No 6 (2016)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/80629

Health and Well-Being in Today’s Scandinavia

This issue of LIR-journal »Health and well-being in today’s Scandinavia« is the outcome of interdisciplinary research done within the research programme »Religion, Culture, and Health« at the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Gothenburg, between 2010 and 2014.2 Here six scholars present their work on how it is possible to understand and deal with the growing number of people suffering from various states of illness, as well as mental and social difficulties, and therefore also how it is possible to apprehend and treat health problems related to ideological and culturally defined issues, such as ethical and political questions, gender structure, and religion.

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Health through Work: Lutheran and gendered perspectives in Swedish health magazines 1910–13
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Kardemark, Wilhelm
    This article analyses Lutheran and gendered perspectives in Swedish health magazines published from 1910 to 1913. As the article shows, we may talk of a masculine middle-class bias that, in the magazines, intertwined with a Lutheran outlook on life. Hard work and discipline as well as a willingness to be at the service of one’s neighbour are emphasized as essential to life and good health. The notion of the calling is seen as a key factor in explaining the Lutheran perspective on health. The emphasis on the calling and a Lutheran view of society are seen as crucial aspects that distinguish the Swedish approach to health from those of muscular Christianity.
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    ”I wish I had gone on a diet”. Citizenship in Danish campaigns and the novel The Mountain
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Schwartz, Camilla
    Health and physicality play a key role in the citizenship grammar of the late welfare state, and the citizen’s identity is increasingly linked to body functions and body appearance. In particular, overweight citizens are positioned as deviations from the norms of ideal citizenship in the late welfare state. However, health and physicality alone do not define citizenship in the late welfare state because alongside these ideals run demands for the citizen to be mobile, adaptable and adjusted to a constant process of optimization. The higher goal of this process is articulated as the illusion of future happiness. On the basis of various narratives on obesity, this article examines the frameworks for the citizenship ideals and subjectivity perceptions of the late welfare state (2009–2011) and looks at how the Danish novel Bjerget (The Mountain) from 2001 by Mads Brenøe establishes a dialogue with and problematizes these ideals. The idea is to examine how the Danish welfare state creates different narratives about the welfare citizen: How do they interpellate the citizen, and how does literature respond to these narratives in their own words? In the article obesity represents an example of subjectification in the late welfare state. The article deals with subjectivity in general, not specifically the citizenship of obese people, and the theoretical framework is based on theories of subjectivity in general, not obesity studies in particular
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    Translation and untellability. Autistic subjects in autobiographical discourse
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Bergenmar, Jenny
    This article discusses the conditions for and reception of auto biographies by autistic persons from a critical disability per spective. Taking as a point of departure theories of narrativity where storytelling is seen as an essential human trait and narrative as a prerequisite for the construction of a self, the article discusses different modes of representing autistic subjectivity, in some cases contradicting these assumptions. In some of the »canonized« autistic autobiographies, the narrative script of overcoming autism is strongly present. The article shows how this is not merely an adaptation to the expectations of the audience, but also a method strategically employed as a means to avoid objectification and to gain agency. Although some autobiographical representations of autistic personhood resist having to translate their experience or language to fit the narrative script of disability, audiences tend to appropriate them into the expected narrative trajectory of overcoming, thus rendering alternative representations of autistic personhood unacknowledged.
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    Women’s experience of reading fiction while on sick leave
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Pettersson, Cecilia
    The article presents an empirical study of women’s experi ences of reading fiction while on sick leave. The aim is to discuss questions concerning the choice of literature and the function of reading in a bibliotherapeutic context from the viewpoint of literary studies. The results presented shed new light on pre vious research on bibliotherapy. They also show that the surveyed women’s reading patterns correspond very well with how women have read historically. Thus, the literary studies perspective applied in the study opens up for a more broadminded approach to the selection of literature and to different kinds of reading in bibliotherapy than has been customary. In addition, it suggests that research on bibliotherapy has everything to gain from taking a gender perspective.
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    Social reading for mental health
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Stenberg, Lisbeth
    Social reading is a praxis that has gained renewed interest during the twenty-first century. In my research project »Social reading — fiction and health« I strive to throw light on if and how the use of group discussions of fiction can play a supportive role in rehabilitation. In this chapter I discuss the results of my exploratory empirical studies of five reading groups, theorizing the processes of interpretation from a sociological perspective. My results indicate firstly, that group discussions about a text inviting identification tend to result in a deeper understanding of the characters and have the potential to empower individuals. Secondly, texts likely to raise debate rather than lead to role-taking open up for readers to try out new ways of understanding or judging characters that they originally feel unrelated to.
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    Existential Health. Philosophical and historical perspectives
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Sigurdson, Ola
    In this article I strive for a conceptual clarification and constructive elaboration of the concept of existential health. Taking my cue from the multidimensionality of health – re ferring to contemporary experience, the WHO definition of health as well as pre-modern conceptions of health – I compare existential health to other concepts of health – i.e. physical, mental, social and spiritual. I argue that existential health should not be seen as yet another dimension of health – not even spiritual health, the most likely candidate as Valerie DeMarinis and Cecilia Melder, two prominent Swedish psychologists of religion, has argued – but rather is a reflexive experience of health. By »reflexive« I mean an intentional relation to one’s own experience of ailment and health, in cluding a relation to these experiences as one’s own. My conclusion is that existential health as a concept should be reserved for this reflexive feature of human subjectivity in relation to health, cutting across all other health dimensions, so as not to confuse the conceptuality in speaking of health.
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    Editorial - Introduction
    (LIR. journal, 2016) Demker, Marie; Leffler, Yvonne; Sigurdsson, Ola