Livet äger rum : Försörjning och platstagande i norrländska sågverkssamhällen

• This study is concerned with the people who settled permanently near the sawmills of Västernorrland during the expansion of the sawmill industry in the latter half of the 19th century. The basis of, and a prerequisite for this resettlement and the life thus built up was the permanent employment and wages earned by the men at the sawmills. The purpose is to study the pattern of subsistence and the process of place making among the permanent working population in the early sawmill community. The focus is placed on what possibilities and limitations a settlement in the sawmill communities had for the permanently employed sawmill workers and their families - wives and children, and what material and symbolic resources they created and gained access to in order to build up a new life in a place where they had no previous social contacts. An adaption to the context of the sawmill implied many mental and practical transformations, but at the same time a learning process; they had to learn to handle the diversity of people, commodities and objects in a new physical environment. They had to take place in a space and in a context that was unfamiliar and predictable. Following themes are discussed in the dissertation: the pattern of subsistence, dwelling and meaning, the relation between the permanent workers population and the sawmill-owner and the process of place making, temporalization and social identification. The main sources of information consist of autobiographies and recorded life- stories, but even contemporary sources such as newspaper articles, judicial records, estate inventories, official records and reports from county sheriffs, enforcement officers, clergymen and district medical officers. in the rich detail of these texts, in these fragments of life, I find the data upon which I build a narrative by means of a series of interpretations with the aid of different theoretical tools, in collaboration with other interpretations and my own intuition.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Etnologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Ethnology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Ethnology

integrity

pattern of subsistence

place making. sawmill workers

Etnologi

Ethnology

Etnologi

Etnologi

Ethnology

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

dok (subject category)