Mid Sweden University

Drawing on critical frameworks in criminology, including Popular Criminology and Ghost Criminology, this paper aims to explore how Bloodborne offers a critical reflection of the haunting nature of the harms inflicted by humans in the age of the Anthropocene. More specifically, we aim to examine how the cultural text of Bloodborne illustrates humanity's corruption of the natural and the harms this inflicts, arguing that this can be understood as a reflection of ghosts of the Anthropocene. Using ethnographic content analysis, three main themes were uncovered in Bloodborne that related to humanity's corruption of the natural, the harms this inflict, as well as how this can be understood as a reflection of ghosts of the Anthropocene: Sanguine Exploitation, Horrific Creation, and Monstrous Extinction. We conclude by arguing that Bloodborne, in evoking the horrors of climate catastrophe, is an important cultural script that responds to McBrien’s necrocene and Haraway’s Chthulucene.

The home, and domesticity, is not only central in the Western imaginary blurring the lines between domestic space and individuality, but the home can also be seen as an extension of the self, a scaffold to which we construct and critique our identity, built of mirror as well as mortar. But homes are also inherently haunted, dyschronous and disjointed from time, where the present wavers with ghosts of both past and future. Using the haunted house as a conceptual metaphor, this paper aims to delineate a framework to encapsulate and understand lingering afterlives of violence in both literal as well as conceptual ‘homes’. Exploring haunted houses as both literal figurative sites, we map out the frame of this metaphor using two examples, exploring both the meaning of ‘haunted’ as well as the structural scaffold of the house itself as it relates to afterlives of violence. Reading the Swedish People’s Home as a form of ‘haunted house’, we explore the effects of lingering violence built into the very foundations of this home, now making its return. We also explore how the analytical framework of the haunted house can be used to conceptualise the displacing effects of climate weirding, using the town of Acerado as an example, tracing the haunting effects of solastalgia and its asynchronic relationship with home. These examples are used to illustrate how our proposed framework can be used both to deconstruct the bones of the haunted house, as well as the ghosts haunting it. This does not only provide us with a lens to identify cultural, social or political trauma embedded in actual as well as symbolic structures, but it also allows us to challenge the boundaries of our ‘homes’; challenging deep-held notions of privilege and power, allowing us to identify and dismantle structures of inequality and oppression.

Intimate partner homicide (IPH) constitutes the most extreme form of intimate partnerviolence. While this violent crime affects many of women all around the world, little isknown about this phenomenon when perpetrated against young victims. To date, no studyhas investigated trends of IPHs involving young victims. This study therefore aimed toinvestigate trends of IPHs in Sweden between 1990 and 2017, disaggregated by age-groupand gender. Using register data, this study compared opposite-sex relationship IPH com-mitted against young (≤ 25 years) and against adult (≥ 26 years) individuals, disaggregatedby gender. Using poisson regression modelling, our study demonstrates that while ratesof IPH against adult women has declined, the rate involving adolescent and young adultwomen has not. Our study also indicated a decreasing trend of IPH against adult men,albeit not significant. In conclusion, while IPH committed against adult women demon-strated a decrease over time, our findings suggest that IPH against young female victimshas remained stable the past 27 years. As youth IPH has been a neglected subject of re-search, these findings suggest that the policies to combat IPV and IPH may not be adaptedand tailored for the younger population

This article proposes a new, critical methodological framework aiming to unearth hidden, forgotten or banished issues inresearch using feminist theory, such as criminology and sociology, synthesising feminist theory and hauntology. By developing aframework for “speaking with ghosts”, we provide concrete tools to theoretically interrogate feminist issues of the past, presentand future using a lens of archetypical imagery in order to prompt ethical as well as political critique. The framework is illustratedby unearthing gendered and feminist spectres of three photographs taken by young women in a recent photovoice studyexploring everyday violence among youth. By applying the framework on the photographs, drawing on conceptual metaphors ofboth the spectral and of fairytales, which are always and already important sites of feminism, the study unpacks how spectresrelating to heteropatriarchy and gendered power orders still haunt the everyday lives of young people and how the use of afeminist hauntology can provide potential for ethical, social and political change. Unlike previous consolidations of feminism andhauntology, this methodological framework is designed to promote political, ethical and social change as well as critique bydelineating concrete ways of teasing out the feminist spectral in late modern texts, thus going beyond previous engagements withthe spectral.

