Gendered Social Capital - A Case Study of Sports and Music Associations in Leksand and Rättvik, Sweden

Earlier research has been able to establish a connection on an aggregated level between a lively participation in voluntary organisations and a flourishing economy. This has been explained in terms of dense, informal networks of civic engagement fostering norms of reciprocity and trust - i.e. social capital - which in turn facilitate co-operation and successful economic development. The causality on the individual level, that is the relationship between engagement in the voluntary sector and position on the labour market, has been less studied, though. In this paper, we focus on various qualities which the links between an individual's participation in the voluntary sector and position on the labour market/local business can have. We concentrate on gender aspects. The empirical findings originate from a study of two rural municipalities, Leksand and Rättvik, located in the region of Dalarna in Sweden. The area is characterised by a high degree of civic engagement in voluntary organisations. The study focuses on sports and cultural associations and illuminates the different kinds of voluntary engagement in these, especially the differences between female and male actors. Preliminary results show that there are gender differences concerning the degree to which the informal networks related to a voluntary organisation reach from this over to other local sectors. Men to a higher degree than women are members of "cross-sectional" networks linking the voluntary sector with others, like the business, politics and municipal authority. One example of such a male-dominated, possibly excluding network is the one linking the sectors of business and municipal authority via the association of ice-hockey in Leksand. On the individual level, the men seem to have a more direct connection between their participation in a voluntary organisation and their paid job. For example, they might use the contacts they get through their voluntary engagement in their private business. On the other hand, their position on the labour market/business sector may have led to them being offered the current (high) position in the voluntary organisation. Men to a higher degree than women hold positions in committee boards in large, semi-commercial sports and cultural associations. For the women, such a direct link between their voluntary engagement and their paid job seems less common. They hold hierarchically lower positions in the associations than men, and in cases where they are members of committee boards, this is more typically in smaller, non-commercial associations. This also means that women are less likely to be members of networks stretching from the voluntary sector to other societal sectors, like business or the municipal authority. Earlier research has pointed to a relationship between informal networks related to the voluntary sector and the development of a community. Our study points to gender differences regarding the degree to which these networks are cross-sectional. Such differences may be assumed to lead to gender inequalities regarding the power to influence the officially promoted line of development. Key words: social capital, networks, gender, exclusion, Leksand-Rättvik, Swede

Landsbygdernas och de mindre orternas civilsamhällen

Denna rapport introducerar det forskningsfält som uppstår när landsbygdsforskning och civilsamhällesforskning möts. Texterna i rapporten presenterades vid en konferens som genomfördes 2021 av en grupp forskare som är verksamma inom civilsamhällesforskning och landsbygdsforskning. Som framgår av konferensens titel, ”Landsbygdernas och de mindre orternas civilsamhällen”, skulle den ge möjlighet för dessa två forskningsområden att mötas och fördjupa varandra. Rapporten är tänkt som en ingång till aktuell forskning på detta tema och vi tror den kan vara intressant läsning för både aktiva inom civilsamhällets organisationer och verksamma inom myndigheter, regioner och kommuner som relaterar till landsbygdernas civilsamhälle i sitt arbete. Rapporten inleds med ett kapitel som kortfattat och översiktligt beskriver hur civilsamhällesforskning och landsbygdsforskning växt fram och diskuterar behovet av forskning som sätter fokus på landsbygdernas och de mindre orternas civilsamhällen. De inkluderade kapitlen presenterar forskning där landsbygdernas civilsamhällen studerats med olika metoder och ur flera olika perspektiv. I den första delen av rapporten presenteras forskning som beskriver skillnader och likheter i civilsamhällesengagemang mellan städer och landsbygd i Sverige, behandlar hur tillgång till service också kan påverka tillit till institutioner och diskuterar betydelsen av känslor i relation till civilsamhällesengagemang och samhällsutveckling. Vidare presenteras en övergripande bild av kunskapsläget om social innovation som svar på landsbygdens samhällsutmaningar, med särskilt fokus på civilsamhällets roll och samverkan med andra samhällsaktörer. Utifrån en studie av civilsamhällesprojekt finansierade med offentliga medel diskuteras också hur de ekonomiska bidragsresurserna omvandlas till immateriella resurser till nytta för lokaldesamhället. Rapporten innehåller också kapitel som diskuterar civilsamhällets alternativa bildningsvägar som utgår från platsers egna premisser, sociala rörelser för hållbarhet på den svensk-samiska landsbygden samt ett kapitel som diskuterar hur medborgarskapet omformas när boende i landsbygder och mindre orter i större utsträckning behöver förlita sig på civilsamhällets lösningar för att få tillgång till vardaglig service och grundläggande infrastruktur

