Tina Mattsson

Intersectionality as a usful tool: Anti-oppressive social work and critical reflection

This article introduces intersectionality as a usable tool for critical reflection, which as a part of the critical social work tradition aims to challenge oppression and inequality. It is argued that in critical reflection, oppression and injustice are often understood in general terms and that oppression and inequalities related to gender, sexuality, class, and race therefore risk being neutralized and undetected. The suggestion is made that by using an intersectional approach, which focuses the interplay and complexity between gender, sexuality, class, and race, critical reflection gets the capacity to keep central power relations in urgent focus.This article introduces intersectionality as a usable tool for critical reflection, which as a part of the critical social work tradition aims to challenge oppression and inequality. It is argued that in critical reflection, oppression and injustice are often understood in general terms and that oppression and inequalities related to gender, sexuality, class, and race therefore risk being neutralized and undetected. The suggestion is made that by using an intersectional approach, which focuses the interplay and complexity between gender, sexuality, class, and race, critical reflection gets the capacity to keep central power relations in urgent focus.

‘Good girls’: emphasised femininity as cloning culture in academia

Gender inequality in academia might be understood as an effect of the belief of a contradiction between woman and science, which make it difficult for women to appropriate the right to author and authorise acts of knowing and thinking in science. In relation to this concern, the aim of this article is to explore how a group of successful women researchers do science and uphold their position as researchers. It is based on evidence from participant observation and qualitative interviews. Theoretical understandings of femininity and cloning culture are used to analyse how the women united as a group that displays a subordinate, heterosexual femininity. Their strategies might be understood as a form of cultural cloning. By expressing a collective emphasised femininity grounded in white, heterosexual, middle-class norms, the women experienced a sameness that rendered them strong as a group and well adapted in academia.

The making of body differences: physical activity, gender, and age in institutional addiction treatment

ABSTRACT Elements of sports and physical activity are common in institutional addiction treatment, in both Sweden and other European countries. These activities can be understood as activities of everyday life that promote health and well-being in institutional life. At the same time, physical activity is closely interwoven with a Western culture in which a healthy and fit body is an important social marker. The body is used to differentiate among bodies and attribute different values to them. The aim of this article is to explore how elements of physical activity supports ideas about gender, age and body in institutional addiction treatment. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with staff from three in-patient institutions. Using the concepts of functionality, body normativity and the normate, the analysis shows how staff reason in various ways when speaking about different client groups in relation to physical activity. Physical activities are described as problematic for women as the staff connect them with a psychological dysfunctionality which is assumed to be physically limiting. For younger men, who embody normativity, the elements are understood as unproblematic. Physical activities becomes disciplinary for these men since their bodies are understood as always capable of being physically active. Older men are described as partly being prevented from participating because of age and physical illnesses, but such elements are nevertheless seen as important to them.