Abstract
Changes in metropolitan districts of Sweden during the last 30 years have created a situation that in many respects resembles those in big cities of continental Europe. Increasing social and economic disparities have generated a tense social climate that threatens social cohesion. The globally reported riots in the poor high-rise suburbs of Stockholm in 2013 were stark manifestations of the tensions. This chapter examines the social background of the tensions that fostered the riots and a new form of suburban mobilization that has emerged in parallel to police confrontations. It focuses on the prioritization of acquiring knowledge and learning in the political agenda developed by organizations that young adults have established recently in these suburban areas, particularly one called The Panthers for the Restoration of the Suburb. Two key questions are addressed. How should the knowledge-seeking and learning processes related to the informal and formal activities of the Panthers be understood? What can compulsory schools run by the municipality learn from the joyful and purposeful learning in the everyday praxis of an organization like the Panthers?
The title relates to a quote from Sandor, a 26-year old informant with a Bolivian background and member of The Panthers for the Restoration of the Suburb.
A young adult is, according to Erik H Erikson (1993), anyone who is 20–30 years old, a category mainly used in professions related to healthcare and social work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Netnography is the branch of ethnography that analyses the behaviour of individuals and groups on the Internet. Netnography uses online marketing research techniques to provide useful insights. The term “netnography” was coined by Robert Kozinets (1998).
- 2.
In English a suburb has various definitions. A common one is a distinct residential area (usually, but not always, populated by middle class people) within commuting distance of a city centre. In contemporary Sweden suburb essentially refers to physically and socially segregated, poverty-stricken, immigrant-rich, high-rise fringes of major cities, similar to high-rise ‘sink estates’ in the UK and ‘housing projects’ in the USA. The Metropolitan Committee (Storstadskommittén) established by the Swedish Parliament in the 1990s to study metropolitan neighbourhoods delivered several reports on living conditions in these areas that were generally characterized as socially vulnerable.
- 3.
This sequence of events has parallels to the Cynthia Jarrett case in Tottenham (London), 1985, the Rodney King case in Los Angeles, 1992, the Paris riots in 2005, and the widespread riots in London 2011. On all of these occasions police actions prompted victims’ relatives and neighbors to demand explanations and independent investigations. The inability of the police to provide credible explanations was a major source of festering irritations that eventually triggered riots.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Three researchers are engaged in the research project The Suburb and the Renaissance for Adult Education: Dr René Leon-Rosales, Associate Professor Johan Södermalm, and Professor Ove Sernhede who are respectively based in and responsible for collecting data collection Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg.
- 7.
The Million Program was an ambitious politically motivated housing program realized in 1965–1975. It was intended to rehouse less well-off residents of dated buildings. It represented the biggest political venture of both the Social Democratic Party and the Swedish Welfare State. Today these dwellings in the urban periphery house the poor, immigrant part of the Swedish population.
References
Andersson, R., Bråmå, Å., & Hogdal, J. (2009). Fattiga och rika, segregerad stad. [Poor and rich, segregated city]. Göteborg: Stadskansliet.
Appadurai, A. (1997). Modernity at large. Minneapolis: University at Minneapolis Press.
Atkinson, A. (2015). Inequality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bauman, Z. (1998). Work, consumerism and the poor. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Beach, D. (1995). Making sense of the problem of change: An ethnographic study of a teacher education reform. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gotheburgensis.
Blackmar, E. (2006). Appropriating the ‘commons’: The tragedy of property rights discourse. In S. M. Low & N. Smith (Eds.), The politics of public space. London: Routledge.
Bloom, J., & Martin, W. E., Jr. (2013). Black against empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York: Greenwood.
Bourdieu, P., et al. (1999). The weight of the world. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bunar, N. (2001). Skolan mitt i förorten. [School in the middle of the suburb]. Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion.
Bunar, N. (2010, July). Multicultural urban schools and their communities. Urban Education. doi: 10.1177/0042085910377429.
Bunar, N., & Sernhede, O. (2013). Skolan och ojämlikhetens urbana geografi. [School and the urban geography of inequality]. Göteborg: Daidalos.
Castells, M. (1983). The city and the grassroots. Los Angeles: The University of California Press.
Castells, M. (2010). The power of identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Crouch, C. (2005). Post-democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
della Porta, D., & Tarrow, S. (2005). Transnational protest and global activism. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield.
