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- Blomqvist, Håkan
(författare)
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Nation, ras och civilisation i svensk arbetarrörelse före nazismen
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ideas of nationalism, race and anti-Semitism are usually connected to right wing ideology and politics. This thesis, however, is studying them in the context of the socialist labour movement. That a radical left wing patriotism, inspired by the French revolution, developed intertwined with workers’ internationalism is well known. But this left wing nationalism has, in the Swedish case, been characterised as an “internal” tool for obtaining democratic rights and social reforms and not directed against other peoples and nations. Inspired by postcolonial studies of whiteness the thesis examines the views of development of mankind and of national difference expressed in Swedish socialist publicity since the 1850’s up to the late 1920’s. Empirical studies of magazines, brochures and books show that it is possible to distinguish a trace of socialist whiteness in the production of ideas from the labour movement, influenced by liberal radicalism. Here, by socialist whiteness is not primarily meant identities of skin colour but ideas that the working class was the true and purest part of the nation and that socialism primarily was of concern to the white races on top of the chain of development. How this whiteness could be counter-posed to peoples and races considered different or “lower placed”, such as Slavs and Jews, has been of particular interest. In opposition to import of foreign labour, “usury Jews” and Tsarist Russia, arguments of socialist whiteness could be developed. With the Russian October revolution in 1917 bolshevism could be described as an Asian threat under Jewish leadership, alien to Swedish labour. Eugenic concerns for the Swedish race also found spokespersons in the socialist milieu of the 1910’s and 20’s. When fascism in the 1920’s captured the most radical themes of socialist whiteness ideas of Jewish threat and race purity could no longer be combined with defence of democratic ideals and find a public space in social democracy.
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| 2. |
- Ek, Arne, 1950-
(författare)
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Att konstruera en uppslutning kring den enda vägen : Om folkrörelsers modernisering i skuggan av det östeuropeiska systemskiftet
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about some Swedish organizations that are connected to the labour movement and their actions to cope with the new hegemony around market liberalism. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90-ties, the liberal order, meaning market economy and democracy reduced to the election of elites, has become totally domineering both in the western and in the former communist world. Even left wing oriented organizations have adopted their operations and activities accordingly, especially in their internal governing structure. The organizations that I have studied, mainly the Swedish Tenants organization at its local level of Stockholm, developed during the 70-ties and the 80-ties a participatorier member structure. The “Swedish model” of consensus/corporative decision-making and agreement, used by them on the national level for decades, was during that period introduced also on local and regional levels. In the 90-ties these organizations, according to earlier studies, have instead adapted a more costumer-oriented and elite-democratic way of operating and governing. These later changes could be seen as contradicting both the development of the 80-ties and the basic values of those organizations. My questions are therefore how these changes became possible and my aim is to study how the active members have contributed to this development. Using a constructionist theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, I am showing how this potential conflict between a participatory and an elite-democratic model can be reconciled by a discursive construction. The active members have in fact been able see these changes just as a modernization of their organization. From their point-of-view their organization still works in a participatory democratic way. My analysis shows how this ambiguousness and potential paradox became possible thru internal discourses and under influence from the liberal hegemony.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Ers, Agnes, 1970-
(författare)
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I mänsklighetens namn : En etnologisk studie av ett svenskt biståndsprojekt i Rumänien
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is an analysis of observations among, and interviews with, Romanian and Swedish employees at a Swedish development aid project in Romania. The aim has been to study the categories of ‘humanity’: how the notions of the ‘human(e)’ and the ‘inhuman(e)’ were created in the context of the project. Further, the aim of the thesis has been to connect the relations in everyday life as it develops in an aid project to the social and societal processes of change in today’s Europe.Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the study. Chapter 2 analyses media representations of institutionalized children in Romania, and describes the development aid in Romania. Chapter 3 describes and analyses the practical work with the children in the everyday life of the project. Chapter 4 focuses on the locally employed project staff, and their adoption of a ‘more human(e)’ identity through working with the Swedish NGO. Chapter 5 analyses how the construction of difference took place in the everyday life of the development aid project. Chapter 6 analyses the development aid as exchange of gifts and applies models of analysis of social work with the so-called deserving and undeserving clients. Chapter 7 is a concluding chapter.The construction of the ‘human(e)’ and its opposite, the ‘inhuman(e)’, could be found on three levels. These categories were used in reference to: (1) the children, the sick elderly and the poor families that were the clients of the aid project and were expected to be ‘humanized’ in the course of project implementation; (2) the Romanians who were employed by the Swedish organization and who were to be humanized through their work and through learning Western views on what the human being is; and (3) by implication, the whole Romanian society and all the Romanians who were also to be ‘humanized’ through the intervention of the Western NGOs.
