Tag: theory

Graugaard, Naja Dyrendom, & Høgfeldt, Amalie Ambrosius. The silenced genocide: Why the Danish intrauterine device (IUD) enforcement in Kalaallit Nunaat calls for an intersectional decolonial analysis. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Graugaard, Naja Dyrendom, & Høgfeldt, Amalie Ambrosius. The silenced genocide: Why the Danish intrauterine device (IUD) enforcement in Kalaallit Nunaat calls for an intersectional decolonial analysis. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 162–167.

From introduction:

In 2022, it was publicly revealed that Danish authorities have initiated and performed coercive insertions of intrauterine devices (IUDs) in Kalaallit women and adolescents, beginning in the 1960s. This has brought forth public and political calls to action, and an offi cial Danish-Greenlandic commission has been established to investigate this hitherto silenced history (Naalakkersuisut 2023).As feminist scholars of postcolonial and de-colonial studies (one of us Danish/Kalaaleq, one of us non-Kalaaleq), we urge the forthcoming investigations to considerthe colonial, racial, and gendered mechanisms of the IUD enforcement prac-tice, and the narratives around it. We hold that apt analysis of Danish IUD coercion and campaigning, its past workings and present consequences, requires specific attention towards how different modes of power and oppression intersect in Danish colonial strategies in Kalaallit Nunaat. While the gendered and racial dynamics of Danish colo-nization is seldomly analyzed (Loftsdó ttir & Jensen 2012;Petterson 2012; 2014; Andersen, Hvenegård-Lassen & Knobblock 2015; Ambrosius 2020; 2022), we argue that the history (and presence) of reproductive control of Kalaallit indeed points to the intimate relations between colonialism, racism, and patriarchy in Danish colonial practices.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/137309

Acharya, Maya & Gabriella Isadora Muasya. Sensible Ruptures: Towards Embodied and Relational Ways of Knowing. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Acharya, Maya & Gabriella Isadora Muasya. Sensible Ruptures: Towards Embodied and Relational Ways of Knowing. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 29–45.

This paper explores queer and racialized experiences in Danish academia through what we call ‘sensible ruptures’: affective, embodied and sensory ways of knowing. Taking seriously these modes of knowledge, the article outlines the creation of an online, audio-visual archive. Weaving together text, audio and images to unfold our concept of sensible ruptures, we demonstrate how the audio-visual can meaningfully contribute to capturing the affective and material fabric of racialized and queer experiences with/in Danish higher education. Sensible ruptures underscore the importance of under-standing the complex processes of racialization in an institutional and national context saturated by ambiguity and exceptionalism. We contend that thinking not only against, but beyond, disembodied colonial logics offers a different mode of knowledge creation, reconfi guring the self as permeable: constituted through and with our histories and surroundings. We centre friendship as a vital part of this process, harnessing queer epistolary to perform our pursuit of, and argument for, knowledge as always and inevitably relational.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/138090

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. Black Racial Isolation: Understanding African Diaspora Subjectivity in Post-Racial Denmark. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. Black Racial Isolation: Understanding African Diaspora Subjectivity in Post-Racial Denmark, 2023, Dissertation, UC Berkeley.

