Emil Edenborg
Biographic Data
| ID | 912933 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emil Edenborg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emil |
| FAMILY NAME | Edenborg |
| SIGNATURE | EDENBORG E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swedish Institute of International Affairs |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4502-4770 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
We are queer and the struggle is here! Visibility at the intersection of LGBT+ rights, post-coloniality, and development cooperation in Uganda
This article unpacks different meanings of visibility and adds to a more complex and nuanced understanding of visibility and its role in LGBT + activism in Uganda, a widely discussed case of political homophobia. Public visibility has a central, although contested, role here. The study aims to explore how visibility is understood and navigated by local LGBT + activists, unaffiliated people with same-sex desires, as well as international developme…
Rainbow diplomacy: LGBTQ+ rights and everyday diplomatic practice at Pride
This article explores how LGBTQ+ advocacy and involvement in local LGBTQ+ activism is enacted by diplomats and mediated by everyday practices of diplomacy. The article analyses the interconnections and disconnections between high-level foreign and diplomatic policy discourses and local enactments and positions of embassies and diplomats. In doing so, the article considers states with an expressed commitment to feminist or LGBTQ+ advocacy in forei…
Queer on the home front: Russian LGBTIQ activism and queer security in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine
The article investigates Russian LGBTIQ activism in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a conflict framed in highly gendered and sexualized geopolitical terms. The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of queer security and is based on interviews with Russian LGBTIQ activists, their international funders, as well as a text analysis of Russian official documents and news media. It shows how the safety of queer and trans people in Russia…
Governing queer activism: Power and visibility in state funding of international LGBTI organizations
This article examines how international lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism is governed through state funding. Through archival material documenting the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency’s (SIDA’s) funding of two international LGBTI organizations – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the Swedish Federation of LGBTQI Rights – complemented with interviews, we …
‘Traditional values’ and the narrative of gay rights as modernity: Sexual politics beyond polarization
Examining the Russian state’s turn to ‘traditional values’ in the 2010s, this article aims to understand traditionalist state discourses in a global context where LGBT inclusion has been incorporated into notions of national exceptionalism. It argues that the Putin regime has articulated, provided ideological coherence to, and made visible a narrative according to which resistance to LGBT rights appears as a logical choice for states seeking to p…
Embodying Military Muscles and a Remasculinized West: Influencer Marketing, Fantasy, and “the Face of Nato
In 2018, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out Trident Juncture, its largest military exercise since the Cold War. The event was promoted on social media featuring Lasse Matberg as “the face of NATO.” Matberg is an Instagram influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, with an impressive physique and Viking looks. He frequently appears on NATO’s social media accounts and lends his own platform to share activities…
Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of “Traditional Values”
This article proposes Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of…
Disinformation and gendered boundarymaking: Nordic media audiences making sense of “Swedish decline”
This article examines how Russian geostrategic communication is entangled in global gender politics. The aim is to understand the resonance of disinformation in relation to culturalized, ethnicized and racialized narratives of gender, or “gendered boundarymaking.” The analysis is based on focus group discussions with Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian individuals, asked to share their impressions of news articles from the Russian media agency Sputnik…
Saving women and bordering Europe: Narratives of “Migrants’ Sexual Violence” and geopolitical imaginaries in Russia and Sweden
This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symb…
You Cannot Oppress Those Who Do Not Exist
Reports in April 2017 regarding a state-initiated wave of homophobic persecution in Chechnya attracted worldwide outrage. Numerous witnesses spoke of arrests, abuse, and murders of gay men in the republic. In response, a spokesman of Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, claimed that "you cannot ... oppress those who simply do not exist." In this article, with the antigay purge in Chechnya and in particular the denial of queer existence as their …
Visibility in Global Queer Politics
This chapter discusses the notion of visibility and its place in the politics of queer oppression and queer liberation. In theory as well as activism, visibility is often considered necessary for the advancement of LGBT rights. However, some researchers challenge the reliance on visibility in queer politics, arguing that visibility may be related to control, normalization, increased violence, and backlashes; may contain biases with regard to race…
