Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. (2019)

Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019.

This book represents a comprehensive effort to understand discrimination, racialization, racism, Islamophobia, anti-racist activism, and the inclusion and exclusion of minorities in Nordic countries. Examining critical media events in this heavily mediatized society, the contributors explore how processes of racialization take place in an environment dominated by commercial interests, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives and sentiments, and a surprising lack of informed research on national racism and racialization. Overall, in tracing how these individual events further racial inequalities through emotional and affective engagement, the book seeks to define the trajectory of modern racism in Scandinavia.

Content:

 1. Peter Hervik:

Racialization in the Nordic Countries: An Introduction

2. Mathias Danbolt, Lene Myong:

 Racial Turns and Returns: Recalibrations of Racial Exceptionalism in Danish Public Debates on Racism

3. Tuija Saresma:

Politics of Fear and Racialized Rape: Intersectional Reading of the Kempele Rape Case

4. Mahitab Ezz El Din:

 News Media Racialization of Muslims: The Case of Nerikes Allehanda’s Publishing of the Mohamed Caricature

5. Asta Smedegaard Nielsen:

White Fear: Habitual Whiteness and Racialization of the Threat of Terror in Danish News Journalism

6. Sayaka Osanami Törngren:

 Talking Color-Blind: Justifying and Rationalizing Attitudes Toward Interracial Marriages in Sweden

7. Mantė Vertelytė, Peter Hervik:

The Vices of Debating Racial Epithets in Danish News Media Discourse

 8. Carolina S. Boe, Karina Horsti:

Anti-Racism from the Margins: Welcoming Refugees at Schengen’s Northernmost Border

9. Christian Stokke:

Do Antiracist Efforts and Diversity Programs Make a Difference? Assessing the Case of Norway

10. Camilla Haavisto:

The Power of Being Heard: How Claims Against Racism Are Constructed, Spread, and Listened to in a Hybrid Media Environment

11. Kjetil Rødje, T. S. Thorsen:

(Re)Framing Racialization: Djurs Sommerland as a Battleground of (Anti-)Racism

12. Nasar Meer:

Whiteness and Racialization

http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-74630-2.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319746296

Brade, Lovise. ‘“Just So You Know; I’m Absolutely Completely Normal!”—An Empirical Investigation of Firstness’. (2015)

Brade, Lovise. ‘“Just So You Know; I’m Absolutely Completely Normal!”—An Empirical Investigation of Firstness’. NORA: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 23, July 2015.

What is it like to be a white Danish male heterosexual engineer? What is it like to enjoy societal privileges without even noticing it? In a liberal egalitarian and consensus-seeking country like Denmark, theses questions are hard, if not impossible, to ask. We are very used to talking about and diagnosing “the Others” (in various forms) but what happens when the analytical gaze is turned towards the unproblematized majority – “the Firsts”? This article share insights from a fieldwork among a group of “perfectly normal” engineers in a large Danish consulting company and suggests firstness as an im/perceptible position depending largely on context and what kind of “Other” it relates to. The article also proposes ways to navigate when engaging methodologically and analytically with firstness.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08038740.2015.1045939

Andreassen, Rikke. ‘The Search for the White Nordic: Analysis of the Contemporary New Nordic Kitchen and Former Race Science’. (2014)

Andreassen, Rikke. ‘The Search for the White Nordic: Analysis of the Contemporary New Nordic Kitchen and Former Race Science’. Social Identities, vol. 20, no. 6, Nov. 2014, pp. 438–451.

The article analyzes the so-called ‘New Nordic Kitchen’ and its award-winning Copenhagen-based restaurant, Noma. Despite the fact that the idea of the New Nordic Kitchen, where only ingredients found naturally in the Nordic territories can be used for cooking, has gained huge popularity among ordinary people and politicians alike, very limited critical research has been done on the phenomenon. This article investigates how the New Nordic Kitchen plays into constructions of race and whiteness. It shows how the New Nordic Kitchen celebrates an ideal of ‘the Nordic’ as ‘pure’, ‘wild’ and isolated from globalization and immigration. Furthermore, it argues that the image of Nordic food, displayed in the New Nordic Kitchen – including the idea of Nordic food as a messenger between a celebrated past and contemporary times – is rather exclusionary towards Nordic racial minorities, e.g. recently arrived immigrants and descendants. The article includes an analysis of Nordic race science from the turn of the twentieth century in order to illustrate how the New Nordic Kitchen draws upon a longer historical tradition of viewing the Nordic, and especially Nordic whiteness, as superior. The historical importance of race science in Denmark is not common knowledge, and very limited research is done in this area. The article therefore also brings new insights to the historical construction of whiteness in the Nordic context. Finally, the article also shows how the New Nordic Kitchen not only draws upon but also continues the colonial power relations between Denmark and former Danish colonies.

doi:10.1080/13504630.2014.1002599.

