Falling in love with a wheelchair. Enabling/disabling technologies

Abstract in UndeterminedThe aim of this article is to explore how young women with physical impairments make use of technology in their identity construction, drawing on the metaphor of the cyborg as well as on science and technology studies and disability research. In addition to participant observation, semi-structural interviews were conducted and video diaries were kept of the women playing sledge hockey, wheelchair basketball, or table tennis. The informants included their wheelchairs in constructing their identities as young women and active subjects. In talking about pleasure and strength, they opposed the discourse that characterises disabled people as leading empty, tragic lives. They challenge stereotypical notions of gender in sport by displaying determination, strength, and risk-taking, while embodying a more traditional femininity when resisting the widespread view of disabled women as non-gendered and asexual

Att crippa högre utbildning: Skillnad och erfarenhet i universitetens lärosalar

Samtidigt som antidemokratiska krafter växer i Europa har frågan om breddad rekrytering och mångfald återigen aktualiserats. I sin utvärdering av lärosätenas arbete med breddad rekrytering från 2022 konstaterar Universitetskanslersämbetet att den sociala snedrekryteringen består. Snedrekryteringen har negativa effekter på såväl demokratisk samhällsutveckling som social rättvisa. Dryga 20 år efter att uppdraget att främja breddad rekrytering skrevs in i högskolelagen finns det alltså skäl att fundera över varför så lite har hänt. Essän argumenterar för att blicken bör vändas från underrepresenterade grupper mot exkluderande normer och sociala strukturer inom universiteten. Syftet är att diskutera hur universitetslärare kan motverka de mekanismer som gör att vissa studenter känner sig hemma i föreläsningssalar och seminarierum medan andra inte gör det. Essän har ett intersektionellt perspektiv, men fokus läggs särskilt på de normer och strukturer som tar utgångspunkt i föreställningen om den normala kroppen, vad som benämns ableism. Essän diskuterar metoder för att synliggöra lärarnas och studenternas situering, pedagogiska verktyg för att låta olika erfarenheter komma till tals, betydelsen av val av perspektiv och kurslitteratur liksom tillgänglig undervisning. När skillnader synliggörs utan att ordnas hierarkiskt blir de skilda erfarenheterna en resurs för ett ömsesidigt lärande om varandra och det kritiska tänkandet främjas.  ENGLISH ABSTRACT Cripping higher education. Difference and experience in university classrooms At the same time as anti-democratic forces are growing in Europe, the issues of broader recruitment and diversity in higher education have once again come to the fore. In its 2022 evaluation of universities’ work towards broader recruitment, the Swedish Higher Education Authority notes that social inequality in recruitment persists. Imbalanced recruitment has negative effects on both democratic societal development and social justice. More than 20 years after the task of promoting broader recruitment was written into the Higher Education Act, there is reason to consider why so little has happened. This essay argues that the gaze should be turned away from underrepresented groups and fixed towards exclusionary norms and social structures within universities. The aim of the text is to discuss how university teachers can counteract mechanisms that make some students feel at home within the university while excluding others. The essay has an intersectional perspective but focuses on exclusionary norms and structures based on the notion of the normal body – namely, ableism. The essay discusses methods for visualizing teachers’ and students’ situatedness, pedagogical tools for giving voice to different experiences, the implications of choice of perspectives and course literature, and accessible teaching. Making differences visible without organizing them hierarchically does not only turn different experiences into a resource for mutual learning, but also promotes critical thinking

Cripping sex education: lessons learned from a programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments

This paper analyses sexuality and relationship education (SRE) in a Swedish college programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments. Interviews and focus groups were conducted to explore students’ experiences of the structure, content and usefulness of SRE, and college personnel’s SRE practices. Results show that, although many of the issues covered are pertinent for all youth, being disabled raises additional concerns: for example how to handle de-sexualising attitudes, possible sexual practices, and how reliance on assistance impacts upon privacy. Crip theory is used as an analytical framework to identify, challenge and politicise sexual norms and practices. Students’ experiences of living in a disablist, heteronormative society can be used as resources to develop cripistemologies, which challenge the private/public binary that often de-legitimises learners’ experiences and separates them from teachers’ ‘proper’ knowledge production. Crip SRE would likely hold bene ts for non-disabled pupils as well, through its use of more inclusive pedagogy and in work to expand sexual possibilities. Crip SRE has the potential to disrupt taken-for-granted​ dis/ability and sexuality divides as well as to politicise issues that many young people presently experience as ‘personal shortcomings’

