Master’s thesis – Cultural and Social Anthropology
‘Jag är svensk, men inte svensk som en svenne’ –
‘I am Swedish, but not Swedish like a swede’
An anthropological thesis on identity politics in Stockholm and the
concept of orten
Elliot Easton
12207268University of Amsterdam Supervisor – Dr. Yatun Sastramidjaja Fieldwork Supervisor – Dr. Francio Guadeloupe
Second Reader – Dr. Vincent de Rooij Third Reader – Dr. Anne De Jong
Email: Elliot.kungsholmen@gmail.com
Word count: 27,325 (excluding abstract, bibliography and discography) Submitted: 1st of August 2019
Statement on plagiarism and fraud
I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [http://student.uva.nl/mcsa/az/item/plagiarism-and-fraud.html?f=plagiarism]. I declare
that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of
Acknowledgements
Finally!It took a while, and at times I never thought I would manage to finish this piece, this project, this textual monstrosity.
It has been many years since I first had the idea to put my digital pen to the digital paper and scribble furiously. One should not dwell on the past they say, yet I cannot help but return to those formative initial years in Stockholm. First and foremost, I am eternally grateful to my friends from Johannes and Rödaberg. It has been more than 20 years now and still to this day it shocks me that we are as it were, one big and mostly happy family. It is also with you lot that the idea for this project was first conceived, and from our many adventures that helped to colour in the bits in between.
To my father, words cannot express how grateful I am for your patience and kindness. My moral support and theoretical counterpart, I hope you know that without you, this project and the person I am today would not be possible. To my mother and brothers, once again I cannot express how your patience is unmatched – I know I am hell to live with at times, but I love you all so very much.
To my supervisor, words cannot fill the space from which I wish to shower you with praise. You are the expert, the sensei, and the ever-kind but critical
observer. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for me.
And perhaps most importantly, thank you to my co-researchers. Without you, this piece would have been the ramblings of a madman. It is not I as researcher that has embarked to some far off field and returned emblazoned with insights and knowledge. Rather, I have returned with fellow researchers, with friends, and only through our cooperation and mutual work has this project been made possible. Hopefully it is interesting too.
Lastly. Going forward and not dwelling on the past, I implore each and every reader to think and act with compassion and kindness. Whatever position or situation in life you might be in, try to be and think as an anthropologist. Work from spaces where anything and everything, felt or said, can be as fun as it is difficult. Do so with joy, for thinking anthropologically may change the way you perceive the world. If you choose to think in this way, it may transform the seemingly inconspicuous into something fantastic.
Key:
- Words in Green = Lyrics in translation (Original found in footnote). - Words in Blue = Hip-hop intermezzo (Original found in footnote). - Words in Yellow = Translated excerpts from interviews.
Abstract
Intro – Suspend reality and imagine What the hell is orten?
Thinking orten – Theoretical Framework – Identity
– Transnationalism – Space
Building the scene and the night’s main act – Entry into the field and introduction of research population
These thoughts of ours – Research questions Walking and talking – Methodology
Chorus - Chapter Outline
Chapter 1 – ‘Den platsen som jag bor på, den platsen som jag tror på’ – ‘The place that I live in, that place that I believe in’.
Chapter 2 – Bara här för att ghädda – Only here to party – Colour Coordination
– One Sum but Two Totals
Chapter 3 – Mittemellan helor och halvor – Between wholes and halves – Det dem säger – What they say
Outro - Conclusion Bibliography Discography 5 6 7 11 12 17 19 21 24 24 27 29 35 38 42 45 48 56 61 65
Abstract
The thesis presents an introduction to the particularities of Stockholm-based identity politics and the Swedish notion of orten. It argues that Swedish hip-hop proposes alternative and contradictory narrations of Swedish national identity other than those articulated by the dominant hegemony. By engaging debates in transnationalism, space and identity, the thesis seeks to explain how the
experience and efforts of inscribing or ascribing national identities are
intertwined with ethnoracial presuppositions. Moreover, it introduces the notion of immigrantisation as a concept that pays attention to heritage specificities and inscribed nationalities.
Accounting primarily for identities that pertain to individuals with mixed national heritage, the thesis proposes that orten identity is comprised of
different differences. It seeks to show how orten identity can be experienced and acted upon as a polar opposite to the identity of swede, which is regarded by orten as an axiomatic claim of national identity. Furthermore, the thesis proposes that orten and swede identities should both be regarded as totalising identities that eradicate difference in order to produce sameness.
This leads the thesis to conclude that there cannot be a singularly defined Swedish national identity but rather multiple imaginations of it. Thus, the
imagined nation of Sweden must in this context be conceived of as an intermezzo between differently articulated Swedish identities. Orten and swede identities are to be regarded as augmentative identities that proclaim alternative
inscriptions of Swedish national identity that remain as imagined as they are varied.
Keywords: Augmentative identity, orten, swede, ethnoracial, Swedish hip-hop, immigrantisation.
Intro - Suspend reality and instead imagine
Imagine for a moment that you are walking down a bustling city street. You are in your early twenties, a young professional so to say, on your way to work. As you stare at the clouds trudging towards your place of employment, a shoulder strikes yours. ‘Go back home you fucking immigrant!’ a voice whispers in your ear. You freeze, caught in the moment, the aggressor has quickly moved on but the words linger. Go home. But what if this is your home, and not just in the sense of material goods and relations. What if this is where you were born, the place you have always called home? You suppose that this person might be a loner, a single individual with a vicious tongue, but then again, this is not the first time you have heard this. You wonder why this situation arises in the first place. You pay taxes, you go to work, you vote, and if anything, you are a model citizen. So why?
It might be hard to imagine this scenario if you are an individual who fits the presupposed physical appearance that is contingent of the nation where you reside. In many cases, this situation could be chalked up to one very distasteful human being abusing their power, being racist or xenophobic. But if this situation were to be a daily occurrence, and something you were to find not only in direct confrontations with people, but also in the language of the media and in state discourse, then what would you feel? Despite holding a passport and being a citizen, would you start to feel that the place you were born might not be your home after all? Or perhaps you might turn to an alternative space, a place where people like you, have suffered from continuous negations of their self-inscribed identity. In this space, an alternative form of being seems plausible perhaps even obtainable.
Imagine, for a last time, that you were born into this alternative space, but in a nation that routinely strips away self-inscribed identities if the individual in question possesses difference – either physical or otherwise. Your daily movements involve you crossing into spaces in which your initial inscribed identity is always negated, perhaps if not always then routinely. In this alternative space your identity, a self-identity is not routinely negated but instead accepted. The people that accept your self-inscribed identity do not necessarily share the same difference as you. Yet, these individuals do perform and possess difference in their own right. Their personal difference, and yours, is lumped together, producing an alternative identity, an
identity of difference. It is because you are different but not the same that you become one as opposed to many. This differentiation is perhaps necessary, because although all of you were born here, this is still not enough for you to be accepted as a national. So what do you call this alternative national status or perhaps augmented national identity?
What the hell is orten?
