| 1. |
- Burnett, Allan
(författare)
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Order in Ruins : British Society and the Media Assemblage of The World at War c. 1970-1975
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies a period of intense crisis and creativity in British media, society, and culture, when the settled outcome of the Second World War (WW2) was perceived to be disintegrating. The post-world-war order was becoming an ‘order in ruins’. The thesis centres on a far-reaching analysis of the making of The World at War (WAW) in the early 1970s. A hugely popular televised documentary series produced in London as the UK entered the European Community amid the Cold War, WAW was a seminal and celebrated attempt to produce a challenging ‘people’s history’ of WW2 with global scope.This is the first full-length academic study of WAW and the first fully comprehensive examination of the production’s key aims and intended outcomes. It shows how WAW was influenced by and sought to intervene in five era-defining developments that upset the presumed status quo: the emergence of media technology as a topic of mainstream intellectual and political debate; the supposed decline of class as a determinant of social relations; the ambivalent second wave of women’s resistance to gender hierarchies; the contradiction of globalist ambitions to surpass cultural barriers amid continuing post-world-war nationalism, post-colonial racism, and economic rivalries; and the sense of a profound gap between pre- and post-world-war generations that exposed an underlying crisis of faith in historical progress. Prior research has tended to concur with claims made on behalf of WAW with regard to these issues or leavekey areas overlooked. This study uses an innovative framework of ‘media assemblage’ derived from critical engagement with contemporary efforts by philosphers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to address the above issues under the influence of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas also influenced the milieu of WAW. The framework provides a method for enumerating a multiplicity of media assemblages that constituted WAW and its roots in wider society far beyond reductive notions of ‘television’ or ‘film’. This approach is applied to extensive empirical research of the WAW production archive, the series as first broadcast from 1973 to 1975, independent interventions by its contributors in contemporary issues, and a range of contextual sources. This thesis concludes that WAW was not the landmark of democratised history its popular and scholarly reputation suggests. It fell short of its aims to challenge intended British and global audiences on matters of historical representation and memory, social hierarchy, cultural division, and their own behaviour as historical actors. Yet, the construction of those issues both behind the production scenes and on screen was often more complex, sophisticated, and significant than previous studies suggest. This thesis finds the question of how and why WAW took its eventual form was deeply entangled with anxieties, claims, and counter-claims about media, as well as being bound up with the emergence of Thatcherism amid debate over the merits of philosophical introspection versus ideological certainty in disordered times.
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| 2. |
- Fjæstad, Maja, 1976-
(författare)
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Visionen om outtömlig energi : Bridreaktorn i svensk kärnkraftshistoria 1945–80
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The fast breeder is a type of nuclear reactor that aroused much attention in the 1950s and 60s. Its ability to produce more nuclear fuel than it consumes offered promises of cheap and reliable energy, and thereby connected it to utopian ideas about an eternal supply of energy. Furthermore, the ideas of breeder reactors were a vital part of the post-war visions about the nuclear future. This dissertation investigates the plans for breeder reactors in Sweden, connecting them to the contemporary development of nuclear power with heavy or light water and the discussions of nuclear weapons, as well as to the general visions of a prosperous technological future. The history of the Swedish breeder reactor is traced from high hopes in the beginning, via the fiasco of the Swedish heavy water program, partly focusing on the activities at the company AB Atomenergi and investigating how it planned and argued for its breeder program and how this was received by the politicians. The story continues into the intensive environmental movement in the 1970s, ending with the Swedish referendum on nuclear energy in 1980, which can be seen as the final point for the Swedish breeder. The thesis discusses how the nuclear breeder reactor was transformed from an argument for nuclear power to an argument against it. The breeder began as a part of the vision of a society with abundant energy, but was later seen as a threat against the new sustainable world. The nuclear breeder reactor is an example of a technological vision that did not meet its industrial expectations. But that does not prevent the fact that breeder was an influential technology in an age where import decisions about nuclear energy were made. The thesis argues that important decisions about the contemporary reactors were taken with the idea that they in a foreseeable future would be replaced with the efficient breeder. And the last word on the breeder reactor is not said – today, reactor engineers around the world are showing a renewed interest in this elusive reactor type.
