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- Israelsson, Jezzica, 1982-
(författare)
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Making themselves heard : Women’s and men’s voice through the regional petitioning process in Sweden, 1758–1880
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of women and men contacted the Governor’s Administration of Västmanland (Länsstyrelsen i Västmanlands län), handing in petitions concerning a wide range of matters. This thesis studies these cases to deepen our understanding of women's and men's ability and need to make themselves heard through the regional petitioning process. It also elucidates how this practice was intertwined with people's endeavours to make a living by focusing on the participation’s connection to resources. By studying petition registers and a corpus of nearly 3,000 surviving petition files, it contributes to existing scholarship in three important ways.First, the thesis introduces an extended theoretical conceptualisation of the regional petitioning process, where the relationship between petitioner and respondent is integral to the petitioning itself. This inclusion shows that the commonest reason why people needed to make themselves heard, thus establishing a relationship with the governor and his administration in the first place, was because of interactions and conflicts with other people over some resource, primarily credit, land or working roles. Everyday interactions led people to use the regional administration in legally regulated disputes, which ultimately had political implications. Second, by comparing the participation of women and men as well as that of labouring people to other groups, the thesis sheds light on how the ability and need to make yourself heard varied with gender, marital status and socioeconomic status. To participate in this manner was expensive, which undoubtedly affected poor people’s ability to do so. Nevertheless, we find people from the lowest rungs of society who vehemently protected their rights, sometimes as petitioners but more often as respondents. Women's participation at the administration, as in almost all official contexts at this time, was lower than men’s, sometimes only a fraction. Despite their low levels of participation, it nevertheless took many forms, a variety that continued into the nineteenth century.Third, the investigation studies how the ways people made themselves heard through the regional petitioning process evolved over time, making it one of few Swedish studies of petitioners and respondents beyond the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its temporal setting has yielded previously unknown insights into how the development of voice through the petitioning process was connected to administrative bureaucratisation, aspects of the judicial revolution, the gradual but non-linear disappearance of household culture and the emergence of a civil citizen.
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| 2. |
- Blomgren, Alvar, 1992-
(författare)
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The Hurricane of Passion : Popular Politics and Emotion in Late Georgian England 1792-1812
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book casts new light on the struggle over reform in Britain following the French Revolution by studying how Georgians from across the social spectrum sought to enlist popular passions, either in defence of the established order – or in order to subvert and challenge it. Inspired by the history of emotions, practice theory, and social movements theory it introduces the concept of ‘emotional tactics’, defined as the language, material objects, and practices used to encourage emotions for political purposes. Using a wide range of source material including controverted election cases, campaign material, newspapers, letters, ballads and prints, this book analyses events of political mobilisation in three English cities: the rapidly industrialising textile town of Nottingham, the imperial capital of London, and Liverpool, Europe’s largest slave trading port. It asks what emotional tactics were used to encourage or discourage political mobilisation, and how they were adapted and deployed depending on local context. The results of this analysis are organised into four ideal types of emotional tactics that were crucial to late Georgian popular politics: 1) Tactics fostering anger; 2) terror tactics; 3) shaming tactics; and 4) tactics fostering loyalty, love and community. This book shows that people in Georgian England were aware that emotions could be manipulated for political gain. It was an established part of the political game. For those who engaged in politics, knowledge about how to influence feelings and passions was a crucial skill, as was the ability to adapt their emotional tactics to the demands of the local community. To the persons studied in this book, contemporary understandings of emotionality were the go-to frame of reference to make sense of the political convulsions of their time. Radicals and government loyalists alike viewed the struggle over reform as a fight to control the hurricane of passions unleashed by the French Revolution. While emotional tactics could achieve powerful results, the persons studied in this book also grappled with the challenge of sustaining emotions over time as a mobilising force. This study finds two ways that Georgians sought to overcome this difficulty: 1) The creation of memory cultures in which the re-telling of stories of past abuses was used to evoke their emotional charge; and 2) the use of re-occurring events of mobilisation to sustain the emotional energy of the participants of a movement. Rather than a history of top-down repression or bottom up protest, this book maps the emotional interaction that linked the national and regional levels of politics, that united and divided socially and ideologically diverse groups of people, and upon which all political mobilisation depended. By bringing passion back into politics in a more balanced and nuanced way, it changes the narrative of popular mobilisation in the Age of Revolutions. It shows both elite and plebeian actors as rational actors who consciously and calculatingly appealed to emotion. Yet it also casts them as driven by emotion and shows examples where people from both spheres were caught up in escalating spirals of radicalisation with unintended consequences.
