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Celebrations of local volunteering as a way to cope with cutbacks are frequent. Not least are such celebrations apparent within the media, where descriptions of local initiatives are sometimes seen as the solutions to downward spiralling trends in Swedish rural areas. The paper explores the media production of meaning around rural resilience as they covered initiatives where rural populations mobilised to 'save' threatened local service for their supposed public interest. Using the concepts of 'patchy resilience' and 'cruel optimism', the paper points at how the representations attach rural areas and identities to a stereotypical rural imagery while also representing a resilience ideal that risks glorifying neoliberal responsibilisation.

This document lays out the background for the research program “A promised land? Drivers, challenges and opportunities related to the (green) industrialization of Northern Sweden,” (nr. M22-0029) awarded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond’s in 2022. The document summarizes work in progress and may therefore be updated and republished in different versions according to the requirements of the program. This interdisciplinary program aims to understand the economic, social, and political challenges and opportunities of the ongoing industrial transformation in northern Sweden. A key element of the program is to identify drivers, obstacles, and preconditions in a historical, present, and forward-looking process-perspective., Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, M22-0029

In recent years, menopause as a phase of transition has received great media attention in Sweden, not only in terms of the cessation of menstrual periods, but specifi cally with a focus on hormonal changes in the longer period of time during which female bodies undergo adjustment. In books such as Hormonstark [Hormone strong] (2020), Perimenopower (2018) and Livet med klimakteriet [Life with Menopause] (2020), the stressed reader in mid-career can get knowledge, tips, ideas and inspiring stories about how to deal with the fl uctuating hormones that are said to affect the body during menopause. In this article, we take a poststructuralist feminist perspective on the narratives of hormones and body control in the above mentioned three examples of self-help literature. The aim is to explore how this type of literature represents women’s menopause and hormonal bodies in a broader sense, and how women are in relation to this discourse. The results show that, although hormone narratives may have feminist potential, they primarily represent menopause as an individual rather than a structural matter. The result also display a close resemblance between hormone narratives and contemporary biocapitalism with the aging female body as a lucrative threat., In recent years, menopause as a phase of transformation has received great media attention in a Swedish context. It is then not only specifically about the time when menstruation ceases – but about a longer period of time when female bodies undergo an adjustment with a focus on hormonal changes. In books such as Hormonstark (Hormone strong) (2020), Perimenopower (2018) and Livet med klimakteriet (Life with Menopause) (2020), the stressed reader in the middle of the career receives knowledge, tips, ideas and inspiring stories about how to deal with the fluctuating hormones that are said to affect the body during menopause. In this article, we start from these books with a poststructuralist feminist perspective on narratives and body control on the hormone stories of self-help literature. The aim is to explore how the literature represents women's menopause and hormonal bodies in a broader sense, and how women are encouraged to act in relation to this. The results show that hormone narratives may have feminist potential, but that they primarily make menopause an individual rather than structural matter. Further, they also reveal a close resemblance between the hormonal narratives and a biocapitalist contemporary, with an aging female body as a lucrative threat.&nbsp

Quality of care is determined not only by political decisions but also by how those policies are understood and managed by professionals when put into action. Home care services, the most common form of elder care in Sweden today, should include social support, which is very important for health and wellbeing. And yet, support for social participation seems to be lacking. Understanding prevalent social constructs and their possible impacts on focus and content of social practice in home care could reveal ways to address social support in home care. Therefore, this article highlights how professionals in home care provision talk about older home care recipients' loneliness and social needs, and how these repertoires are related to professionals' opportunities and obligations to support those social needs. The study included 22 persons from different professions in home care provision, from two municipalities in northern Sweden. Nine individual interviews and four group interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a discourse psychology approach. The results show two interpretative repertoires in which notions of otherness and likeness guided definitions and support regarding loneliness, social needs, and social support. This study reveals assumptions that underpin and structure the practices of home care. As the interpretative repertoires provided differing and partly opposing views on how to provide social support and combat loneliness, it seems important to also address the broader issues of professional identities and how loneliness is defined and approached.