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| 3. |
- Ekerholm, Helena, 1981-
(författare)
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Bränsle för den moderna nationen : Etanol och gengas i Sverige under mellankrigstiden och andra världskriget
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigate Swedish policy-making concerning promotion of wood gas and ethanol distilled from fermented sulphite lye as domestic fuel alternatives in the Interwar years and World War II. With a departure point in the theories of social constructions of technology (SCOT), the sociology of expectations and Thomas P. Hughe’s socio-technical systems I analyse the measures that were undertaken in these efforts, the arguments put forward for and against the ethanol and wood gas projects and how the efforts turned out. I also investigate how the interpretations of ethanol and wood gas as fuel alternatives changed from the Interwar period on through World War II and what consequences this had for ethanol and wood gas policy immediately after World War II. Source material includes Parliament and Government records, cabinet meeting files, governmental commissions, authority archives, technical evaluations and handbooks and scientific medical publications.Ethanol and wood gas were promoted from a nationalist vantage point. The Interwar debate was imbued with visions of national techno-scientific prowess in a perceived ongoing global contest for technological and scientific advancement, of which achieving autarky, self-sufficiency on important raw materials and industrial products, was an ideal for some. Ethanol and wood gas were also promoted as means for creating a lucrative new market for the forestry industry, which also held a prominent position in nationalist visions of technology. Expectations of a new war also motivated the promotion of ethanol and wood gas as national fuels. Measures for promotion included tax exemptions, sales guarantees and legislation for mandatory ethanol purchase for all petrol importing companies and gasifier loan funds. Political conflicts mainly centred around the principles of free trade as opposed to protectionism, proper use of tax funds and whether the potentials of the fuel alternatives were rhetorically exaggerated. During World War II ethanol and wood gas in particular served as important petrol surrogates. The increased wood gas use led to negative interpretations of wood gas a fuel alternative due to its hazardous, dirty and time-consuming maintenance and the changed driving behaviour it required from its users compared to petrol or ethanol fuelled automobiles. Compared to wood gas, ethanol was appreciated for its socio-technical similarities to petrol, but production was after the war deemed difficult to maintain during wartime. Whereas wood gas remained an important stand-by surrogate during the cold war, Swedish politicians lost interest in ethanol of the kind that was promoted in the Interwar years.
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| 4. |
- Westin, Jonathan, 1980
(författare)
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Negotiating 'Culture', Assembling a Past: the Visual, the Non-Visual and the Voice of the Silent Actant
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the processes surrounding the creation of a scientific visual representation, where, both in the practical creation of this visualisation and in the way it is communicated, those actants which amount to what we call ‘culture’ or cultural value, are enrolled or ignored. Trying to answer if a broader set of non-visual cultural properties can be identified and their influence described, and if history can be visualised without displacing our knowledge of the past in favour of a popular representation thereof, I trace the interaction between client, artist, technology and target audience. Although the audience is not permitted to take part in the meetings and walk the floors of the studios, and thus seem to remain silent, I argue nonetheless that their voices are heard during the assembling of a visual representation. Furthermore, offering the audience a tool is not enough to entice them to form their own ideas and exercise influence: although often presented as a visitor-empowering pedagogic technique which invites different interpretations of the material at display, the interactive technology offered by museums and educators is a tool of conformity which disciplines the audience and must therefore be treated as such. An object is not an entity which can be separated into artefact and context, but a hybrid made up of associations spread over both space and time. To describe this, and capture how visual representations can represent ‘culture’, I have developed an analytical vocabulary where the absolute limitations of an artefact or phenomenon is the point of departure. As the vocabulary of limitations demonstrates, limitations constitute the borders of an expression and permit an explanation of how associated actants are shaped by these borders into what we have come to refer to as ‘culture’.
