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Mattias Frihammar

About me

Reader/associate professor in ethnology with an interest in collective memory processes, difficult cultural heritage and issues at the intersection between nature and culture. Coordinate the Critical Heritage Studies Network (CHSN) at Stockholms universitet.

Teaching

I have experience of teaching at of a wide range of courses in ethnology.

I am the course manager for Cultural Heritage and Politics of Memory - Europe in the 20th Century at advanced level, a hybrid course aimed at both Swedish and international students.

Since 2014, I am the coordinator of the Bachelor program in museum and heritage studies.

Previously, I have taught at Halmstad University and Södertörn University.

Research

In my thesis, I analyzed social hierarchies in (re)production of contemporary royalty in Sweden. By studying arenas where royalty was present, I showed how social authority was pruduced at the intersection between notions of exclusivity and commonness. The analysis also demonstrated the symbolic and actual importance of the material in the exercise of power, and how rituals forms social superiority.

After the doctoral thesis, a critical cultural heritage perspective has been consistent in my research. In a postdoctoral project ...smells better, sips nicer.... On gender, nation and leisure in the vintage boating field (2014-2016), the revival and use of the past by vintage boat enthusiasts was in focus. In addition to the enthusiasts' individual meaning-making, the study showed how the relationship between official cultural heritage instances, such as museum authorities, and pleasure-driven actors, such as enthusiasts and boat clubs, affected memory-making in the field.

In a study of the transformation of the harbor in Gustavsberg from a factory area to a residential area, cultural heritage processes in urban planning were analysed, with the aim to show the consequences that urban planning's focus on so-called "creative environments" has for cultural heritage production.

2017-2019, I was active in the project Everyday pictures and stories. Cultural transformations in the Nordic Museum's collections. The aim was to develop methods for analysis and making digitized archive material available. My contribution was about the "visual silences" that can arise when photographic archival material is digitized and published on the internet.

2019-2021, I worked within the interdisciplinary project Making a Military Heritage: Gender and Nation in Sweden's Cold War History with a focus on how remains from and memories of the Cold War are reinterpreted as cultural heritage in Sweden today. The project applied new perspectives to military heritage and dealt with previously unexplored aspects of the Swedish Cold War era. The interdisciplinary approach, which involved ethnology, political science and architectural history, provided new knowledge about how historical geopolitical conditions are interpreted and materialized in society today.

A research interest concerns discourses and practices in relation to so-called alien invasive species. The starting point is that the idea of invasive species is shaped by cultural notions of belonging and alienation, which in turn are based on ideas of an (ideal) historical landscape.

I am happy to seek interdisciplinary collaborations.

Research projects

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • As above, so below? On AHD critique, identity, essence and Cold War heritagizations in Sweden

    2022. Fredrik Krohn Andersson, Mattias Frihammar. Journal of War & Culture Studies

    Article

    In this article, the example of Cold War heritagizations in a Swedish context is utilized to reflect on conceptualizations of heritage regarding identity and authenticity within critical heritage studies and research on Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD). Herein, heritage is perceived as a difference machinery in which difference-produced identities are enacted and performed, and a Deleuzian and Butleresque antiessentialist perspective is adopted to show how the illusion of actual, nondifferential identities is underpinned by a hypostasized reification of AHD. Based on the analysis of how gender has been actualized within official and informal heritagizations, the central discussion concerns the purported benefits of heritages and heritagizations from below, often articulated within critical heritage studies literature. It is argued that both official and informal Cold War heritagizations construct a naturalized gendered logic of protection, with the consequence that security policy issues regarding protection and military violence are placed in a nonnegotiable, extrapolitical sphere.

