This essay examines how the local Civil Guard in the town of Vaasa, in the Finnish civil war of 1918, were presented based on the notion of masculinity in texts by Axel Iversén. In this study discourse analysis with a qualitative approach has been applied. The study shows that the role of the Civil Guard in the civil war mainly revolves around the discourse on safeguarding the nation's independence and protecting Finland as a nation. Based on Judith Butler's theory of performativity this study shows how masculinity is created from a repetitive practice based on concepts such as freedom, courage, offensive, equality, youth, organization and efficiency. The study confirms previous research which shows that according to the Civil Guards notion masculine ideals were related to nationalism, patriotism and sacrifice for the nation's independence. Furthermore, the study confirms the importance of the homosocial relations for the construction of masculinity within the Civil Guard. The discourse on offensive action regarding the Civil Guard is prominent, regardless if it is in battle or the organization of the Civil Guard.

Uppsatsens syfte har varit att studera uttryck för banal nationalism i svenska dagstidningar under världsmästerskapen i fotboll för herrar i USA 1994. Dels för att vidga begreppet nationalism, dels bidra med exempel på hur den kan synliggöras i vardagliga sammanhang och därigenom riskerar reproducera nationella föreställningar. Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk har varit Michael Billigs diskursteori banal nationalism med understöd av Marianne Winther Jørgensens och Louise Phillips begreppsmetaforer för nationella diskurser. För att kunna genomföra en fördjupad analys har uppsatsen haft kompletterande forskningsfrågor om hur Sveriges spelare och tränare samt hur Sveriges motståndarspelare och motståndartränare framställs i materialet. Empirin har bestått utav 157 publiceringar inklusive tidningarnas omslag fördelat över 26 utgåvor av Aftonbladet (9), Expressen (9) samt Dagens Nyheter (8). Analysen visar att banal nationalism i hög utsträckning, på ett till synes omedvetet sätt, varit del i utgåvornas publiceringar kring världsmästerskapen. De uttryck för banal nationalism som förekommer kan ses som försök till att skapa engagemang och intresse hos läsare, men dessa språkliga val bidrar likväl till att producera och reproducera en närmast självklar nationell gemenskap. Därtill är skildringar av Sveriges spelare och tränare likartad mellan tidningar och utgåvor, samt står i kontrast till skildringar av motståndare. De förstnämnda ges egenskaper såsom ödmjuka och lojala, kloka och beslutsamma. Motståndare porträtteras inte sällan som irrationella och oberäkneliga. Styrdokument och historiedidaktisk forskning föreskriver att en elevcentrerad undervisning bör bedrivas, vilket ställer krav på historielärare att vara förtrogen med begrepp som nationalism. Uppsatsen visar att nationella föreställningar på ett oreflekterat sätt kan produceras och reproduceras i till synes vardagliga sammanhang. Resultatet kan således anses bidra med ett angeläget perspektiv för blivande historielärare att reflektera över. / The purpose of this essay has been to study expressions of banal nationalism in Swedish media during the World Cup in the United States 1994. It is meant to expand the knowledge of nationalism in day-to-day life, and how nationalistic ideas might be reproduced and reinforced. The theoretic framework of this essay relies on Michael Billigs discourse theory of banal nationalism, supplemented by Marianne Winther Jørgensens and Louise Phillips theories on metaphors in relation to national discourse. The investigated material consists of 157 different kinds of publications including first pages spread over 26 issues of Aftonbladet (9), Expressen (9) and Dagens Nyheter (8). The analysis shows that banal nationalism is prominent in the issue’s printed materials during the World Cup. The portrayals of Swedish’s players and coach are similar between newspapers and issues and stand in stark contrast to portrayals of the opponents. First mentioned are characterized as humble, loyal, wise and determined. Opponents are often characterized as unpredictable and inconstant. These expressions can be seen as attempts to create engagement and involvement, but nevertheless they´re also a part of producing and reproducing an almost self-explanatory national community. Ruling school documents and history didactic research shows that student-centered learning is preferrable, which demands a history teacher who is confidant with terms like nationalism. This essay shows that national conceptions can be produced and reproduced in ordinary life situations, in a seemingly unreflected way. The results can therefore be considered a meaningful perspective for soon-to-be history teachers to reflect upon.

