Från mobboffer till brottsoffer. Diskurser kring kränkande behandling i den svenska skolan

Abstract

There is a strong case for stating that, during the past decades, there has been a shift in perspective when addressing questions of how to handle and preserve social order in schools. As an institution that focuses on social order and education, since the 1990s the Swedish school system has also become an institution that focuses on social order in terms of law and legal issues. The overall purpose of the present article is to explore in which contexts and in what ways degrading treatment is articulated in policy documents that relate to social order in Swedish schools. Methodologically, we use a discourse analytical approach. We study how contexts and articulations identified in policy documents relate to discourses of degrading treatment and thus contribute to an understanding of how degrading treatment as a concept is constituted. Articulated in different contexts and in different ways, the results show that degrading treatment is constituted as a somewhat ambiguous concept. For example, social psychological perspectives are sometimes articulated within a legal discourse. Articulations of degrading treatment in policy documents cannot be comprehended as totally mutually dependent events, but rather as multiple and partly mutually independent events. Accordingly, we believe that the significance of degrading treatment is best understood as a conjunction of different articulations, contexts and interests. Additionally, the tendency of schools to increasingly treat degrading treatment as crimes has resulted in changing subject positions. The previous position of the bullied pupil is now instead increasingly interpellated and moulded as a victim of crime.