We struggle here in orten/ We long for here in orten/ We wait here in orten/ Yo we love here in orten/ People I know up in orten/ Got friends up in orten/ what’s
happening in orten/ where is orten, here is orten. [Moms – Orten]1 In Sweden the majority of society is white. That is not to say that there are no non-white swedes2, there are many of course. Rather, the presupposed appearance of a swede, both in, and outside Sweden is often imagined as white. In this context and as someone who would partly identify as Swedish, my own appearance is not viewed as puzzling. Yet, when I divulge that I am also part-Turkish, questions arise. The person that I asked the reader to imagine being is that of a second generation immigrant3. Quite obviously, one is not ethnically or racially different to any ‘host nation’ simply because one is part of a second generation, but quite often this is the case. The term in itself cannot escape its inherent paradoxical nature. Why is this person an immigrant, and to what extent have they immigrated? Language in this case fails. It asks that we mitigate the national identity of an individual in place of their parents’ immigrant identity. The situation that I asked the reader to imagine is what I call the process of ‘immigrantisation’. That is, the means of making or ascribing a person an immigrant identity based upon the observation of pre-supposed national, cultural or ethnic difference. The alternative space on the other hand, is the space in which I have conducted research. It is filled with Swedish swedes and Swedish ‘immigrants’ that never immigrated. It is the space in which, at least in the context of Stockholm and no matter the specificity of difference, observable difference to swede becomes
sameness. This shared but different difference has been reformulated as a single identity, an identity of difference. This last part may be what makes the Stockholm context particular and thus I have taken to calling this alternative space and identity by its emic term, namely orten.
There is no good way to adequately translate orten into English, not in the sense that it would keep its local contextual meaning. Breaking the word down to its basic linguistic functions is perhaps the best way to comprehend part of its signified meaning.
Ort = City, place, county or region
Orten4 = the city, the place, the county, the region
1 Original: Vi kämpar här i orten/ vi längtar här i orten/ vi väntar här i orten/ yo vi älskar här i orten/
Folk jag känner upp i orten/har vänner upp i orten/va händer upp i orten/ vart är orten, här är orten.
2 The explanation for why swede here is not capitalised can be found in the following section. 3 This is not a term that will be used in by project for analytic or any other purpose. When it does crop
up, it only does so in order to show its limitations, or to indicate how the project has moved away from utilising it.
In these direct translations orten is static and motionless, indicating only a defined space. Indeed, in Swedish the term orten simply conveys that a place is the place in question; it gives no indication as to where the place is or what is to be found there. It is not used in the Swedish language to indicate suburban space as it lacks a spatial prefix that would convey such a meaning. So what, and perhaps where, is orten? To further understand how and what orten may be I present two more translations.
Förort5 = Suburb (direct translation is ‘pre-place’ or ‘pre-region’) Förorten = The suburb
Förort in itself does not indicate class, demography or anything of the like. In a strict translation it is only a spatial term. A term that draws boundaries between a ‘defined place’, such as the inner city of Stockholm and the preceding suburbs that surround it. Despite its strict spatial meaning, in practice the term can be used as insult, and it often takes on its pejorative connation when used in exchanges between inner city and suburban dwellers. Yet, even with these translations and linguistic clarifications, orten evades a concise and fitting translation. As one of my co-researchers put it,
‘Stockholm has suburbs but not all of them are orten’, so the questions returns, what the hell is orten?
To further complicate matters, ortensvenska – orten-Swedish - presents itself as an alternative way of speaking the Swedish language. Through a vast linguistic index where other languages are subject to Swedish grammatical rules orten-Swedish highlights a composition of different difference. In searching for this term it is
possible to see it formulated as; invandrarsvenska (immigrant-Swedish);
förortssvenska (suburban-Swedish); or Rinkebysvenska (Rinkeby-Swedish), where each term indicates either a relation to orten or to an immigrant identity. Rinkeby is an orten styled suburb of Stockholm sometimes considered as the place where this alternative way of speaking Swedish originated. This however is often a contested claim as there is no proof that Rinkeby is its origin – it is more likely that it is the product of orten suburbs themselves. Yet, as I will show, ortensvenska is both a conscious mis/speaking of a formal Swedish vocabulary and grammatical syntax - similar to Ibrahim’s point on Black English Language and how it reorders English grammar (Ibrahim 2014: 155) - and an extensive indexing of specific words from ‘other’ languages. These other languages are not necessarily spoken fluently, and whether the speaker understands the nation and language that the word originated in, is context specific. Rather, it is a mix of languages, of Swedish, English, Wolof, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Farsi, Fula, and so forth, set for the most part within a Swedish grammar, which constitutes ortensvenska.
It is noteworthy to mention that ortensvenska became a topic of national interest through the collaborative work Förortsslang (2004) written by the linguist Ulla-Britt Kotsinas and Hip-hop artist Dogge Doggelito. Although several years prior
Kotsinas had written numerous books on suburban youth language, it was through the hip-hop centred narratives delivered by the Latin Kings, one of Sweden’s first ever self-proclaimed hip-hop groups and which Dogge Doggelito was the proclaimed leader of, that the concept of ortensvenska was picked up on and expanded. Dogge Doggelito, in an article in the national newspaper Aftonbladet titled ‘Dogge’s fat dictionary straight from the concrete’, explains who uses ortensvenska and why, commenting that, ‘people from Östermalm can’t use our slang, and we can’t use theirs, it becomes a culture clash’, and on why ortensvenska is at all useful he says, ‘it is about identity, that one belongs to a group’ (Aftonbladet 20046; my translation).
It is here that I choose to introduce hip-hop as an alternative discourse for identity in the Stockholm context, as one that is orchestrated to serve orten, but that is under attempts of co-option by the dominant identity discourse. I could and do indeed go so far as to call Swedish hip-hop discourse the soundtrack to Swedish, or at least Stockholm based, identity politics. In the narratives presented through Swedish hip-hop the concept of orten is expanded. Here it is constituted not only as place, i.e. the fringe or margin of Stockholm, but also as an identity. As such the concept is both a spatial one and a term of identification. One can be orten and be in orten, yet it is still more complex than relational and neighbourhood terminology. As one of my co-researchers pointed out, ‘you can come from orten, and not be orten’. That is to say, not everyone who lives or comes from orten may self-identify as orten. As Bredström illustrates from her interviews,‘[i]ndeed, the articulation of an overarching identity as “immigrants” could even be inclusive of Swedes: “I know one Swede”, a young man said, “but he’s more immigrant than I am!” (Bredström 2003: 85). Rather, through a self-inscription or ascription, orten is taken on or it is assigned as an appropriate identity for the individual(s) in question. It is not entirely a collective identity but rather an inclusive identity that with its porous borders of inclusion can come to accept any member.
