The Nordics have historically been seen, both nationally and internationally, as sexually progressive countries. Yet, beyond myths of regional exceptionalism, the reality has always been far more complex, as many queer and feminist researchers and activists have noted. In the Nordics, not all sex is seen equally. Instead, Nordic sexual progressivism has been structured, like in so many other places, by norms of what constitutes “good sex” and these have, in turn, guided relationships between individuals and institutions—educational, medical, legal—tasked with teaching, caring, supporting, or disciplining bodies and populations.
In our increasingly cosmopolitan societies, marked by faster and easier digital access to various kinds of content and information exchange, international travel, migration, and diverse cultural backgrounds, it is all the more urgent to rethink Nordic sexual norms and their impact on societal formations and models of democratic citizenship.
With that in mind, the network brings together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines whose work speaks to the role of modern and contemporary media as “infrastructures of intimacy” (Paasonen 2018) and to sexualities as cultural formations, that is, as sets of meaningful practices, values and beliefs that inform subjectivities in their orientation towards others understood as objects of desire.
The primary aim of NordSex is to build on individual and institutional strengths in the Nordic region in order to better understand sexuality as an assemblage of gendered bodies, media technologies and (sub)cultural imaginaries, and—through that—to contribute to ongoing debates on sexual citizenship and rights, sexual ethics, policy and health, among other related matters and challenges.
Working interdisciplinarily and collaboratively, we are guided by the principle that “healthy” and “good” are always value-laden concepts that can be co-opted into systems of discrimination, especially when it comes to sexuality; and that sexuality itself is always shaped by “the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors” (WHO 2006).
Funding
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Project time
12 months