    Read more about As above, so below? On AHD critique, identity, essence and Cold War heritagizations in Sweden

  • Förenade krafter och hotfull natur: Om gemenskap, naturvård och invasiva arter

    2021. Mattias Frihammar, Lars Kaijser, Maja Lagerqvist. Laboratorium för folk och kultur: En kulturvetenskaplig tidskrift (2)

    Article

    I vår samtid av oroande rapporter om klimatförändringar och hotad biologisk mångfald, är det många som är engagerade i frågor om naturen och miljön. Till dagens miljöproblem räknas de invasiva främmande arter, som av Nationalencyklopedin definieras som ”icke ursprunglig art vilken påverkar det ekosystem som arten koloniserar”. I den här artikeln visar vi hur engagemangen i vad som betecknas som invasiva främmande arter bidrar till uppfattningar om den svenska naturen och till vissa givna förhållningssätt i naturfrågor. Det handlar då inte bara om idéer om en svensk natur, utan mer konkret om hur arbetet med att bevara en svensk natur i praktiken rymmer utrotningen av enskilda arter som signalkräftor, blomsterlupiner och spanska skogssniglar (också kända som mördarsniglar). Här utgör politiska strävanden, lagstiftning och regleringsarbete villkorligheter som bidrar till affektiva gemenskaper där de invasiva arterna ses som ett självklart problem. Samtidigt finns här motrörelser och i arbetet med de främmande invasiva arterna uppstår också konfliktytor. Hantering av främmande invasiva arter, tidigare en fråga för specialister, engagerar idag allmänhet och föreningsliv. Nya vanor och kulturella mönster etablerats när myndighetsarbete, nyhetsrapportering, föreningsverksamhet och individuella initiativ samspelar. Det är ett sammanhang i rörelse, där arters förändrade status också etablerat sociala positioner och svårrubbliga sanningar.

    Read more about Förenade krafter och hotfull natur

  • Kalla kriget som njutning och ideal

    2021. Mattias Frihammar (et al.). Dagens arena

    Article

    Känsloläget i försvarsdebatten har höjts, inte minst av Försvarsmakten själv. Frågan är inte längre om utan när kriget kommer. Den nya retoriken åkallar känslor förknippade med kalla kriget. En hotfull historisk period som idag används för att rättfärdiga försvarspolitik och signalera trygghet, skriver fyra forskare som tittat närmare på läget.

    Read more about Kalla kriget som njutning och ideal

  • Man caves: Om bunkrar som manliga trygghetszoner

    2020. Fredrik Krohn Andersson, Mattias Frihammar. (O)tryggt? texter om makt, plats och motstånd, 124-148

    Chapter
    Read more about Man caves

  • A picture is worth a thousand words: On photographs, talking contexts and visual silences

    2020. Mattias Frihammar. Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research 12 (1), 117-132

    Article

    This paper’s point of departure is that historic silences are socially constructed and culturally productive, and that photographs in archives participate in the creation of historical silences despite, or maybe thanks to, their convincing depicting qualities. In this essay, photographs from three occasions have been studied in detail in order to elucidate different kinds of visual silences. The occasions are i) a funeral where it is the photographer’s own mother that is being buried, ii) a funeral where the coffin is covered in a draping with a swastika, and iii) a royal funeral. Adopting a self-reflexive outlook, the purpose of this essay is to suggest a few possible ways of addressing silences that can occur when the presumptions of a beholder meet the image content of a photograph from the past. The three examples show that the concept of visual silence can be applied in different ways. In the first example, the technical and artistic shortcomings are interpreted as silencing components, which can convey information. In the second example, the (to a contemporary beholder) provocative silence around the historically charged symbol of a swastika becomes an analytical resource in its own right. The last example illustrates how a lot of information can compose such a dominant narrative, that it silences other stories.

    Read more about A picture is worth a thousand words

  • Introduction: Archive and Method(s)

    2020. Mattias Frihammar. Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research 12 (1), 1-15

    Article
    Read more about Introduction

  • Heritage of death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice

    2018. .

    Book (ed)

    Today, death is being reconceptualised around the world as heritage, replete with material markers and intangible performances. These heritages of death are personal, national and international. They are vernacular as well as official, sanctioned as well as alternative. This book brings together more than twenty international scholars to consider the heritage of death from spatial, political, religious, economic, cultural, aesthetic and emotive aspects. It showcases different attitudes and phases of death and their relationship to heritage through ethnographically informed case studies to illustrate both general patterns and local and national variations. Through analyses of material expressions and social practices of grief, mourning and remembrance, this book shows not only what death means in contemporary societies, but also how individuals, groups and nations act towards death.

