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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

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.