Dikeç, M. (2007). Badlands of the republic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1998). Souls of Black folks. New York: Bantam.
Erikson, E. H. (1993). Childhood and society. New York: Norton & Company.
Fornäs, J., Lindberg, U., & Sernhede, O. (1995). In Garageland. Rock, youth, modernity. London: Routledge.
Gilroy, P. (2000). Between camps. London: Penguin.
Gustavsson, B. (1995). Att tänka om folkbildningsidén, [To think about folkbildning]. In B. Bergstedt & S. Larsson (Eds.), Om folkbildningens innebörder. [On the meaning of folkbildning]. Norrköping: Mimer.
Hall, S. (1996). When was the post-colonial? In I. Chambers & L. Curti (Eds.), The post-colonial question. London: Routledge.
Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism. The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler B, 71(1), 3–17.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2009). Social justice and the city. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities. London: Verso.
Kozinets, R. V. (1998). On netnography: Initial reflections on consumer research investigations of cyberculture. In Advances in consumer research (Vol. 25, pp. 366–371). Provo: Association for Consumer Research.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lundqvist, A. (2014). Skillnader i livsvillkor och hälsa i Göteborg. [Difference in life conditions and health in Gothenburg]. Göteborg: Social resursförvaltning.
Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging codes – Collective action in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, D. (1998). The focus group guidebook (The Focus Group Kit, No. 1). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Nielsen, K., & Kvale, S. (2000). Mästarlära som lärandeform av i dag [Master-pupil as a form for education]. In K. Nielsen & S. Kvale (Eds.), Mästarlära: Lärande som social praxis. [Master-teaching as a form for social praxis]. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
OECD. (2013). Income distribution and poverty. www.oecd.org.social/inequality.htm
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Regeringskansliet. (2012). Urbana utvecklingsområden. [Urban development regions]. Arbetsdepartementet, Dnr A2012/4115/IU.
Rothstein, B. (2003). Sociala fällor och tillitens problem. [Social traps and the problem of trust]. Stockholm: SNS Förlag.
Rubenson, K.-Å. (1995). Vad är folkbildning? [What is folkbildning]. In B. Bergstedt & S. Larsson (Eds.), Om folkbildningens innebörder. [On the meaning of folkbildning]. Norrköping: Mimer.
Runfors, A. (2003). Mångfald, motsägelser och marginalisering [Diversity, contradictions and marginalization]. Stockholm: Prisma.
Salonen, T. (2013). Välfärd, inte för alla. [Welfare, not for all]. Stockholm: Rädda Barnen.
Sassen, S. (2001). The global city. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sernhede, O. (2002/2007). AlieNation is my nation. Om hip hop och unga mäns utanförskap i det Nya Sverige. [AlieNation is my nation. On hip hop and the marginalization of young men in ‘the New Sweden’]. Stockholm: Ordfront.
Sernhede, O. (2005). Reality is my nationality. The global tribe of hip-hop and immigrant youth in the New Sweden. In M. Andersson, Y. Lithman, & O. Sernhede (Eds.), Youth, otherness and the plural city. Gothenburg: Daidalos.
Sernhede, O. (2011). School, youth culture and territorial stigmatization in Swedish metropolitan districts. Young, 19(2), 159–180.
Sernhede, O., & Söderman, J. (2010). Hip hop planet. Malmö: Liber.
Therborn, G. (2013). The killing fields of inequality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Touraine, A. (1981). The voice and the eye: An analysis of social movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wacquant, L. J. D. (2008). Urban outcast: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wacquant, L. J. D. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. London: Duke University Press.
Wallace, M. (1978). Black macho and the myth of the superwoman. New York: Dail Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour. London: Gower Publishing.
Willis, P. (2004). Twenty-five years on. In N. Dolby, G. Dimitriadis, & P. Willis (Eds.), Learning to labor in new time (pp. 167–196). New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sernhede, O. (2017). ‘We Are Not Interested in Knowledge for Its Own Sake. Knowledge Should Be Put into Motion…’ Young Adults, Social Mobilization and Learning in Poor, Multi-ethnic Suburbs in Sweden’s Metropolitan Districts. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_39
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_39
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40315-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40317-5
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)