“They really looked, looked and looked:” Contemporary dance, disability and the circulation of emotions

Over the past decade, several inclusive dance projects, in which professional dancers with and without disabilities collaborate, have been started in Sweden. The article explores disabled and able-bodied dancers’ and leaders’ experiences of and strategies for managing gazes and emotions – in encounters with the audience and other surrounding people – from a phenomenological perspective. Eleven qualitative interviews were conducted. The interviewees meet gazes filled with benevolence, surprise, pity and fascination. The emotions stick to the disabled dancers’ bodies, distance them from their own bodies and arouse uneasiness that needs to be handled. However, disabled dancers and disabled persons in the audience may also meet in the gaze of recognition. The companies’ internal gazes are important, too. When disabled dancers are only physically integrated or when differences are hidden, the potential for change gets lost. If choreographers and audiences succeed in looking beyond the body itself, an empathetic identification may take place. Another strategy is to completely break with voyeurism by blocking all gazes. The companies show new ways of interacting, thus expanding the possibilities for both able and disabled bodies.Au cours de la dernière décennie, plusieurs projets de danse inclusive, dans lesquels des danseurs professionnels handicapés et non handicapés collaborent, ont été lancés en Suède. L’article explore les expériences des regards et des émotions des danseurs et des leaders avec et sans handicap – lors de rencontres avec le public et les autres personnes qui les entourent – d’un point de vue phénoménologique. Onze entretiens qualitatifs ont été réalisés. Les personnes interrogées croisent des regards remplis de bienveillance, de surprise, de pitié et de fascination. Les émotions collent au corps des danseurs handicapés et suscitent un malaise à gérer. Cependant, les danseurs handicapés et les membres du public handicapés peuvent également se rencontrer dans un regard de reconnaissance. Les regards internes des compagnies sont également importants. Lorsque les danseurs handicapés ne sont intégrés que physiquement ou lorsque les différences sont cachées, le potentiel de changement se perd. Si les chorégraphes et le public réussissent à regarder au-delà du corps lui-même, une identification empathique peut exister. Une autre stratégie consiste à rompre complètement avec le voyeurisme en bloquant tous les regards. Les compagnies montrent de nouvelles façons d'interagir, élargissant ainsi les possibilités pour les corps valides comme handicapés

Alltid dessa svårigheter

Elisabet Apelmo tittade på trailrar för de Paralympiska spelen – men det var ett helt annat tv-program hon kom att tänka på

Crip heroes and social change

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS a critical reading of Robert McRuer’s Crip Theory: cultural signs of queerness and disability (2006), in which the author, a professor of English, explores common ground between disability studies and queer theory. The conjunction of the two has been rare (Grönvik 2008:48; Kafer 2009:291) but does ap- pear in a special edition of the magazine GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies for which McRuer was one of several guest editors (2003). The aim of the present article is two-fold. First, the consequences of McRuer’s choice of empirical data for Crip Theory are analysed. Second, the relevance of Crip Theory for a study on how female athletes with physical impairments relate to their bodies and to the field of sports is examined

(Dis)Abled bodies, gender, and citizenship in the Swedish sports movement

The aim of this article is to examine how the Swedish Sports Organization for the Disabled (SHIF) portrays disabled people. A text analysis of two policy documents, 'Disability Sports Policy Programme' and 'Sports Objectives - A Summary of Aims and Guidelines for the Sports Movement', examines ways in which sports are supposed to affect people's bodies and contribute to society. Counter to its own aim to integrate disabled people, SHIF constructs such people as different and subordinated to able-bodied people, setting up an insurmountable boundary between the two groups