In attempts to translate orten into English, it often, quite paradoxically, takes on the role of the Americanised concept of ‘hood’ or perhaps the British ‘endz’ and in certain iterations it has even been dramatically depicted as a ‘favela7’ (Adam & Asme 2018). Furthermore, it has been described by certain parts of the media as a ‘ghetto’ (see Aftonbladet 20048), or as a low-income area, inhabited by migrants and
individuals who are ‘not Swedish’. Through the media, the spatial aspect of the concept has been picked apart and reformulated, producing such discourse that has termed some of these areas as ‘No-go zones’ (see SvD 2018)9. But orten is not only spatial, and thus these renderings of the concept only grasp at what it actually signifies and conveys. In addition, these incomplete understandings or reflections further complicate identity politics and are experienced as having negative impacts on how people, especially immigrantised individuals relate to their national identities.
6https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/G1Mpjm/dogges-feta-ordlista-direkt-fran-betongen 7https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atvcHIQyjQI
8https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/qn1j5O/har-ar-sveriges-varsta-ghetton 9https://www.svd.se/svenska-no-go-zonen-blev-en-idyll--sa-gick-det-till
Important to note is that the inhabitants of orten or inscribers of orten identities are not necessarily immigrantised individuals. Present in orten are also recent first generation migrants and non-immigrantised individuals. The orten identity is thus not limited to being in possession of ethnic, racial or cultural difference as opposed to the presumptions that comprise a ‘Swedish’ identity. Yet, in many ways this is what is presupposed. One can argue that being in possession of difference is the basis for a presupposition that an individual would identify or could be identified as orten. Yet as my fieldwork has shown, this is quite obviously not the case. Rather, the presupposition of what constitutes orten should be seen as a reflection to how orten styled identities voice an appraisal of what constitutes a ‘swede’ identity. In the Swedish language, this distinction is perhaps more clear, where swede would translate as svenne, Swedish would be translated as Svensk. Accordingly, I posit that the
concept of ‘swede’ is not the same as ‘Swedish’. This I do consciously in order to show how the two are different, and that identities other than ‘swede’ may be inscribed as Swedish.
Interestingly then, Swedish hip-hop features identities that are incoherent with the presuppositions of orten. It does so by drawing attention to how the perceived presupposed differences are in effect different iterations of Swedishness. This makes hip-hop important, both in terms of its different narrations of Swedish identities, but also in terms of the variation that these possible identities may present. Hip-hop narratives do not provide a defined respondent identity, but rather, each narrative provides an account for how orten may be thought of as an endless plethora of varying orten identities. Erik Lundin, a prominent Swedish rapper, imparts a
reflective narrative in his song ‘Suedi’ that serves as example par excellence, focusing directly on the relationship between being orten and Swedish. The first verse sets the tone, narrating how immigrantisation affects the interplay between custom and a Swedish national identity. But, once the listener reaches the end of the second verse, the interplay ends with a rejection of immigrantisation, as he proclaims himself as Swedish.
I was ‘second generation’/ Could feel it during class/ On the buss, on the way to the station/ I Like it in orten the most, maybe rowdy/ But never boring, diverse and multilingual/
Kick a ball with Taiwan, sipping Ayran/ Food from Thailand, trying to avoid haiwan.10
--- I remember it well, the day I found myself/
10 Jag var "andra generationen"/ Kände tonen på lektionen/ I bussen, på vägen till stationen/ Trivdes
bäst i orten, kanske bråkigt/ Men aldrig tråkigt, mångfald, flerspråkigt/ Kicka boll med Taiwan, sippa Ayran/ Mat från Thailand, försöker ducka haiwan/
I treated my parents to fika11, remember how dad was shocked/
Took a deep breath, no point in being ashamed/ I said, it’s time that I tell you that your son he is Swedish/12 This interplay converts difference to sameness and in the process, both directly and indirectly, advocates the Swedish national identity as an inclusive one.
Thus I will make the argument that orten centred narratives make use of their own presuppositions to envisage the identity of ‘swedes’, teasing out differences to orten as incompatible and thus different. In doing so, Swedish hip-hop narratives draw attention to and advocate for, an inclusive Swedish national identity, whilst simultaneously rejecting sameness with swedes. Combatting and ridiculing the presuppositions that are projected on orten however, runs the risk of reifying a polarisation that orten narratives at times seek to destabilise. Erik Lundin’s text once again is relevant; in his initial verse he outlines both sameness and differences between orten and swedes, in effect reifying the polarisation of a presumed incompatibility of difference. Yet, as one becomes keenly aware, his second verse does away with both presumption and incompatibility and asserts Swedish as an identity possible for all.
Thinking orten – Theoretical Framework
But in Sweden, if you have the wrong skin colour you might be carved by a sword/ Here in Sweden, I swear, the situation has gotten worse/ Where your value is determined by skin color/ Check yourself, we’re lacking agreement and closesness. –
[Mohammed Ali – Allting Blev Så Konstigt]13
This thesis is grounded primarily in three established fields and engages debates concerning identity studies, transnationalism and space. Identity studies pave the way in which academia might pay better attention to emergent variations of national and cultural identities, both as collective and individual acts. In utilising concepts and perspectives that engage this particular debate the thesis articulates a more developed account of Stockholm based identity politics in relation to orten, and that until
recently (see Hubinette 2017), has been less articulated. The thesis also engages with debates of transnationalism, producing a criticism of its perspectives as applied to migrants, transnationals and their relations to heritage, ‘host’ and ‘homeland. In this debate the use of these notions, and the ways in which they are applied, this thesis
11 A Swedish term roughly translated to ‘coffee and cake’.
12 Original text: Jag minns det så väl, dagen jag hitta mig själv/ Jag bjöd föräldrarna på fika, minns hur
farsan blev ställd/ Tog ett djupt andetag, ingen idé att jag skäms/ Jag sa, det dags att jag berättar er son han är svensk.
13https://www.google.com/search?q=translate&oq=tran&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i60j69i61l2j69i 59.677j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 original text: Men I Sverige, har du fel hudfärg kan du bli huggen med svärd ah yeah/ här i sverige, svär yeah, situationen blivit värre, där ditt värde bestams efter hudfargen/ kolla dig, vi saknar enighet och närhet .
regards as both over-determining and pre-determining identities. Thus
transnationalism balances on a tightrope between assuming a critical perspective that accounts for local articulations, and reifies a culturalist perspective, one that is in stark contrast to the theories that underpin this thesis. As such, it is necessary to delineate where transnationalism in this particular context is necessary, and where it runs the risk of reproducing problematic assumptions. Finally, to understand how orten figures as both space and identity, it is appropriate to discuss and analyse what the concept of space might indicate, and how in the case of orten-space, it should be thought of. By explicating how the thesis conceives of space in a tripartite division, orten’s
immaterial identity and tangible – as well as auditory - qualities are thus conjoined and their interrelations made clear.
