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- Smedberg, Carl-Filip, 1992-
(författare)
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Klassriket : Socialgruppsindelningen som skillnadsteknologi under 1900-talet
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the 20th century, a number of actors and institutions set out to develop taxonomies of the Swedish population. This thesis examines the most important social classification system, the social group, which despite its great importance in administrative, scientific, commercial, political and media contexts has received little attention in historical research. Invented by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1911 to map voters according to their social position, the division enabled Swedes to be hierarchized under the categories of social group I, II or III. The taxonomy became a standard for a number of knowledge-producing institutions in their studies of the Swedish class structure: for the nascent market research companies and their assessments of consumers from the 1930s onwards; for the polling companies’ surveys of public opinion from the 1940s onwards; and for the post-war social science research and government committees’ statistical production about higher education.The thesis analyses classification systems in use and in movement between actors and contexts. Social taxonomies are understood as difference technologies: by which I mean ways of mapping and studying populations. They link populations together, quantify concepts into precise classifications and enable specific overviews of social structures – knowledge that can then be used as a basis for action and societal interventions. Moreover, the social group division was widely discussed in post-war Swedish press and mediated into images and tables. Actors within media interpreted and used it differently, and as a result, new meaning was created around it. The division was presented by some as cultural communities, while others pointed to it as evidence of a new social phase, characterised by declining class conflicts. Finally, it became the focus for meta-reflections on the societal place and impact of social divisions. Through these mediated engagements, the taxonomy became a given yet contested part of the Swedish public sphere.
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| 2. |
- Bauer, Peter, 1992-
(författare)
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När slutar invandrarna vandra? : Integrationsfrågan i statlig, kommunal och skolpolitisk diskurs 1967–2000
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the last three decades of the 20th century Swedish immigrant policy went through a profound change. In the late 1960s immigrant policy were based on assimilation but during the 1970’s and 1980’s this policy was exchanged to multicultural guidelines. These multicultural guidelines were however abandoned in the late 1990s when integration became a key word in the debate about immigrants. This thesis investigates how these changes were made possible by a shifting understanding of immigrants in state and local discourse (the last represented by Malmö municipality) by operationalizing Carol Lee Bacchis What’s the problem represented to be analysis. Previous research has shown that the social category of immigrants during the first six decades of the 20th century understood immigrants as a threat towards the Swedish race and later the welfare state. From this perspective immigrant policy can be seen as the result of the creation of a problematized immigrant subject, a tendency that is also the case for later decades. The investigation shows that immigrants in the early 1970’s were mainly understood from a class and welfare perspective. During this period immigrants were seen as a threat towards the social cohesion of the welfare state as well as the social democratic ambitions of a raised standard of living for the working class. This understanding led to the development of a multicultural policy where immigrant culture was supported within state and local politics and by structural changes in the education system, aiming to include the category in civic life and improve their living conditions. In the years between 1976 and 1985 the understanding of immigrants however changed. During this period immigrants became increasingly problematized for their lack of employment and a cultural difference. During the end of this period the multicultural policy changed from an emphasis on culture as a resource for social inclusion to that some parts of of a Swedish identity were not subject of choice. Furthermore, this period also lead to increased efforts at the individual level, were the policy aimed to give individual immigrants increased chances at the labor market. During the last fifteen years the 20th century immigrant policy became increasingly politicized, and immigrants became understood as radically culturally different from swedes. In this period immigrant culture were constructed as oppressive towards women and outdated when compared to the modern Swedish culture. Furthermore, the notion of immigrants as unemployed from previous decades continued to play an important part and immigrants were also conceived as living segregated. This view resulted in the creation of integration policies aiming to not handle immigrants as a from the general population different group. Instead, immigrants should become integrated in Swedish society through the general welfare with an emphasis that not all parts of a Swedish identity were choose able.The result of the investigation show that European culture became increasingly normative in the development of Swedish migrant policy, thus excluding European immigrants from the problematized immigrant subject. Thereby the globalization of migration towards Sweden led to a development were immigrant policy shifted focus from class to cultural perspectives.