This is an Afrofeminist Cultural Studies analysis of blackness and belonging in Denmark. The study is situated within African Diaspora Studies, specifically the theoretical branches in and of Europe. Simultaneously constructed as marginal to hegemonic Europeanness and dominant conceptions of blackness, I seek to carve out space for Afropean and European Black perspectives. With attention to genealogical distinctions between European-based Afrofeminisms and Black Feminisms of the USA, this dissertation is a contribution to a grounded theory of blackness in a larger European context. Specifically, this is a step towards writing the much under-theorized conditions of the African diasporas in the Nordics into the archives (McEachrane 2016).The study centers first-person narratives. I focus on first-generation African diaspora Dan-ish people, i.e., those with experiences of being raised and socialized in Denmark while Black as the first in a family. Situation myself as a researcher within this very life experience, I examine how others have navigated that experience before the era of the Internet and with a scarcity of racial mirroring. But particularly, I examine the condition of being racialized as Black in an alleged post-racial European context, dominated by a ‘raceless’ discourse of Denmark and its ‘other’ (El-Tayeb 2011; Boulila 2019). And more precisely within a regional discourse of Nordic Exceptionalism (Habel 2011). Positioned as apparently a paradox within an exclusive nationalist narrative, Afropean existence becomes unspeakable and Black Danish people constructed as always already foreigners, having just arrived. Part of the Black Danish experience, as across the Nordic region, is thus characterized by a lack of language to name one’s reality (Adeniji 2016; Diallo 2022). And importantly, a language to understand and resist racism, and to develop a political consciousness (Essed 1991; Kelekay 2019). I analyze how these circumstances affect Black Danish people’s subjectivity. The study’s first chapter builds on a reading of Crucian-Danish Victor Cornelins’ autobiography From St. Croix to Nakskov from 1976. This is supplemented by material from the Nakskov Local History Archives in Denmark. Here, I offer feminist analyses centered in African diasporic care and consideration of historical representations of blackness in Denmark as well as archival silences. Reading Cornelins as an early theorist of blackness in Denmark, the contours of a primary formative condition emerge: racial isolation. The second and third chapters are based on original data from semi-structured interviews during a seven-month stay in Copenhagen in 2020-2021. The second chapter sketches out the scattered collective of a post-WWII generation of so-called ‘brown babies.’ Being of Black American and white German parentage, thousands of individuals were deemed ‘better off’ outside of Germany due to their blackness and ‘mixedness.’ At the beginning of a post-racial discourse in Europe and a decolonization moment globally, a generation of ‘brown’ children were adopted into the intimate sphere of the post-racial Danish nation-state. An obscured, misrepresented part of Danish history, this chapter seeks to humanize people of this generation and identify their agency in constructing themselves as whole. The final chapter gives context to the current moment and growing up Black in Denmark. Imagined as outside of the Danish nation, yet also outside of dominant immigration discourse, analyzing the particularity of racialization as Black proves highly pertinent. The taxing reality of experiencing racism in a post-racialist culture become clear, especially the fact of being the only one in many social contexts. Yet this chapter also illuminates people’s ambivalence, disidentification, and dissociation from concepts of collective blackness or minoritarian solidarity. There is a complex relationship between assuming one’s own racialized social position as Black and understanding oneself as Danish. Black racial isolation runs through the three chapters as a common condition for African diasporic Danish people who have come of age in Denmark between 1905 and 2021. I therefore of-fer Black racial isolation as a core concept to better understand how Danish Black people make sense of themselves and their relationship to African diasporas and Black (political) collectivity. As a Black experience the Danish is version an articulation of racialization within a Westernized con-text historically shaped through binaries of Black/white. What sets this apart from other theorizations of blackness in the West, is that it experienced alone, rather than in community. My findings suggest that such isolation can results in internalization of binaries and a splitting of the self. In conclusion, I meditate on conditions for creating connection – with self and others – as a path to-ward sustainable, humanizing futures for Danish African diasporic blackness and belonging. As such, this dissertation contributes original, grounded theory of blackness, race, and racialization in Europe with deep appreciation for Afrofeminist and decolonial feminist genealogies from which this study could grow.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qk0z1fm

Berisha, Tringa. Racialized spatial attachments: Researcher positionality and access in a Danish suburban high school. (2023)

~ mortenstinus

Berisha, Tringa. Racialized spatial attachments: Researcher positionality and access in a Danish suburban high school. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 63–79. https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/136438

Danish high school’s rising ethnic/racial diversity and tendencies of segregation call for explorations of students’ educational experiences of racialized differentiation. This article unfolds methodological reflections on this endeavor, by focusing on researcher access. Not only is space a medium through which racial relations materialize – space is also interconnected with access. If researchers depend on relations for access to sites of inquiry, which depends on how researchers are read by actors in the field, it is critical to scrutinize the spatial dimensions to such readings and what knowledge is (allowed to be) produced. Unfolding two ethnographic vignettes, the researcher’s positionality of passing is analyzed to explicate the relationship between racialized bodies and racialized spaces. I propose the notion of spatial attachments as an analytical lens for explaining such body–space conflations to illuminate the interconnectivity between educational spaces and the broader external world, and to expand the language to address racialization in the colorblind context of Danish high schools.

Khawaja, Iram, Tina Wilchen Christensen, and Line Lerche Mørck, Dehumanization and a Psychology of Deglobalization: Double Binds and Movements beyond Radicalization and Racialized Mis-Interpellation. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Khawaja, Iram, Tina Wilchen Christensen, and Line Lerche Mørck, Dehumanization and a Psychology of Deglobalization: Double Binds and Movements beyond Radicalization and Racialized Mis-Interpellation, Theory & Psychology, 33.2 (2023), 249–65

This article seeks to conceptualize and analyze how processes of deglobalization are interdependently connected with processes of dehumanization, double bind, and racialization in the field of radicalization of ethnic and religious minorities in Denmark. We analyze two sociopolitical cases to show how deglobalization takes form in local practice, enabling or limiting specific subjects’ and groups’ possibilities of being perceived and accepted as Danish citizens. Relations between radicalization and dehumanization are explored across subjective, societal, political, and discursive practices linked to double bind processes and possible movements beyond them. Our aim is to establish a theoretical framework for exploring a psychology of deglobalization that takes into account processes of racialization, mis-interpellation, double bind, and the possibilities for rehumanization.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543221138541

Skadegård, M. C., Slipping and Sliding: Wielding Power with Slippery Constructions of Danishness. (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Skadegård, M. C., Slipping and Sliding: Wielding Power with Slippery Constructions of Danishness, Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, 1.2 (2022), 158–80.