As a consequence of cutbacks in the welfare sector, rural populations have reacted to their situation by taking over and operating activities that are threatened by closures, such as schools, grocery stores and health centres, for themselves. Such initiatives are often referred to as examples of rural resilience. Drawing on interviews, this paper explores participants' narratives about rural initiatives aiming to retain and develop local welfare and community services. It pays specific heed to how notions of resilience reside within the narratives – the ideological convictions and challenges they entail, and the practices they make (im)possible. The study shows that participants’ narratives about resilient villages and initiatives indirectly support the neoliberal rural policy focus on regional responsibility to create growth. It argues that, in order to understand the appeal of the neoliberal positions and practices that resilience thinking proved to entail, it is important to recognise the intersections of space and identity, and to explore the local spatial experiences and imageries in relation to which resilience practices appear desirable and necessary, as well as the specific rural identities that resilience discourse supports.

Aims: The aim of this study was to identify and evaluate critical components within social prescribing programmes that can impact loneliness, health, or well-being among older adults. Methods: A systematic review with a narrative synthesis was conducted by systematically searching five databases. A total of 1193 hits were identified, screened, and assessed. Twelve studies were included, with data being extracted and deductively analysed in an iterative manner and then tabulated together with outcomes in order to find common narratives. Results: Three critical components were identified: Assessment before prescription, matching participants with relevant activities, and individualised support from link worker. These critical components seemed important for the success of social prescribing programmes since they had an impact on loneliness, health, and well-being. All together, these results highlight the importance of person-centeredness in the prescribing process. Conclusions: The three critical components identified may prove useful in further research, evaluation, or implementation of social prescribing programmes. Important aspects for further evaluation are discussed.

2020-01220/Vetenskapsrådet/Det är hormonerna. Kvinnor i transition genom berättelser om hormoner.

The implementation of digital healthcare technologies—eHealth—is presented as a solution to increasing costs, demographic changes, and quality issues in rural healthcare. Employing the concept of affective atmospheres, this article uses interviews to explore the emotional aspects of digital healthcare among rural persons of advanced age. Our results suggest that participants were clearly influenced by an affective atmosphere that was deeply embedded in spatial imageries as well as in notions of old age. Strong feelings of resignation, necessity, low entitlement, and defiance tended to encourage participants’ wishes for local face-to-face healthcare to translate into viewing eHealth solutions as positive. This also meant that participants came to enact neoliberal identities of “active ageing”. In conclusion, the concept of affective atmospheres highlights how human subjects and digital materialities interact in the production of human emotional responses to digital healthcare technologies, and emphasises how the conditions and shared imageries of geographic space and age are active components in that process.

The balance recipe: the art of managing menopause in the hormone stories of self-help literature In recent years, menopause as a phase of transformation has received great media attention in a Swedish context. It is then not only specifically concerning the time when menstruation ceases – but about a longer period of time when female bodies undergo an adjustment with a focus on hormonal changes. In books such as Hormonstark (Hormone strong) (2020), Perimenopower (2018) and Livet med klimakteriet (Life with Menopause) (2020), the stressed reader in the middle of the career receives knowledge, tips, ideas and inspiring stories about how to deal with the fluctuating hormones that are said to affect the body during menopause. In this article, we start from these books with a poststructuralist feminist perspective on narratives and body control on the hormone stories of self-help literature. The aim is to explore how the literature represents women's menopause and hormonal bodies in a broader sense, and how women are encouraged to act in relation to this. The results show that hormone narratives may have feminist potential, but that they primarily make menopause an individual rather than structural matter. Further, they also reveal a close resemblance between the hormonal narratives and a biocapitalist contemporary, with an aging female body as a lucrative threat.