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| 5. |
- Lundström, Brita, 1971-
(författare)
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Grundat 1876 : Historia och företagsidentitet inom Ericsson
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis sets out to analyse the importance of history use in the modern industrial enterprise and its role in creating and transforming corporate identity. Both history use and corporate identity are concerned with creating and using a narrative or a self-image, and these concepts, accordingly, provide the starting point of the study. More specifically, the aim is to analyse how, at various points of time and in various connections, Ericsson, the Swedish telecom conglomerate, has produced and used its history and how that history has been used for creating a corporate identity. The theoretical premises are drawn from two separate fields of research, namely history use and corporate branding.The thesis comprises two parts, the first of which is a comparison over time, showing how history use has changed within the enterprise and focussing mainly on activities at head office/the main factory in Stockholm. The first of these three chapters deals with LM Ericsson’s relocation in 1940 to its newly built factory at Telefonplan in Stockholm, where history was used to show how new the new plant was. The second chapter deals with the LM Ericsson centenary in 1976. The planning and conduct of the centenary celebrations are studied to analyse the purpose of the centenary commemoration, which in this particular instance was very much aimed at strengthening relations with important customer groups. The third chapter covers the period between 2001 and 2004, during which the company celebrated the 125th anniversary of its formation and transferred its head office from Telefonplan to Kista. During this period the company passed through a financial crisis which impacted on the enterprise and on its manner of communication. On all three occasions, history was closely connected to communication and marketing, but the use of history assumed different guises at different times.Part II is devoted to a particular history product, namely anniversary and commemorative publications produced by various subsidiaries and divisions within the group. Here the perspective is broadened to include Ericsson companies both in Sweden and abroad. The publications are analysed in terms of genre and form, function and content. A hypothesis that the books contain a canon or basic narrative proves untenable. Instead what appears is a polyphonic history. The genre is studied both synchronously and diachronically. One diachronic difference is the increased importance of author selection, illustrations and design. One synchronous difference is the prominence of national narratives in the various publications.
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| 6. |
- Lundin, Per, 1971-
(författare)
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Bilsamhället : Ideologi, expertis och regelskapande i efterkrigstidens Sverige
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the 1950s the number of cars in Sweden increased almost fivefold and the country attained the highest level of car ownership per capita in Europe. The rise and establishment of mass motoring was dramatically illustrated by the violent encounter between the car and the city. Despite the fact that congestion as well as road accidents were well-known, everyday occurrences, they reached previously unimagined heights through the growth of mass motoring. In this doctoral thesis Per Lundin focuses on the emergence of a group of planning experts as the key advocates of the idea of the “car society” as the solution to these problems. By fully adapting society to the car it would be possible to eliminate congestion and road accidents, thus affirming the continuing advance of the car. This ideal, which originated in the United States, became the goal and the dream of these experts.The general question addressed by Lundin is to what extent the actions and the ideologies of the experts interacted with the advent of mass motoring and the extensive urban building during the post-war period. In order to answer this question Lundin analyzes, firstly how the planning experts laid claim to the problems of congestion and road accidents, thereby restating them as exclusive planning problems, secondly how guidelines and standards for a car-conscious planning of cities and communities were developed based on the formulation of this problem and thirdly how, and to what extent, the guidelines and standards concerned were implemented in the town planning process.In the thesis Lundin argues that the dreams about a post-war Swedish society entirely adapted to the car by and large were realized. One important explanation of the fact that the physical adaptation of cities and societies to the car could proceed so quickly, on such a large scale and in similar forms all over the country, is found in the planning rules developed by the experts. The rules were the embodiment of the untroubled and unreflecting dreams nourished by the planning experts of the 1950s and the 1960s. Through the rules these ideological conceptions were reinforced and disseminated in a manner almost unable to stop. As the rules quickly were integrated with the planning instruments of administrative bodies locally, regionally and nationally, they set the tone for the extensive urban renewal of the following decades.