This article addresses implicit and underlying discrimination in public and private interactions in Denmark. In particular, it examines racial structural discrimination in regard to citizenship and belonging in Danish contexts. Two cases are presented in this analysis, both from the fall of 2015, in which mixed race figures either directly or indirectly. The first case is a public debate concerning Danish citizenship as presented in news coverage and the second is an everyday private interaction at a dinner party in which the author was a participant. The study assesses how (racialized) Danishness, citizenship, and entitlement are constructed in the two cases. Further, it introduces the notion of “slipperiness” as a mechanism in discriminatory interactions (in regard to defining “Danishness”) and discusses how this notion functions to maintain and enforce racial discrimination.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5m3202b5

ang, Ahrong, Child-Friendly Racism? An Ethnographical Study on Children’s Racialized Becoming in a Race-Blind Context. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Yang, Ahrong, Child-Friendly Racism? An Ethnographical Study on Children’s Racialized Becoming in a Race-Blind Context, Dissertation, Aalborg University, 2021)

English summary
What makes race and issues concerning racialization primarily
seem a concern for adults? What are the implications of
disconnecting race and children ‒ keeping race and racialization
from children? This dissertation is dedicated to an investigation
of children’s racialized becoming in a Danish context, and in
doing so, by foregrounding the racialized lived experiences
shared by children aged 10-13. The context in which the
children’s racialized lived experiences become, I argue, is
situated in a historically challenged space of denial, evasiveness,
and discomfort towards issues on race. Hence, the racialized
lived experiences shared by the children become within a
context that works against these experiences. It is within this
space of mutual resistance that this research takes its point of
departure.


In getting closer to understanding the racialized becoming of
children, the study is guided by two research interests: 1)
Analytically privileging race as an important social category,
by/and 2) foregrounding the children’s racially lived
experiences. In foregrounding lived experiences as access to
knowledge production, the dissertation finds theoretical
inspiration in postcolonialism, critical race theory, critical
childhood studies, and queer and black feminist perspectives.
What especially draws me towards these insights is how they
offer alternative perspectives on how to understand both
children and race as lived, meaningful categories, however,
socially constructive and performative ones.
The project is based on an ethnographical study with children
attending 4th to 6th grade from spring 2018 to fall 2019. The study
was made up by participant observations, qualitative interviews
with children, informal conversations with teachers at the
schools, and workshops with the children that were designed for
this project. Workshops were based on visual methodologies and
material made by the children.
In particular, the dissertation aims at reflecting on and offering
alternative perspectives into understanding race and childhood
that challenge the idea of children being non-knowledgeable and
in need of protection against issues of race. By queering
children’s racialized becoming, I refer to a non-binary
Child-Friendly Racism? perspective on the child/adult relation, which takes seriously the children’s racialized experiences by also approaching the in-
/outside of the body and emotions non-binarily.
The study shows how the children’s racialized experiences
become within and are expressed through resistance towards
discourses working to suppress these experiences. Manifested
through two article contributions, the research specifically
examines, in the first article, how the racially minoritized
children’s becoming is not only informed by their past
experiences with race and racism. Race is also experienced as
expected futures ‒ what I call racialized forecasting. What the
concept springs from and is trying to grasp is how race becomes
within struggles that the racially minoritized children shared
when trying to make sense of their experiences.
The second article analytically unpacks the notions of ‘child-
friendliness’ through examining the seemingly complex
intertwinement and interconnectedness of race and children,
which I find to be within the concept of innocence. The
dissertation operates with innocence from two different
perspectives: First, in terms of racialized innocence. Second, in
terms of child-ed innocence. Innocence, I argue, is the
intersecting point of children and race: An intersection that
currently works to disconnect children and race. The discourses
of innocence that work to maintain ideas of child(-ed)
innocence, and which furthermore make questioning children’s
innocence seem almost outrageous, I stress, are connected to the
same notions that maintain race-blindness and processes that
discursively have made and sustained the silencing and erasure
of race as a lived category.
It is my hope that this research can give rise to further reflection
on the importance of how race as a social category informs the
lives of children and their feelings of belonging. Both racially
minoritized and white children.