Blaagaard, Bolette ‘European Whiteness? A Critical Approach’. (2008) [PDF]

Blaagaard, Bolette ‘European Whiteness? A Critical Approach’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 4, 4, Dec. 2008.

Born out of the United States’ (U.S.) history of slavery and segregation and intertwined EUROPEAN WHITENESS? 21 with gender studies and feminism, the field of critical whiteness studies does not fit easily into a European setting and the particular historical context that entails. In order for a field of European critical whiteness studies to emerge, its relation to the U.S. theoretical framework, as well as the particularities of the European context need to be taken into account. The article makes a call for a multilayered approach to take over from the identity politics so often employed in the fields of U.S. gender, race, and whiteness studies.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v0i4.27942.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/27942.

Blaagaard, Bolette. Journalism of Relation. Social Constructions of’whiteness’ and Their Implications in Contemporary Danish Journalistic Practice and Production. (2009) [PDF]

Blaagaard, Bolette. Journalism of Relation. Social Constructions of’whiteness’ and Their Implications in Contemporary Danish Journalistic Practice and Production. Dissertation. Utrecht University, 2009,

This dissertation is focused on the journalistically practiced and mediated self-other relation in the contemporary cultural and postcolonial context of Denmark. As part of the ‘western’ world Denmark’s journalistic endeavours and explorations reflect and engage the cultural memory and thus the hegemonic self-image, the social imaginary, of the country and to some extent of its ‘western’ neighbours. Positioning myself in a European tradition of what may be called philosophies of experience – that is, philosophies that place emphasis on the embodiment of knowledge and the subjectivity of experience – I pay particular attention to the practice and production, in Raymond William’s use of the word, of journalistic participation in re- and de-constructing cultural memories and feelings of national, cultural, ethnic and religious belonging. The dissertation sets up a theoretical framework of references by presenting a number of debates that challenge the claimed universality and objectivity of white ‘western’ culture and politics. This critique emerge from African-American scholars and ‘white’ feminists alike, however the two have difficulties combining their respective positions and knowledge claims. Moreover, African-American women have called for recognition of the particularities of their situation of belonging to both categories. I employ a post-phenomenological approach to develop a theoretical framework which is based on the argument that though perception is at the core of a phenomenological approach to difference, perception should not be understood as interchangeable with visualisation. It is rather an understanding that creates strong ties to consciousness and experience. Drawing in the whole of personal experience and consciousness of difference phenomenology presents a theory of the self-other relation which is simultaneously personal and political. Secondly, the dissertation relates the phenomenological ‘race’ and gender debates to the societal and productive context of contemporary European and ‘western’ globalised and mediated culture and politics. Journalism is re-defined as theory and practice of production of cultural memory and social imaginaries of gendered, ethnic, religious, national and ‘racial’ differences. At the core of the argument here is a critique of the journalistic use of ‘objectivity’. This use hides the journalistic subjectivity by splitting the ethical accountability and relation from journalistic training and practices whereby a ‘white’ and homogeneous social imaginary is reproduced. I make a call for thinking about journalism as relation – in terms of technological mediations, but also in terms of subjectivities. In order to allow for this, a shift is needed in the understanding of an ‘us’ that forges a view of identity redefined in terms of intensities (Braidotti 2006), an ethics of difference (de Beauvoir 1976; Braidotti 2006) and a non-reductionist understanding of the other as part of the self (Glissant 1997). Following this framework the dissertation reworks ideas of cosmopolitanism from universal reproductions of sameness into creative productions of singular self-other relations based on the practiced and productive journalism. This is substantiated through case study analyses. The aim is to challenge the modern, rational journalistic subject referring back to the unified nation-state citizens. It is an undoing of journalism – a journalism as becoming and as excess of relation.

PDF: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/32207/blaagaard.pdf?sequence=1

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Lene Myong. ‘Love Will Keep Us Together: Kærlighed og hvid transracialitet i protester mod danske familie- sammenføringsregler’. (2012) [PDF]

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Lene Myong. ‘Love Will Keep Us Together: Kærlighed og hvid transracialitet i protester mod danske familie- sammenføringsregler’. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, vol. 36, no. 03–04, Universitetsforlaget, 2012, pp. 188–202.

