TITAN - Theorising politics and practice - critical studies of gender equality

Project description

The aim of this project is to develop the field of critical studies on gender equality, especially in terms of feminist theorising politics and the political, including the relations between politics and practice. Our premise is that articulating questions in politics is not the same as these questions being political, i.e. that gender equality is articulated as public policy does not mean that gender is politicised. As our starting-point we relate politics to three other central concepts; moralism, market and emancipation. These three versions of politics are to be elaborated both as theoretical/analytical tools and as ways of finding empirical openings to how politics could and should be studied. In particular we intend to analyse how market-oriented solutions as well as moralism can be understood as simultaneous tendencies of politicising and depoliticising. The project is divided into two interrelated parts: (1) thematic empirical studies on four central themes that capture the central aspects of how gender equality has been constructed in Sweden since the 1960s, i.e. in terms of influence and/or strategy, work and issues relating to the body and sexuality, situated in different levels of governance: Meanings of Gender Equality in State Policy, Work as the Key to Gender Equality, Sexual Value and Gender Equality and Local Practices of Gender Equality Politics, and (2) collective theorising practices focusing on collaborative forms of knowledge production.