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| 6. |
- Kotljarchuk, Andrej, 1968-
(författare)
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In the Shadows of Poland and Russia : The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden in the European Crisis of the mid-17th century
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book examines and analyses the Union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden signed in 1655 at Kėdainiai and the political crisis that followed. The union was a result of strong separatist dreams among the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Protestant elite led by the Radziwiłł family, and if implemented it would radically change the balance of power in the Baltic Sea region. The main legal point of the Union was the breach of Lithuanian federation with Poland and the establishment of a federation with Sweden. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania aspired to return to international relations as a self-governing subject. The Union meant a new Scandinavian alternative to Polish and Russian domination. The author places the events in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the general crisis that occurred in Europe in the middle of the 17th century characterized by a great number of wars, rebellions and civil wars from Portugal to Ukraine, and which builds the background to the crisis for Lithuania and Sweden. The research proved the importance of lesser powers in changing the geopolitical balance between the Great Powers. The conflict over Lithuania and Belarus was the main reason for the Swedish-Russian, Polish-Russian and Ukrainian-Russian wars. The failure of the Union with Sweden was caused by both internal and external factors. Internally, various ethnic, confessional and political groups within the nobility of Lithuania were split in favour of different foreign powers – from Muscovy to Transylvania. The external cause for the failure of the Union project was the failure of Swedish strategy. Sweden concentrated its activity to Poland, not to Lithuania. After the Union, Swedish authorities treated the Grand Duchy as an invaded country, not an equal. The Swedish administration introduced heavy taxation and was unable to control the brutality of the army. As a result Sweden was defeated in both Lithuania and Poland. Among the different economic, political and religious explanations of the general crisis, the case of Lithuania shows the importance of the political conflicts. For the separatists of Lithuania the main motive to turn against Poland and to promote alliance with Sweden, Russia or the Cossacks was the inability of Poland to shield the Grand Duchy from a Russian invasion.The Lithuanian case was a provincial rebellion led by the native nobility against their monarch, based on tradition of the previous independence and statehood period. It was not nationalism in its modern meaning, but instead a crisis of identity in the form of a conflict between Patria and Central Power. However, the cost of being a part of Sweden or Muscovy was greater than the benefit of political protection. Therefore, the pro-Polish orientation prevailed when Poland after 1658 recovered its military ability the local nobility regrouped around Warsaw. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania managed to remain on the political map of Europe, but at the price of general religious Catholization and cultural Polonization. After the crisis, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gradually changed into a deep province of the Polish state.
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| 7. |
- Lindelöf, Karin S., 1976-
(författare)
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Om vi nu ska bli som Europa : Könsskapande och normalitet bland unga kvinnor i transitionens Polen
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to highlight the discourses surrounding the creation of gender in relation to a number of young, well-educated city women in Poland in the early 21st century. It is my intention to show which “ways of being a woman” that are culturally feasible in Poland in a time of transition – politically, economically, and socially. The study is based on interviews and field notes from a half-year field project in Gdansk-Sopot-Gdynia in 2001.The first chapter discusses theoretical and methodological issues and the second introduces the main themes by analysing a number of essays where Polish students are discussing feminism and women’s situation in Poland and Sweden. Chapter three to six analyses the interviews and other fieldwork material. The courtliness and daily door-opening procedures, which several of the participants in the study regard as typically Polish, are discussed in chapter three. In chapter four, connecting courtliness to issues of love and sexuality deepens this discussion. In chapter five gender equality and feminism is in focus, and in chapter six this discussion is connected to the young women’s ideas of future work and family life. The last chapter concludes and continues the analysis by introducing the concepts of variants and variant-making as a promising way of discussing new identities, institutions and structures in post-socialist and similar settings. The creation of identity appears as a highly intersectional activity in the study. Gender, class, generation, sexuality, nationality, place of residence (city/countryside) are important elements in the young women’s creation of themselves as individuals. The different processes of democratisation, adapting to the EU, privatisation etc., as well as current ideas such as new liberalism, Catholicism and femininity are central to what is happening in Poland today. All these aspects interact in the construction of the identities of the young women.
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| 8. |
- Petrov, Kristian
(författare)
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Tillbaka till framtiden : Modernitet, postmodernitet och generationsidentitet i Gorbačevs glasnost´ och perestrojka
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with the concepts glasnost and perestroika during the Gorbachev era 1985–1991. It offers an explanation to the rise and fall of these concepts and casts light on their modern and postmodern implications, as well as their historical and generational preconditions. In light of the Soviet and Russian conceptual history, Gorbachev’s articulation of glasnost and perestroika is contrasted with the reception of these concepts in what at that time came to be called Russian postmodernism. Glasnost and perestroika both confirm and transcend Soviet modernity. They are both future-oriented but at the same time possess retrospective anchorage. The present study reconstructs the experience encapsulated in the concepts, the expectations they unleashed and the tensions they triggered. The Gorbachev era signaled a rupture in the temporal order of modernity. During this time Soviet modernity lost confidence in its self. With glasnost and perestroika a suppressed past opened up which blocked the futurist potential inherent in the present. The concept-theoretical perspective assumed in the dissertation helps explain essential aspects of the dramatic turn of events. Postmodernism’s relationship to the concepts is mainly antagonistic. At the same time glasnost and perestroika were essential to the self-identity creating process of postmodernism and its development of an understanding of a specific late Soviet postmodern situation. Beneath the surface a conflict evolves, constituted in intergenerational terms. The vast differences in deployment of the two key notions appear related to generation specific historical experiences. This is apparent in the glasnost- and perestroika discussions of the 19th and 20th centuries. In several respects the 20th century discourse reflects that of the 19th century. The analysis in the present dissertation demonstrates how Gorbachev, on the basis of his generation-specific experience as a man of the 1960s actively sought to articulate an alternative reconstruction (perestroika) and did so with a distinct ideological accent. The postmodernists, the last Soviet generation, bore the imprint of the stagnation of the Brezhnev era and had no ideal past to resuscitate. Instead of reconstructing social reality they tried to place themselves outside it. This apolitical stance however embodied both anti-political and political implications.
