To Örebro University

The proliferation of "sugar dating" websites, facilitating transactional relationships between a "sugar baby" and a "sugar daddy," raises new questions about the reconfigured relationship between intimacy and economy in the contemporary Global North. By encouraging people to approach sex and intimacy through a logic of exchange, sugar dating has been claimed to represent the culmination of a broader trend towards a "marketization" of intimacy. Based on semi-structured interviews, this article analyzes Swedish "sugar babies"' investment in a transactional approach to intimate interactions with men, focusing on the emotional rewards that they associate with the transactional setup of sugar dating. While the participants' transactional approach to intimacy is bolstered by the cultural dispersal of a neoliberal rationality into ever more domains of life, I argue that its deeper roots need to be sought in the precarious conditions of contemporary intimacy. Drawing in particular on the work of Eva Illouz, I claim that the women's embracement of a transactional approach to heterosexual sex and intimacy may be read as a defensive tactic of seeking to gain control over the flows of intimate interaction in light of the (gendered) insecurities and vulnerabilities of the contemporary market of intimacy.

In recent years, men identifying as involuntary celibates, or 'incels,' have been involved in serious incidents of violence against women. This group is characterized as a poltical sub-culture or onlinecommunity, marked by misogyny and driven by emotions such as resentment, shame, and revenge. The research on online incel communities is expanding, revealing their promotion of sexist, anti-feminist, and pro-violence worldviews, along with hegemonic and toxic forms of masculinity. A notable feature of the incel community is its intricate 'theoretical framework' used to elucidate the plight of its members. Within this framework, incel men are depicted as voiceless, excluded victims and losers in the (hetero)sexual market. This marginalization is atributed to their perceived biological inferiority and increased subjugation of men within a context shaped by hegemonic feminism. While existing research has extensively studied the content of incel theorizing, litle atention has been devoted to understanding how the incel community constructs its worldview. Our article aims to fill this gap by examining the incel worldview through a sociology of knowledge lens. A netnographic study of the digital incel forum Incels.is reveals how users establish their knowledge claims and the sources and methods they employ. Additionally, we explore the implicit or explicit epistemic paradigms at play, emphasizing the interactions and tensions between different paradigms. Notably, we investigate how incels leverage both conventional scientific principles and personal experiences, mirroring feminist approaches, to make claims about societal structures.

Sugar dating has gained extensive media coverage over the last couple of years, often being depicted as a veiled form of prostitution / sex work. While similar dating arrangements encompassing some sort of economic compensation are well researched in an African and Asian context, sugar dating has only garnered attention from researchers in the Global North during the last decade, in the wake of a proliferation of websites facilitating the practice. In light of the contested nature of the phenomenon, in this article we critically assess how knowledge about sugar dating is constructed in the emerging literature on the topic in the Global North, with a particular focus on the role attributed to sugar daters' own experiential accounts. Alongside furthering the discourse on sugar dating by unravelling the epistemological underpinnings of existing research, we utilise the case of sugar-dating research to elaborate on the continued relevance of feminist debates on the epistemological status of experience. We call for a more comprehensive theoretical examination of experience in sugar-dating research and posit that some versions of feminist standpoint theory, as well as strands in feminist phenomenology, provide valuable theoretical tools for navigating between understanding experience as an ideological construct and/or as a privileged foundation of knowledge.

Background: Lay online communication about health-related issues has in recent years largely been associated with the spread of misinformation and decreased trust in healthcare. Such communication has included claims about systemic side effects of the copper IUD. In Sweden, a social media group centered on this issue now gathers around 8,700 members. This study aimed to use the case of reported yet unestablished side effects of the copper IUD to investigate experiences of and reasoning about healthcare encounters between caregivers and patients contesting established medical knowledge.

Methods: We conducted qualitative, semi-structured, digital group interviews with members of the social media group (seven groups, n = 23) and with midwives and gynecologists (six groups, n = 15). We also gathered essays written by social media group members (n = 23). The material was analyzed thematically.

Results: The participant accounts pointed towards tensions related to principles of evidence-based medicine, i.e., perceived insufficiency of research on the safety of the copper IUD and lack of clarity in routines for reporting and following up suspected side effects, and of patient-centered care, i.e., listening respectfully to patients. Tension between caregivers’ obligation to adhere to evidence-based medicine while also providing patient-centered care was noted.

Conclusion. Healthcare providers’ efforts to assess and address patient claims contesting established medical knowledge should include ensuring and communicating sufficient research, clarifying procedures for reporting suspected side effects, and improving person-centered care. This can increase the quality of care while contributing to the mitigation of distrust in healthcare and the spreading of health-related misinformation.

The article intervenes in discussions on lay knowledge production about health in the Internet era, through the case of a group of women claiming that their use of copper intrauterine devices has led to systemic side effects. Based on online group interviews and written essays, we examine how women embracing these knowledge claims navigate various sources of information, focusing on the role of scientificity in these epistemic negotiations. The women were found to be involved in an active, scientifically oriented process of knowledge formation, which we refer to as a collective labour of scientific patchworking. Meanwhile, due to a perceived lack of scientifically based expertise on their condition, the women reported having little choice but turn to resources with weaker scientific foothold. We argue that the tendency to portray these women’s claims as unscientific simplifies the nature of lay knowledge production, potentially deepening divides between medical authorities and the public.

I det här avsnittet intervjuas forskaren Lena Gunnarsson om sugardaddies. Vad är det som lockar män till sugardejting? Vad får de ut av det? Vilka slags problem kan uppstå när man försöker betala för någonting som egentligen bara kan ges frivilligt? Lena Gunnarsson har lett forskningsprojektet "Mellan relation och prostitution: Sugardejting och omförhandlingen av gränsen mellan ekonomi och intimitet" och har tillsammans med Sofia Strid skrivit artikeln "Chemistry or Service?: Sugar Daddies' (Re)quest for Mutuality Within the Confines of Commercial Exchange".

'Experiential knowledge' has been identified as a key epistemic resource used by lay people to contest medical authorities and build new knowledge related to health. The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for such experience-based epistemic projects. This article contributes to understandings of the as yet under-theorised concept of experiential knowledge by analysing accounts of a group of Swedish women who claim that their use of contraceptive copper IUDs has led to systemic side effects not recognised by health care providers. Based on digital group interviews and written essays, we distinguish between three components or stages of experiential knowledge at work in the women's use of experience as an epistemic resource: somatic knowing, collective validation and self-experimentation. Drawing on a critical realist framework, we defend a notion of experiential knowledge as crucially, while only partially, based on a bodily and practical access to aspects of reality organised by extra-discursive principles. By providing theoretical complexity to the notion of experiential knowledge, we contribute resources for discriminating between and evaluating various experience-based claims, something that is particularly needed in the current 'post-truth' era where experience-based knowledge claims pointing in divergent directions flourish.