This thesis project opens up an interaction design space in the InfoSec domain concerning raising awareness of common vulnerabilities and facilitating counter practices through seamful design.This combination of raising awareness coupled with boosting possibilities for deliberate action (or non-action) together account for augmenting agency. This augmentation takes the form of bottom up micro-movements and daily gestures contributing to opportunities for greater agency in the increasingly fraught InfoSec domain.

In Sweden, the language of norm critique has gained increasing influence over the past ten years in connection with queer theoretical thinking and norm critical pedagogy becoming part of gender equality work and equality work in the (pre)school system. In this essay I examine, through interviews, how people who use norm-critical language view the normativity in the Swedish language with the main purpose of seeing if it works and how it is achieved. The essay also examines how norm-critical language users try to change the language to become more inclusive and how all this can be understood from the perspective of Butler’s performativity theory and ideas about power and normativity. The results of the survey show that norm-critical language works and contributes to the goal; a world where everyone gets a place and recognition in both language and physical space. We can see how children become subjects and are included in norm-critical language and how the binary perception of gender is set in motion, which leads to greater scope for action and inclusion. Furthermore, it is stated that there is a danger in the goal’s new normativity which leads to the conclusion that norm-critical language is and has to be a constant process and under constant reflection. As it is a small study and a large topic, I urge further research on norm-critical language.

The Syrian civil war has been one of the most complex armed confrontations in modern era. In thiscontext, the military participation of Kurdish female fighters of the YPJ Units has received globalmedia coverage. This thesis explores the gendered dimension of media representations of YPJfighters and the representation of the construction of their military identity. Firstly, it asks howBritish media represent their appearance and background, their ability to fight and their motivation.Moreover, it explores how pro-Kurdish media and on-line platforms represent the construction oftheir military identity and the way the YPJ is formed into a group. The data comes from 23 Britishand 8 pro-Kurdish media articles and is analysed with discourse analysis. The thesis finds thatBritish media representations echo the hegemonic discourse about women’s role as victims duringwar, while only the more liberal media represent motivations connected with a struggle againstpatriarchy, capitalism and the nation-state. Moreover, it finds that pro-Kurdish media represent YPJfighters as breaking stereotypical notions of femininity through a repetition of performativemilitary acts and about precarity being the condition of the group’s coherence. It also finds that thearticles function as interpellation to new fighters.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the interplay between economics, gender, and materiality in an economic sector that has received little attention from performativity scholars: agriculture. During the early 20th century, Swedish agricultural education was organized along gendered lines. I study how male and female schools differed in their economics education. In so doing I will explore the question: How were economic and non-economic agents assembled in Swedish lower agricultural education during the first half of the 20th century? To answer this the thesis follows a rural domestic school and an agricultural school, intended for female and male students respectively. The method is a qualitative text analysis of firstly archival material from the schools, secondly textbooks in agricultural economics and bookkeeping, and thirdly Swedish Government Official Reports. The main finding is that performance of economic theory creates both the economic and the non-economic. The farm as a unit of production and reproduction was split into home and business, in an act of interessement. The two forms of smallholder education were reformulated as agricultural education and domestic education, thereby placing the young men in a productive sphere and the young women in a domestic, reproductive sphere. Economic agents were assembled in the agricultural school as resources for qualculation were provided, not least through economic and agronomic quantification. In the rural domestic school, conversely, resources for qualculation were removed as women’s farm labor was framed as an expression of immeasurable maternal love. The economic actor was thus assembled in relation to his female Other. In summary, performing the economic man means performing economic and performing man.

The stories we tell about "the economy" in discourses of regional economic development play an active role in shaping our economic realities. The construction of more equitable, democratic and ecologically-sound economies must involve an interrogation of our assumptions about what “the economy” is, how it works, and how these conceptions shape our senses of agency and possibility. I argue in this thesis that key texts in regional economic development present a concept of economy that renders the interrelationships between social, economic and ecological processes invisible or beyond ethical contestation, restricts the field of economic possibility, and generates a problematic sense of necessity in the pursuit of endless growth and competition. Effectively enacting different forms of economic relationship requires different economic ontologies. After exploring in some detail, through engagement with the work of Butler, Laclau and Mouffe and Latour, the proposition that "the economy" is socially-produced and that economic ontologies can be "performative,” I investigate the alternative economic ontologies of Karl Polanyi, Stephen Gudeman and J.K. Gibson-Graham. Offering a conceptualization of economy as a process of actively constructing livelihoods in which human and more-than-human participation are recognized and the ethical nature of this interdependence is placed at the forefront of economic negotiation and construction, I distill a provisional toolbox of economic questions, concepts and coordinates which might become sites of new learning, imagination and construction when placed in the hands of communities who seek a different kind of development.

This essay explores how adolescent girls in two pieces of children’s fiction are portrayed in children’s literature from the start and end of the 20th century to examine how they perform their gender in relation to expectations as informed by the Angel in the House discourse. Anne of Green Gables and the Harry Potter series were published at the start and end of the twentieth century, and both texts engage with the discourse. Using Judith Butler’s theory of Gender Performativity, this essay demonstrates that the Angel in the House discourse continues to influence expectations of how adolescent girls should behave, particularly with regards to being responsible for upholding the moral code to ensure the social standing of their family. However, they differ in regard to other aspects of the discourse, indicating that parts of the discourse appear to have lessened over the course of the 20th century.

This study examines the complex relationship between gender, virtual reality (VR), and social interaction within the context of full-body tracking (FBT) technology in social VR platforms. As VR technology advances and becomes increasingly integrated into users’ lives, understanding the implications of gender expression and perception in these immersive environments is crucial. Utilizing unobtrusive observations and interviews within the VRChat platform, this research explores avatar choices, interactions, and FBT technology utilization as they relate to users’ expressions and perceptions of gender. The findings reveal that cultural background plays a significant role in shaping users’ gender expressions and perceptions in social VR. The study also demonstrates the fluidity of gender expression in virtual environments, highlighting how users can challenge and subvert traditional gender norms, and the potential of virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning, fostering cross-cultural understanding, and promoting inclusive and diverse gender expressions. This study contributes to the emerging body of literature on virtual reality and gender, providing insights that can inform future research and technology development in the field.

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This essay aims to examine how fan fiction texts and the digital non-profit platform Archive of Our Own can provide queer separatist spaces for reorienting cis- and heteronormativity as well as how that is manifest in the published stories. It does so through an analysis of the platform’s design and accessibility and through a reading of two short stories from the collection QUEER CONVERSATIONS by the pen name heliosole. Results include that the platform makes space for non-normative stories by being free of use, its equality between moderators, writers, and users, its tradition of education and resistance, by making writing accessible and collaborative, using famous characters’ voices for speaking comforting truths and by challenging norms regarding sexuality and temporality.

No description available.