Identity
They call it being anti-Swedish, if one shows some humanity/ But I say they don't know anything about Swedish Identity/ Nothing about solidarity, nothing about those
who are never seen/ Isolated, laughed at and quieted, but here is the remix so you'll have to listen more. [Stress – Tystas Ner Remix]14
Identity is a complicated concept to tackle analytically, hence many anthropologists and social scientists differ in their views on its meaning, use and relevance. Sökefeld details the anxiety that some anthropologists have expressed with how the concept has been used in academia; as rooted in and propagating an occidental bias; and as a concept taken, applied and thus accounted for as a cultural universal (Sökefeld 2001: 531). Sökefeld then encapsulates how the concept of identity, after voracious scrutiny by the academy, has come to lean on the notion of difference (Ibid: 535). The
implications of this shift are important to understand in regards to the way in which I deploy and use the concept of identity in this project. It implies a recognition that ‘external references … are not only taken into account but occupy a central position in the structure of the concept’ (Ibid: 535), meaning that identity in terms of the self, is always reliant upon the identification of others. Yet, Sökefeld warns, difference alone cannot be taken as constituting identity and so, it must be ‘supplemented by plurality and intersectionality because both conditions prevent a renewed
essentialization’ (Ibid: 535). In this trifecta, identity comprised of difference and supplemented by these joint concepts, erects an understanding that identities cannot be singular nor can they be constant. As such the acceptance of plurality of difference means that one treats identities as contextually definable depending on interactional difference. In plainer terms, identities are comprised of relations of difference; these relations are contextual, meaning that they are subject to change, so that which constitutes difference in one context may afford sameness in another. This is in
14https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36MO0UucWSk original text: Dom kallar det för
svenskfientlighet om man visar lite mänsklighet/Men jag säger att dom inte vet någonting om svensk identitet/Någonting om solidaritet, ingenting om dom som aldrig ses/Hånas fryses ut o tystas ner Men här kommer remixen så ni får lyssna mer
accordance with how orten is expressed and understood as identity – comprised of different differences that afford sameness when in relation to the notion of a swede identity; but that can afford difference when in relation to others inscribing orten as their identity. A concluding point to take away from Sökefeld’s explanation, and that again exemplifies the relation between difference, identity and self/other, is that ‘[i]dentity is not selfsameness but sameness in terms of shared difference from others’ (Ibid: 536). In effect then, although orten is comprised of different differences, these are not to be seen as the same differences held by all. What Sökefeld intends by making the distinction between selfsameness and sameness is that identity does not recognise the sameness of selves, but rather, different selves can be understood as similar due to their shared differences. In effect, orten’s pan-ethnic composition is what affords it sameness, in that orten identities may be different from one another, but they equally become the same in their shared difference to a swede identity.
Sökefeld’s (2001) overview I find in accordance with my understanding of Ibrahim’s (2014) use of ‘rhizomatic identity’, a term that he borrows from Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Ibrahim’s (2014) distinction of identity implies that the identification of self and others is an ongoing and never ending process. Identity in this way is rhizomatic. That is to say, identities are a processual, as a spread of tendrils weaving and fashioning, forming and deconstructing and reforming repeatedly. What these tendrils are, are experiences of other identities, of other compositions of differences, and through interactions they thus are negated, accepted or ignored. Due to its rhizomatic shape, there is no discoverable end point to identity, or origin. Instead, It is assembled contextually to create self-identities, and to discern and ascribe the identities of others. It is the case, as Winkler and Olivier describe, ‘that identity - whether the identity of a singular or collective subject, of the self or of a people – is a product of differential relations’ (Winkler & Olivier 2016: 96), which I take to mean that the assemblage of identities is the product of the relation between different differences, the intermezzo of difference, rather than the differences
themselves. Specific differences between identities are thus inconsequential in theory, as it is the relation between differences themselves that gives rise to the possibility of their inscription or ascription.
This process by which identities are made and consequently remade, gives birth to identity’s rhizomatic form. As Ibrahim writes speaking of identity as a process, ‘It [identity] is not a point we reach, and finally say, We are finally there! Rather, it is a way of becoming that we are forever struggling to attain’ (Ibrahim 2014: 3). Identity in this way is eternally dying and being reborn through a constant interplay between interactions of selfing and othering identification, that in turn are derived from relations of difference. I dub these the acts of inscription and ascription. It is like a permanent blank page where a scribe works on that identity and where both self and other are continuously construed. Although the two terms do not directly entail nor lend themselves to an explication and analysis of identity as such, I make use of them within this context. It is important to note that linguistically, inscription refers more often to an act of carving into something, whereas ascription more often details an attributed cause. This distinction is indeed useful to keep in mind, as
inscription in this way is anchored within the actions of the subject or the self; whereas ascription can be understood as identity attributed to an observable cause.
Furthermore, I regard this interplay between inscription and ascription as being observable in language use (Ibrahim 2014; Deleuze & Guattari 1987). Perhaps the most eloquent way to phrase it comes from Kulick and Cameron who write, ‘language-using, whatever else it accomplishes, is an “act of identity”, a means whereby people convey to one another what kinds of people they are’ (Kulick and Cameron 2003: 11).
To bring this into context, an orten identity is neither eternal nor is it defined in a sense of stability. Instead, it is composed contextually through relations of difference and sameness of difference. As such, an infinite amount of orten identities are possible, and can flourish without difficulty. There exists no rule or agreement on the exact specificity of what it is comprised as its compositions are interrelations of difference itself, and as contexts change so to do its differences. Thus, the specific orten identity in one interaction may be composed differently in another. It is ‘a process of becoming’ that cannot be singularly defined, but that becomes defined through its relation to the identity of ‘swede’.
Finally, I turn to a lengthy quote from Aijt Maan’s (2007) description of, what he terms, the second generation diaspora. Maan writes,
‘Second generation diaspora are nomadic…a person who exists in-between cultures and languages and social institutions. The nomad has access to multiple
cultures/languages/conceptual schemes but is not determined by them. Nor can he call one language his mother tongue or one place his home. ‘Homeland’, ‘mother-tongue’,
and ‘nationalist identity’ are only inherited concepts for the nomad. The second generation of colonial subjects is exiled from the very notion of an original language,
exiled from any memory of a homeland, exiled from the very possibility of a stable identity.’ (2007: 415)
I find his definition both useful and problematic, for different reasons. If this were to be an account by which second generation immigrants could be defined – that is to say, define their identities - then one would do well to steer clear of stripping agency from the subjects themselves. It is problematic to posit such a broad classification that rests on setting itself above the self-proclaimed identifications that those intended to be encompassed by the category might themselves express. It is reminiscent of the identity as concept that is rightfully critiqued by Handler (1994) that serves to propagate a perspective rooted in occidental understanding. Indeed, to suggest that a second generation diaspora can only inherit, is to determine them as nomads
regardless of the case in hand, and to reinforce a supposed incompatibility with what must be their ‘host nation’. Much like the concept of ‘second generation’ itself, it also supposes, that their identities must be and are related to the identities of their parents and their national identity by heritage. Thus, the problematic aspect of Maan’s definition is that it ascribes identities that are over determined, making the second
generation diaspora terminally void of self-inscribed identities capable of possessing agency.