    Read more about Heritage of death

  • Hotet i vägrenen: Blomsterlupinens plats i ett svenskt kulturarvslandskap

    2018. Mattias Frihammar, Lars Kaijser, Maja Lagerqvist. Kulturella perspektiv - Svensk etnologisk tidskrift 27 (3-4), 13-24

    Article
    Read more about Hotet i vägrenen

  • Vrak och övergivna båtar: En armada i minnets marginaler

    2015. Mattias Frihammar. I utkanter och marginaler, 165-176

    Chapter

    Som kulturella lämningar är vrak och övergivna fritidsbåtar intressanta eftersom de befinner sig i marginalen på flera sätt. De ger uttryck för flera slags ambivalenser. En ambivalens rör kulturarvsaspekten: de övergivna båtarna är vissa specifika objekt inom en accepterad kulturarvskategori som inte anses som bevarandevärda. En andra ambivalens berör landskapet: övergivna fritidsbåtar lämnas att förfalla i naturen och beroende på vilken typ av båt och sönderfall det är fråga om kan de då antingen bli betraktade som pittoreska eller som svårt vanprydande inslag i landskapet. En äldre eka i trä som ligger till hälften sjunken kan till exempel väcka en slags ruinromantik, medan en dito plastmotorbåt från 80-talet ses som skräp. En tredje ambivalens rör övergivna båtars oreglerade status ur ett rättsligt perspektiv. Ingen bär till exempel ansvaret för en övergiven båt på drift: vems minnen kan en ägarlös båt härbärgera? Vrak efter äldre fritidsbåtar kan därtill knytas till två sidor av moderniteten, dels den industriella fabriksmässiga produktionen, dels fritidens framväxt och idyllisering.

    Med fritidsbåtsvrak som utgångspunkt diskuteras  individuella och kollektiva minnens betydelser och kopplingar, kulturarvets landskap och landskapens kulturarv, makten över förflutenheten och sist men inte minst modernitetens materiella lämningar.

    Read more about Vrak och övergivna båtar

  • Ur svenska hjärtans djup: Reproduktion av samtida monarki

    2010. Mattias Frihammar.

    Thesis (Doc)

    The aim of this thesis is to show how Swedish royalty is reproduced and gains its extraordinary status through interaction between people, institutions and artefacts in the beginning of the 21st century.

    The analysis is based on data collected between 2003 and 2009 in different contexts where royalty and the monarchy are brought to the fore. The data consists of field notes from a municipality’s preparations for a visit of the king and queen of Sweden and three official events where royals are present, transcribed interviews, answers to a museums questionnaire and media material. The main theoretical premise is Actor Network Theory (ANT). Additionally, the study draws upon theories about cynical reason, modernity, humor and ritual.

    The study shows how royal sovereignty is reproduced basically by acts that separate persons and artifacts, put them on display and evaluates them as extravagant. These processes are at hand both in people’s everyday lives and during official event that present royals as the center of attention. Monarchy is interpreted as a modern institution mirroring notions of rationality through notions of irrationality, and the analysis shows how royal charisma is produced through performances fully in accordance with late-modern thinking and acting. The attractive royal mystic is interpreted as a consequence of a general strives to bring together the contrasting concepts of royalty and ordinariness. By analyzing humorous as well as servile attitude towards the royal institution and its representatives, the study shows how monarchy and the concept of royalty interact in the re-production of Sweden as a nation and in the individual citizen’s project of self-identity. Through creating memories of royal ancestors, individually and collectively, and through preserving the relations to existing royals and imagining the future of the royal family, a collective immortality is formed. In the process structures of inequality and social differences are established and made reasonable.

    Read more about Ur svenska hjärtans djup

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