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Historier : arton- och nittonhundratalens skönlitteratur som historisk källa
- 2009
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Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I denna antologi diskuteras hur skönlitteratur kan användas som källa till historiskt inriktade studier. Upprinnelsen är en konferens som hölls hösten 2008 i Göteborg, då företrädare för disciplinerna historia, idéhistoria, ekonomisk historia och litteraturvetenskap presenterade sin forskning. De många bidragen ger en översiktlig bild av forskningen kring litteratur som historisk källa bland svenska forskare.
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- Ahlberger, Christer, 1956, et al.
(author)
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Consumption fantasies in Modern Literature 1820-1860. The making of the modern consumer
- 2010
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In: ESSHC 2010 – Material and Consumer Culture /MAT03: Homemaking, Cherishing and the Senses.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- During the first half of the 19th century Sweden was undergoing a rapid integration with the capitalistic world economy. A fundamental part if this process was a profound change of consumption patterns among ordinary people. This change is the focus of our research project. Earlier research has focused on describing and explaining the concrete changes in consumption during this period. Today we have a reasonably good knowledge of the use of new commodities like colonial goods and textiles among different social groups and the sexes. On the other hand we still have little understanding of the context of the consumption. The methods and sources hitherto used in historical studies of emerging and changing consumption patterns simply do not allow us to fully analyse and interpret the attitudes and circumstances of the use of specific consumer items. Our research project takes as its point of departure a notion first conceived by the sociologist Werner Sombart and later developed by the historian Collin Campbell. Campbell claims in The romantic ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism that the origins of the consumer society should be sought in the dreams for new commodities and the desire of satisfaction by the use of new commodities. The purchase creates however disappointment and frustration, since reality does not correspond to the hopes pinned in advance. From this frustration new needs and consumption fantasies are born. The aim of this project is to investigate how these consumption fantasies were created and what they consisted of. The British historian Maxine Berg stresses in Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain the connection between our senses and modern consumption. She says that the ”representations of fashion are typically sexualized”. She quotes Sombart who claims that “sensuous pleasure and erotic pleasure are essentially the same”. When capitalism and industrialization extended the opportunities for consumption to the lower classes, this resulted in an obsession for fashion and luxury, a “sensual arousal”. Therefore you can say, that in the first half of the nineteenth century, along with the agrarian, the demographic and the industrial revolutions, Sweden experienced – along with other western countries – a sensual revolution. There is an extremely rich and currently underutilized source for understanding and analyzing the modern consumption society in contemporary literature. Nancy Armstrong, professor in literature, has shown in her study Desire and domestic fiction: a political history of the novel the great impact of the modern novel in 19th century England. Studies of Swedish contemporary literature, has convinced us that it can be used as a historical source. Hence our project has two specific goals: Firstly to deepen the understanding of the creation of the consumer society, and secondly to develop new methods using literature as a historical source: On the one hand, the Swedish fiction emerging during this time and pious literature, on the other.
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- Ahlberger, Christer, 1956
(author)
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Handelns historiska forme, 1600-2050.
- 2010
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In: Kommers. Historiska handelsformer i Norden under 1700- och 1800-talen. red GudrunAndersson & Klas Nyberg. Opuscola Historica Upsaliensia. - 0284-8783. ; 1:42
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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- Ahlberger, Christer, 1956
(author)
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På spaning efter Västerhavets kulturarv
- 2011
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In: Västerhavets kulturarv. Kulturmöter i skandinavisk pereferi. - Oslo : Unipub. - 9788299784627
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Voices of the Western Sea Cultural Heritages of Scandinavian Peripheries For some years a cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional research and development program titled ”The Cultural Heritage of the Western Sea” and financed by the EU/Interreg IV has been working with the so-called Western Sea area from a heritage and heritage production perspective. An important structural idea behind the project has been to establish cooperation between representantives of different university disciplines and practitioners in central museums. This cooperation has made it possible to connect traditional historical and ethnological and artefact-based research traditions with reflection on and construction of cultural heritage in the region. This cooperation has thus been an important arena for asking new questions and establish new perspectives in the cultural heritage field in Scandinavia. The project’s point of departure is that the Scandinavian coastal regions around the Western Sea to a large extent were marginal or peripheral in the nation building and national cultural heritage construction in the 19th century. In Denmark and Sweden, the regions Jutland and Bohuslän were distant from the national capitals Copenhagen and Stockholm, while in Norway the most important national cultural symbols were related to inland peasant districts. At the same time, there obviously were a large number of transnational contact zones and areas in the Western Sea regions. Even if a transnational “Western Sea” identity is difficult to find, both in past and in present, there have been and still is a series of important and identity creating cultural heritage practices in the Western Sea area – practises that have many structural and substantial similarities, and focussing e.g. on the close connections with sea and trade, with crafts and art, with manors and industrial elites, with urban cultures, migration and mobility. Our project has been explorative aiming at understanding the distribution and communication of symbols, people, commodities and ideas and how this is embedded in the collective memory and cultural heritage production of people living around the Western sea. Focus has been on the analysis and re-enactment of what might be called the non-authorised cultural heritage practises and constructions in the Western Sea regions, heritage and heritage practices that are not in conflict with the national but represent an alternative perspective on spatial and cultural identity. In fact, it is obvious that the Scandinavian regions areas around the Western Sea have provided "raw-material" to the constructions of the "great" national heritages narratives of Sweden, Norway and Danmark. As a consequence, the inhabitants of these regions seem to have developed a complementary and complex cultural identity where the national heritage lives side by side with the regional and local heritages. Our conclusion is that it is more relevant to analyze this not as a conflict but, on the contrary, as a creative relation between these different "layers" and voices of cultural heritages.
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