I am in agreement however, with his statement that the second generation diaspora exists in the ‘in-between’ - the intermezzo of converging linguistic, ethnic, racial, social and cultural differences – but with one addendum, that it is not exclusive to the second generation diaspora. As the aforementioned explanation has disclosed, all identities, second generation diaspora or not, are configured in an intermezzo of converging differential relations. Furthermore, by no means do I accept that they are exiled from the possibility of stable identity, or from any articulated relation to ‘home, mother-tongue, or nationalist identity’. In fact, I would argue the opposite. That being transfixed in the intermezzo actually affords the greatest ability to do so by accepting the plurality of identity. Thus, a person can have two homelands, speak two mother tongues, and have two nationalist identities, or more. What I wish to highlight in Maan’s definition however, is how the process of classifying individuals’ identities, is most often caught up in defining their national identities, and the discernible qualities that are (as presuppositions) implicated. Where orten figures as identity, it must be seen as augmenting the concept of national identity. Thus one can be ‘orten-Swedish’, where the former augments the latter to signify difference and the relations between differences.
Keeping in mind then that identity is neither solid, singular nor exists prior to its performance – as formed in the intermezzo of differential relations – this can produce expressions of national identity which are augmented, orten as identity is both rhizomatic, comprised of differential relations, and presented through its performance (performance is explored in more detail in chapter 2). Thus the process of immigrantisation becomes more relevant to account for than ever. For, being immigrantised would presuppose that the identity ascribed is both singular, solid, and comprised by difference itself. Baumann picks up on this in his three grammars of identity and alterity – orientalisation, segmentation and encompassment (Baumann &
Gingrich 2005: x; See also Mácha and Pellón 2014: 35) – stating that one of the constituting parts of orientalisation is the belief that ‘what is good in us is lacking in them’ (Baumann & Gingrich 2005: x). That is, what is held to be an axiomatic identity must make a distinction between itself and those identities that it isolates as different. This perspective, which Baumann also refutes, draws upon a faulty
understanding of identity; one where it exists prior to performance, and that is based on identity as selfsameness i.e. that nationals share the same identity, rather than sameness in terms of shared difference that is in turn different from others.
As I show throughout the project, orten is not aligned with this problematic perspective, although elements of it do have influence. The construction of swede as identity, which is posited in the project as polar opposite to orten, also does not necessarily align itself with this perspective. Yet, orten’s continual experience of immigrantisation may engender a respondent belief, one where swede identity is believed and conceived by swedes themselves, along the lines of selfsameness. What constitutes them as swedes is that they are unreservedly the same and not due to their shared difference to orten. Both orten and swede however, function as augmentative
identities. Respective acts of inscription or ascription are thus rhizomatic and contextual processes that re-contextualise presupposed beliefs of what Swedish identity is.
Ghassan Hage (2000) makes a similar point to Baumann but includes a more precise understanding of the implications of ethnoraciality. He illustrates how, in the context of Australia, ethnic and racial identities are believed and acted upon as hierarchically spaced out within a spectrum of national belonging and mastery over – as well as rights too – the nation’s space (Hage 2000: 16). This spectrum rests on a belief that designates specific ethnic or racial appearances as possessing varying degrees of claims to a national identity. Consequently, some identities become excluded from the possibility of such claims on the grounds that their specific
ethnoracial makeup terms them as incompatible or insoluble with what is regarded as the axiomatic one. Hage claims, as I do, that ‘[t]his will to exclude is not explained primarily either by race or ethnicity, but by the specific image of the racialised nation’ (Ibid: 26, original italics), which in the case of Sweden, is an image of a white nation. A white identity thought of as being more natural and axiomatic than another. Yet, this should not be seen as the belief that non-white appearance cannot be thought of as Swedish at all, quite the contrary, they can. Rather, it is another iteration of the
process of immigrantisation, whereby identities and appearances are made not simply other but also ‘immigrant’.
It is important to understand that the process of immigrantisation is not necessarily a consciously racist or ethnocentric act, although it can be experienced as such. Rather, the process and its departure begin with the belief that one ethnoracial makeup is more ‘natural’ or axiomatic. The situation is however, more complex, as the belief itself can also be held to be axiomatic. Homi K. Bhabha eloquently explains this conundrum, ‘[a]t the point at which the precept attempts to objectify itself as a generalized knowledge or a normalizing, hegemonic practice, the hybrid strategy or discourse opens up a space of negotiation where power is unequal but its articulation may be equivocal’ (Bhabha 1996: 58). Where the belief that a white identity is axiomatic and the notion that this belief is equally ‘natural’, orten and hip-hop are configured in what Bhabha terms the ‘hybrid’. Although it is subject to an unequal power relation, it is through and in its alternative discourse that orten can be proclaimed as a Swedish identity where its articulations can most definitely be equivocal. Continuing, Bhabha writes that, ‘Hybrid agencies find their voice in a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty’ and that this dialectic serves to, ‘give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy; the outside of the inside: the part in the whole’ (Ibid: 58).
What makes orten particular is how it is comprised of both immigrantised identities and different degrees of axiomatically held identities, namely white ones. Hage (2000) does pinpoint that even if a white identity is held as a primordial fantasy identity, it is also subject to degrees of differentiation. To illustrate his meaning, and speaking of believed axiomatic identity in Australia, he writes, ‘Having blond hair is valuable, but if one has blond hair and an ‘East European accent’, this does not make one more national than having brown hair and an Australian accent’ (Ibid: 29). It is
thus not as straightforward as white versus non-white in regards to the belief in axiomatic identity, and it should rather be thought of as a spectrum that makes use of immigrantisation processes that, vis-à-vis Bhabha’s point, produces and gives form to orten’s position.
Transnationalism
Don’t call me Kurdish, Woriya or Swede/ I grew up with friends from 50 nations/
Here in Sweden we are blackheads, Immigrants, forgein/ but in my homeland I get called Swedish. [Mohammed Ali – 50 länder]15
Transnationalism is one of the main theoretical debates that this project seeks to engage in, and in doing so it challenges some of the theory’s stipulations. Indeed, the concept has been by and large accepted as an anthropological ‘given’ in studies concerning post-colonial states, multiculturalism, and migration. The challenge that is evoked in this text is not one that seeks to destabilise the concept in its entirety, for it is still an important and useful one. Rather, I challenge the recurrently uncritical academic acceptance of the concept’s applicability, as it often over determines or pre-determines how people conceive of identity and the ways in which they do so. For example, in his discussion of how transnationalist perspectives have aided and contributed to anthropological discourse overall, Kearny (1995) highlights how ‘transnational migrants move into and indeed create transnational spaces’ and that these have the evocative power to ‘liberate nationals within them who are able to escape in part the totalizing hegemony that a strong state may have within its borders’ (Ibid: 533). The problematic aspect of this perspective is that it over determines how transnational migrants may identify with the ‘strong state’, and pre-determines the importance of transnational migrants as mobile individuals seeking liberation. It may be, that in the case of first generation immigrants, or migrants, this perspective is more apt, but in addressing orten and in extension those who identify as it, problems arise.
