Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research (Aug 2024)
“The Usual Antisocial Protocol”
Abstract
This article considers experience narratives of “dålig stämning” (bad atmosphere and unease) in Swedish workplaces. The aim of this article is to show how office-employees in Sweden experience, negotiate and understand bad atmosphere and unease in their working life. By analysing personal experience narratives, collected through a qualitative questionnaire, through the lens of narrative positioning (Hynninen 2017; Pöysä 2009; Bamberg 2003; Harré & van Lagenhove 1999). The article shed light on how an uneasy atmosphere is defined and experienced in a Swedish office workplace environment. By analysing narratives collected in the qualitative questionnaire through close reading (Pöysä 2010) concentrating on positions, or who the narrator positions him/herself to be, I conclude that the narrators narrate an experience of lack, and that office unease can be viewed as the attunement phase of a conflict taking place or a call to action to resolve the lack.
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