Research project In the project, three cultural products are followed; the veil strongly associated with religion; the rainbow flag associated with liberalism, progressivism and secularism; and manga, as a post-secular phenomenon.
The aim is to study the role of products in the creation of imagined transnational communities that consciously or unconsciously reproduce, resist, or change norms of gender and sexuality.
Lena Martinsson (PI), Department of Cultural Sciences, Gender Studies, University of Gothenburg
Erika Alm, Department of Cultural Sciences, Gender Studies, University of Gothenburg
Diana Mulinari, Department of Gender Studies, Lund University
Pia Laskar, Department for Collections and Research, Norwegian State Museums of History
Mikela Lundahl, Department of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg
Mona Lilja, Department of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg
Cathrin Wasshede, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Anna Johansson, Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, University West
The goal is to gain knowledge about a civil society beyond organizations, but which is nevertheless perceived as an imagined transnational community. The three products are related to a global and hierarchically ordered division between the religious, which is often linked to a supposedly traditional order, and the secular, which is just as often perceived as the condition for both criticism, democracy, and progressivity. The division is also linked to geographical location where the secular and perceived progressive are often connected with Europe and the West. We want to challenge this dichotomy. By studying the three products as operating and relating to a range of other contexts, such as the market as well as religion and other norms, the emergence of new positions and communities to identify with or feel alien to is studied. In doing so, the project also approaches new ways of understanding gender and sexualities.
Researcher in the project at Umeå University is Linda Berg. In her research, she focuses on issues of politics and secularism through studies of feminist street art (in Sweden, France, Egypt and Afghanistan) as well as in political debates about the veil nationally and transnationally.
