Andrés Brink Pinto
Lecturer
Panopticon in the Urinal? : the Stockholm homo-sex Commission C. 1950–1965
Author
Summary, in English
This article examines the records of the so-called homo-sex commission—a part of the municipal Stockholm police force dedicated to the policing of male same-sex practices—as a case study of the role of policing in shaping historical understandings of homosexuality. Building on a series of documents left by the commission and high-ranking police officers, from memoranda describing the nature of homosexuality to descriptive records of individual suspects and cruising sites, I argue that anti-homosexual policing in Stockholm served three key functions: producing knowledge about homosexual identities and practices, rendering the homosexual population and social spaces visible, and regulating the perceived homosexual use of the urban landscape. While historians have carried out important work on the policing of homosexuality in Anglo-American cities, issues pertaining to other national contexts remain largely unexplored in an international setting. Thus, this article is an effort to bridge geographic gaps in the international historiography of sexuality. It is also an effort to enrich the history of sexuality with a theoretical framework from governmentality studies, examining how sexual categories are produced, made legible and thus becomes possible objects of regulation and management.
Department/s
- Department of Gender Studies
Publishing year
2022-05-09
Language
English
Pages
180-193
Publication/Series
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research
Volume
30
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- History
- Gender Studies
Keywords
- urban space
- homosexuality
- policing
- Surveillance
- Governmentality
- Urban space
- homosexuality
- policing
- surveillance
- Governmentality
Status
Published
Project
- Panopticon in the urinal - The sexual geography of Stockholm 1944-1968
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1502-394X