Dansk resume
Hvad gør race og racialiserede problemstillinger til et
anliggende, der ofte kun er forbeholdt voksnes virkelighed?
Hvad er implikationerne ved at afkoble og skærme børn fra race
og racialisering? Denne afhandling undersøger børns
racialiserede tilblivelse (racialized becoming) i en dansk
kontekst med udgangspunkt i racialiserede erfaringer fra børn i
alderen 10-13. Jeg argumenterer for, at den kontekst, hvori
børnenes erfaringer bliver til, er en kontekst, som historisk er
situeret i benægtelse, undvigelser og ubehag omkring
spørgsmål, der involverer race og racialisering. Altså bliver
børnenes racialiserede levede erfaringer til i en kontekst, der
modarbejder og underkender deres oplevelser. Det er en
nysgerrighed for denne modstridende kontekst, som dette
projekt udspringer fra.
For at komme nærmere en forståelse af børns racialiserede
tilblivelse har to forskningsinteresser styret projektet: 1)
Analytisk at privilegere race som en betydningsfuld social
kategori ved at 2) tage analytisk udgangspunkt i børnenes
racialiserede levede erfaringer. Afhandlingen har sit analytiske
fokus på levede erfaringer som adgang til vidensproduktion og
er inspireret af teoretiske perspektiver som postkolonialisme,
critical race theory, kritiske barndomsstudier, queer- og black
feminism. Jeg er særligt inspireret af, hvordan disse perspektiver
tilbyder alternative indsigter til at forstå barn og race som
konstruerede og performative — men alligevel betydningsfulde
— sociale kategorier. Projektet er baseret på et etnografisk studie foretaget fra foråret 2018 til efteråret 2019 med børn i 4. til 6. klasse. Studiet består
af deltagerobservationer, kvalitative interviews med børn,
uformelle samtaler med lærere og workshops med børnene.
Disse workshops var designet til projektet og baseret på visuelle
metoder og materiale lavet af børnene.
I særdeleshed er afhandlingens sigte at reflektere over og tilbyde
alternative perspektiver på race og barndom: Perspektiver, der
udfordrer dikotomiske forestillinger om børn som uvidende,
uskyldige og ufærdige mennesker, der bør beskyttes mod race
indtil de en dag er gamle nok til at erfare ”voksenlivets
realiteter.” Med queering children’s racialized becoming
Child-Friendly Racism? refererer jeg til non-binære perspektiver, som tager børnenes
(racialiserede) erfaringer alvorligt og gør op med binære
forståelser af barn vs. voksen og krop vs. emotionalitet
Studiet demonstrerer, hvordan børnenes racialiserede erfaringer
bliver til igennem modstand mod raceblinde diskurser:
Diskurser, der forsøger at ignorere og undertrykke disse
oplevelser. I afhandlingens to artikler undersøger afhandlingen,
blandt andet, hvordan de racialt minoriserede børns tilblivelse
ikke kun informeres af deres tidligere erfaringer med race og
racisme, men også gennem forventede fremtidige oplevelser.
Dette undersøges i afhandlingens ene artikel gennem begrebet
racialized forecasting, der beskriver hvordan børnene
fremskriver deres levede erfaringer som racialiserede og
forestiller sig fremtidige situationer. Begrebet tager
udgangspunkt i, hvordan race bliver til gennem følelser af
modstand: Følelser, som børnene fortæller om, når de forsøger
at skabe mening ud fra deres erfaringer — levede såvel som
forestillede.
Afhandlingens anden artikel koncentrerer sig om ideen om
’child-friendliness’ [børnevenlighed] — et udtryk, som bringes
op af en gruppe børn i deres interne forhandlinger om race, og
hvad de må tale om som børn. Artiklen fremanalyserer den
komplekse forbundenhed og sammenfiltring mellem race og
børn: En forbundenhed, som jeg vil mene findes i og omkring
uskyldsbegrebet. Afhandlingen opererer med uskyld fra to
forskellige perspektiver: Som racialiseret uskyld (racialized
innocence) og børnegjort uskyld (child-ed innocence).
Uskyldsbegrebet som et skæringspunkt mellem race og barn er
med til at producere diskurser, som frakobler barn fra race – og
race fra barn. De diskursive forestillinger om uskyld, som er med
til at opretholde forestillinger om børns uskyld (eller børnegjort
uskyld), argumenterer jeg for, er direkte forbundet til de
forestillinger, som opretholder raceblindhed: De processer, der
diskursivt har været med til at fortie, nedtone og slette race som
levet kategori.
Mit ønske er, at denne forskning kan være med til at give
anledning til yderligere refleksion over- og dialog om
vigtigheden af, hvordan race som levet kategori er med til at
konstruere og forme børns liv og deres oplevelser af at høre til.
For både racialt minoriserede og hvide børn.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.54337/aau466408959

