Youth, Religion and Participation : Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

This roundtable session focus on religious and social change as well as democracy and political culture, startingfrom the role of youth in these processes. The role of religion in young people’s participation is a key theme inthe cross-disciplinary network “youth and religion” connected to the Impact program. Participation here includesboth citizens’ “vertical” capacities to make their voices heard and influence decision-makers in the political system(e.g. via elections or civic organizations and social movements) and their “horizontal” capacities to communicateand cooperate with other people (within society at large or certain associations/communities). The participants ofthe session will present influential theories and methodologies used to study participation among youth within theresearch disciplines they represent (i.e. sociology of religion; theology; ethnology; political science). This will befollowed by a joint discussion of how these theories and methodologies have approached religious involvement witha particular focus on youth’s participation in politics, civil society as well as social media and the internet. The aim ofthe session is to look for common themes and new issues that can guide contemporary studies of participation in thefield of youth and religion. The session is open to conference participants interested in the issues discussed.

Medborgarmönstringen inom högern 1915–1936 : En begreppshistorisk och diskursorienterad undersökning av medborgarbegreppets utbredning, mening och funktion inom Allmänna valmansförbundet

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Swedish right-wing party Allmänna valmansförbundet (AVF) made citizen into a key concept within their political vocabulary and practice. This thesis examines the distribution, meaning and function of the concept of citizen within the AVF between 1915 and 1936. By using theoretical and methodological perspectives from both the English (Skinner) and German (Koselleck) side of conceptual history vis-à-vis Begriffsgeschischte, this study illuminates how a discursive framework took place within the AVF and expanded throughout the organisation. The constitutional reforms 1918/1921 and the organisational strength from opposite parties, stressed the importance for the AVF to assemble the citizens around conservative value laden concepts: responsibility, ansvar, and public participation, offentlighet. This new situation in political and social life, pushed the AVF towards a reorganisation. The aim was to educate the masses, women and youth into conservative citizens. Citizen became the sole tool in (i) upholding the traditional heritage between folk–state, and (ii) enabling the AVF citizen discourse to spread throughout the society. This study shows the multiple meaning and functions of the citizen concept within the AVF.  It provides a new understanding of how collective concepts became an important part of the struggle for power during the democratization process in Swedish political history and must in that respect be seen as an antithesis to the collective concepts of the Social Democratic Party during this period.  

Den flygande maran : En studie om åtta narkotikabrukande kvinnor i Stockholm

Between April 1997 and November 1999, I followed eight socially excluded female drug users in an attempt to describe their lives and living conditions. The study employs an ethnographic approach with the focus being directed at the specific woman and her life in relation to the social context where this life is lived. The study’s objective has been to describe the lives and living conditions of the eight drug-using women, as well as the extent of the opportunities available to them, as being determined by mechanisms of social exclusion. Their lives are understood on the basis of a feminist and social constructionist perspective where perceptions of ‘the drug-abusing woman’ are regarded as the result of constructions of gender and deviance. The theoretical perspectives proceeds from the idea that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one. The fundamental idea is that women become women by means of processes of femininisation, in the context of which certain ways of interpreting and presenting oneself as a woman are regarded as good and others as bad. Our images of ‘the female drug addict’ are based on how we define and interpret deviance and on the cultural and social thought and behaviour patterns we ascribe to people on the basis of bodily differences. It is images of ‘the good woman’ that defines what we regard as characteristic of ‘the bad woman’ and vice versa. The findings are organised into three main topics: femininity, living conditions and social control. The main findings are: The women described themselves as women by relating to normative messages about how women “are and should be”, and their drug use constituted a means of coping with life from their social position. Their life revolved to a large extent around money via a constant struggle to find enough to cover the rent, food and other basic necessities. And finally, how the women’s relations to societal institutions were formed by their social position as ‘female drug addicts’ and how the asymmetry of these relations produced certain fixed patterns of action for the parties involved.