De danske familiesammenføringsregler blev i 2010 genstand for kritik fra et borgerinitiativ, som i kærlighedens navn kæmpede for en lempelse af loven. Som politisk mobiliserende affekt lover kærligheden inklusion og frigørelse. Men risikerer den også at gentage racialiserede og seksuelle hierarkier? På hvilke præmisser kan seksualpolitiske kritikker udfordre disse hierarkier? Denne artikel søger at tage affekt alvorligt som politisk og analytisk fænomen, og den introducerer begrebet om hvid transracialitet som betegnelse for de underliggende magtformer, der informerer kærlighed som politisk protestform.

Denmark has imposed some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe since 2000. Consequently, family reunification in the country has become increasingly difficult for both immigrants and Danish nationals. This article looks at a political initiative called «Love without Borders» (LwB) and its attempt to mobilize the Danish public in a push to overturn the laws. LwB has generated momentum around the ideal of transraciality (straight, white subjects oriented towards reproduction and romantic love). At the same time, queer activists have offered  a political rebuke by pointing out how the laws (and in turn LwB’s critique) are built on heteronormative assumptions that ignore homosexuality. In both cases, however, love seems to promise affective ties to the nation, to the future, and to the political system in ways that sustain white hegemony. Building on Sara Ahmed’s reflections on love as cultural politics and Jasbir Puar’s notion of homonationalism, the article analyzes posters, viral videos and newspaper debates in its discussion of the promises and pitfalls of love as an affective political tool.

https://www.idunn.no/tfk/2012/03-04/love_will_keep_us_together_krlighed_og_hvid_transracialit

PDF: https://www.idunn.no/tfk/2012/03-04/love_will_keep_us_together_krlighed_og_hvid_transracialit. https://www.idunn.no/tfk/2012/03-04/love_will_keep_us_together_krlighed_og_hvid_transracialit

Andreassen, Rikke, and Kathrine Vitus. Affectivity and Race: Studies from Nordic Contexts. (2016)

Andreassen, Rikke, and Kathrine Vitus. Affectivity and Race: Studies from Nordic Contexts. Routledge, 2016.

This book presents new empirical studies of social difference in the Nordic welfare states, in order to advance novel theoretical perspectives on the everyday practices and macro-politics of race and gender in multi-ethnic societies. With attention to the specific political and cultural landscapes of the Nordic countries, Affectivity and Race draws on a variety of sources, including television programmes, news media, fictional literature, interviews, ethnographic observations, teaching curricula and policy documents, to explore the ways in which ideas about affectivity and emotion afford new insights into the experience of racial difference and the unfolding of political discourses on race in various social spheres. Organised around the themes of the politicisation of race through affect, the way that race produces affect and the affective experience of race, this interdisciplinary collection sheds light on the role of feelings in the formation of subjectivities, how race and whiteness are affectively circulated in public life and the ways in which emotions contribute to regimes of inclusion and exclusion. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, with interests in sociology, anthropology, media, literary and cultural studies, race and ethnicity, and Nordic studies.

Contents:

Introduction: affectivity as a lens to racial formations in the Nordic countries, Kathrine Vitus and Rikke Andreassen.

Part I How is Race Politicised through Affects?:

Politics of irony as the emerging sensibility of the anti-immigrant debate, Kaarina Nikunen;

If it had been a muslim: affectivity and race in Danish journalists’ reflections on making news on terror, Asta Smedegaard Nielsen;

The racial grammar of Swedish higher education and research policy: the limits and conditions of researching race in a colour-blind context, Tobias Hübinette and Paula Mählck.

Part II How Does Race Produce Affects?

‘And then we do it in Norway’: learning leadership through affective contact zones, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and Dorthe Staunæs;

Nordic colour-blindness and Nella Larsen, Rikke Andreassen; Disturbance and celebration of Josephine Baker in Copenhagen 1928: emotional constructions of whiteness, Marlene Spanger.

Part III How is Race Affectively Experienced?

Feeling at loss: affect, whiteness and masculinity in the immediate aftermath of Norway’s terror, Stine H. Bang Svendsen;

The affectivity of racism: enjoyment and disgust in young people’s film, Kathrine Vitus; Two journeys into research on difference in a Nordic context: a collaborative auto-ethnography, Henry Mainsah and Lin Prøitz;

Doing ‘feelwork’: reflections on whiteness and methodological challenges in research on queer partner migration, Sara Ahlstedt.

https://www.routledge.com/Affectivity-and-Race-Studies-from-Nordic-Contexts/Andreassen-Vitus/p/book/9780367597870