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- Bertilsson, Fredrik
(författare)
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Frihetstida policyskapande : Uppfostringskommissionen och de akademiska konstitutionerna 1738–1766
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Regulating education is a vital part of government. This thesis is inspired by recent changes on the political landscape of higher education. It is guided by an interest in how political objectives and concepts of ideal social relationships are transformed and expressed through government university policies and their consequences. An early stage of what is now commonly referred to as the modern state and the modern research university, rather than present or relatively recent developments, will be explored. Instead of studying trends on the European continent, the thesis inquiries into an attempt made by the Swedish government to revise the constitutions of Swedish schools and universities through the so-called Educational Commission appointed in 1745.The purpose of the thesis is to apply a modern policy perspective to the Educational Commission’s attempt at reforming the constitution of the Swedish universities. The aim is to illuminate the construction of university regulations and to place this within a larger framework of policy making during the Age of Liberty (Frihetstiden) in Sweden.The Commission was an attempt by the Swedish government to implement educational changes based on a holistic view of the realm. It was one of several contemporary initiatives with nationwide ambitions. The Commission did not, however, succeed in reaching its formal objectives, but by placing too much emphasis on what the Commission did not achieve one risks overlooking other results and consequences. It initiated new communication structures, operating procedures and accountability schemes. It changed the regulations for assessing higher education making the university transparent and accountable to the government in new ways. New administrative routines for producing university reform were introduced.The Commission also provided university actors with a legitimate channel for voicing their opinions in relation to the government. They were given a legitimate position to formulate problems, questions and solutions regarding the university. The demands of the professors for increased autonomy in seeking knowledge and providing education stood against the claims made by the government for added control and insight into academic affairs. Through the Commission, the views of the professors were put into circulation in an official political context.
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| 2. |
- Orrje, Jacob, 1981-
(författare)
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Mechanicus : Performing an Early Modern Persona
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies mechanics as a means of making men, rather than machines. Drawing on Swedish sources from 1700–50, it approaches mechanics as an exercise of a virtuous subject, known to his contemporaries as the “mechanicus”. The mechanicus was a persona, consisting of expectations of the performance of mechanics that were part of the social fabric of the early modern Swedish state. The aim of this thesis is to understand how mechanical practitioners performed in relation to this persona, and how these expectations in turn were changed by actors’ performances.By studying the mechanicus, I take an interest in historical ways of conceiving of mechanics. Previous research on early modern mechanics has tended to relate it to modern phenomena, such as engineers, technology and industrialism, and mechanical practitioners have been considered as agents of change, who brought traditional societies into modernity. Avoiding such long narratives, this thesis presents an alternative history. By following mechanical practitioners, who staged themselves as relevant to an early modern state, I seek to understand how mechanics was presented and justified in a pre-industrial society.The thesis is comprised of four studies. First, I discuss how mature mechanical practitioners imagined the exercise of mechanics to make a boy into a mechanicus. These exercises would nurture an ideal man, encompassing a range of the expected virtues of a male subject. Second, I study mechanics and geometry at the Swedish Bureau of Mines between 1700 and 1750. I show how, from having initially been associated with the building of machines and subterranean constructions, such knowledge formed the basis of a community of mathematical men of metals. Third, I analyse the letters exchanged between the mechanical practitioner Christopher Polhammar and the Swedish king Karl XII, showing how royal patronage of mechanics shaped both men. Finally, I follow the mechanical practitioner Anders Gabriel Duhre, who first succeeded and then failed to present himself as a virtuous mechanicus to the parliament of the Swedish constitutional monarchy of the 1720s and 1730s. Taken together, these studies show how men imagined, succeeded and failed life as a mechanicus in early modern Sweden.
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