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- Kenttä, Tony, 1985-
(författare)
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When Belongings Secure Credit… : Pawning and Pawners in Interwar Borås
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with pawning primarily from the perspective of the pawners. It utilises two samples from the ledgers of a municipal pawnshop in Borås in western Sweden, from 1922/23 and 1932/33. Its aim is to deal with the relation between the material and financial side of pawning as well as the causes behind pawning. One of the results of the study is that most pawn loans were very small, which means that pawning probably was connected to income insufficiency. It showed that weekly repeated pawning, which has been proposed in previous research as a common pattern, was nearly non-existent. Instead, most pawners were occasional customers at the pawnshop.It was shown that certain collateral (such as clothes and decorative objects) affected the length of the redemption time. This meant that pawners had the ability to redeem a pledge quickly – if they had a need for the item. However, at the same time, pawns could remain for a long time in the pawnshop, which indicates that repaying the loan was difficult for the pawner. Otherwise, they should have acted to minimise the interest they had to pay for the loan. For the pawner the payment of the loan likely meant foregoing much needed consumption in the present.According to this study, variability of income was a more important cause for pawning than the size of income. Pawn loans likely countered short-term variation in income or expenditures. However, it could not help against long-term unemployment. The study also investigated if pawning was affected by the life cycle, but found no clear relationship. The study showed that most of the customers at the pawnshop were male, which goes against most of the previous research. Another of the study’s result was that women’s pawning, but not men’s pawning, was connected to the presence of children in the household, and women had also more children than men did. Having many children had also an effect on women’s pawning, but not on men’s. The study considers that it seems like women pawned more due to family needs than men did.
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- Värlander, Johanna, 1976-
(författare)
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A Genealogy of Governing Economic Behaviour : Small-scale credit in Malawi 1930–2010
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis the aim has been to analyse changes and continuity in the governing of economic behaviour in small-scale credit schemes in colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi from 1930 until 2010. Furthermore, how the effects of history in terms of how colonial and post-colonial development discourses and practices have been rephrased and reused in the early 21st century are discussed. The study focuses on the teaching and fostering of borrowers’ economic behaviour in order to reach increased living standards. The genealogical approach to the history of small-scale credit has made it possible to analyse a selection of colonial and post-colonial small-scale credit programs and microcredit organisations operating in the early 21st century.To analyse the governing of economic behaviour in the small-scale credit schemes, three aspects of the Foucauldian concept of governmentality are used: problematics of government, political rationality and governmentality technologies.The findings of the thesis, which are based on interviews, unofficial and official written sources, show that the genealogy of governing economic behaviour through small-scale credit schemes has varied over time depending on perceptions of the ideal actor’s economic behaviour. Despite this, some continuities have been identified. For example, there is a continuity in the problematics of government, the analysis of the perceived development problem and how small-scale credit was to be a solution. The study indicates that a linear and universal financial history is used in theory and practice and consequently that the local Malawian national history of small-scale credit has been ignored.Despite different political rationalities during the period there is a continuity in funding small-scale credit with external money, and the government’s interest in small-scale credit has also persisted. One effect of history is that small-scale credit seems to be politically efficient, but economically inefficient. In the colonial period and in more recent times, it seems like governmentality technologies regarding lending are quite ad hoc, for example regarding the supervision and distributions of loans. One effect of history is subordinated positions for borrowers and a governing towards economic responsibility, rather than entrepreneurship.
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- Jansson, Olle, 1978-
(författare)
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Industriell invandring : Utländsk arbetskraft och metall- och verkstadsindustrin, i Västmanlands län och på Bulten i Hallstahammar, 1946-1967
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the first decades of the post-war era, Sweden experienced a rapid increase in labour immigration. Many of these migrants found employment in the industrial sector, where they became concentrated. This concentration varied between different industries, but was amongst the highest in the metal and engineering industries. The aim of the thesis is to explain why migrant workers were concentrated in the Swedish metal and engineering industries during the post-war period, circa 1946-67. For this aim the thesis uses case studies, one on the regional level and another at the company level, in order to investigate and differentiate between different explanations.A varied set of different direct, as well as underlying causes and circumstances have been suggested in previous research to explain this uneven distribution of migrant workers on the labour market. Different explanations arising from these perspectives have been used in prior research with some success, but they rarely confront explanations from other perspectives, thus creating different narratives driven by different circumstances, causes, processes and intentions. The ambition of this thesis has been to seek explanations for a complex and changing historical process in post-war Sweden. In order to study this, explanations from previous research have been used to find the reasons and causes behind the concentration of foreign workers in the metal and engineering industries during the post-war era. At the same time, the results of these empirical studies are used to problematize and question these established explanations.The results have led to a somewhat different picture of the circumstances and reasons that shaped the labour immigration and the distribution of foreign employees on the Swedish labour market during the post-war period. The thesis particularly stresses that the possibilities and capabilities of the employers had a significant impact on the distribution of foreign workers.
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