Books by Tobias Hübinette
Sveriges avrasifiering. Svenska uppfattningar om ras och rasism under efterkrigstiden, 2023
The deracialization of Sweden is a research anthology that examines issues of race, racism, anti-... more The deracialization of Sweden is a research anthology that examines issues of race, racism, anti-racism and whiteness in a Swedish post-war and contemporary context. The anthology consists of 13 studies written by authors from different fields that collectively explore how the concept of race was gradually dismantled and eventually became taboo in Sweden after 1945, and how a specifically Swedish form of anti-racism instead became normative.
The anthology's contributions can be seen as case studies, focusing on key persons, public debates, figures of thought, institutions, migration and marketing, based on material from archives, the daily press, interviews, social media and more. Through this empirical and methodological breadth, the anthology as a whole cross-sections Sweden’s evolution from being a race science pioneer to becoming the world's most distinctly “colorblind” country.
The book is edited by Tobias Hübinette and Peter Wikström, with contributions written by Martin Ericsson, Johan Samuelsson, Ludwig Schmitz, Emma Severinsson, Mattias Tydén, Mats Wickström, David Assadkhan, Karin Idevall Hagren, Catrin Lundström, Sayaka Osanami Törngren and Jeff Werner.
Papers by Tobias Hübinette
Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 2002
Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies
This is a study of the Swedish debate on statues and monuments to the world-famous Swedish natura... more This is a study of the Swedish debate on statues and monuments to the world-famous Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus that took place during the Black Lives Matter movement breakthrough in the summer of 2020. The purpose is to examine how understandings of race, racism, identity, and history were articulated in the debate. The empirical material consists of Twitter posts and newspaper editorials, which we approach through thematic analysis complemented with discourse analysis of illustrative examples and excerpts. Theoretically, we conceptualize the debate as a case of a Swedish racialized memory war. The results show that discourse participants constructed the terms of the debate as a matter of being “for” or “against” Linnaeus’ legacy, and consequently as a matter of being for or against science, reason, progress, and a supposedly non-ideological historiography, rather than as a matter of qualitatively renegotiating how we selectively remember and celebrate historical persons...
Hur subjektet forandras av produktivkrafternasutveckling, den teknologi (verktyg, apparater ochor... more Hur subjektet forandras av produktivkrafternasutveckling, den teknologi (verktyg, apparater ochorganisationsformer) som mojliggor och villkorartankandet.metaforDe begrepp och symboler och samtidens ...
On Whiteness, 2012
This chapter focuses on the concept of trans-racial adoption of children and adults. Despite the ... more This chapter focuses on the concept of trans-racial adoption of children and adults. Despite the recent concentration on the adoption of white families adopting nonwhite children, we identify how the opposite was a regular occurrence in the classical colonial period. The existence of these inverted trans-racial adoptions is well documented in literary and autobiographical texts, historical and official documents, as well as in art and visual culture. This chapter aims at reconceptualising trans-racial adoption within the framework of the European's fundamental inability to attach to the lands and peoples outside Europe by making use of the concepts of indigenisation and autochtonisation.
Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2011
To transcend race: An introduction to the concept of transraciality seen through transracial expe... more To transcend race: An introduction to the concept of transraciality seen through transracial experiences and fantasiesThis article introduces the concept of transraciality based on the following questions: Is it possible to transgress race in a similar way as it is possible to transgress sex? How does the transracial experience look like and how does it differ from a transracial fantasy? Who is transracial, and is it the same to transracialise from non-white to white as from white to non-white? The article takes up the experiences of non-white adoptees and their identifications of being white and of white people who want to become non-white both in a colonial and in a postcolonial setting, and argues that it is the non-white to white race transgression which has the potential to transform a dichotomous and hierarchical racial structure.
Culture and Empathy: International Journal of Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies, 2019
Sweden is one of the most diverse countries as far as demographic makeup in the world; however, a... more Sweden is one of the most diverse countries as far as demographic makeup in the world; however, acceptance of mulit-racial inhabitants is not on par with other diversified countries throughout the world. This article aims to understand the situation and position of mixedrace Swedes in contemporary Sweden, their experiences of racialization in different social spaces and how they acquire and develop a racial literacy. This study takes place in a country which is currently inherently super-diverse and rapidly developing into an even more multiracial nation but is also a highly racially segregated, and in which a color-blind racial grammar is the dominant discourse dividing the population between "immigrants" and "Swedes.
