Research interests: constructions of gender and sexuality among adolescent girls, LGBT youth, intersectionality and queer theory, queer temporality, feminist och queer perspectives on care

I defended my doctoral thesis in 2004 at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University with the thesis “In a class of their own. Gender, class, and sexuality among high school girls” (Ordfront 2004), which deals with constructions of gender among two groups of girls in their late teens.

Since then, my research interests have centred on gender constructions, particularly in relation to youth and femininity, but also in relation to power structures such as sexuality, class and age. For example, based on queer and post-structuralist theory, I have studied how specific forms of heteronormativity are central to the formations of the ”normal girl”. My interest in queer theory has also resulted in an introductory book on queer theory and activism, “Vad är queer?” [What is queer?] (Natur & Kultur 2006, second revised edition 2016).

While the dissertation dealt with normalization processes among high school-aged girls, another focus has been to investigate how gender takes form at younger ages. The project “Genusskapande och normaliseringsprocesser” [Gender formation and normalisation processes] (funded by Fas/Forte) focuses primarily on how parents of young children discuss and act around their children with regard to gender. The project resulted in the book “Pink – the dangerous color” (Ordfront 2011), in which I discuss contemporary notions of femininity, class, sexuality, and age, based on, among other things, the attitudes of parents of young children and preschoolers toward the culturally charged color pink.

The relationship between age, aging, normative life courses on the one hand, and sexuality, family formation, and gender on the other, has been central to another of my projects, in which I have examined how young LGBTQ people (between the ages of 20 and 30) challenge, negotiate, and relate to mainstream society. The project is part of a larger study entitled “Queerkids, baby butches, and lesbians. Living conditions and resistance strategies among two generations of LGBTQ women” (funded by Fas/Forte), which was conducted together with gender studies scholar Janne Bromseth. Based on theories of queer temporality, we examined how constructions of gender and sexuality interact with time, age, and generation. The study has resulted in, among other things, the anthology “Lifelines. Stories about age, gender, and sexuality” (Makadam 2010).

In recent years, I have taken interest in care and, more specifically, cleaning as a cultural practice. Inspired by feminist perspectives on care work, queer temporality theory, and anthropological theories of cleanliness and uncleanliness, I examined the essence of cleaning: what kind of activity is cleaning, what does it mean in people's lives, how is it practically organized, and what is perceived as a clean or dirty home? Ultimately, I wanted to explore why cleaning, i.e. caring for the material world, is so undervalued and, by extension, what this says about how our society is organized. The study has resulted in, among other things, the monograph Tid att städa. Om vardagsstädningens praktik och politik (Ordfront 2018).

Care is also the focus of Om Nadja. En systers berättelse (Norstedts, 2021), a book that, in terms of methodology and form, is mixture of biography and autoethnography and which partly breaks away from academic conventions. Om Nadja, centering around the life of my younger sister Nadja and her extended family, is an attempt to approach a life that was lived beyond the expected life lines. Academically, it explores issues of dependence, asymmetry, solidarity, and dignity in a society where autonomy and norm-following functionality are presented as the ultimate goal.

Currently, I am working with gender researchers Emil Edenborg and Elin Bengtsson on a project about story time events at libraries, where drag queens read stories to children. Originating in the US, where the phenomenon has been the subject of controversy and conflict, the event has become widespread and popular in Sweden since 2017, but it is also controversial. The purpose of the study is to examine drag story events as an arena for conflicting meanings in relation to children, gender, and sexuality in the specific Swedish context—not least since Sweden has made a name for itself as a country with progressive gender equality and LGBTQ policies. Based on queer temporality theory and global sexual politics, we analyze how children are portrayed and featured in various competing visions of future gender orders and the good society. 

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Rosa

  2011. Fanny Ambjörnsson.

  Book

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• Tid att städa

  2018. Fanny Ambjörnsson.

  Book

  Read more about Tid att städa

• Vad är queer?

  2016. Fanny Ambjörnsson.

  Book

  Read more about Vad är queer?

• Vulnerable Viewer Positions

  2020. Fanny Ambjörnsson, Ingeborg Svensson. Vulnerability in Scandinavian art and culture, 195-219

  Chapter

  Ambjörnsson and Svensson analyse a group of queer feminist activists watching the reality show Paradise Hotel. Inspired by the feminist research tradition’s interest in consumers, the reality TV format is understood as a genre centred on intervention, participation and emotionality, rather than merely representation. Following Sara Ahmed’s thoughts on orientation, the viewers’ emotional reactions of approaching and distancing themselves from the programme are used to investigate various ways of handling and managing vulnerability. This is achieved through localizing a specific queer feminist viewing position, where the viewers’ feminist identification with female subordination is combined with a camp attitude towards the despised and failed. Thus, through embracing and exposing themselves to the hyperbolic, exaggerated, shameless and sometimes sexist and homophobic representations in the programme, they simultaneously negotiate marginalization, subordination, a longing for inclusion in mainstream society and their own potential middle-class advantage.

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• Time to clean

  2019. Fanny Ambjörnsson. Sociologisk forskning 56 (3-4), 275-288

  Article

  Cleaning is a practice with low status. Most people single out cleaning as the least attractive of household chores and the people who clean as a profession are usually badly payed. This article is an attempt to discuss why these practices have such a bad reputation - in everyday life, in work, in popular culture and, not the least, in the feminist movement. Through ethnographic data primarily based on interviews, I investigate the historically imbedded meanings tied to practices of tidying up. Drawing on theories of queer temporality, I highlight what I want to call the temporality of cleaning - the repetitiveness and direction backwards and sideways instead of forward - as a possible answer. The circular practice of taking care of our physical remains remind us of our approaching death, rather than of progress, and thus generates feelings of anger and despair. But instead of ignoring or avoiding this reminder of another time, I argue for a feminist appraisal of the temporality of cleaning. In line with scholars within resistance studies who urge for a sensibility for the temporal aspects of everyday resistance, I propose that a feminist politics that puts cleaning at the center rather than in the margins would acknowledge our mutual dependency and co-living with the material world around us.

  Read more about Time to clean

Show all publications by Fanny Ambjörnsson at Stockholm University