Search

On June 18th the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland, celebrated 100 years of women’s‘ voting rights in Iceland with a special conference, Power and democracy 100 years later. In association with the conference Dr. Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir, Professor emerita at the University of Örebro, Sweden, was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science. Anna Guðrún was the first Icelandic woman to complete a doctorate in political science, in 1991, and also the first to embark on an advanced academic career in political science and gender studies. It is therefore highly appropriate that Anna Guðrún should be awarded the first honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science, where these disciplines are located. Her research covers a broad spectrum, including political science, sociology, economic history, psychology and gender studies. She was among the first to deal in a theoretical manner with gender, power and politics, which was considered rather provocative at the start of her academic career in the early 1970s. She is a pioneer in intertwining political research and gender studies and her most important research is in the field of power and personal gender relations. Anna Guðrún moved to Sweden at an early age but has kept in touch with the Icelandic research community. Below we publish her acceptance speech on the occasion when the honorary doctorate was awarded. It reflects clearly how her ideas have developed and her intimate sense for how personal and political factors bring politics and gender studies closer at the same time as she deepens and broadens both of their subjects.

1. Introduction Ann Ferguson and Anna G. Jonasdottir 2. Love Studies: A (Re)New(ed) Field of Feminist Knowledge Interests Anna G. Jonasdottir Part I: Gendered Interests in Sexual Love 3. Love, Social Change, and Everyday Heterosexuality Stevi Jackson 4. Royal Love: Gender, Power, and National Identity in the Swedish Crown Princess Wedding Anna Adeniji 5. "Loving More Than One": On the Discourse of Polyamory Christian Klesse 6. A (Re)Turn to Love: An Epistemic Conversation between Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" and Jonasdottir's "Love Power" Violet Eudine Barriteau 7. Loving Him for Who He Is: The Microsociology of Power Lena Gunnarsson Part II: The Ethical and Political Implications of Time and Love in Caring Practices and Research 8. Time to Love Valerie Bryson 9. All in the Family: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and Love Alyssa Schneebaum 10. Theorizing Love, Work, and Family in Early Norwegian Family Research and Today Margunn Bjornholt 11. Moved by Love: How Love Research Can Change Our Deep-Rooted Emotional Understandings and Affective Consciousness Rosa M. Medina-Domenech, Mari Luz Esteban-Galarza, and Ana Tavora-Rivero 12. Why Love, Care, and Solidarity Are Political Matters: Affectivity, Equality and Fraser's Model of Social Justice Kathleen Lynch Part III: The Politics of Love and Radical/Revolutionary Transformation 13. Revolutionary Love: Feminism, Love, and the Transformative Politics of Freedom in the Works of Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, and Goldman Leyna Lowe 14. Love in Translation: Neoliberal Availability or a Solidarity Practice? Eva Majewska 15. From Veiled to Unveiled: A Look at Discursive Representation of Body in Iranian Love Blogs Maryam Paknahad Jabarooty 16. Love in the Multitude? A Feminist Critique of Love as a Political Concept Eleanor Wilkinson 17. Feminist Love Politics: Romance, Care, and Solidarity Ann Ferguson 18. Bread and Roses in the Common Rosemary Hennessy

Successively through the 1990s and specifically since the millennium shift a growing interest in the subject of love can be seen in various scholarly disciplines and interdisciplinary research area ...

In order to isolate, theoretically, the vital mechanisms that constrain women as citizens in Western, democratic societies, it is necessary to go beyond explanations in terms of work, into sexuality However, it is not the practice of sexual coercion which, though a serious wrong, is fundamental in subordinating women in the formally free society; it is rather the freely given—and taken—love. Furthermore, if scrutinizing pre-democratic, anti-feminist arguments can help to reveal the situation today, it is the utilitarian view of women's sexual resources, rather than arguments about sexually differentiated—and inferior female—nature, which is crucial. Secondly, the concept of ‘difference’, now so popular among feminist writers, is important, especially when used empirically to avoid oversimplifying unity thinking about each of the sex/gender groups. But it is not tit for conceiving the power transactions going on in the socio-sexual process Furthermore. I suppose that one of the most important tasks of feminism is to balance the weights of (different) individuality and collectivity to mutually developmental values. Thirdly, women want more than ‘equal chances’, something other than ‘equal results’, and the ‘different but equally valuable’ must, to be women-worthy, be defined by women themselves. In a democratic society, if women are to be full and equal members, as leaders and led, then women and men have to be openly accepted as two fundamental, interested parties in society Finally, women should not claim this citizen status first and foremost as mothers, but simply as women. i e. as female, social ‘incarnate subjects’.

In this article I summarize some main points from a larger study which I am doing on theoretical conceptualization of the formal/equal patriarchy of today Although I see myself as a socialist feminist, applying historical materialist method to feminist questions, I am critical of contemporary socialist feminist theory for not taking the issues raised by radical feminists seriously enough; for clinging too closely to the specific Marxian prob lematique of political economy and class, and for not stating the basic problem as one of power transactions in the relationship between women and men as socio-sexual beings My position is that in order to develop a feminist theory of patriarchy, we must transcend the 'field of knowledge' of economy, class and work much more decisively than the socialist feminist theory of today does We must establish a specific theoretical problematique ( field of knowledge), that of 'political sexuality', socio-sexual relationship, and love In doing this we can very well use historical materialism as guiding threads' Characterizing patnarchy as a political sex/gender system, the core of my theory is constructed in terms of a specific sex/gender exploitation, which is essentially non-economic but social and human-matenal.

Har kvinnor speciella intressen som kan särskiljas från mäns? Kan kvinnorna betraktas som en intressegrupp i det politiska systemet? Anna G Jonasdöttir diskuterar här det politiska intressebegreppets relevans för kvinnor. Hon lanserar en intressesyn som både visar begreppets fruktbarhet och dess begränsningar.