In early March, the Department of Scandinavian Studies and JSIS hosted Dr. Jasmine Kelekay, an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research on Racism (CEMFOR) at Uppsala University.
Dr. Kelekay visited several UW classrooms and presented some of her latest research from her current book project, Weaponizing Exceptionalism, wherein she argues that “Nordic Exceptionalism…is weaponized against racialized working-class communities to justify unprecedentedly punitive shifts in law, social policy, and policing while attempting to maintain the image of Sweden as a “global moral superpower”.”
At a public lecture on March 6, Jasmine discussed as a case study the neighborhood of Rinkeby in Stockholm, where racialized politics of crime control target Afro-Swedish populations by subjecting them to higher levels of policing and surveillance, and Dr. Kelekay documented how these policies negatively affect Black life in public spaces, architectural design, and social and civic life.