New Meanings to Old Rituals : The Emergence of Mourning Rituals in Shiʿite Islam

This paper will discuss the emergence of Shiʿite mourning rituals around the grave of Husayn b. ʿAli. After the killing of Husayn at Karbala’ in 61/680, a number of men in Kufa feel deep regret for their neglect to come to the help of the grand­son of the Prophet. They gather and discuss how they can best make penitence for this crime. Eventually, they decide to take to arms and go against the Umayyad army – to kill those that killed Husayn, or be killed them­selves in the attempt to find revenge for him. Thus, they are called the Penitents (Ar. Tawwābūn). On their way to the battlefield they stop at Husayn’s tomb at Karbala’, dedicat­ing themselves to remorseful prayer, crying and wailing over the fate of Husayn and their own sin. When the Penitents perform certain ritual acts, such as weeping and wailing over the death of Husayn, visiting his grave, asking for God’s mercy upon him on the Day of Judgment, demand blood revenge for him etc., they enter into already existing rituals in the pre-Islamic Arab and early Muslim context. That is, they enter into rituals that were traditionally performed at the death of a person. What is new is that the rituals that the Penitents perform have partially received a new content. As described, the rituals are performed out of loyalty towards Husayn and the family of the Prophet. The lack of loyalty in connection with the death of Husayn is conceived of as a sin that has to be atoned. Blood revenge thus be­comes not only a pure action of revenge to restore honor, but equally an expression for true religious conversion and penitence. Humphrey and Laidlaw argue that ritual actions in themselves are not bearers of meaning, but that they are filled with mean­ing by the performer. Accord­ing to them, ritual actions are apprehensible, i.e. they can be, and should be filled with meaning, and the people who perform them try to do so within the context where the ritual is performed. The story of the Penitents is a clear example of mourning rituals as actions that survive from earlier times, but that are now filled with new meaning when they are performed in a new and developing move­ment with a different ideology. In later Shiʿism, these rituals are elaborated and become a main tenet of this form of Islam.

Svensklärares arbete : om villkor för gymnasieskolans svenskämne

The aim of this didactic study is to understand the terms of work, education and teaching of Swedish in a period round 2000. The research questions focus on how teachers at upper secondary school in conversations describe and construct their work, values in society and school, structures of power and relation to time. With the help of tools related to story and storytelling, and by connecting the empirical material to a late modern society, I caninterpret and understand the description of their work. With the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory I can see how values, power and relation to time are expressed in different ways when teachers of Swedish talk about their work and education.The results show that when teacher talk about work in school is it related to ideals in a global economy. Decentralization and individualization get new meanings when those words are placed in school environment and activity. Effectiveness, flexibility and individualization are words related to economy and they seem to have an effect on education and subjects of Swedish. I can also understand teachers’ work when it is related to power and values on the educational field. I can see how a diffuse power acts on the field and how harmony is a dominant value and a term that influences teachers’ work. New terms also form new identities related to teaching. New terms form new subjects of Swedish that in time and practice will form newhabitus connected to subjects. I call it ämneskonceptionella habitus.

Att hitta och utforska : Om Damien Echols autobiografi Life After Death

This paper investigates the autobiography of Damien Echols. The autobiographical subject, Echols, depicts his life as a marginalized youth during the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties in Arkansas, USA. It also explores the years that Echols spent on Death Row after having been arrested along with two other youths for the murder of three eight-year-old boys; a crime all three of the accused denied having committed. In 2011, after eighteen years of incarceration, the three now grown up men were released from prison. The author of this paper discusses biography and especially autobiography as a genre and explores to what extent memories represent the actual life the autobiographical subject, Echols, has lived and if memories are or can be truthful. In order to find the underlying meanings of the autobiography, the author of this paper uses as a starting-point a psychoanalytic approach towards Echol’s text. Key terms that will undergo a more close inspection are horror, water and home. This paper concludes with the notion that autobiographical objective truth does not exist.

"Dare to share!" : Bikt, moderskap och motstånd i Den stora mammabikten

”Dare to share!”: Confession, motherhood and resistance in The great mother confession This article explore the meaning of confession in a commercial, secular event – The great mother confession (TGM). The event is understood as imbedded in a therapeutic culture where emotional disclosure, in the form of confessions, is a highly valued practice. In a web-based confession-blog that constitutes part of the TGM-concept, confessions serve to free mothers from supressing norms. The blog becomes an arena for a volatile community where burdening and ”forbidden” thoughts and emotions becomes generalised and disarmed, releasing mothers from guilt. When this function of the blog is questioned from a competing sub-discourse of the therapeutic, emphasising the disclosure of happiness, a struggle emerges over the authority to define the meanings of confession. TGM can be understood as having potential for serving as an arena for challenging norms, but even as norms are implicitly addressed the practice makes a halt at that point. Norms that are seemingly dissolved in responses to confessions are not questioned, only recognised, normalised and de-politicised.