Russia’s spectacle of “traditional values”: Rethinking the politics of visibility
This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically gendered and sexualized ways. In doing this, it contributes to queer and feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, where visibility and invisibility, although central themes, are sometimes insufficiently problematized. In a case study of Russia’s contemporary project of “traditional values,” I show how the Kremlin-promoted heteropatriarchal def…
Gendered bordering practices in Swedish and Russian foreign and security policy
Visualizing the included subject: Photography, progress narratives and intellectual disability
Creativity, geopolitics and ontological security: Satire on Russia and the war in Ukraine
Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creat…
Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of “Traditional Values”
This article proposes Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of…
Embodying Military Muscles and a Remasculinized West: Influencer Marketing, Fantasy, and “the Face of Nato
In 2018, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out Trident Juncture, its largest military exercise since the Cold War. The event was promoted on social media featuring Lasse Matberg as “the face of NATO.” Matberg is an Instagram influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, with an impressive physique and Viking looks. He frequently appears on NATO’s social media accounts and lends his own platform to share activities…
Russia’s spectacle of “traditional values”: Rethinking the politics of visibility
This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically gendered and sexualized ways. In doing this, it contributes to queer and feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, where visibility and invisibility, although central themes, are sometimes insufficiently problematized. In a case study of Russia’s contemporary project of “traditional values,” I show how the Kremlin-promoted heteropatriarchal def…
You Cannot Oppress Those Who Do Not Exist
Reports in April 2017 regarding a state-initiated wave of homophobic persecution in Chechnya attracted worldwide outrage. Numerous witnesses spoke of arrests, abuse, and murders of gay men in the republic. In response, a spokesman of Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, claimed that "you cannot ... oppress those who simply do not exist." In this article, with the antigay purge in Chechnya and in particular the denial of queer existence as their …
Gendered bordering practices in Swedish and Russian foreign and security policy
Disinformation and gendered boundarymaking: Nordic media audiences making sense of “Swedish decline”
This article examines how Russian geostrategic communication is entangled in global gender politics. The aim is to understand the resonance of disinformation in relation to culturalized, ethnicized and racialized narratives of gender, or “gendered boundarymaking.” The analysis is based on focus group discussions with Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian individuals, asked to share their impressions of news articles from the Russian media agency Sputnik…
Governing queer activism: Power and visibility in state funding of international LGBTI organizations
This article examines how international lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism is governed through state funding. Through archival material documenting the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency’s (SIDA’s) funding of two international LGBTI organizations – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the Swedish Federation of LGBTQI Rights – complemented with interviews, we …
Creativity, geopolitics and ontological security: Satire on Russia and the war in Ukraine
Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creat…
Rainbow diplomacy: LGBTQ+ rights and everyday diplomatic practice at Pride
This article explores how LGBTQ+ advocacy and involvement in local LGBTQ+ activism is enacted by diplomats and mediated by everyday practices of diplomacy. The article analyses the interconnections and disconnections between high-level foreign and diplomatic policy discourses and local enactments and positions of embassies and diplomats. In doing so, the article considers states with an expressed commitment to feminist or LGBTQ+ advocacy in forei…
Saving women and bordering Europe: Narratives of “Migrants’ Sexual Violence” and geopolitical imaginaries in Russia and Sweden
This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symb…
Creativity, geopolitics and ontological security: Satire on Russia and the war in Ukraine
Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creat…
Visualizing the included subject: Photography, progress narratives and intellectual disability
Visibility in Global Queer Politics
This chapter discusses the notion of visibility and its place in the politics of queer oppression and queer liberation. In theory as well as activism, visibility is often considered necessary for the advancement of LGBT rights. However, some researchers challenge the reliance on visibility in queer politics, arguing that visibility may be related to control, normalization, increased violence, and backlashes; may contain biases with regard to race…
