One of the main preconditions of this thesis is that identity is a relational process. Another precondition is that the process of constructing a librarian identity begins when students of Library- and Information Science (LIS) categorize themselves based on their belief of what the librarian profession is. A third precondition is that librarian stereotypes are categorizations of what is means to be a librarian. Their simplified construction makes them hard to change. In order to understand the process of constructing identities in the librarian profession two narratives on what it means to become a librarian are identified – one narrative is from the LIS discipline and one is from popular culture. By combining Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis with Butler’s theory of subversive performativity and social identity theory, ten bachelor and master theses by LIS students are analyzed. Five theses investigate the librarian identity and five investigate librarian stereotypes in popular culture.This thesis finds that the whereas stereotypes re-produce gender as power relations, telling a story of the public librarian as feminine and lacking status, the discipline’s narrative on public librarian also equals to these gender structures. The same hegemonic masculinity may affect how future librarians identifies themselves with their profession. In accordance with the device that we are not born librarians, we become one, this thesis proposes that knowledge of social structures behind how librarians are portrayed can give librarians power over their own identification process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hb-23245 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Kläpp, Corina |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Borås, Akademin för bibliotek, information, pedagogik och IT |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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