Nordberg, Marie, Dr.

By bjorn on 18 Jun | 0 comments

Biographical Note
Marie Nordberg is Associate Professor in Gender Studies, for the moment working as a researcher and Senior Lecturer at the Division for Educational Sciences, Karlstad University. Her research interest includes Methodology and theoretical questions, Men and masculinity in female coded occupations, Men and gender equality, Men and boys’ experiences of violence, Men and fashion, Masculinity and Queer theory, Transnational hegemonies and the work of discourse flows. Her theoretical position is grounded in a Gramscian and post-Marxist understanding of hegemony, Post-structuralism, Feminism, Post-colonial research, Actor-Network-Theory, Visual Cultural Studies and Queer Theory. Marie has taken an active part in the development of the critical Nordic research on men and masculinities, is often engaged as lecturer and has edited two Swedish books on Boys, masculinity and schooling.

GEXcel Project
“The Boy Problem” - Deconstructing Critical Masculinity Studies part in a transnational knowledge production

ABSTRACT: The aim of my GEXcel project is to examine and compare how transnational discourse flows on boy pupils as a failing and underachieving group today is transformed and intermingles with theories, findings and descriptions produced in critical “Northern” masculinity research, and other discourses in three Nordic education settings – Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The empiric material consists of ethnographic material from gender equality conferences, political documents on government’s websites and articles and articles in newspapers and teachers’ magazines. A part of my research will also be directed at theoretical development.

EXTENDED OUTLINE: The project consists of two parts, which in slightly different ways deals with the deconstruction of the same “centre”: Critical “Northern” masculinity research, and the theoretical hegemonies and hegemonic transnational flows of theories, research practices, analytic models, assumptions and descriptions of masculinity and men and boy’s practices constituted in this research field. The term “Northern” is used for pointing out and examine the material consequences of an assemblage of hegemonic flows of theories, analytic models, findings, descriptions, network of scholars and research practices, which over time, by repeating, extending and relaying on some assumptions, has come to shape and fix critical masculinity research in certain ways. “Northern” should hereby not be read as a strict geographical border marker.

The empirical project – background and research focus
In Sweden, England, Australia and North America and a couple of other western industrialised countries have discourses that position boys as a problematic group been articulated the last decade. These discourses have some things in common with the discourses on “failing boys” that repeatedly has been articulated in US and Australia, but are not identical with the assemblage of antifeminist discourses that presents boys as a suppressed group in a feminized society. In national policy documents and in contemporary educational debates on boy pupil’s educational achievements can, as also pointed out by other scholars, a new intricate intermingling of feminist discourses, critical masculinity research, heteronormative gender equality discourses and “travelling” failing boys discourses today be found. In Sweden are for example boy pupils’ today both presented as a problematic group of lazy, immature, obsolete individuals that oppress girls and teachers and cause trouble in school, and described as a marginalised group that for a long period has been left out of attention, and by not in same way as girl pupils been encouraged to use their full potential, today is in immediate need of forceful interventions. The transnational discourse flow and anxiety articulated for boy pupils educational position articulated in many West countries today can, as I have pointed out elsewhere, both be related to and understood as an outcome of contemporary transformations of gender relations and the undermining of white middleclass boys’ working life positions, and be connected to the “performance paradigm” and the transformations that has undermined Europe’s and the West World’s former position.

My empirical research project is to study how transnational discourse flows on boys, masculinity and schooling are articulated and transformed in three national Nordic education settings –Sweden, Norway and Denmark – today and to deconstruct critical masculinity scholars’ part in this knowledge production. In the project will attention special be directed at to what extent and in what way theories, analytic models, research findings, masculinity concepts and descriptions of masculinity and men and boys practices articulated in critical “Northern” masculinity research are presented and used in the knowledge production in the three settings. Specific interest will be paid at a how Connell’s and other critical masculinity scholars’ writings on  “hegemonic masculinity” are presented – or not presented – and used in these settings. A focus will also be directed at how the transnational discourses on boys and education presented above intermingles with and are transformed by other discourse flows. To some extent will I also focus on what implications the descriptions of boys and boys’ school practices have for boy and girl pupils and for teachers. The findings will also be related to the discourses that today are presented in the Australian, British and North American context.

The empirical base consists of ethnography from national, Nordic and European conferences on boys and schooling arranged in Sweden, Norway and Denmark between 2006-2010, policy documents and a sample of articles on “the boy problem” published in newspapers and teachers’ magazines.

The theoretical part
As part of my GEXcel research will I also continue the deconstruction of theoretical hegemonies and hegemonic transnational research flows I began in my thesis. The aim of this part of my research is to develop new analytic models, research methods and ways of presenting results that can be used for visualizing and discussing power relations, without fixing and re-establishing masculinity as a fixed and gender binary description. In my thesis I found the heteronormative construction and the polarised and negative relation between masculinity and femininity and strong focus on only one hegemonic centre and the descriptions of a hegemonic masculinity concept, underpinning most of the analytic models offered in critical masculinity research, problematic. Some part of my empirical material was not possible to describe through Connell’s, Kimmel’s and other masculinity models generated in Australian, North American and British settings. I therefore constructed an analytic model that also could catch men and boys’ more positive interaction with some feminine and women marked identity positions and visualise fluidity and the non binary constructions that could be found in my material. Although some efforts have been made to develop the analytic models gathered under the term “hegemonic masculinity” problems connected to Connell’s still exists. In my recent writings I have therefore experimented with a double story, a telling and a retelling that highlights other practices and works with a broader and less heterosexualised masculinity definition that present and opens for other identifications.

In the theoretical work, which is the other part of my participation in the GEXcel research, I will continue the deconstruction of theoretical hegemonies and hegemonic transnational research flows that I began in my thesis. The aim with this part is to develop new and more elaborated analytic models for describing men and men’s practices. This effort will also be combined with a search for new theoretical combinations that in a fruitful way can visualise hierarchies, categories and power relations today often are downplayed or left out of attention in critical “Northern” masculinity research. In my contemporary research I have for example combined Gramsci’s description of hegemony as a process and ongoing practice with Latour’s focus on assemblages and networks of things, individuals, techniques and practices, and also used Judith Halberstam’s discussions of “Metronormativity” to analyse and visualise how an ongoing construction of centre and periphery and the privileging of certain life styles intermingles with discourses on masculinity.