Orten should not be thought of as attempting to achieve national liberation from Sweden, and to make this assumption would be to misunderstand both hip-hop narratives and orten inscriptions entirely. Orten does however, draw upon narratives of difference that highlight its position within Swedish society at large, as subjected by the power relations produced by the state and by hegemony; and as an alternative and augmented Swedish identity. Yet it does so not under the guise of an attempt to relocate identities elsewhere, as transnationalism would suppose, rather, orten identity seeks to locate its presence in the nation, as an alternative to a discourse that would regard it as terminally transnational. Being different – and engaging and revelling in that difference – to a presupposed identity of swede surely cannot alone determine or
15 Original text: Kalla inte mig för kurd, woriya eller svenne/ Jag växte upp med vänner ifrån 50 länder/
ascribe transnational relations and mobility. Indeed, one of the criticisms of
transnationalism is that it tends to conceive of both transnational space and migrants as being uniform, as defined by a ‘nondescript’ difference alone. This can be read in how transnationalism relates to diaspora, where difference to the ‘host nation’ is conceived as the indication of transnational engagement and identity to the ‘homeland’. Thus one could claim that a transnational perspective argues that, difference to the ‘host’ begets practice that engenders relations to the ‘home’.
Through this theoretical presumption, those who are both this and that, part of a diaspora and at the same time not, part Swedish, Turkish and Scottish for instance, are made to either be perpetual others or constant insiders. It would be as though someone with mixed heritage would be forced to choose one space as home and one as host, as if their heritage supposes an inherent transnational mobility and relation. In the case of orten and the participants in this thesis, such definitions rest uneasily. Mr. Orange for instance, introduced in chapter three, articulated that leaving Sweden was the point at which she felt herself as Swedish. To argue her voiced inscription as necessarily transnationalist, and as at odds with the state (to echo Kearny’s
observation), would thus be to over determine her relation to the Swedish state, as though she were seeking liberation from an identity that she herself inscribes. Mr. Maroon on the other hand, who also is introduced in chapter three, has never left Sweden as anything but a tourist. To pre determine his understanding of Iran, as being the result of transnational or translocal relations to his heritage, would thus be to pre-determine the impetus of his mobility, as if when Mr. Maroon moves it must be transnational movement because of his heritage. Under the imposition of a
transnationalist perspective, Mr. Maroon’s and Mr. Orange’s respective inscriptions of orten would have to make a choice – although they themselves would hardly make it – between regarding the Sweden or their heritage as either ‘home’ or ‘host’.
It is unlikely that such an ascription in the context of Sweden would be utilised if the individuals in question were to be of north European or occidental decent. Bearing in mind the specific ethnoraciality of Stockholm, would the child of two white Norwegian parents be acknowledged and regarded as engaged in
transnationalism aimed at liberation, or would it occur only if the child had a heritage that occupied and was manifested by their appearance as different to the ’host’, I wonder?
Wessendorf (2016) in her study on what she terms ‘second-generation transnationalism’, presents a complex and diverse process by which this so called ‘second-generation’ engages in transnationalist relations. Wessendorf argues that in her particular context of Switerzland, ‘ethnic-identification is directly linked to concrete transnational involvement’ (Ibid: 4). This is not surprising as her work engages a distinct and singular ‘ethnic’ or national diaspora, namely Italy and Italians, living and born in Switzerland, or who have relocated to Italy (Ibid: 2). Indeed, for a study that focuses on regional, national or ethnic diasporas in their singular capacity, it is indeed fitting that what is illustrated are relations to a nation by heritage. Yet, for the context that this project engages in, and one that does not seek to locate a single group, but instead account for a varied collective, such a definition remains flawed.
For this research, the reason why this is problematic is because orten is pan-ethnic, pan-racial and pan-heritage, encompassing and subsuming differences so as to produce a collective of different differences. In this sense, to term and define orten as transnational would be a catastrophic mistake. It would promote the notion that orten as a collective is based on uniform difference that is understood and experienced in the same way, and at odds with a so-called ‘host nation’. This is not the case, and I do not imagine that Wessendorf would argue differently, as she further claims that ‘[c]onsiderable variation in transnational engagement and practices among members of the second generation of different origins has been revealed’ (Ibid: 2).
The numerous narrations of orten, both in hip-hop and through the
co-research that this project is based on, highlight how divergently different heritage can be proclaimed as affording a collective alternative national identity. This alternative national identity recognises different differences without necessitating their dependent transnational relations.
What I mean to impart here is that transnationalism is indeed involved on a micro and minute level, through intricacies between individuals’ self inscribed identities from within the collective of orten. Yet, in detailing how this collective figures and operates, in order to attribute it as transnational will always run the risk of over determining such self-inscriptions. Thus I propose that, if one is to regard
Stockholm’s identity politics from the perspective of transnationalism, one must acknowledge and make clear that one focuses on distinct and defined ethnic, racial, national (etcetera) groups to constitute them as such. One cannot argue that orten is transnational if one accepts that part of its composition is made up of individuals whose heritage is Swedish. Not accepting this distinction would be to essentially argue that certain orten identities would engage transnationally with Sweden, as both ‘homeland’ and ‘host’.
In essence, to determine orten as engaging outright in transnational relations, would be to contend that orten engages transnationally with the nation that also figures as the ‘host nation’ – if one would want to claim that orten engages in transnationalist relations with Sweden itself then what is it that determines it as transnational in the first place?
Space
Yalla, orten kids, rep16 the place you live/ No matter if its a city or not, its your zone/ We are idiot kids because we grew up in a zoo/ Where they kept us in, far from town,
far from town. [Dani M - All In]17
16 Means to ‘represent’.
17https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAS8rwMd6tM
Original text: Jalla, ortbarn, reppar platsen där du bor/Oavsett en storstad eller inte det din zon/ Vi är idiotbarn för vi växte upp zoo/Där dom hållt oss kvar/ långt från stan
Following this enthusiastic description of what orten is not, it might be pertinent to mention a couple of concepts that might serve to explain what it is – or at the very least, how it can be thought. Relevant here is a reconceptualisation of space, an interjection of a different way of conceiving what has classically and most often been understood as binary, an opposition between real and imaginary space. I employ the concept of space throughout this study as referring to three different realms, which I borrow from Lefebvre’s division of space as a conceptual triad of ‘representational space, representations of space, and spatial practice’ (Lefebvre 1991:33), and from Soja’s formulation of ‘firstspace, secondspace and thirdspace’ (Soja 1996: 6; see also Bhabha 2004; and Bhabha in Rutherford 1990). In these tripartite divisions, orten is not reduced to one, but instead figures as all three in different ways. As Soja writes, speaking of the thirdspace, ‘Thirdspace…can be described as a creative
recombination and extension, one that builds on a Firstspace perspective…focused on the “real”…and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through
“imagined” representations of spatiality’ (Soja 1996: 6). Orten is quite obviously then a firstspace, in that it is located as a physical space in the immediacy of Stockholm, at the margins of the city limits, as suburbs. Equally so, it is a secondspace in the way that orten in and of itself – and importantly also through language – does not ‘really’ exist. Rather, orten as secondspace is a thought, it is the ‘real’ interpreted by orten identities and consequently imagined and reimagined as imaginarily real. Finally, one can regard orten identity as the synthesis of these two perspectives, as the ‘creative recombination and extension’ that serves to eradicate the binary of either/or and to impose a forgiving binary of both/and also (Ibid: 5-6).