This thesis addresses devil beliefs in Karlstad diocese during the years ca. 1870-1950. The aim of thethesis is to shed light on devil tales that were told during the above-mentioned timeframe with thetheoretical framework of Ulrika Wolf-Knuts’s devil genres. Moreover, the thesis attempts todistinguish a folklore-devil affected by the Christian revival in Sweden during the 19th century. Thethesis thus contributes to a deeper understanding of devil tales in Karlstad diocese, the revival’ssignificance over folklore and comprehension of the Värmlandic and Dalslandic peoples’ culturalhistorical heritage. A hermeneutic as well as comparative methodology was used to navigate the source materialwhich consists of 20th century records of folk belief from The Institute for Language and Folklore(Isof) archives; these consists of stories told by people born during the second half of the 19th century.Furthermore, the records are complimented by a printed work by Carl-Martin Bergstrand,Värmlandssägner, wherein additional stories where analysed. The analysis shows that the source material fits well together with Wolf-Knuts’s devil genres,moreover, four new genres could be identified within Karlstad diocese. These contain mostlyinformative storytelling but are also complementary to Wolf-Knuts’s non-necessary devil genres.Wolf-Knuts’s theoretical framework can thereby receive an update considering these findings.Furthermore, the results determine that the peoples’ understanding of the devil is uniform in itsmultifaceted nature. The thesis puts out a hypothesis; the terminology when referring to the dark lorddiffers in places wherein the Christian revival had a greater hold. There, it was commonplace to usebiblical names for the devil. If the Christian revival is definitively responsible for this occurrence ornot could not be determined.

This thesis investigates the semantic values of the two concepts “smallholding” (Swe. “småbruk”) and “smallholder farmer” (Swe. “småbrukare”), as well their role and function as central concepts in the public debate about the “agricultural rationalisation” (Swe. “jordbrukets rationalisering”) reform initiated by the Swedish government together with industry actors in the late 1940s. Studying articles in the newspapers published by two Swedish farmers’ associations, as well as government documents and political pamphlets, I employ the concept of “temporalisation” developed by Reinhart Koselleck as part of his theory on conceptual history in order to identify implicit and biased expectations on “modernity” ruling against smallholding as a viable form of farming in the future. I also study how rationalisation advocates’ descriptions and opinions are contested in the writings of smallholder activists and practicians. I argue that the meanings and associations attributed to smallholding and its modus operandi in the late 1940s, strongly influenced by the “agricultural rationalisation” debate of the time, disqualified it from any modernising project on grounds that were oftentimes ideological rather than rational or factual. I further argue that a misunderstanding of the modus operandi and purpose of smallholder farming, prompted by the application of industrial concepts and ideals as well as undue comparisons with other trades and professions, exaggerated the poor socio-economic status of smallholder families. This resulted in a temporalisation of the “agricultural rationalisation” debate, depicting large-scale industrial agriculture as a thing of the future and smallholding as a thing of the past.

The aim of this paper is to examine how Ethiopia, Egypt, and Liberia are portrayed in Swedish encyclopedias. Specifically, it investigates the thematic elements that emerge in older Swedish encyclopedias, written between 1876 and 1959, regarding descriptions of the countries' populations and histories. As method the essay uses “conventional qualitative content analysis”, and the theoretical framework constitutes of Edward Said’s theory of orientalism.  The findings indicate that the populations of these countries are categorized and ranked according to value. The encyclopedias depict the populations of these countries as inferior and distinctly different. The older histories of these countries are portrayed as grandiose, but with a loss of prestige over time. The historical narratives often suggest that these countries are inferior to European powers and require domination in order to develop, either through European instructors or through European control over the state.

