| 1. |
- Berg, Jan O., 1937-
(författare)
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På spaning efter en svensk modell : Idéer och vägval i arbetsgivarpolitiken 1897-1909
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The period saw the founding of the first Swedish employers´ associations as a reaction to the preceding decades´ growth of industrial trade unions. Conflicting ideas fought about supremacy. Not only was the fight carried out across the social dividing line separating workers from the bourgeoisie, but also between groups on either side: hawks versus doves among employers; revolutionaries versus reformers among workers. The study uses an actor perspective, comparing three leading industrialists in their particular roles as employers. It analyzes the development of ideas over the period studied, using minutes from meetings, company memos, letters, speeches and newspapers as primary sources. In addition, it is action-orientated and analyzes major labour conflicts that were fought and agreements that were reached. It applies a split vision, taking into regard the contemporary views and actions of the labour unions. Its perspective moves between the individual, the company and the organizational levels, with the primary aim to see what changes in the traditional patriarchal employer policies that were considered and to what extent such changes were realized. A major result is the evidence of the irreconcilable views on the subject of strike breakers/loyal workers -- two conflicting terms for one phenomenon that indicate a gap between two different sets of values. Differing views among employers on how to relate to this gap caused frictions in the years 1906-09. The outcome of the general strike in 1909 ended in a harsh employer organizations policy for more than the two following decades. It was replaced by the mutual spirit, later known as the Swedish Model, materialized in the Saltsjöbaden general agreements of 1938.
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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. |
- Friberg, Anna, 1980-
(författare)
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Demokrati bortom politiken : En begreppshistorisk analys av demokratibegreppet inom Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti 1919–1939
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyzes the concept of democracy as it was used in the official rhetoric of the Swedish SocialDemocratic Party (SAP ) between 1919 and 1939. Theoretically, the dissertation relies on German Begriffsgeschichte, as put forward by Reinhart Koselleck, and Michael Freeden’s theory of ideologies. Together, by supplementing each other, these theories offer a perspective in which concepts are thought of as structures that are under contestation and change due to socio-political circumstances. However, the formulation of this change takes place in relation to the linguistic praxis of each time-period, and renegotiates the relative constraints of established relations between concepts in language.The analysis shows that the profound changes in society provided impetus for a continuous renegotiation of meanings, allowing concepts to retain their explanatory power under changing circumstances, at the same time the SAP needed new ways to express what kind of society the party strived to realize. The SAP had been one of the leading forces in the struggle for universal suffrage, and when the bill, giving universal suffrage to men andwomen, was passed in the Parliament 1919 this meant a temporary cessation to a long and intensive political debate. However, the SAP did not consider the introduction of suffrage reform as the end of full societal democratization. Rather than seeing the reform as a terminal point, the SAP saw it as the starting point for the struggle for full democracy. The SAP did not limit itself to only one concept of democracy but instead used a number of composite concepts, such as political democracy and economic democracy. The use of composite concepts can be understood as a changing temporalization of democracy. Since parliamentarism and suffrage were seen as central components in democracy, the realization of these institutions meant that the concept of democracy lost its future dimension. Thus, the usage of composite concepts should be seen as a re-temporalization of democracy. The composite concepts pointed forward in time, toward political goals that the SAP envisaged realizing in the future.Concepts should not be thought of as having cores but rather, as suggested by Freeden, ineliminable features. An ineliminable feature is not of logical nature but has a strong cultural adjacency. By analyzing the ineliminable components of the concepts of democracy that the SAP used, it is possible to discuss whether the composite concepts should be understood as subsets of a whole or as separate concepts. The analysis shows that the composite concepts that the SAP used during the first half of the 1920s shared a number of ineliminable features, but that the commonality of these features started to disintegrate during the latter half of the decade, leading to a rather diversive concept of democracy. During the 1930s the disintegration ceased as the party was faced with new circumstances, for example the growing threat of international war and national clashes between different social groups. There has always been a close relation between language and society. However, the relationship does not follow a simple and clear-cut logic but a complex mixture of various factors at different levels, both within language itself and of society. When society develops, language also has to change if the ongoing process is to be understood. As this study shows, new circumstances require new argumentsand thus revised concepts.
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| 4. |
- Andreasson, Ulf, 1967-
(författare)
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Arbetslösa i rörelse : Organisationssträvanden och politisk kamp inom arbetslöshetsrörelsen i Sverige, 1920-34
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis sets out to analyse the development of the unemployed movement in Sweden during the period 1920–34. The study is divided into two parts. The first is empirical and descriptive while the second is interpretive and explanatory, and seeks to examine why this phenomenon developed in the way it did. Mass unemployment in Sweden between the World Wars did not cause the same social tensions as in many other countries. This relative peace endured despite high and consistent unemployment and hard living conditions for the unemployed. These conditions served as sources for tensions present in the unemployed movement, and which some actors sought to take advantage of and even exacerbate. Andréasson argues that a major reason that society did not take a more radical turn in the period was that the reformist labour movement actively moderated these tensions. This was done by the Social Democratic Party (SAP) changing the environment of the unemployed organisations, for example by using local unemployment policy to polish off the rough edges of the national unemployment policy. More important was the crisis politics in the early 1930s that helped narrow the socio-economic gap between those who had and those who did not have a job. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) neutralised the movement of the unemployed by introducing changes within the unemployed movement itself, involving a variety of strategies. After 1933, the LO and SAP dominated and were able to direct the activities of most of the organisations that existed. Gaining control over the unemployed was as important for the LO and SAP as being able to exert control over other forces that might threaten to weaken their long-term strategies and aims. There was a conviction within the unemployed movement that mass unemployment was largely a consequence of technological developments in production. This argument had roots dating back to the early stages of industrialism in England when Luddites had attacked production machinery. The coalition of organisations of unemployed workers in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s did not seriously consider engaging in machine-breaking activities. The movement’s criticism of technology did not extend into the Swedish model which envisioned the development of machinery as a way to prevent rising unemployment.
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