A Room of One’s Own Delivery

Abstract

This study focuses on the closing of the birthing clinic in Sollefteå hospital in January 2017, and the occupation of the ward that followed thereafter. Emphasis is put on the construction of rural identity in general, and rural female identity in particular, as the Other and aims to examine emancipatory potential in mobilizing resistance through vulnerability by studying the occupation in Sollefteå as a case of rural uprising. The theoretical framework consists of Judith Butler’s reading of Simone de Beauvoir, explaining construction of othered identity, and rural identity using studies of Chris Philo, Joe Little, Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, Patrick Mooney, Madeleine Eriksson, Bo Nilsson and Anna Sofia Lundgren. Val Plumwood’s theories of masculinist rationality is used to analyse the practical consequences, and the concept of mobilizing resistance through vulnerability is explained by Zeynep Gambetti, Leticia Sabsay and Judith Butler. The study is built on feminist, activist research and finds an oppressive construction of rural citizens, and rural women in particular, as the Other, and as vulnerable in relation to the urban male norm, which leads to material impacts. However, people in Sollefteå and other rural regions take charge of their vulnerability as rural citizens and use it to mobilize resistance in order to fight back.