Anxious Intersectionality : An Anthropology of Swedish Feminist Activism

Anxious Intersectionality offers an ethnographic exploration of feminist activism in Stockholm, Scandinavia’s largest city and a vibrant hub for feminist organizing in the late 2010s.

Drawing on thirteen months of immersive fieldwork across a diverse range of activist spaces – including a queer feminist safe-space vegan café, Sweden’s feminist political party and its youth wing, an organization for male feminists and allies, a women and non-binary separatist fanzine group, feminist markets, protests, and social media – the book examines the pervasive anxiety that shapes feminist activism today. Rather than treating anxiety as a personal or psychological issue, the book elaborates on how it is collectively produced and practiced within an activist community through the concept of interpretive precedence. Confronting the sources and drivers of internal conflict and anxiety in activist spaces, researcher Kristian Sandbekk Norsted highlights how movements risk becoming pacified and fragmented.

Offering a rare look into the world of activist communities, Norsted explores intersectionality beyond the bounds of theory. The book offers a critical yet empathetic account of underlying tensions within activist groups, contributing to broader debates on feminism, activism, intersectionality, and the emotional politics of social movements.