Culture and Empathy: International Journal of Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies, 2018
During the summer and autumn of 2012, K-pop finally got its breakthrough in Northern Europe due t... more During the summer and autumn of 2012, K-pop finally got its breakthrough in Northern Europe due to the Gangnam Style world phenomenon and also in Sweden wherein K-pop previously had had a very small fan base. This article consists of a study of the reception of hallyu in Northern Europe after 2012 and with Sweden as the case study and national context and with an emphasis on Kpop. Given that it is highly unlikely that any K-pop artist will ever again be able to reproduce and replicate PSY's unique and momentary popularity in such a peripheral European country like Sweden, the article tries to offer some insights into Sweden's K-pop fandom base of today by the way of a mapping of the fan world and interviews with 8 Swedish K-pop fans: What has happened with the reception of K-pop in Sweden since Gangnam Style, how big is the fan base, who are the fans and why are the fans attracted to K-pop? The article begins by introducing the context of hallyu and K-pop in contemporary Sweden and continues with an overview of the Swedish K-pop fandom world and an account of the interviews and at the end the findings are summarised and reflected upon.
Genealogy, 2018
In this article, we use the results from two studies, one on interracial relationship and the oth... more In this article, we use the results from two studies, one on interracial relationship and the other on transnational adoption, to explore how notions of race and ethnicity shape family policies, family building and everyday life in Sweden. Transnational adoption and interracial marriage in Sweden have previously never been compared in research, even though they both are about transracial family formation. By bringing these two topics together in a critical race theory framework we got a deeper understanding of how transracial families are perceived and affected by societal beliefs and norms. The analysis revealed a somewhat contradictory and complex picture on the norms of family formation. The color-blind ideology that characterizes the Swedes’ self-understanding, together with the privileged position of whiteness in relation to Swedishness, makes the attitude towards different forms of transracial families ambivalent and contradictory. Transracial children and their parents are pe...
Korea Observer, 2012
The winds of hallyu, which for several years have swept through most of Asia and parts of South A... more The winds of hallyu, which for several years have swept through most of Asia and parts of South America and Africa, have not yet been able to penetrate the part of the world that is usually known as the West. The reasons for the relatively meagre breakthrough and presence of all things hallyu in Western countries are of course many and complex as well as differentiating according to country and region. The state of the popularity and spread of hallyu and its type of audience, users and consumers is therefore not the same in North America with its big and territorialised Korean and Asian diasporic communities or in Australia and New Zealand which apart from their large Korean and Asian minorities also benefit from a geographic proximity to Korea compared to in Europe where the Korean presence is thin and where Korea is generally an unknown country. This article presents the situation concerning the reception and consumption of hallyu in today's Sweden, a Northern and Western European country with a small Korean and Asian population but 503 * Tobias Hübinette is Associate Professor in Intercultural Education at Södertörn University and a Researcher at the Multicultural Centre in Sweden. He received the Ph.D. in Korean Studies from Stockholm University. His research has focused on the Korean adoption issue and Korean popular culture, adopted Koreans and the Korean diaspora, and questions of race and whiteness and postcolonial issues.
Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World, 2013
Public and media discussion of Europe's colonial and racist history has also recently generated c... more Public and media discussion of Europe's colonial and racist history has also recently generated controversy in Nordic countries such as Sweden. For example, a growing number of white Swedes have argued that the contemporary Swedish word 'neger' ('Negro'), and its various linguistic derivations, are not considered, for the most part, to be racist terms in public and media discourse, despite protestations from representatives from the African diaspora against the naturalized use of the word in media, academic, literary, artistic and political settings (Sabuni 2005). In 2009 a Swedish Facebook group called 'Det heter negerboll' ('The name is Negro ball') was able to recruit tens of thousands of white Swedes who defended the usage of the word 'neger' to reference a popular chocolate pastry, and in support of a white Swedish journalist who had defended the use of the term on public service television a month earlier. Another example of the politicization over language use can be seen within
Social Identities, 2014
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Glänta, 2011
Vi har ju lyckan att äga en ras, som ännu är ganska oförstörd, en ras som är bärare av mycket hög... more Vi har ju lyckan att äga en ras, som ännu är ganska oförstörd, en ras som är bärare av mycket höga och mycket goda egenskaper." Arthur Engberg (s) 1921
positions: asia critique, 2007
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Books by Tobias Hübinette
The anthology's contributions can be seen as case studies, focusing on key persons, public debates, figures of thought, institutions, migration and marketing, based on material from archives, the daily press, interviews, social media and more. Through this empirical and methodological breadth, the anthology as a whole cross-sections Sweden’s evolution from being a race science pioneer to becoming the world's most distinctly “colorblind” country.
The book is edited by Tobias Hübinette and Peter Wikström, with contributions written by Martin Ericsson, Johan Samuelsson, Ludwig Schmitz, Emma Severinsson, Mattias Tydén, Mats Wickström, David Assadkhan, Karin Idevall Hagren, Catrin Lundström, Sayaka Osanami Törngren and Jeff Werner.
Papers by Tobias Hübinette