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Barbro Blehr

About me

Research interests: rituals, religion, nationalism, everyday life; the importance of form and small detail. Among my publications are, besides books and papers from my main projects (please see below) also papers on e. g. the politics of identity among descendants of members of the Norwegian Quisling party, contemporary royal weddings, everyday rituals and a special kind of low-key humour.

At Stockholm University, I have held leadership positions in Ethnology and served as Head of Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies (2008-2014), Deputy Head of Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German (2015/2016) and Vice Dean, Faculty of Humanities (2018-2023).

Teaching

I have taught courses on theory and method, the continuity and change of Ethnology in Sweden, and rituals.

Research

My dissertation explored how various kinds of talk about local issues created a sense of community in a small village in Northern Sweden in the 1980s. Shortly after my PhD I was awarded a grant for studying how celebrations of Norwegian Constitution Day articulated and underpinned Norwegian nationalism. Later, I have been interested in mainstream Christianity in the former state church of Sweden and published minor studies of various kinds of rituals. Most recently, I try to figure out how current forms of procedural research ethics may affect qualitative and ethnographic research. 

Research projects

Participant observation: reflections on a method

The intention of the project is to shed light upon how participant observation has been used and debated in Nordic Ethnology and Folklore Studies in the last five decades, and to reflect upon its prospective future use.

Photo: Pexels / Pixabay

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Samtidsetnologi före samtidsetnologin

    2019. Barbro Blehr. RIG 102 (4), 209-220

    Article

    Ethnology of the present: Revisiting a debate in 1967

    According to a popular understanding among Swedish Ethnologists (not least in Stockholm), its practitioners turned to studies of contemporary society and culture in the 1960’s, with a young generation taking the lead. This paper examines how a little group of their elders, in the same decade, envisioned and assessed the prospect of ethnological studies of modern life. Based primarily on contributions to a symposium on the theme, the following key components of their vision are identified: an understanding of “the contemporary” as a period of considerable length; the adherence to a particular concept of tradition; and a dedication to the ideal of a broad coverage of modern life and collections of data large enough to secure that results would be representative, or typical. In combination, these components rendered the task of studying modern life overwhelming and in practice impossible to realize, for lack of personnel and resources. In the concluding remarks, various aspects of the transition to an Ethnology of the present are illuminated by comparing the paradigmatic work of Åke Daun (1969) to the vision presented by the elders and to some other publications issued at the same time.

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