Research Expanding Current Understandings of Bullying in Sweden

Abstract

This paper discusses the on-going research on the phenomenon of bullying in the Department of Child and
Youth Studies at Stockholm University. The paper describes the reasons, and how to contribute with an
understanding of bullying as a social group phenomenon, and specifically focuses on inductive ethnographic
and cyberethnographic approaches toward peer-to-peer interactions in schools, preschools and on the
Internet. The understanding of this phenomenon is based on a Swedish interdisciplinary approach which
includes children’s perspectives. The objective is to explore bullying as a complex social group phenomenon
which allows for a focus on the process of bullying, thus creating an opportunity for the enhancement of the
understanding of inter- and intra-connected actions and perspectives. This article is intended to contribute to
a discussion on a broadening of the conceptualization of the phenomenon of bullying.