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| 7. |
- Svensson, Daniel, 1983-
(författare)
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Scientizing performance in endurance sports : The emergence of ‘rational training’ in cross-country skiing, 1930-1980
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Elite athletes of today use specialized, scientific training methods and the increasing role of science in sports is undeniable. Scientific methods and equipment has even found its way into the practice of everyday exercisers, a testament to the impact of sport science. From the experiential, personal training regimes of the first half of the 20th century to the scientific training theories of the 1970s, the ideas about training and the athletic body shifted.The rationalization process started in endurance sports in the 1940s. It was part of a struggle between two models of training; natural training and rational training. Physiologists wanted to rid training of individual and local variations and create a universal model of rational, scientific training. The rationalization of training and training landscapes is here understood as an aspect of sportification, a theory commonly used to describe similar developments in sports where increasing regimentation, specialization and rationalization are among the main criteria. This dissertation adds the concept of technologies of sportification to explain the role that micro-technologies and practices (such as training logs, training camps and scientific tests) have in the scientization of training.This thesis thus sets out to analyze the role that science has played in training during the 20th century. It is a history about the rationalization of training, but also about larger issues regarding the role of personal, experiential knowledge and scientific knowledge. The main conclusions are that the process of scientization never managed to rid training of components from natural, experiential training, and that the effort by Swedish physiologists to introduce rational training was part of the larger rationalization movement at the time. In the end, training knowledge was a co-production between practitioners and theoreticians, skiers and scientists.
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| 8. |
- Af Geijerstam, Jan, 1951-
(författare)
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Landscapes of Technology Transfer : Swedish Ironmakers in India 1860–1864
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the early 1860s three Swedes, Nils Wilhelm Mitander,Julius Ramsay and Gustaf Wittenström, were engaged by theBritish to build and run charcoal-based ironworks in India.These works, the Burwai Iron Works of the British Government inthe case of Mitander and the privately owned Kumaon Iron Worksin the case of Ramsay and Wittenström, were both to bebased on the most modern European technology. The projects werepioneering in Indian ironmaking. The ambitions were high andstakes big, but after only a few years the projects were closedand the Swedes returned home.Landscapes of Technology Transferpresents a detailedstudy of the Kumaon and Burwai Iron Works, from their firstconception to their final closure. The investigation isbasically empirical and a fundamental question is: Why were theworks never brought into full and continuous production?The ironworks projects should be considered as processes oftechnology transfer rather than fully fledged and completedtransfers. In spite of this lack of success, or maybe becauseof it, the history of the ironworks and the Swedes also forms afruitful case to put other questions of wide relevance. Itexposes workings and effects of colonialism and offers anexplanation of the late development of India's iron and steelindustry and analyses of the complex totality forming theprerequisites for a successful transfer of technology. The longtraditions of bloomery ironmaking in India and ismarginalisation is also discussed.Landscapes of Technology Transferis a comprehensiveempirical study. From a local and individual perspective ittraces lines of connection across boundaries of time andgeography. The historical landscapes of technology transfer aredescribed in their cultural, social, economic and politicaldimensions and the thesis underlines the importance of a closeacquaintance with local settings and conditions, where historyis manifested in a physical presence. The remains of theironworks and theirlocal landscapes in present-day India areused as a central source for writing their histories. There isalso a strong emphasis on the use of photographs and drawingsas sources.The outcome of the projects was the result of the interplaybetween the local and the global, between a diversity ofconcrete factors influencing the construction of the works andtheir running and their colonial character. The studyemphasises the importance of technological systems andnetworks, both on a micro and a macro level. On a local leveldemanding logistics, a sometimes adverse climate, theprocurement of charcoal and iron ore in sufficient quantitiesand the build up of knowledge of ironmaking posed serious butnot insurmountable difficulties. Most obstacles were overcomealready during the first few years of the 1860s, the period ofthe Swedes, but to put the works into full and continuousproduction would have needed perseverance and purposefulefforts to support and protect the iron production, at leastduring an initial period. In the end the position of India as acolonial dependency, subjected to the primacy of Britishinterests, set the limits of the projects.Key words:History of technology, industrial heritagestudies, industrial archaeology, technology transfer,diffusion, technological systems, landscapes of technology,iron and steel, charcoal iron, direct and indirect ironmaking,bloomeries, 19th century, industrial history,industrialisation, de-industrialisation, underdevelopment,colonialism, India, Sweden, Great Britain, global history,annales.
