"It is essentially about controlling women's sexuality". A critical study on on the communication of ‘honour-based violence’ in Swedish online courses.

Sammanfattning: Since the early 2000s, the issue of ‘honour-based violence’ has sparked significant discussions in Sweden, leading to governmental and civil efforts to combat this form of violence. An essential intervention highlighted in these efforts is improving knowledge among professionals in sectors such as social and healthcare, schools, and the judicial system. Recently, a new platform has emerged, offering easily accessible information and knowledge through web-based courses. However, postcolonial researchers have long criticised how Sweden and Western countries construct ‘honour-based violence’ in their sources of information and knowledge. Therefore, this thesis investigates how ‘honour-based violence’ is communicated specifically through Swedish web-based courses. To accomplish this, the thesis utilises two sources of data: web-based courses and interviews. The interviews have been conducted to gain a more comprehensive understanding of why the online courses were presented in the way they were. The analysis of the data reveals three overarching results. Firstly, ‘honour-based violence’ is portrayed as an issue not culturally rooted in Sweden. This is evident through the use of binary oppositions in the online courses, where the normative standpoint, represented as ‘we’, is contrasted with the perceived ‘Otherness’ of ‘them’. Secondly, the overall understanding and communication of ‘honour-based violence’ in the online courses exhibit ambivalence, as they oscillate between viewing it as a matter of men’s violence against women and as a cultural phenomenon. Lastly, it is apparent that ‘honour-based violence’ is utilised as a means to create divisions between those who are deemed as being Swedish and those who are considered outsiders.