Chasing Moving Targets in Rural Spaces : Local Policing and Drug-Related Interventions

Globalization in rural areas is commonly described in terms of both challenges and opportunities. Opportunities include increased communication and reduced distance. These factors, however, are also favorable for illicit activities such as increased opportunities for marketing drugs on the Internet and reduced barriers for transporting drugs. The drug industry is global and involves cross-site processes, but the drug problem is very local. This article discusses how drug activities infiltrate the work of professionals in rural places and the way this affects rural people and their living environment. In local communities, the police have the authority to counteract the spread and use of drugs, an authority that is described as geographically thinned. That is, police as well as other professionals combating the effects of drug abuse are affected as local cooperation, which is often encouraged by short distances, dense networks, and local knowledge, is weakened. Using a qualitative interview approach, this study argues that local practices related to prevention of drug-related crime are poorly equipped to deal with the speed and range of the contemporary drug trade

Conditioned receptiveness: Nordic rural elite perceptions of immigrant contributions to local resilience

Drawing on case studies among rural elites in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, this study investigates how rural elites in Nordic rural communities link immigration to rural resilience as expressed in their place narratives. Applying the dual concepts of retention vs. receptiveness and exclusion vs. inclusion, we find that rural elites relate variously to immigration and local resilience, but that immigrants are deemed valuable for the local economy, and for population growth. Further, rural elites expect immigrants to become co-producers for local resilience. We term the elites' views conditioned receptiveness. The study sheds light on how rural elites' norms of diversity influence how ‘difference’ is placed and handled through processes of inclusion/exclusion vs. retention and receptiveness, with the rural as an enabling space for building local resilience

Trends and Challenges in Nordic Gender Geography

The development of Nordic gender geography is closely related to societal transformation. The way the gendered labour market is structured and re-structured is a recurrent theme for investigation. In this chapter, we discuss Nordic gender geography since its establishment in the 1980s, with the aim of scrutinising long-term and contemporary trends and challenges. We discern an engagement in issues based on socio-spatial conditions, where agency, identity and intersectional perspectives work together with materiality, institutions and structures. Nordic gender geography thereby contributes with a contextual gender theory, emphasising space as both a designer and an interpreter of gender relations. Regional and local gender relations become a player in the structure-agency relationship, and we argue that socio-spatial gender theorising can modify the idea of universal and all-embracing theoretical explanation of how gender is constructed. Nordic gender geography constitutes a prevailing and growing potential for a significant contribution to gender theory and to socio-spatial analysis of power

To ‘go gender’ : A conceptual framework for analysing migration-related strategic gender practice

In everyday life individuals tend to read place- and time-specific gender codes and act according to, or in contrast to, what they perceive as the appropriate local gender practice. The aim of the article is to address the questions of what happens when people live translocal lives, in multiple cultures, as in international migration situations, and when people change their place of residence with a corresponding changed gender context. Based on in-depth interviews with immigrants, the authors analyse gender navigation in relation to mobility. They focus on the need to navigate between intentions and requirements of various gendered behaviour. By investigating the gendered practices involved in migration, specifically in international migration, they elucidate this navigation as a ‘going-gender’ process which, in turn, visualises the dilemmas involved in these oscillating rather than unidirectional processes. In conclusion, a ‘going-gender’ analysis can explain the way in which individuals learn to handle the intersection of diverse gender contracts through solving the dilemmas when they move between places. Such an analysis would stress the transformative character of ‘doing gender’ and emphasise the reflexive attitude and strategic approach of studied immigrants

Conditioned receptiveness:Nordic rural elite perceptions of immigrant contributions to local resilience

Drawing on case studies among rural elites in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, this study investigates how rural elites in Nordic rural communities link immigration to rural resilience as expressed in their place narratives. Applying the dual concepts of retention vs. receptiveness and exclusion vs. inclusion, we find that rural elites relate variously to immigration and local resilience, but that immigrants are deemed valuable for the local economy, and for population growth. Further, rural elites expect immigrants to become co-producers for local resilience. We term the elites' views conditioned receptiveness. The study sheds light on how rural elites' norms of diversity influence how ‘difference’ is placed and handled through processes of inclusion/exclusion vs. retention and receptiveness, with the rural as an enabling space for building local resilience