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| 9. |
- Rodin, Johnny
(författare)
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Rethinking Russian Federalism : The Politics of Intergovernmental Relations and Federal Reforms at the Turn of the Millenium
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Russia federalism and the design of federal institutions have been greatly debated topics ever since the beginning of the 1990s. When the newly elected Russian president Vladimir Putin introduced a number of federal reforms in May 2000 it represented the culmination of a debate on federalism that had been triggered by the political and economic crisis of 1998. In many ways these reforms entailed a different perspective on federalism, or in the terminology of this thesis a new “federal paradigm”, from the one that had dominated most of the Yeltsin era. At the same time the relations between federal and regional authorities, often referred to as intergovernmental relations, appeared to become less confrontational and fragmented than before. This work examines this latest stage in the Russian state-building process.In particular two elements are scrutinized. The first is the shift of federal paradigms that the federal reforms reflected. Combining organisation theory and historical institutionalism it is argued that the origins of federal paradigm shifts often can be traced to the federal system itself. In Russia the failure of the federal system manifested through the political and economic crisis of 1998 changed many governmental actors’ views on federalism. However, it was not until Putin became president that the new federal paradigm could consolidate.The second element concerns the connections between the new federal paradigm and the mode of intergovernmental relations. This work presents the argument that the way in which federalism is interpreted and conceptualised by governmental actors is important for the variation of intergovernmental relations across and within federal systems. Deriving from federal theory and some comparisons with other federal systems it is concluded that the federal paradigm that Putin represented in his first presidential term was on the whole more conducive for coordinate intergovernmental relations, at least in the short term.
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| 10. |
- Stickley, Andrew
(författare)
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On Interpersonal Violence in Russia in the Present and the Past : A Sociological Study
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- For much of the twentieth century researchers in the West knew little about the phenomenon of interpersonal violence in Russia as the Soviet authorities kept the vital and criminal justice statistics of violence secret. It was not until the Soviet Union was in its final death throes that these statistics were officially released for the first time in over fifty years. They showed that at least in terms of its level of lethal violence, Russia was one of the most violent countries in the industrialized world. Since that time, the sharp rise in violent mortality that has occurred in post-Soviet Russia during the transition period has attracted the attention of many researchers in both the East and West. The studies that have resulted have done much to enhance our understanding of violence in contemporary Russia. However, there are still many questions to be answered. For example, was Russia a violent country in much earlier periods of its history and are there particular social and/or cultural processes that have been important in explaining the occurrence of violence in Russia across time?To address these and other questions I have made use of the vital statistics data of homicide from tsarist and Soviet Russia, as well as individual-level survey data on violence from the contemporary period. By doing this it has been possible to show that there was a high level of lethal interpersonal violence in Russia throughout those periods of the twentieth century for which data exist and that Soviet Russia became comparatively more violent between the end of the tsarist and Soviet periods. Moreover, alcohol seems to have played an extremely important role in the occurrence of both lethal and non-lethal violence across time. In relation to this, I have focused on the particular drinking culture in Russia as a possible explanatory mechanism for the occurrence of violence, in conjunction with the Russian state’s dependence on the taxable revenue alcohol generated – which in both tsarist and Soviet Russia prevented any prolonged attempts to act against the deleterious effects of alcohol. The high level of violence in Russian society also highlights the problems that the Russian authorities had when trying to impose order on a geographically vast and ethnically diverse country. This might explain why even by the end of the Soviet period, rates of lethal violence were highest in those places (i.e. Siberia and rural Russia more generally) where the state’s presence is likely to have been at its weakest.The consequences of interpersonal violence have become a serious public health issue in contemporary Russia. The lesson that ‘might makes right’ seems to be learnt at an early age by some men who may subsequently model their behaviour on what they have witnessed in their childhood homes, with alcohol acting to facilitate the occurrence of violence in some instances. Any attempt to address the issue of violence in Russia must therefore focus on the specifics of the Russian drinking culture, as it is likely that if this can be changed, a reduction in levels of serious interpersonal injury can also be achieved. However, it may be the case, that it is not only changes in the drinking culture which are necessary, but also perhaps, the way in which violence is seen in Russian society traditionally, both by the state and its citizens – as a means of resolving both relatively minor and more intractable problems.
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