Papadakis, Yiannis, Belonging in a Welfare State: Greek and Greek Cypriot Immigrants in Denmark. (2022)

~ mortenstinus

Papadakis, Yiannis, Belonging in a Welfare State: Greek and Greek Cypriot Immigrants in Denmark, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 0.0 (2022), 1–20

A central question in migration studies concerns how communities of belonging can exist beyond communities of identity. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Greek and Greek Cypriot immigrants in Denmark and theoretical discussions on “translocational belongings”, this article suggests that security, equality and a sense of ownership are key factors that contribute towards an enhanced a sense of belonging premised on solidarity, even in the presence of cultural differences related to identity. Migrant belongings, it is further suggested, should not only be treated as plural but also as comparative vis-à-vis the country of origin. The immigrants’ narratives often focussed on comparisons between Denmark with Greece or Cyprus emphasizing how their interactions with the Danish welfare state contributed to a, comparatively-speaking, more profound sense of belonging in Denmark. Yet, the rise of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, along with the persistent challenges to the welfare state, have led to rising feelings of alienation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2022.2085524

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. “Diasporiske perspektiver på racialiseringens kolonialitet i Danmark.” (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. “Diasporiske perspektiver på racialiseringens kolonialitet i Danmark.” Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat, no. 25, 25, Aug. 2021, pp. 88–111.

Fra indledning:

Da jeg i begyndelsen af 2020 blev opfordret til at bidrage til dette særnummer, kunne ingen af os have forudset, hvad året ville komme til at bringe, og jeg ser det derfor som en mulighed for at stille nogle grundlæggende spørgsmål til teamaet sorthed i en dansk kontekst. Især i kølvandet på George Floyd. Og mordet på Bornholm (Hunter 2020). Hvad og hvem taler vi egentlig om, når vi taler om sorthed? Hudfarve, en racemæssig kategori, en strukturel position, en kulturel identitet, en politisk identitet, levede erfaringer eller ideologi? Den kortvarige og selektive offentlige opmærksomhed usynligjorde måder, hvorpå nævnte mord kan være udtryk for en anti-sort status quo i Vesten rettere end beklagelige særtilfælde. Mediernes/offentlighedens fokus på mordene på disse enkelte mænd tilslører med andre ord, hvordan et samspil af magthierarkier gør sorte personer, der marginaliseres på flere måder, udsatte på andre måder, mens disse samme personer også systematisk ekskluderes fra gængse kritikker af anti-sort vold og død. Jeg rejser dog primært de ovenstående spørgsmål, da sorthed og afrikansk diasporisk baggrund i stigende grad, og med rette, er omdrejningspunkt for politisk organisering og græsrodsaktivisme i Danmark. Der er stor diversitet blandt folk med afrikansk baggrund i Danmark. Og derfor også afgørende forskellige positioner i samfundet inden for den brede gruppe. Fra mit perspektiv er det derfor ikke indlysende, hvilke forståelser af sorthed, og hvilke former for sammenfiltrede magtrelationer, der mobiliseres gennem termer såsom sort, afro eller afrikansk. Jeg er nysgerrig på, hvordan nationalitet, køn, klasse og konkrete, diasporiske historier medtænkes og kontekstualiseres lokalt i danske formuleringer af sorthed. Og på, hvad, om noget, der får sorthedtil at hænge sammen på dansk i organisering på tværs af afrikanske diasporaer i Danmark.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/128472

Hassani, Amani. “Muslims and Islamophobia in ‘Raceless’ Societies: Critical Insights from Denmark and Quebec.” (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Hassani, Amani. “Muslims and Islamophobia in ‘Raceless’ Societies: Critical Insights from Denmark and Quebec.” The Sociological Review, The Sociological Review, June 2021. thesociologicalreview.org, https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.gijy3798.

PDF: https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/june-2021/sociological-theories/muslims-and-islamophobia-in-raceless-societies/

Borevi, Karin, Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen, and Per Mouritsen. ‘The Civic Turn of Immigrant Integration Policies in the Scandinavian Welfare States’. (2017) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Borevi, Karin, Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen, and Per Mouritsen. ‘The Civic Turn of Immigrant Integration Policies in the Scandinavian Welfare States’. Comparative Migration Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Physica-Verlag, Dec. 2017.

