Linda Sandberg

Talking about fear of violence in public space : Female and male narratives about threatening situations in Umeå, Sweden

Geographers may benefit from a narrative approach as it permits insights into both meanings and how stories are permitted and controlled by social conditions. The aim of this article is to discuss methodological aspects of studying fear as a restriction on mobility and use of public space. We have used examples from a study on fear of violence in the city of Umeå, Sweden at the time of threats from a serial rapist, the Haga Man. We employed Labovs model to analyse female and male narratives about fear. Women from all backgrounds reproduced a shared story of experiences of fear. Male stories were fragmented and diverse, especially in terms of ethnicity. The Haga Man was described in the media as a man of ‘normal Swedish appearance’, which put a focus on Swedish hegemonic masculinity and ‘normality’ rather than on commonly reproduced fear of the racialized other. Labovs model was useful in clarifying how narratives differed in their structural components and completeness, but limited in terms of how to interpret the evaluative component: the model needs to be combined with theory in order to understand relations to changing political, institutional and media discourses on crime and fear in public space.

Afraid and restricted vs bold and equal: Women’s fear of violence and gender equality discourses in Sweden

This study analyses the responses and reactions among women in Umeå during the period of threat from the Haga Man: a serial rapist operating between 1998 and 2006, and highlights how women in this new situation handled feelings of vulnerability and fear of violence in public space. The article analyses the ways women positioned themselves in their narratives and how this could be understood in terms of how they negotiated spaces for agency within a context where public space has been represented as safe and gender-equal. Women’s fear of violence is discussed in relation to Swedish gender equality discourses and contextual constructions of femininity. The research is based on empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with women in Umeå. The results show the difficulties of claiming the official position of a gender-equal femininity. The informants’ ambivalence, and partly anger, in relation to a femininity they wanted but could not have also created an opportunity for critique of women’s position in society and thus a challenge to a presumed gender equality that stands in the way of addressing issues of gendered power relations.

‘I don’t think we’ll ever be finished with this’: Fear and safety in policy and practice:

In planning contexts, safety is often discussed from a women’s perspective. An ideal site for exploring some of the key issues is Umeå, a medium-sized town in northern Sweden. Here, attention to women’s fear of violence greatly increased at the turn of the century, when a single repeat offender known as the ‘Haga Man’ assaulted several women in the city. People’s (especially women’s) fear of violence came to be seriously recognised, discussed and taken into consideration in the city’s planning. The present research is based on an analysis of empirical data collected in 2008, through interviews with people who in various ways work to increase safety in Umeå. The paper addresses how the informants define the problem of fear of violence in public space and the strategies they employ to address it, what could be described as the analytical-practice paradox, as the results show the difficulties of integrating gender-aware planning into planning practice.

The co-creation (of) culture? The case of Umeå, European Capital of Culture 2014

ABSTRACT Culture is often promoted as crucial in efforts to achieve economic growth and social cohesion. In recent debates, greater attention has been directed at the importance of culture in creating democratic and just cities. Drawing on theories concerning participation, we study the processes of citizen participation in the creation of culture in relation to the European Capital of Culture in Umeå in Northern Sweden. The city has been praised for its focus on participation and the ‘co-creation’ of culture. We scrutinize the idea of co-creation, how it is filled with meaning by different actors, the way it is operationalized by city officials and cultural actors/practitioners and the possibilities for public participation and the power relationships at play in the city. We conclude that culture tends to be depoliticized and turned into an arena available for all on supposedly equal terms and ignores the very unequal terms on which different actors participate. It ignores how power relations affect and construct who gets to speak and be heard; that there are conflicting meanings of culture and co-creation and how power influences whose definition of culture is accepted.

Imagining the ideal city, planning the gender-equal city in Umeå, Sweden

Abstract Focusing on imaginaries of the ideal city is an important method to illustrate the power of ideas, imagination, representations and even visions, and how these dimensions influence the way in which cities are organized and lived. In this article, we argue that one current and important city imaginary in a Swedish context is the gender-equal city. In this imaginary, the gender-equal city becomes a symbol for the open, tolerant, bustling, safe city, a city aiming to attract the middle and creative classes. However, at the same time, the imaginary of the ideal, gender-equal city is highly ambiguous. This ambiguity will be discussed throughout the article. Based on present planning projects in the city of Umeå in Sweden, we will discuss how the imaginary of the gender-equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing, with the overall ambition of discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender-equality planning strategy. The aim of the article is to study how the city of Umeå is acting to create a gender-equal city and what kind of imaginaries these practices build on. The material consists primarily of a case study focusing on projects that aim to create an equal city, and also includes analyses of policy documents and media reports. This study illustrates how imaginaries are produced through local projects and different imaginaries provide different spaces for politicizing gendered power relations.

Fear and Loathing in Umeå—Gendered Bodies and Actual Imprints of the Haga Man

This study analyses the responses and reactions among women and men in Umeå during the period of threat from a serial rapist, the so-called Haga Man. This article discusses how the increased threat in public space influenced constructions of male and female bodies in space during a period of changing public crime discourses. The article illustrates the importance of context and demonstrates the temporality of how bodies are perceived in space. Public descriptions of the Haga Man focused on characteristics of the perpetrators body and “normal Swedish appearance”, which constructed an image of the dangerous white body. White male respondents positioned themselves in relation to these descriptions, and were partly challenged with respect to new perceptions and meanings associated with “normality”. In descriptions of the Haga Mans victims, women were presented as vulnerable, but in contrast to many other cases of serial rape there was no immediate focus on their bodies in terms of respectability. A shift of emphasis took place, towards a focus on bodies that frighten, rather than those that are afraid. The findings contribute to a discussion of how gendered power relations can be understood through shifting representations of bodies in space.

“It was entirely his fault” : constructing white masculinities and the Haga man assaults in Umeå, Sweden 1998-2006

Several cases of single repeat offenders in urban space have raised public concern in Sweden during recent decades. Few studies have been conducted on the consequences of the ‘hostage situations’ that emerge when one individual offender causes fear and affects a large group of people in a specific place. The concern of this article is to examine consequences of the Haga Man phenomenon: the case of a serial rapist operating between 1998 and 2006 in Umeå, a medium-sized Swedish city. The article focuses on the construction of white masculinities among male respondents in Umeå during the time of the attacks. I examine how men positioned themselves in relation to the public image of the offender as a ‘normal Swede’ and how they related to womens increasing fear of violence in urban space. Three prominent constructions of masculinity emerged from the research data: the dangerous stranger, the suspect and the protector. These three constructions of masculinity were not clear-cut and did not ‘belong’ to specific men – several of the interviewees articulated various forms of masculinities but stressed them in different ways depending on, for instance, age and/or ethnicity/race. I conclude that men largely positioned themselves as protectors as a strategy to distance themselves from the perpetrator (the image of the ‘normal Swedish man’ performing the rapes) and to ensure that they would not be perceived as suspects. However, men largely perceived that womens increased fear of crime was ‘one mans fault’ and broader issues about gendered power relations in space were not raised.