What happens when similar measures are being introduced in different national contexts? This article studies the ways in which patient choice has been articulated in public and official reports on health care in the two contexts of Sweden and the UK, whose welfare systems are typically comprehended as different. Specific interest is directed towards the construction of patient positions, and policy documents are analyzed using discourse theory. The results show many similarities between the national contexts; choice is primarily articulated with individuality, autonomy, consumption, and responsibility, as well as with support from state agencies, and patient choice is relentlessly normalized as the way forward. But there are also important differences that reveal that the presuppositions differ, for example, when pinpointing the stakeholders of patient choice reforms and how the different policies work to take the well-known edges off of patient choice ideology., Thematic issue: Managing Health and Social Care

This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. The results showed that masculinity was associated with violence, harassment, and a culture of abuse, as well as with progressive ideas of a “new man” that is both strong and gentle at the same time. The article discusses how the represented masculinities might be problematic in relation to the #MeToo movement’s ambition to reform a sexist society because of the stereotypical and gender-dualistic tendencies that permeate the material and the tendencies to individualize the represented assaults and perpetrators.

The use of healthcare apps for medical advice is becoming increasingly common. This paper explores apps that offer interaction with medical experts. Working from the supposition that digital technologies are intimately entangled in their cultural context, we argue that the apps do more than just neutrally mediate contacts and offer medical and psychological advice. The article addresses the cultural dimensions of healthcare apps and answers questions about the ways in which such apps contribute to forming changing notions of what “healthcare” and being a “patient” entail. Three popular Swedish apps and their marketing material is studied using a discursive interface analysis of the apps’ affordances. The results show that the apps significantly contribute to producing a marketable narrative about app health care that includes accessibility, security/safety and personalisation, and which is partly produced as an alternative to what is offered by Swedish public health care. The results further show that this narrative primarily represents and addresses users who are young, busy, urban consumers of care – partly contrasting policy expectations and hopes.

Introduction: Loneliness and social isolation among older adults (≥65) are an emerging issue of public concern, associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Today there is no systematic intervention developed, implemented or evaluated in Sweden addressing loneliness. The overall aim for this project is to develop, test and refine a person-centred Swedish model for social prescribing (SPiS), and to assess whether and how it reduces loneliness, promotes health and improves well-being among older adults. Description: The focus will be to develop, culturally adapt, evaluate and refine the SPiS model. Following the sequential structure of realist evaluation in three consecutive phases qualitative and quantitative data along with subsequent analysis methods will be collected and utilized. The project will provide knowledge of what works with the social prescribing model, for whom, in what conditions and why, in relation to loneliness, health and well-being among older adults. Discussion: SPiS has the unique position of providing initial knowledge regarding how to reduce loneliness in the Swedish context. However, evaluation is complex as this research goes beyond the unidimensional question “Is it working?”. Conclusion: Developing, implementing and evaluating such a complex program needs systematic and close evaluation.

Teknografiska studier undersöker förhållandet mellan teknik, kultur och sociala relationer. Ett sådant perspektiv kan användas för att synliggöra hur teknologier villkorar hur människor agerar, hur deras identiteter formas och hur de blir till som subjekt. I kapitlet exemplifieras hur olika material, såsom digitala vårdappar, innehåll från sociala medier samt intervjuer, kan användas i teknografiskt inspirerade kvalitativa analyser.

Introduction: The Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP) in the Region Västerbotten Sweden is one of the very few cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention programmes globally that is integrated into routine primary health care. The VIP has been shown as a cost-effective intervention to significantly reduce CVD mortality. However, little is known about the effectiveness of a digital solution to tailor risk communication strategies for supporting behavioral change. STAR-C aims to develop and evaluate a technical platform for personalized digital coaching that will support behavioral change aimed at preventing CVD. Methods: STAR-C employs a mixed-methods design in seven multidisciplinary projects, which runs in two phases during 2019–2024: (i) a formative intervention design and development phase, and (ii) an intervention implementation and evaluation phase. In the 1st phase, STAR-C will model the trajectories of health behaviors and their impact on CVDs (Project 1), evaluate the role of the social environment and social networks on behavioral change (Project 2) and assess whether and how social media facilitates the spread of health information beyond targeted individuals and stimulates public engagement in health promotion (Project 3). The findings will be utilized in carrying out the iterative, user-centered design, and development of a person-tailored digital coaching platform (Project 4). In the 2nd phase, STAR-C will evaluate the implementation of the coaching programme and its effectiveness for promoting behavioral change and the spreading of health information across social networks and via social media (Project 5). The cost-effectiveness (Project 6) and ethical issues (Project 7) related to the coaching programme intervention will be evaluated. Discussion: The STAR-C research programme will address the knowledge and practice research gaps in the use of information technologies in health promotion and non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention programmes in or