This special issue addresses the question of how to understand the civic turn within immigrant integration in the West towards programs and instruments, public discourses and political intentions, which aim to condition, incentivize, and shape through socialization immigrants into ‘citizens’. Empirically, it focuses on the less studied Scandinavian cases of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In this introduction, we situate the contributions to this special issue within the overall debate on civic integration and convergence. We introduce the three cases, critically discuss the (liberal) convergence thesis and its descriptive and explanatory claims, and explain why studying the Scandinavian welfare states can further our understanding of the nature of the civic turn and its driving forces. Before concluding, we discuss whether civic integration policies actually work.

doi:10.1186/s40878-017-0052-4.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/da/publications/the-civic-turn-of-immigrant-integration-policies-in-the-scandinav-2.

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. (2020)

~ mortenstinus

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. i Et ulydigt arkiv: Udvalgte tekster af Sara Ahmed, Eds. Daniel Nikolaj Madsen, Eva Obelitz Rode, Lea Hee Ja Kramhøft, and Mette A. E. Kim-Larsen, Forlaget Nemo, 2020, 11–22.

Et ulydigt arkiv er syv af Sara Ahmeds artikler fra de sidste 20 år samlet og for første gang udgivet på dansk. Teksterne arbejder med figurer som ’den feministiske glædesdræber’, ’den melankolske immigrant’, ’det egenrådige barn’ og ’den fremmede’ indenfor emner som racisme, feminisme, klagen, m.m. Samlingens tekster skifter kontinuerligt mellem det teoretiske og det hverdagslige; mellem filosofi og popkultur; mellem det strukturelle og personlige erfaringer. 

Et ulydigt arkiv indeholder derudover et helt nyt forord dedikeret til denne udgave samt et introducerende forord af lektor Mons Bissenbakker og lektor Michael Nebeling, som viser Ahmeds tænknings relevans i dansk kontekst.

https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/en-f%C3%B8lelsernes-grammatik-og-politik.

https://www.forlagetnemo.dk/butik/ulydigtarkiv

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Antiracist Feminism and the Politics of Solidarity in Neoliberal Times’. (2021) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Antiracist Feminism and the Politics of Solidarity in Neoliberal Times’. Feminisms in the Nordic Region: Neoliberalism, Nationalism and Decolonial Critique, Eds. Suvi Keskinen, Pauline Stoltz, and Diana Mulinari, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021, 201–221.

This chapter analyses the establishment and expansion of antiracist feminism in the last decade throughout the Nordic region, with new groups, media sites, and public events organised, especially in the large cities. I examine antiracist feminist and queer of colour activism in which the main or sole actors belong to groups racialised as non-white or “others” in Nordic societies. A fundamental argument developed in the chapter is the central role and potential of these emerging social movements to reconfigure political agendas and tackling of pressing societal issues, due to their capacity to overlap and connect the borders of antiracist, feminist, and (to some extent) class-based politics. The chapter further argues for the usefulness of theorising the neoliberal turn of racial capitalism as the societal condition in which feminist activism takes place. 

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53464-6_10.

PDF: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-53464-6_10

Hussain, Naimah. ‘Bourdieu in Greenland: Elaborating the Field Dependencies of Post-Colonial Journalism’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hussain, Naimah. ‘Bourdieu in Greenland: Elaborating the Field Dependencies of Post-Colonial Journalism’. Present Scenarios of Media Production and Engagement, Eds. Simone Tosoni, Nico Carpentier, Maria Francesca Murru, Richard Kilborn, Leif Kramp, Risto Kunelius, Anthony McNicholas, Tobias Olsson, and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, edition lumière, 2017,

The scarcely populated island of Greenland offers a unique opportunity both to study the complex dependencies and tensions of contemporary “global” or “transnational” journalism and to test and develop the explanation power of one key theoretical framework, field theory. With only one (national and public) broadcaster and two weekly newspapers, the journalistic field in Greenland is small, exposed and vulnerable. It is embedded in the broader political, economic and professional field dynamics of Denmark, the former colonial power. For instance, the legislation and the organizational structure of the media are inherited and a flow of Danish visiting journalists and editors keep up the norms and the value system of the field. At the same time, Greenlandic journalism operates in a nation of its own with distinct characteristics: small size, politics of the bilingualism, tight local networks with a small elite and close ties between reporters and possible sources shape the field practically, professionally and socially (in a specific, local way). These tensions between the “global-colonial” and “local” capitals and capacities are negotiated and managed in the everyday practices of newsrooms. There is almost no previous research on Greenlandic media in general and journalism practice in particular. Mapping this small but contested field allows us to highlight some of the key analytical strengths of Bourdieu’s field theory and its ability to capture the dynamic actor relationships in such a complex, structured space. At the same time, however, the “post-colonial” realities of Greenlandic journalism can help us to pose some questions about the limits – or the need for further development – of Bourdieu’s initial sketch about the journalistic field. This chapter tests the analytical concepts of capital and habitus by putting them to empirical work through an ethnographic study of practices and structures of news making in Greenland.

https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/bourdieu-in-greenland-elaborating-the-field-dependencies-of-post-. https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/bourdieu-in-greenland-elaborating-the-field-dependencies-of-post-.