It is in this way that orten as space and as identity should be considered – as being a thirdspace, the synthesis of the real and the imaginary, in effect, an
intermezzo itself. Ethnoracial differentiation and immigrantisation are conceived of in this first binary, the either/or, where identities are either seen as members or as
permanent others. Orten thus interpolates this binary by introducing the both/ and also, the alternative of being both member and other and more, simultaneously. The inscription of an identity comprised of different differences is this forgiving binary made practice. The same interpolation can be said of Swedish hip-hop narratives, wherein orten is located not only in firstspace and secondspace, – albeit that these are the spaces that figure as its visual backdrop – but also within an effective thirdspace that thus proclaims orten as an augmented Swedish identity.
Lastly, it is important to introduce Deleuze and Guattari (1987), who would argue that identity is performed in either smooth or striated space, but where identities are ultimately construed between them (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 408). They are formed in the ‘intermezzo’, the in-between space of spaces. In this sense, striated and smooth space, in conjunction with their notion of the intermezzo, may be seen as another vocalisation of a tripartite division of space. Thus striated and smooth space are excluded in Soja’s first and secondspace (1996), or Lefebvre’s domains of
‘representational space and representation space’, whereas the intermezzo can be seen as the one space that remains. Consequently, thirdspace is an intermezzo, (as is spatial practice,) where Deleuze and Guattari go further than dividing up space and where
they thus transfix identities within this intermezzo. It is in this way that one should understand orten, as both real and imagined space and as a synthesis of the two that thus gives rise to rhizomatic identity, the ‘option’ of being both/ and also.
Building the scene and the night’s main act – Entry into the field and introduction of research population
The whole town is there, everyone, both the blattar and the swedes Eyyyy!/ So welcome to our town brother, Feel at home here yaoooo.- [Labyrint – Välkommen
Hem]18
When I set out to begin my fieldwork, I was under the assumption that what I would find in the field I would already recognise. It is not because I imagined that I had some preordained knowledge, or that I am an expert anthropologist, able to asses a place or people beforehand, arriving at a theoretical conclusion as to what the case might be. Rather, my intentions and beliefs about the field stemmed from my personal involvement and relationship with this specific field. I am from it, and I am part of it, unable to completely do away with that connection. This is the place that I grew up in, I know it intimately, as I do the people with whom I worked. Our knowledge of the place, of the case as it were, is both the thesis’ difficulty as much as its strength. At times, it was impossible to not fall into the same role that I had previously occupied. Certain relations were pre-established, and it was not always easy to be anthropologist rather than friend. But this project is something that has remained dormant in me for a long time. In some ways, this project is a collection of stories, mine included, that impart what it is like to have parents that have a different nationality to one’s own. These are stories that recall what it is like to feel differentiated because of your parents, because of your appearance, or because of the way you speak. They are a collection of narratives about selves and identities that I herein present, but that I by no means am the author of.
At the onset of the project I speculated on what findings I would arrive at, and to accommodate my thoughts I applied an equally speculative understanding of who should be included as research participants. The initial understanding that I had formulated was inadequate, and in fact it relied heavily upon certain presuppositions, the very same ones that later became part of the project’s focus. The pre-fieldwork understanding was one that regarded the project’s participants as ‘swedes identifying as non-white’, so as to reflect the ethnoracial tension and boundaries I envisioned. Yet, as my fieldwork showed, if I was to rely upon only non-white swedes my findings would not reflect properly what was imparted to me in the field.
Transitioning from including only ‘non-white swedes’ to more general and pan-ethnic ‘orten-swedes’ took time, however, and it was not instantly obvious. One of my key co-researchers (the term is explained below), Mr. Green, who at first due to his white
18https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ujLGsONW0 original text: Hela stan är där, allihopa, både
skin I regarded only as a potential gatekeeper and friend, challenged my speculative selection of research participants. It was not through an outright objection that this challenge occurred but through the countless iterations of ortenness that I was privileged to witness, and that opposed my initial speculations. Mr. Green had to be included. Treating him as a bystander not only would be an injustice to his self-inscribed identity, negating it by ascribing him an ‘appropriate’ identity, but also to how orten was comprised, and indeed experienced. Orten was comprised of all kinds of bodies, and all types of appearances, to single out one was to forgo its inclusive entirety. Another example that proved the limitations of my initial understanding was in analysing voiced experiences of the relations between white and non-white swedes in and of orten. If these experiences accepted a pan-ethnical constitution of orten, then the project could not be such an exclusive one. Thus the shift from non-white swedes to orten-swedes was intrinsic to the relevance of the project and the demonstration of its findings.
The ignorance of my initial speculations, and the necessity to be more inclusive was made clearer still when I posed my co-researchers the sloppy and somewhat arrogant question, ‘can a white person be orten?’ to which the answer was, yes of course they can! This shift to recognize orten as pan-ethnic was not only important for the project’s intended research participants, but also for the ways in which it could consider hip-hop performance and narratives. It also entailed a revamp of how hip-hop artists and performances could be understood. Where I at first had decided to include only non-white participants, I would have to exclude a number of white Swedish hip-hop artists. They did not fit within the inflexible category that I had outlined, and so the notion was that somehow their narratives were unfitting, taking space from more relevant performances. With a properly pan-ethnic
perspective of orten and of hip-hop, their utterances too became important, together accounting for a whole rather than a part.
As speculator first and researcher last, and with my initial ideas discarded or altered, I must mention that I did not return alone. Hence, I have chosen to address the contributors of this project as co-researchers, because it is through their research, conducted upon their selves and the selves of others, that this project draws its conclusions and analysis from. Some of our research expertise is derived from personal experiences of immigrantisation and from suffering racism and
ethnocentrism. Some directly facilitated connections to individuals or provided spaces in which our research could be discussed. Other positions, such as providing
problematic justifications19, where instrumental for inspiring and elucidating what should come to be included as text. These varying roles, that were fluid in regards to whom held which, complemented one another by each contributing a piecemeal understanding and estimation of what orten is.
This project interrupts their on-going research, extracting and selecting
moments from these to serve as data for this more formalised iteration. Conversations
19 Such as a white man using the N word as a term of endearment, or a non-white woman justifying her
and research brought to life memories and experiences, feelings and desires that due to their difficult and at times hurtful nature were not easy to formalise academically. Indeed, many co-researchers continuously remarked that without first hand
experience of orten, and in extension then the particularities of Stockholm based identity politics, what they narrated would seem trivial or inappreciable. The thesis is thus an attempt to place serious attention, and to not trivialise or go beyond what was articulated.