How do politicians make sense of situations in which they may find themselves caught up in between opposing loyalties, for example, party loyalty on the one hand and loyalty to neighbours and friends or ideological convictions on the other? Based on interviews about a rural occupation in protest of a political decision in a small community in Northern Sweden, this paper explores the approaches of local politicians to the protest and to the people involved in it. The results show how discourses of geographic space and party-political loyalty structured the negotiated responsibility for the situation, affected the politicians’ descriptions of the occupation as such, and made support for the protest become more or less difficult.

Background: The concept of occupation has been widely discussed and developed theoretically in occupational science and occupational therapy. Objectives: To explore how older community living adults themselves describe and negotiate the meaning and definition of “occupation”. Methods: Twenty-seven persons in northern Sweden (67-95 years old) participated in workshops with audio-recorded discussions. The transcribed discussions were analyzed using discourse theory. Findings: Discussions started with efforts to establish a initial definition of occupation focusing on what kinds of practices could be seen as occupations. Second, there were significant efforts to value and grade different occupations, described as evaluative definitions. Last, participants resonated around the disadvantages of stable definitions of occupations, and put forth reflexive arguments for more relativizing definitions. Conclusion: While physical occupations were tellable, social and mental occupations seemed to require a language that was less familiar. Therefore, interventions that suggest participants to engage in social or mental occupations need to provide a language that makes non-physical occupations comprehensible as occupations.

The Swedish wild-berry industry has become increasingly dependent on migrant workers. As the world market's demand for health and food ingredients increased, Swedish forest berries are exported to China to become nutraceutical products, while most berries consumed in Sweden now are imported cultivated berries. These changing geographies of production and consumption have resulted in a system of supply chains, that reproduce and manage difference between groups of workers and thus, make it difficult to safeguard labor rights. Moreover, this new“global standard” has great impacts on the cultural and political meanings of food. The aim of this paper is to study new emerging practices within the industry and to shed light on the production of representations of certain types of workers and work, and how this relate to supply chain capitalism. From the starting point of narratives collected within the different nodes of the supply chain, the paper focuses on the production, distribution and consumption of berry products as means to address how meanings of work and berries are negotiated. A specific focus is put on the narrated events during and after a strike where migrant workers tried to fight for better wages and living conditions. The workers not only lost the battle, but they were also expelled from Sweden without being paid. The work of the pickers and their agency is disconnected from discourses of labor and from Swedish laws and regulations, and the injustice is further justified and obscured through the lens of memories and nostalgia among Swedish consumers of berries.

Swedish media regularly indicate that people's confidence in politicians is low. This distrust in or discontent with politicians is often related to rural politics. This paper focuses on the populist tendencies in the representations of politicians in the Swedish rural press during the parliamentary election year of 2014. A discourse analysis of the press material illustrates three closely related and critical themes; politicians are regarded as being urban centred, as doing anything for power, and as acting in an autocratic manner and misusing their power. The discourse analysis also reveals how the critical press material is linked to a moral geography relating space to a specific moral order. Drawing on theories on rural populism, the article shows how the media's references to a rural‐based victimhood, and to an alleged inequality between urbanity and rurality, can morally legitimate and bluntly express their contempt for 'scandalous' politicians, and they can present their critique as rational and justified.

Temanummer: Att vara eller inte vara pensionär

There is a need to understand the underlying mechanisms at work within health promotion and occupational therapy interventions. The aim of this article was, therefore, to explore and describe how the participants of a group-based occupational therapy intervention with positive health outcomes created meaning of and around their experiences of the intervention. The studied intervention was part of the evaluation of a single-blinded, exploratory randomised controlled trial of three different interventions. A total of 19 participants between 77 and 82 years of age with experiences from the group-based intervention were interviewed, and the transcribed interviews were analysed from a constructivist approach. The results showed five different perspectives of meaning, including enjoyment, usefulness, togetherness, respect for individuality and self-reflection. Based on our findings, we argue that the possibility of getting information, sharing with others and having fun, and the ability to adjust the activities in the intervention so that they met the individual's needs, created meaning for the participants. Moreover, meeting with others supported the participants’ perspectives of themselves. The results are discussed in relation to the pervasive discourse of successful ageing, including how it was present but also challenged within the participants’ accounts of the intervention.

