This research program is funded by The Swedish Research Council for 2012-2015 within the area "Long-term funding for theory and concept development". It takes its point of departure in research done within the research theme “Challenging normalization processes” (CNP) within Challenging gender (read more here). The program will build on solid empirical work done within CNP research theme.

Neoliberal individualism and the corresponding re(de)formation of the welfare state and new approaches to political struggle have remapped society and thereby also the feminist agenda. These changes have deep consequences for the understanding of gender and for the possibilities of gender theory to produce knowledge for social change. The aim of this program is to further explore the challenges gender theory thus will meet in a neoliberal welfare state, but also to explore and further develop how gender theory, in its turn, can meet with these challenges.

  

The program is built on a step-by-step thematic process:

1.Understanding and challenging the way normalization processes make power, values and responsibility invisible,

2. Challenging the role of emotions in normalization/ individualization and finally

3: How to deal with differences in an ethical way? The possibility of developing a more sustainable gender theory in a neoliberal time. (more here)

 

The work will be carried out in an interdisciplinary and international collaboration within Forum for gender studies and its national/international networkthe  MING network and FlickForsk! The network will meet for thematic workshops twice a year . 

 

Between the workshops literature seminars will be held (read more here).