IDENTITETSSKAPANDE I STUDENTFÖRENINGEN ULRIKA ... - DiVA

Widding, Ulrika. Identitetsskapande i studentföreningen: Köns- och klasskonstruktioner i
massuniversitetet. (Identity Construction in the Students’ Society: Formations of Gender and
Class in a Mass University). Academic dissertation, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå University,
Sweden, 2006.
(In Swedish, with an English summary.) ISBN: 91-7264-038-3 ; ISSN: 0281-6768
Abstract
This thesis deals with the construction of identity going on in Swedish students’
societies, which is analyzed as an intersection of gender and social class.
Theoretically, I draw on discourse analysis. Foucault’s genealogical method is
applied in order to understand how discourses of the past are active today in
students’ identity construction. The study is based on interviews with members
of the board of three different societies. In all, 28 interviews were made.
Furthermore texts and pictures from each society’s homepage were examined.
Overall, the study shows that two main discourses are activated in students’
identity construction. The members of the male-dominated society belonging
to the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology represent a specific form of
masculine identity in accordance with medieval ideas of student life. Being a
student means to be without responsibility, to drink and have fun, and women
are constructed as ‘the others’. The members see them-selves as rather ordinary
men in the future. Women and men are active in equal numbers in the society
of students belonging to the Faculty of Social Sciences. They activate the meritocratic
discourse dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries as they construct
themselves as future men in power with the right to speak. Women can however
also represent this identity. In the society of students belonging to the Faculty
of Medicine, women constitute the vast majority. They also activate the
meritocratic discourse. However, they attach new meanings in accordance
with the female symbolic gender to what should be regarded as merits: responsibility,
respectability, care, and nicety. Thus, they represent a feminine identity,
but the few male members do not adhere to these female symbolic norms.
The society is an arena for the members’ resistance against hegemonic discourses
of gender and class that would confine them to subordinate positions in
their future working-life. Each society provides valuable symbolic capital that
might be important.
Key words: class, discourse, gender, genealogy, ideal identity, identity construction,
ideological dilemma, intersectionality, mass university, students’ society,
symbolic capital, the other.