Importantly, I asked each and every co-researcher whether or not I should anonymise their names, and although many said they did not mind having their original ones in the formal text, two were hesitant and one even professed that they did not want to see their name tied to any statement or excerpt. To be as respectful as possible I have chosen to use pseudonyms inspired by the 1992 film Reservoir Dogs20
by Quentin Tarantino, where each co-researcher is dubbed after a colour. Importantly, as this thesis does not analytically or critically engage with a debate about gender, the names that act as pseudonyms have been selected at random and the reader should not always conclude that for instance ‘Mr. Green’ is necessarily male, unless otherwise specified.
Our research is on going, incomplete, and identity as process dictates that it always will be so. Inquiries of self and identity are continuous, and each iteration stands as another performance of identity as process. In this everyday act of identity negation or acceptance, Swedish hip-hop articulates this interplay, between being allowed to be and being told be. Performances of hip-hop are not our identities, but they reflect or highlight the continuous process that we engage in. Swedish hip-hop is, as I have mentioned previously, a soundtrack to Swedish identity politics. It enacts in musical and lyrical form the experience of Swedish identity politics. The narrations of identity that I present here are deeply personal, and they impart glimpses of how my fellow co-researchers and I regard ourselves, and the people around us. To
acknowledge the pivotal role of hip-hop in these narrations, and alleviate what might at times be a difficult read, I equip this thesis with its own soundtrack, to be read in the intermezzos of its sections. Furthermore, this soundtrack is intended not only to lighten the read, but also to reflect what is being discussed in each section, as well as the overarching argument that the thesis presents.
Lastly, because identity is an eternal process (Ibrahim 2014: 3), the glimpses we share here are not who we ‘always are’, rather, they are moments of being and becoming, which to the best of our ability we have attempted to recount and explain. As this is a project about presenting the self, both internally and externally, and about assessing selves in ones surroundings, it would be unbecoming of me as a fellow researcher to not include myself in the project’s findings.
20 I find it a fitting film to inspire the thesis’ pseudonyms as the range of colors I see as reflecting the
pan-ethnic and pan racial identities of orten. To make sure and clear that the reader is not mislead, the names Mr. White and Mr. Black have been deliberate omitted.
These thoughts of ours - Research questions
Through laughter or tears, I am home here/ Will leave sometimes, but wont ever leave here/ Might never understand what it is we feel here/ But we are home here, that's
what happens here. [Parham – Hemma Här]21
The chief question that governed the project and my intentions in the field was subject to slight changes once I arrived in Stockholm. As I mentioned earlier, prior to
fieldwork the project made use of untenable notions whose inappropriateness was made blatantly clear to me. In the spirit of transparency, and to further show how the project has discarded its initial and much problematic framework, the original question read: How are second and third generation immigrants living in Stockholm expressing their identities in Swedish Hip-Hop in relation to ethnic differentiation? For aforementioned reasons, while I was in the field the question was reformulated gradually to accommodate emic terminology and field-based conception. Hence, the overarching question that this project presents an answer to now is: How does
Swedish hip-hop reflect the believed polarisation between orten and swede identities and how is it experienced in inscriptions of Swedish national identities? The necessity to make these changes was made quite obvious from the strong resentment that my co-researchers demonstrated of the term second generation immigrant. Yet, perhaps most evocative of all was the lyric from Alphalif’s song Paradoxens Mamma (The Paradox’s Mother),
Wandering still got no place to go/ Born in Sweden by a Swede became an immigrant here anyway/ Say a big lie several times in the end that’s the way it is.22 [Alphalif –
Paradoxens Mamma]23
Indeed, his title hints at the paradoxical classification that being a so-called second generation immigrant may convey. Alphalif’s lyrics will return later in the text, but for now they stand as a significant and telling indication for why both my terminology and indeed initial framework were insufficient.
Walking and talking - Methodology
Yo sit down and listen close, light a joint/ You'll get to know how people in orten grow up/ Its ghetto kids, they are dogs that are hungry/ It's boys that don't care and all
for a few hundreds. – [AliAmmo – Bevisen]24
21https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l9B157XN5o Original text: Genom skratt eller gråt jag är
hemma här/ Kommer dra ibland, men kommer aldrig lämna här/ Kanske aldrig kommer fatta vad vi känner här/ Men vi är hemma här, de sånt som händer här.
22 Original text: Vandrar ännu ingenstans att gå/ Född I Sverige av en Svensk blev invandrare här ändå/
Säg en stor lögn flera ganger till slut är det så.
The thesis’ findings and stipulations are officially the result of a three-month fieldwork period, between late December to the beginning of April 2019, in
Stockholm, Sweden. Yet, unofficially as mentioned, this project began several years ago, and has been a continuous research endeavour. In a sense, the academic thesis can be treated as the first formal iteration of the continuous project's findings.
As I have stated previously, the project presents narratives of identity politics and identity negation and acceptance that are alternative and often contentious. They are the result of 11 interviews, whereof three were group interviews, and none followed a set list of questions. All interviewees held Swedish passports except for one who had a Ghanaian passport. Several also had second citizenships and hold passports for other nations. In what is telling of the pan-ethnic constitution of orten, 10 out of my 11 interviewee’s had at least one parent born outside of Sweden – being nationals or former nationals of Chile, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Finland, Mozambique, Iran, Turkey, Nigeria, Kurdistan and Bosnia. The interviews were held in cafés, my apartment, the apartments of my interviewees and in the ‘Shoreline’ studio – a recording studio run by two of my co-researchers. Out of these 11 interviews, there were only two co-researchers that I had not met with previously before the interview was conducted. Despite pre-established relations, it would be hard to claim that they were well-maintained relations of friendship, as many were individuals whom I had had little or no contact with for at least 10 years. I bastardise an old Nokia slogan in saying that, ‘Facebook. Connecting people’, but it is a telling tale that it was through this social media platform that I was able to come into contact with many old
acquaintances. What initially had felt uncomfortable, sending messages to old friends with whom I had maintained little contact, soon became a productive joy. Lengthy personal messages in which I routinely apologised for the lack of previous contact and for disturbing the receiver’s existence, saw responses that almost always expressed an eager willingness to engage and participate in the topic and research. The project was introduced as an anthropological study of identity in Stockholm, and how identity might be seen as related to or influenced by hip-hop.
As only two of the co-researchers were previously unknown to me, there was an element of luck that my old and current acquaintances accepted my interview and conversational invitations and introduced me to these two. Problems did arise in attempting to find suitable dates and times, with one invitation being extended from the first day to the last. Unfortunately no agreed date was ever made, as the potential participant responded that they ‘had a funeral to attend, business to conclude’
(etcetera). After these initial personal message exchanges, I made it a habit of routinely writing to and informing all co-researchers on how the project was going, what I had identified as needing more research – and what I did not – and how much time I had left in Stockholm. This proved not only apt in securing final interviews, but 24https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjaCWXEwor4
Original text: Yo sätt dig ner stanna up, lyssna noga tänd en zutt/ du får veta hur folk i orten växer up. Det är ghetto kids, de är hundar dom som är hungriga/ det är grabbar som skiter i for bara några hundringar