PDF: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/SuSobook2016.pdf

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 4, De Gruyter Open, Dec. 2017, pp. 251–259.

In investigating global and regional care chains, scholars have traditionally adopted a sociological bottom–up approach, but more attention has recently been focussed on the role of the state. Despite this new attention to states and how they condition care chains, the existing frameworks cannot grasp the complexity of potential struggles and tensions within states and at the various state levels. In outlining a broad and tentative analytical framework for exploration of the role of the state in shaping global care chains, this theoretical article combines feminist state theory, discursive policy analysis and multi-level governance theories. Paying attention to the role of the state, we focus on the framing of policy problems that are important for care chains and on potential tensions between different framings within a state and across the different state levels. We argue that these framings should be investigated in both receiving and sending states.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/rethinking-global-care-chains-through-the-perspective-of-heteroge.

PDF: 10.1515/njmr-2017-0029.

Hervik, Peter. ‘Refiguring the Public, Political, and Personal in Current Danish Exclusionary Reasoning’. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter. ‘Refiguring the Public, Political, and Personal in Current Danish Exclusionary Reasoning’. Political Sentiments and Social Movements, 2018, 91–117.

Hervik uses the new concept of “fractal logic” as a way to explain how scaling takes place in Danish exclusionary reasoning, in news articles, web commentaries, blogs, and Facebook posts about Muslims. Through two incidents in Denmark, an amusement park controversy and a missing handshake panic, he shows how participants and other commentators move from small-scale particularity to a generalizable pattern that is understood to give it strength from scaling up to higher levels where the stakes are higher. This leads to the argument that the reproduction of a specific fractal logic called “the nation in danger” works as an exclusionary reasoning that reinforces the political subjectivity of Danish neonationalism. In addition, the argument opens up for a refiguring of the public–private in both psychological and political anthropology.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-72341-9_4.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323947565_Refiguring_the_Public_Political_and_Personal_in_Current_Danish_Exclusionary_Reasoning.

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. (2019)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 1–2, 1–2, July 2019, pp. 44–57.

The elephant in the room. Racial disappearance acts, mood politics and idiomatic diffraction summarizes a particular way of handling social and cultural problems. It is about social taboos that are affectively charged: even if everybody knows the elephant is there, they ignore it. In this article, we are grappling with disappearance acts related to race and racialization at a white-dominated Danish university. Race is simultaneously there and not there in organizational policies and practices preoccupied with governing diversity. Using a recent debate over ‘prayer rooms’ in educational institutions, we develop a methodology (‘idiomatic diffraction’) sensitive towards race and racialization in contexts dominated by whiteness. Leaning on Karen Barad, we argue that diffraction may open up a space from where light can be explored in the shadows of what Sylvia Wynter names ‘Man’s Project’.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116116.

https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116116.

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. (2020)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 3, July 2020, pp. 224–236.

In this article, we ask: “how does race matter when working with intersectional feminism in a postcolonial Nordic context?” We take our cue from feminist and postcolonial scholars who have pointed out that minoritisation and majoritisation processes in the Nordic area are entangled in ongoing racialization processes. Working with and around the video installation Black Magic at the White House by the artist Jeanette Ehlers, we hold on to the particularities of racialization processes in the Danish context, as well as their insertion in a global racial ontology. We establish a conversation between Ehlers’ installation and the work of two black American scholars from the humanities: Sylvia Wynter and Hortense Spillers. These scholars have not been influential in the European uptake and further elaboration of intersectionality, but we argue that engaging with their work opens up a perspective that focuses on affect, absence and disappearance rather than only representation, identity and recognition, thereby worlding intersectionality differently than standpoint theory. Experience is also constituted through affective encounters, the ephemeral, forgotten and bypassed qualities and intensities. We conclude the article by drawing a preliminary sketch of elements in what we, paraphrasing Spillers, call a Danish “grammar book” of the racialized and gendered ordering of the human that again complicates the stories we may tell about how race matters and what Nordic intersectional feminism may look like, as well as the interventions this may open up.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’ (2011) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’. Qualitative Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec. 2011, pp. 63–78.