Russia’s spectacle of “traditional values”: Rethinking the politics of visibility
This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically gendered and sexualized ways. In doing this, it contributes to queer and feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, where visibility and invisibility, although central themes, are sometimes insufficiently problematized. In a case study of Russia’s contemporary project of “traditional values,” I show how the Kremlin-promoted heteropatriarchal def…
Gendered bordering practices in Swedish and Russian foreign and security policy
Saving women and bordering Europe: Narratives of “Migrants’ Sexual Violence” and geopolitical imaginaries in Russia and Sweden
This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symb…
You Cannot Oppress Those Who Do Not Exist
Reports in April 2017 regarding a state-initiated wave of homophobic persecution in Chechnya attracted worldwide outrage. Numerous witnesses spoke of arrests, abuse, and murders of gay men in the republic. In response, a spokesman of Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, claimed that "you cannot ... oppress those who simply do not exist." In this article, with the antigay purge in Chechnya and in particular the denial of queer existence as their …
Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of “Traditional Values”
This article proposes Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of…
Disinformation and gendered boundarymaking: Nordic media audiences making sense of “Swedish decline”
This article examines how Russian geostrategic communication is entangled in global gender politics. The aim is to understand the resonance of disinformation in relation to culturalized, ethnicized and racialized narratives of gender, or “gendered boundarymaking.” The analysis is based on focus group discussions with Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian individuals, asked to share their impressions of news articles from the Russian media agency Sputnik…
Embodying Military Muscles and a Remasculinized West: Influencer Marketing, Fantasy, and “the Face of Nato
In 2018, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out Trident Juncture, its largest military exercise since the Cold War. The event was promoted on social media featuring Lasse Matberg as “the face of NATO.” Matberg is an Instagram influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, with an impressive physique and Viking looks. He frequently appears on NATO’s social media accounts and lends his own platform to share activities…
‘Traditional values’ and the narrative of gay rights as modernity: Sexual politics beyond polarization
Examining the Russian state’s turn to ‘traditional values’ in the 2010s, this article aims to understand traditionalist state discourses in a global context where LGBT inclusion has been incorporated into notions of national exceptionalism. It argues that the Putin regime has articulated, provided ideological coherence to, and made visible a narrative according to which resistance to LGBT rights appears as a logical choice for states seeking to p…
Governing queer activism: Power and visibility in state funding of international LGBTI organizations
This article examines how international lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism is governed through state funding. Through archival material documenting the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency’s (SIDA’s) funding of two international LGBTI organizations – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the Swedish Federation of LGBTQI Rights – complemented with interviews, we …
We are queer and the struggle is here! Visibility at the intersection of LGBT+ rights, post-coloniality, and development cooperation in Uganda
This article unpacks different meanings of visibility and adds to a more complex and nuanced understanding of visibility and its role in LGBT + activism in Uganda, a widely discussed case of political homophobia. Public visibility has a central, although contested, role here. The study aims to explore how visibility is understood and navigated by local LGBT + activists, unaffiliated people with same-sex desires, as well as international developme…
Rainbow diplomacy: LGBTQ+ rights and everyday diplomatic practice at Pride
This article explores how LGBTQ+ advocacy and involvement in local LGBTQ+ activism is enacted by diplomats and mediated by everyday practices of diplomacy. The article analyses the interconnections and disconnections between high-level foreign and diplomatic policy discourses and local enactments and positions of embassies and diplomats. In doing so, the article considers states with an expressed commitment to feminist or LGBTQ+ advocacy in forei…
Queer on the home front: Russian LGBTIQ activism and queer security in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine
The article investigates Russian LGBTIQ activism in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a conflict framed in highly gendered and sexualized geopolitical terms. The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of queer security and is based on interviews with Russian LGBTIQ activists, their international funders, as well as a text analysis of Russian official documents and news media. It shows how the safety of queer and trans people in Russia…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Queer (6 works) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues (5 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (5 works)