolitik i linje med Parisavtalet kräver både att alla typer av växthusgasutsläpp minskar samtidigt som – inte i stället för – upptaget av växthusgaser maximeras: i dag misslyckas Sverige på bägge fronter.

Slutsatsen är tydlig. Sverige vidtar inte de åtgärder som krävs för att skydda barns och ungdomars rättigheter enligt Europakonventionen till skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Detta medför allvarliga risker för liv och hälsa för unga generationer, människor i andra länder och särskilt utsatta grupper. Detta kan inte fortsätta. Därför ställer vi oss bakom Auroras krav att Sverige börjar göra sin rättvisa andel och omedelbart sätter igång ett omfattande och långtgående klimatarbete som vilar på vetenskaplig grund och sätter rättvisa i centrum.

The climate crisis has increased the demands on Swedish forestry and given fuel to an already polarized debate concerning how Swedish forests should be managed and what constitutes sustainable forestry. Questions of ownership and who should have a say in the matter is at the center of this conflict. This essay examines the topic of ownership in the Swedish forest debate. The argumentation of stakeholders in the debate was analyzed to show which topoi contribute to the conflict and create inertia towards reaching mutual understanding. Thirty-nine opinion articles from Swedish news media, published between April and October 2021, were analyzed through a critical textual analysis. Two primary groupings among the debaters were found: those who argue to strengthen the rights of forest owners, and those who argue for more regulation or conservation. Identified topoi show that emotions and trust play a key role in the conflict. Ways of working with this and possibilities for discursive meeting places are discussed. Making explicit important values, clearly defining important terms, and focusing on the right subject matters are also suggested to enhance possibilities for mutual understanding.  

All around society, examples are found for how the debate for equality is being rhetorised, giving various suggestions for how the struggle should, or may, be fought, as well as suggestions for who and whom should be included within the term equality. Here a study is presented on the feminst equality campaign SheForHe and the debate article ”Men can – but you need our help”, in which a critique of malevolent norms of masculinity encourages women to free the man from the chains of patriarchy. The purpose is to investigate how, within the perspective of rhetorics, the article can be seen as to challenge the present discourse in the debate about equality through the following questions: Which motives are being constructed? Which rhetorical strategies are at play? Which ”men” and which ”women” as well as their internal relations are constructed? This is done based on Kenneth Burke’s theories on dramatism and the pentad as method of analysis for change of perspectives, as well as Karlyn Khors Campbell’s theories on the rhetoric of women’s liberation. The analysis is discussed drawing from Judith Butler’s terms performativity and the heterosexual matrix. The main conclusion is that the article can be seen as a rhetorical action in solidarity that through a societal critique aims to offer men new possibilties of identification. At the same time the article can be regarded as, within the scope of the equality debate, a rhetorical provocation that gives women actorship in the struggle for equality and highlights a male dominance within the debate. A further conclusion is that the article, although it may be viewed as an important act of resistance, is at risk of reproducing the view of ”men” and ”women” as homogenous collective identities, further constituting the gender system and contributing to the consolidation of a learned mandatory heterosexuality.

This article critically explores Oliver Marchart's recent and notable book, Thinking Antagonism by way of the ideas of 'the proper' and appropriation. After presenting a broad overview of the post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe, and the specific ways Marchart further develops their arguments, the paper goes onto explore in what ways the thinking of antagonism, as Marchart discusses it, implies a rethinking of the political significance of appropriation and 'the proper', two terms that are not without ontological implications for post-Marxist and post-foundational political thought. In order to demonstrate this, the article seeks to show three things: (i) that the novelty of Marchart's thinking, as set out in Thinking Antagonism, is already engaged in a series of interpretive-appropriative acts, and it is as the outcome of these appropriations that Marchart's thinking on antagonism, alongside the traditions within which his thinking operates, and the idea of antagonism itself, show themselves in their proper light; (ii) that, while remaining unthematised, 'appropriation' nonetheless operates in significant ways in the process of Marchart elucidating central features of 'being-in-the-political' (the politics of naming serves as a test-case for this) and (iii) ontologically, Marchart opens up the possibility for thinking 'generalised appropriation' on the basis of de-propriation (or, as Marchart himself puts it, 'disowning), though this is never explicated by Marchart. The article presented here thus invites a discussion surrounding the ontological synergy between antagonism and appropriation.

Som ett återkommande inslag i den svenska självförståelsen framställs ofta bilden av Sverige som ett land i fred, ett land som sedan länge varit förskonat från krig och lidande. I det moderna Sverige blir ofärden ett alltmer avlägset minne, en ofta abstrakt topik.

I början av 1800-talet var däremot Sverige märkt av århundranden av mer eller mindre konstant krigföring i Europa, där det svenska rikets gränser gång efter annan hade ritats om efter krigståg och fredsfördrag. I olika delar av landet var den betydelsefulla historien inte abstrakta, förgångna geopolitiska erövringar och förluster utan konkreta, mänskliga erfarenheter av ockupationer och härjningar. Den nyliga förlusten av de östra landskapen i Finland, liksom den inte glömda erövringen och ’försvenskningen’ av de sydliga landskapen i Sverige, innebar att både riket i stort och de lokala samhällena behövde förhålla sig till en stundtals traumatisk historia.

Sedan tidigmodern tid hade skolorna utgjort en viktig retorisk arena för fostran av medborgare och konstituerande av identiteter i lokala och nationella sammanhang. Det var också på denna arena som det uppväxande släktet skulle fås att identifiera sig och förlika sig med en lokal och nationell historia.

Presentationen behandlar konstitutiva retoriska funktioner framför allt utifrån en undersökning av skoltal, hållna vid till exempel invigningar och jubileer, från perioden ca 1800–1850. Vid dessa tillfällen framställdes för publiken inte bara skolans utan också ortens historia och elevernas identitet knöts till lokala såväl som nationella sammanhang. Genom att undersöka hur olika minnen åberopas visas hur skolors retoriska praktiker kunde konstituera medborgare vars identitet formades av historiska erfarenheter av krig och fred, samt hur dessa minnen kunde utgöra en beståndsdel i ett kollektivt, förment fredligt ethos. Avslutningsvis ställs frågor om vad som kan nås genom en förståelse av dylika retoriska mekanismer i dagens skola och samhälle. 

With rhetoric regaining ground in twenty-first century education, a reappraisal of the history of rhetorical education can give us insight into the goals and methods of school rhetoric and its potential applications in education today. This presentation outlines the development, dynamics and eventual dissolution of protestant humanist education based on the classical trivium: grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. It describes the three components of the classical rhetorical pedagogical program -- theoretical studies, reading of exemplary texts, and writing and speaking exercises -- and considers their role in a contemporary setting.