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| 3. |
- Englund, Josefin, 1975-
(författare)
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Som folk är mest : Könsideal i svenska kontaktannonser 1890–1980
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates 5,000 descriptions of men and women in search for a life partner of the opposite sex through classifieds 1890-1980. The advertisers’ descriptions of who they are and what they want sketches a picture of the expectations everyday people have had on how men and women should be over almost a hundred years. Previous accounts of 20th century gender relations are based on governmental and political materials.The bipartite structure of the personals advertisements is used methodologically to differentiate between the so-called “ego-descriptions” and the “alter-descriptions” - what the advertiser had to offer and what the advertiser wanted. Men's descriptions of themselves – ego descriptions – is compared to women's descriptions of the man – alter description –, and women’s descriptions of themselves – ego-description – is compared to men’s descriptions of women – alter description. Six categories were created to capture the content of the personal advertisements: 1) Breadwinner qualifications 2) Parenting qualifications 3) Homemaker qualifications 4) Bodily aspects 5) Leisure 6) Personal interests and qualifications.This study shows that men and women increasingly are described on the grounds of similar qualifications, and that both men and women are increasingly depicted with characteristics that earlier was coded as female. It also shows that children and the family became more important. Stability and security were highly appreciated in the beginning of the period, but gave way to values as mobility and opportunity in the late 1900’s. Both women and men shift from favouring material conditions to an increased focus on feelings and thoughts, and in the end of the period the life partner relationship was more about emotional closeness and the company of a like-minded individual.However, despite these more general results, it is clear that neither the images of the man nor the images woman was unambiguous, and that men and women for most of the time didn't share the same ideals. When thousands of men and women describe their dreams and needs based on the lives they live, unlike government surveys, for example, a multitude of images of the nineteenth century man and woman appear.
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| 4. |
- Pihl Skoog, Emma, 1984-
(författare)
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Kraftkarlar och knockouts : Kraftsporter, kropp och klass i Sverige 1920–1960
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis analyses representations of body and class, and their wider ideological meaning, in Swedish power sports from 1920 to 1960. Boxing and weightlifting – sports dominated by manual workers – are chosen as study objects. The sources used are magazines connected to the power sports, and autobiographies by four prominent athletes. The thesis relates to different areas of previous research. One concerns the body as such, from a social and cultural history perspective, another revolves around medial and autobiographical representations in relation to sports, and a third is about the relationships between body, class and sport.In the analysis, the Bourdieusian concepts capital and hexis are added to a discussion on the ways that value is attached to the body, linked to the notions of use value and exchange value. The content analysis of the source material makes ground for an analysis of more implicit ideological aspects, e.g. using Barthes’s theory on mythology.Manual labour and working life appear as central organising themes in the source material. Boxing and weightlifting were largely regarded and designated as professions, challenging ideals of amateurism. A physically demanding manual work was depicted as natural breeding grounds where sports practitioners became skilled. This masculine ideal united people from various manual working groups (not only from the working class in its socio-economic sense) where the emphasis was put on the physical strength and ability of the athlete to work hard.The body was used in a form of class polemics, preferably against middle and upper class people. Certain aspects of strength and style of athletic performance were related to particular levels of intelligence and education. Power athletes from the manual working groups were depicted as “natural”, with associations to rural areas, not least working in the forest. The ideas of naturalness in its most derogatory sense of being close to animals and lacking civilisation, was however mostly used in connections with black athletes.Success stories were common narratives about power sports as arenas of success. They included a powerful norm that success must be cultivated, where the responsibility was put upon the athlete himself. Successful athletes from manual working groups could transform their physical capital into economic capital, which was often depicted as short-lived because of aging and individual shortcomings.A commercial consumer culture became more explicit in the 1950s, when bodybuilding had its Swedish breakthrough within weightlifting. Sports training was rationalised and largely decoupled from its associations with manual work. This led to an increased reification of the body as pure surface, which was attributed a value itself. The body became an area of consumption, a commodity with an exchange value, when decoupled from its use value as labour or tool for sporting success.As to the ideological aspects of the development, it is shown that there was a widespread individualist norm. Only the individual himself had the possibility to rise up and achieve success. The ideal of manual work was more of a moral and cultural nature, than political. Although there were some collectivist features in that rhetoric, the manual worker idealisation fundamentally carried an individualistic tendency. It is argued that this idealisation, or workerism, is a fruitful object for further analyses.
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