The article examines the potentials of the concept of othering to describe identity formation among ethnic minorities. First, it outlines the history of the concept, its contemporary use, as well as some criticisms. Then it is argued that young ethnic minority men in Denmark are subject to intersectional othering, which contains elements of exoticist fascination of the other. On the basis of ethnographic material, it is analysed how young marginalized ethnic minority men react to othering. Two types of reactions are illustrated: 1) capitalization on being positioned as the other, and 2) refusing to occupy the position of the other by disidentification and claims to normality. Finally, it is argued that the concept of othering is well suited for understanding the power structures as well as the historic symbolic meanings conditioning such identity formation, but problematic in terms of agency.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/5510

Keskinen, Suvi, and Rikke Andreassen. ‘Developing Theoretical Perspectives On Racialisation and Migration’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Keskinen, Suvi, and Rikke Andreassen. ‘Developing Theoretical Perspectives On Racialisation and Migration’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, pp. 64–69. DeGruyter,

https://journal-njmr.org/articles/abstract/10.1515/njmr-2017-0018/

PDF: http://archive.sciendo.com/NJMR/njmr.2017.7.issue-2/njmr-2017-0018/njmr-2017-0018.pdf

Khawaja, Iram, and Line Lerche Mørck. ‘Researcher Positioning: Muslim “Otherness” and Beyond’. (2009)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Khawaja, Iram, and Line Lerche Mørck. ‘Researcher Positioning: Muslim “Otherness” and Beyond’. Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 6, no. 1–2, Routledge, June 2009, pp. 28–45.

This article focuses on the complex and multilayered process of researcher positioning, specifically in relation to the politically sensitive study of marginalised and “othered” groups such as Muslims living in Denmark. We discuss the impact of different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds, of membership in a minoritised 1 or majoritised group, and the influence of different theoretical and methodological outlooks on our common goal of trying to transcend existing othering and objectifying representations of Muslims in Western societies. This process sometimes entails a direct political and personal involvement by the researcher, which challenges traditional perspectives on research and researcher positioning. A key point in this regard is the importance of constant awareness of and reflection on the multiple ways in which one’s positioning as a researcher influences the research process. Studying the other calls for close reflections on one’s own position, theoretically, personally, and politically, taking into account one’s complicity in either overcoming or reproducing processes of othering and marginalisation. 1We use the term (ethnic) minoritised not as a distinction with numerical proportions but rather related to societal power relations (Phoenix 2001, p. 128).

doi:10.1080/14780880902900713.

Lægaard, Sune. ‘The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?’ (2007) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lægaard, Sune. ‘The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?’ Political Studies, vol. 55, no. 3, Oct. 2007, pp. 481–498.

If the publication of twelve drawings of the Prophet Mohammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which sparked the ‘cartoon controversy’, was wrong, why might this be the case? The article considers four arguments advanced in relation to the quite similar Rushdie affair for judging such publications to be wrong, and asks whether they provide plausible moral reasons against such publications, and whether they justify legal restrictions on freedom of speech. The arguments concern: (a) the consistent extension of group defamation legislation to cover Muslims; (b) offence to religious sensibilities; (c) issues of identity; and (d) oppression. The article also considers whether such arguments can be acknowledged within a liberal model of toleration. It is argued that versions of several of the arguments may in fact be thus accommodated, but that they nevertheless do not provide strong reasons for judging the kind of publications under consideration to be morally wrong or suitable objects for legal restrictions. The argument from oppression is different, however, in pointing to different kinds of factors, but its applicability is limited both by a number of conditions for when oppression provides the right kind of reasons, and by empirical constraints. The suggested conclusion is that the publication of the Mohammad cartoons was not wrong, at least not all things considered, for any of the noted reasons, but that there might be other kinds of factors that are not captured by traditional liberal models of toleration, which might provide reasons for moral criticism of this and similar publications.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00685.x.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4780115_The_Cartoon_Controversy_Offence_Identity_Oppression/link/5d7b74a5299bf1d5a970eb2e/download

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (2011)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London ; New York: Zed Books, 2011.

Across the West, something called multiculturalism is in crisis. Regarded as the failed experiment of liberal elites, commentators and politicians compete to denounce its corrosive legacies; parallel communities threatening social cohesion, enemies within cultivated by irresponsible cultural relativism, mediaeval practices subverting national ‘ways of life’ and universal values. This important new book challenges this familiar narrative of the rise and fall of multiculturalism by challenging the existence of a coherent era of ‘multiculturalism’ in the first place. The authors argue that what we are witnessing is not so much a rejection of multiculturalism as a rejection of lived multiculture. In documenting mainstream racism and the anxieties that inform it, Lentin and Titley argue that the crisis is a projection of neoliberal societies’ disjunctures. Combining theory with a reading of contemporary events, it examines the transnational, mediated nature of crisis itself, and argues challenging this notion provides activists with a chance to transcend resurgent racism.

The Crises of Multiculturalism