Ensamhet - gemenskap : Ett spänningsfält i Vilhelm Ekelunds författarskap

For the Swedish poet, essayist and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund, ensamhet (solitude) and gemenskap (intellectual and spiritual community) were highly complex notions, with various and often contradictory meanings. In this article, I argue that both concepts have positive as well as negative connotations in Ekelund’s texts. Solitude can be sweet and delightful and the poet/writer may long for it, but it can also appear to him as a sordid and painful state. In the same way, life with other people may be just as difficult and complicated. I show that Ekelund as a young poet both embraced solitude as a positive notion and suffered from depressing isolation. The theme of solitude also appeared in his early prose as a heroic stance fitting for an extraordinary person. According to Ekelund, the fate of the truly gifted artist is loneliness, and he will find great difficulties connecting with people around him. In fact, he will find intellectual and spiritual community only when communicating with the great precursors – in Ekelund’s case that meant the prominent figures of Greek and Roman cultural heritage. “Modern” artists interested him only in so much as they openly venerated this classicist tradition. Ekelund may have despaired at the idea of an intellectual or spiritual community with his contemporaries; he was, nevertheless, optimistic regarding the ability of later generations to understand him. He was convinced that he did not write for people in his own time but, indeed, for posterity.

Ett litet ord betyder så mycket : Alliansregeringen, Handlingsplanen och betydelseförskjutningarav begreppet mäns våld mot kvinnor

A little word may mean so much: Changed meanings of the concept men’s violence against women This article concerns the process of policymaking in the Swedish political system with a focus on the concept of men’s violence against women. The material analyzed is based on interviews with key civil servants and the Minister of Equality responsible for the ”Action Plan for Combating Men’s Violence Against Women” launched by the right wing government in 2007. The article shows how a shift in the concept of men’s violence against women is achieved through complex negotiations involving the administration staff as well as the political representatives.The outcome is a change from an understanding of the issue as a structural gender power relation problem, to explaining it as related to individual deviations. This change has been made by re-wording and editing out earlier understandings of men’s violence against women as a structural gender power concern in policies and guidelines, so that the concept is framed as something pertaining to groups of vulnerable women with specific individual obstacles. The political goals are then expressed along the lines of providing support for each group’s designated problems, but the connection to gendered power structures is made invisible.

Överviktens betydelser

Meanings of overweight In societal discourses overweight is defined as a growing individual and a social problem leading to sickness and disability, mental distress, increased use of health care and reduced economic productivity. A strong normative pressure is directed at the overweight but relatively few succeed in reducing their weight. Therefore, the overweight need to manage a double stigma; the overweight body per se and their inability to conform to norms about bodyweight. This article investigates how individuals present their overweight to their social environment. Empirical data was collected as part of an evaluation study of a keep-fit project directed at home-care staff. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 49 participants and 30 of them had either tried or were trying to reduce their weight. The analysis shows that the informants presented a divided self consisting of a biological body, with its own drives, and a mind that is aware of the body and its social meanings. They portrayed their lives as a battle between these two sides. Their presentations of the divided self can be analysed as a defence of their social selves. The overweight can account for the kilos by blaming the biological drives, which leaves the core of themselves – their minds – unblemished. They can express an intention to loose weight and thereby conform to norms about bodyweight. When they fail to loose weight, the responsibility can be attributed to the unruly body.

Rapport från projektet Multimodala uppgifter och bedömning i matematik : Video och kollaborativa samtal som metod vid lärares bedömning av elevers matematiska kunskaper

This research will discuss some experiences from a four year school research study. It was conducted in cooperation with teachers from four municipalities in Dalarna. The aim of the research was to examine teachers´ professional development when they participated in collaborative discussions based on video recordings and video edited material from specific lessons in their own practice. The study had two foci one was to investigate methods and tools that teachers can use to develop their ability to assess their students while working on multimodal tasks. The other was to examine how video can be used by teachers wanting to obtain knowledge about assessing students. The study is based on several theories about when teachers collaborate to create new knowledge. The first is the design theoretical approach – where visual ethnography and a semiotic approach contribute to problematize the use and mixture of different modes. A basic assumption of the framework here is that meanings are made and communicated in mathematics through a wide range of semiotic modes. By using video as an essential tool in the research the framework theories concerning visual ethnography, video documentation and individuals as reflective practitioners were also needed. The findings can be divided into the following themes: the use of tasks for assessment, collaborative discussion, equipment, ethical dilemmas. Collaborative discussions were evaluated as a meaningful way of sharing knowledge. The use of video recordings in association with these discussions raised important ethical issues. Working with the assessment framework was of great interest to the teachers but it took a lot of time from their ordinary work. In this way the project highlighted more general aspects of school development. The research also concerns teachers´ use of collaborative discussions in assessment work, multimodal tasks in mathematics and video as a research tool in general.