The expression ‘a living countryside’ is often used to characterize the goal of Swedish rural politics. In this article the use of the expression in 170 non-government bills related to Swedish rural politics is analysed using discourse theory. On a general level, the expression was found to be empty of meaning and open for use by different and often opposing political parties proposing different and sometimes antagonistic measures. However, there were aspects of it that flirted with positively charged notions of Swedish national identity. It was also clear that the discursive struggle for a living countryside was also part of a party-political struggle. Further, the fantasy of a living countryside performed an ideological function in that it under-communicated how rural areas are generally and structurally subordinated to urban centres in ways that reach far beyond easily performed measures and political party quarrels., Rural moral: mening, mobilisering och medborgarskap i initiativ för hållbar norrländsk landsbygd

The expected costs of population ageing have generally led to perceived needs to postpone the age of retirement. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, the aim of this paper is to describe the ways that the possibility of an extended working life is comprehended by persons over the age of 60 living in sparsely populated areas in northern Sweden. While defining themselves as active, the interviewees argued strongly in favour of the right to retire. What are often described as opposing retiree subject positions healthy and active vs. vulnerable and dependent were partly transgressed in the interviews. The interviewees performed a solidarity that had the potential of including their future selves as possible objects of solidarity. Another important result was that in comprehending the possibility of an extended working life, morally charged notions of geographic place became central., Paths to healthy and active ageing

Recension av: Kim Silow Kallenberg: Gränsland. Svensk ungdomsvård mellan vård och straff. Södertörns högskola, Huddinge 2016. 258 s. English summary. ISBN 978-91-87843-42-6.

In spite of the fact that we are living in a digital era the position of traditional news media as the fi rst chosen source of information has not been altered. Th is is especially true when it comes to older persons. What are the reasons for this persistency? Th is article gives an account of how older persons refl ect on whether and why they believe in, and trust, news press reporting and their reasons for acquiring news from traditional news media. Using a discourse theoretical logics approach we found that whether or not the informants believed in and trusted the news they all referred to an overarching fantasy stating that it is a right and an obligation of an ideal citizen to update oneself of the surrounding world via the news media. We also found social habits to be crucial for the informants’ practice of obtaining information from the news media.

Previous research has pointed to the fact that ideological images of geographies are bound up with the ongoing struggle for economic and social resources, and that moral values and emotions are central in rendering such images intelligible and accepted. To explore this further, we critically engage with the ways in which moral values and emotions contribute to the (re)production of centres and peripheries in the Swedish news press reports of public-sector job relocations. We deploy the discourse theoretical notion of ideological fantasy to critically explain the forces that make particular moral and emotional judgements comprehensible. We identify two discourses in the news press material – one about competence and one about compensation – built up by morally and emotionally charged articulations. We argue that ideological fantasies worked as driving forces both in this moral and emotional news debate and also in the ongoing constitution of geographies.

Interest in the rural has increased in Sweden during the last decades and the rural has become increasingly present as an object of politics, not least in social media. While social media have been recognised for their significance for social movements generally, less is written about how to understand rural movements online. The aim of this article is to study how politics of the rural is performed in and through social media. Seven Sweden-based Facebook accounts were studied using discourse theory. Three different discourses were identified – a discourse of mobilising action, a discourse of re-representation and a discourse of frustration. Of these, we specifically highlight how the focus on urban norms and the practice of performative re-representation constituted the digital arenas as spaces where people who identified with rural areas were linked together, had their experiences and opinions acknowledged and their rural identities not only re-constituted, but recognised and valued. We also show how the different discourses in turn produced two opposing notions of rural areas: as dying or as alive. These two notions worked to structure the politics of the rural in different ways.