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| 3. |
- Osvald, Tobias, 1989-
(författare)
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Stadens gränsplatser : Kungliga Poliskammaren och vardagens omstridda rum i Stockholm, 1776–1835
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation explores the interaction between the inhabitants of Stockholm and the constables of the Royal Police Chamber—Sweden’s first police force—during a period in the city’s history that is associated with stagnation from the perspectives of demography and economy. The aim is to understand how space was negotiated and changed over time through everyday interactions and practices. The central question is why certain places in the urban space of Stockholm were contested. The investigation is carried out through three thematic parts. Each part investigates kinds of disorder that exhibited clear elements of spatial contestation: homelessness, pub keeping, and sanitation. Each theme is explored by considering the cases that occurred in 1776–1777, 1804, and 1835. On an empirical level, the dissertation provides new information about the practices exercised in the meeting between Stockholm’s population and its agents of order. On a more abstract level, the dissertation engages critically with and adds to current theoretical perspectives on cities and spatiality. The interaction between the ideas and reality of urban space is clarified. Suggestions are made on possible approaches to studies of cities of comparable size and in a similar period.The answer to the central question—why certain places within the urban space of Stockholm were contested—is that they were border or peripheral places. At these places, the ordered city was mainly under threat and negations could occur. Rather than an unchanging city due to stagnation, a dynamic city with micro-geographies that changed in several ways is shown.The dissertation exposes previously underexplored depths of the studied time period. Households became smaller and excluded people who took to the city by “rough sleeping”. Pubs and similar drinking establishments became more distinguished from private homes and less mobile in the urban space. The flows of uncleanliness became more controlled and directed away from the public sphere of the streets. A central result is that an urban space consisting of porous boundaries and general transgressions gave way to one of hardened and more stabilized borders. Contestation and negotiations about borders moved where these were placed in Stockholm. Small, everyday geographies shifted and became more well-organized and closed. The boundaries of the city became, over time, clearer and more essential to keep. New border places arose and old ones were reshaped. By analyzing the practices of the city’s inhabitants and police force, it is apparent how an urban space became atomized.
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| 4. |
- Höglund, Patrik, 1965-
(författare)
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Skeppssamhället : Rang, roller och status på örlogsskepp under 1600-talet
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this dissertation, all the categories of people that were on board fully manned warships are studied. The purpose of the study has been to describe life on board the large warships and to show how hierarchical power structures and social status were expressed and manifested in 17th century society. This has been achieved through an interdisciplinary method where historical and archaeological material, as well as imagery and ship models have been used. The roles of those on board at work, at rest and in battle have been analysed. In parallel, various hierarchical orders such as rank, estate, position and age, have been studied. Social status on board could be expressed through spaces, belongings, norms and practices. In the theoretical apparatus mainly used in this study, the concept of capital is central. Capital, i.e. various forms of assets, exist in several forms where symbolic capital is fundamental. This capital varies depending on the characteristics and abilities that are considered valuable in a specific social environment. Seamanship was a very important factor in obtaining status in the ship society. It formed the basis of the symbolic capital sought within the navy. However, there were differences between what seamanship meant and what the symbolic capital included for the different groups on board. Social status on warships was often expressed through rank and position, but this study also shows the number of other circumstances that could influence the social position of the people on the ships. Factors such as birth, age and experience played a major role.The ship society, with the many groups and individuals from different social strata on board, was characterized by the norms and practices that existed in its day. It was thus in many parts a 17th century society in concentrated form.
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| 5. |
- Linnarsson, Magnus
(författare)
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Postgång på växlande villkor : det svenska postväsendets organisation under stormaktstiden
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates the Swedish postal service, focusing on its organization from approximately 1600 to 1720. The purpose of the study is to explain why the Swedish state, at different points of time, chose one form of postal organization over another. The principle question of the dissertation has been: How was the Swedish postal service organized during the 1600s, what were the forms of organization chosen, and why did the state shift between these? In a broader perspective, the dissertation has investigated how the answers to these questions affect our perception of how the Swedish state organized its agencies in the seventeenth century. The analysis relies on a theoretical model inspired by economist Oliver E. Williamson’s transaction cost theory, modified to function for a study of seventeenth-century Swedish society. The concepts “market” and “hierarchy” is central to this theory. They denote the ways in which enterprises and agencies can be organized. How choices can be made between the two alternatives has been explained by the aid of a transaction cost analysis. The concept of market has been reformulated in the dissertation, and instead of market, the term “contract” has been used. This term denotes an organization where the crown handed over the leadership of the postal organization to some private individual. The analysis focuses on the shifts between the state’s centralized control of the postal organization, labeled hierarchy, and the above-mentioned form of contract. The principle question is why these shifts in the organization of the postal service took place, and what changes these shifts entailed. The investigation is based on a wide variety of sources, complementing material from the central administration — e.g. minutes, ordinances and fiscal material — with, for example, letters written by persons who were central actors in the Swedish state. The dissertation shows that the Swedish postal service during the 1600s was organized according to both contractual and hierarchical principles. During the period under research, the postal service alternated between being incorporated into the government administration and being contracted out to some private individual. The state occasionally relinquished control over the postal service, leaving it to entrepreneurs to handle. At other times, the state centralized the postal service’s administration, putting it under direct government control. The investigation has problematised a formerly standard picture of the Swedish postal service. Hereafter, the Swedish postal service must be regarded as an organization in which both models coexisted. The Swedish state tried both contract-oriented and hierarchical organizations during the 1600s; indeed the organization oscillated between these two poles.
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