Hundra år av tvåsamhet : Äktenskapet i svenska statliga utredningar 1909-2009

Sammanfattning: The aim of the thesis is to study the concept of marriage and discursive constructions linked to marriage in Swedish policy documents, SOU, 1909-2009. Focusing on marriage as a formal institution, and on form, rather than content – marriage is considered one of several ways of regulating intimate relationships, and the analysis is thus centred on the intimate and erotic aspects of marriage as an institution. Using queer and sociological theories on late modern intimacy, state regulation and concepts of norms, theoretical tools which make possible exploring historical discursive shifts of heteronormativity and coupledom are developed. Policy documents (SOU) are analysed using discourse analysis inspired by archaeology and history of concepts. In three chapters, each covering a part of the period 1909-2009, the discursive landscape of state intervention in marital and other coupled relations is traced. Three themes emerge in this analysis. Firstly, a discursive movement can be seen, from marriage, as a morally superior form of relation, to family, as one of several more or less encouraged forms of relations. Secondly, in using the theoretical framework of heteronormativity, it is suggested that heteronormativity is reshaped in paradoxical ways. The seemingly non-heteronormative, gender neutral marriage law introduced in 2009 was built discursively on a concept of love used from the 1980s in these materials for motivating extended civil rights for homosexuals. It was, however, a logic of love based on difference and essentialised homosexual identity. A non-heteronormative law was thus introduced on a heteronormative discursive basis, enforcing extended norms of coupledom in the process. Thirdly, the question of what discursive role marriage plays in relation to society is explored. By enforcing differentiation between sexual and non-sexual, reproductive and non-reproductive, coupled and non-coupled relationships, social order is maintained. For one hundred years, despite major changes, coupledom is constant.