This chapter will provide a critical analysis of the highly influential Playable Teaser (P.T.) for the now-canceled game Silent Hills. The aim of this chapter is to critically examine the narratives of domestic violence in P.T., interrogating the portrayal of perpetrators of such violence and how this relates to the public imaginary of domestic violence. This chapter will argue that not only is domestic violence central to the narrative of P.T., but by rooting domestic violence in the mundane, the game also provides a critique against the Othering of domestic violence perpetrators commonly found in popular culture narratives. Drawing on popular criminology and inspiration from ghost ethnography, this chapter will also explore the lingering societal impact of P.T. as a cultural text, particularly considering the precariousness of P.T. as a canceled and deleted game. Overall, P.T. provides an important critique against the Othering and demonization of domestic violence perpetrators commonly found in the public imaginary of such violence, allowing for a critical, more nuanced understanding of offending behavior. 

Using the spectral as a conceptual metaphor, we explore narratives within Sweden’s welfare institutions and policy discourses surrounding vulnerable EU citizens. We aim to provide a new understanding of vulnerable EU citizens as the social ghosts of our time by exploring how the concept of the social ghost and hauntology can be used to perform ethical critique of social injustice. By excavating examples from already gathered material, we explore the unseen within the already seen to critically examine how vulnerable EU citizens are constructed in social welfare narratives. We argue that the terminology of vulnerable EU citizens not only is constructed as uncanny and abject but also as social ghosts, denied a social and political identity and forced to haunt the margins of societal life. Moreover, we argue that the Swedish state becomes a site for necropolitical power, enabling but also perpetuating lingering violent effects on Roma people.

This study examines homicide trends in seven European countries – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden and Switzerland – all of which manifested a substantial drop in homicide mortality between 1990 and 2016. By using data from the European Homicide Monitor, a coding scheme created to enable cross-country comparisons, combined with the national cause-of-death statistics, we explore generality versus specificity of the homicide drop. We examine changes in the demographic structure of victims and offenders and disaggregate homicides by different subtypes of lethal incidents, such as family-related homicides referring to conflicts between family members, and criminal milieu homicides occurring in the context of robberies, gang-related conflicts or organised crime. Results point to the generality of the drop: in most of the countries studied, the declining trend included all homicide types. The overall decline in homicide mortality was driven mostly by the decline in male victimisation and offending. In most of the countries, the gender distribution of victims and offenders changed only slightly during the study period, whereas the development of the distribution of homicide types manifested greater diversity. Our findings illustrate the benefits of disaggregated analyses in comparative homicide research.

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, this article develops a hauntological framework to trace the no longer and the not yet in the uprising of punitive populism in the Swedish electoral campaign of 2022. Our analysis is based on speeches made by party leaders from the three largest parties in Sweden and their election manifestos. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the spectropolitics of the ‘Swedish People’s Home’ (Sv. Folkhemmet) with its inherent contradictions is haunting our past as well as our future. Resting on a critical analytical tradition, we argue that election campaigns are important to analyse due to their potential power to shape the wider public understanding. Through the spectre of safety and the spectralisation of individuals engaged in ‘gang criminality,’ the Swedish People’s Home assumes a spectralising power in politics, both left and right, that produces a punitive populism calling for the persecution and ‘exorcism’ of certain racialised groups. The shadowy downsides of the dream of welfare in Sweden is haunting; its hidden violence emerges in the politics of punitive populism.