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| 9. |
- Ivanov, Gunnela, 1940-
(författare)
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Vackrare vardagsvara – design för alla? : Gregor Paulsson och Svenska Slöjdföreningen 1915–1925
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is structured in six chapters. Chapter I contains an introduction and includes purpose, theory, method, and concepts. The main purpose, as depicted by the title, is to examine the roots of Swedish ideology concerning what today is generally named design, as embodied in the concept of more beautiful or better things for everyday life (in Swedish: ”vackrare vardagsvara”).Chapter II contains a background and includes philosophical ideas and aesthetic movements in Europe which have influenced the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts (in Swedish ”Svenska Slöjdföreningen”, abbreviated SSF) which was later renamed the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design (in Swedish: ”Föreningen Svensk Form”). It considers these activities: the Arts and Crafts movement in England, the Swedish national romantic movement, Deutscher Werkbund in Germany, and Swedish moulders of public opinion and new ideas, like Ellen Key, Carl Larsson and Gregor Paulsson.Chapter III is an ideological biography of Gregor Paulsson. The chapter deals with biographical data and ideological development, and the social aesthetical texts which were important in his activity in the National Museum and as director of The Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts. Gregor Paulsson is considered mainly in his role as social aesthetical propagandist and museologist.Chapter IV concerns the early history and activities of the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts seen as an introduction to the Baltic Exhibition 1914, and the subsequent schism which eventually led to its reorganization and a new ideological orientation. Its activities were directed towards increased cooperation between artists and industry, and a special department was established as an employment office for companies and designers under the management of the textile artist Elsa Gullberg. This chapter also includes a brief portrait of key persons in the Society.Chapter V is a study in several sections of the articles for everyday use seen in industrial practice, with Gustavsberg’s china factory and Orrefors’ glassworks as two separate historical studies. The 1917 Home Exhibition is surveyed as an example of the educational ambitions in the development of people’s taste. The focus of the chapter, however, is the international industrial art exhibition in Paris 1925, Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, and the debate about it in the Swedish and French press.Chapter VI consists of a concluding discussion with a final epilogue. It contains suggested questions for future research including relations between design and ethics.
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| 10. |
- Backman, Fredrick, 1969-
(författare)
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Making Place for Space : a History of 'Space Town' Kiruna 1943-2000
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Science and technology have a tendency to clump together in places where they spawn other forms of societal activities. Sometimes these places become famous through processes known as place-making, or the social construction of place. Because the scientific and technological activities affect the places, and the places conversely affect the science and technology, it is relevant to study how and why these connections emerge.This dissertation examines the particular case of the northern Swedish town of Kiruna, which has become known for being a `space town' because of its scientific, technological, and other activities that relate to the near space around the earth. The overall objective is to analyse the processes underlying the making of Kiruna as a space town in the period 1943--2000.Five parts make up the study. First is an examination of how the development of space physics research in Kiruna led to the setting up of a scientific observatory. The second part studies how the Swedish participation in the European Space Research Organisationmade Kiruna the place for a rocket base. Next follows an analysis of how local business efforts contributed to forming a new satellite technology business and the Space House office building. The fourth part concerns how the visions to establish a space `university' eventually led to the emergence of the Space Campus. Last is an epilogue that briefly analyses the space tourism efforts in Kiruna.A central finding is that the space town has emerged as the result of entwined processes where, on the one hand, ideas about the near space around the earth have led to new activities and physical structures, and, on the other hand, these new activities and built structures conversely have inspired to new ideas. Of importance is also the geographical place where these developments have occurred. Here, a reoccurring argument to placing the activities and structures in Kiruna was the town's geographically favourable location for specific scientific and technological activities.Another finding is that the development has gradually led to the emergence of a kind of identity or notion of Kiruna as a particular place for space activities. Although this form of place-making has occurred largely through spontaneous processes, it was also the result of intentional efforts.Together, these different place-making processes have formed the `space town' of Kiruna.
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