This dissertation analyses the formation of Swedish cultural policy in the twentieth century and the emergence of a modern concept of cultural policy. The aim is to historicise this concept by opening up the process through which it was established. The dissertation explores different aspects of this process: the use of the word cultural policy (kulturpolitik), the ambitions in the 1960s to establish a form of knowledge production relevant in cultural policy making and the attempts made by various official authorities in the 1960s and early 1970s to identify and manage the field of concerns defined as belonging to cultural policy, thus demarcating culture as a formal area of policy making. I view these as examples of practices where the category of cultural policy was elaborated and established in a form widely recognized today. Accompanying my attempts to historicise the modern concept of cultural policy is an interest in how the history of cultural policy has generally been conceived. In previous research devoted to the history of cultural policy an analytical sense of cultural policy has tended to overrule the understanding(s) of cultural policy found in the historical sources. As a consequence, the histories of cultural policy have left out what historically was identified as cultural policy, thus leaving the historical grounds for the modern concept of cultural policy partly hidden. In the first empirical chapter I examine the uses of the word cultural policy when it was introduced in the Swedish language in the late nineteenth century until the 1950s. From a multitude of usages, I suggest that it was in the mid-twentieth century that a more consistent vocabulary developed, with “cultural policy” referring to political endeavors aiming at a nation’s domestic cultural life. In the second empirical chapter I investigate how scientific conceptualisations and operationalisations rendered culture available for scientific, political and administrative undertakings, and in the third chapter I study how culture was demarcated as a formal area of policy making. The chapters reveal different aspects of the historical process through which the category of cultural policy was established in its present shape.

In Sweden, during the 1920s, the past played a definite part in the folklore research. The folklore scholars argued for collecting the cultural memories (folkminnen) of “the people”, as they were understood to disappear due to a threat from the modern civilization, which was thought to spread across the countryside at an ever-accelerating pace. This study shows that the past is constructed through discourse – not as a predefined object but rather as a dynamic process of temporal constructions. This study analyses the construction of the past in folklore research in Sweden during the 1920s. Two methodological tools have been primarily used to help unfold the process in which the past is constructed. First, by discourses of the past (förflutenhetsdiskurser) which is how, in my case the scholars, relate to the past by various verbal practices. Secondly, by identifying binary characterizations. In this study, the construction of the past, in folklore research, has been shown through three main themes. First, by understanding the importance of collecting the cultural memories of “the people” as an urgent project – due to their inevitable disappearing – but also as a duty towards the people of the past and as a duty towards future generations. Secondly, by identifying three different dichotomies which all functioned as part of the process of the construction of the past. Thirdly, by analyzing “the people” as a category that best is described as a compound of both culture and human.

This study examines Swedish prison priests in the early 20th century, more specifically the years 1900-1909 and 1925-1932. Prison chaplains arose in the early 1800s as a result of reforms to Sweden's penal code in the 1840s. Sweden adopted the so-called Philadelphiasystem which meant that the prisons placed prisoners in complete isolation and only had access to the "morally good" staff, such as the prison chaplains. In theory, the aim was to talk with prisoners and "rehabilitate" them, so they could return to society. The priests' main method of establishing rehabilitation attempts was achieved through constant observation and dialogue with prisoners. Unlike other prison studies, which are often associated with analyzing the typical power dynamics between "superior" and "subordinate", this study will investigate and present, through the prison chaplains' annual reports and books, what they believed and considered to be cause of crime, the right way to rehabilitate prisoner and what problems they could face after their time in prison. The study will focus on comparing their relationships and interpretations of prisoners and how this was linked to similar discussions related to Sweden's social problems and solutions such as alcoholism, prostitution, modern city life, industrial workculture, parenting and neglectful households.

The aim of the paper was to identify tendencies in the type of descriptions, categories, and identities that the doctors at the mental hospital Stockholm’s hospital gave to the mentally ill patients. The time period was chosen for a few specific reasons, one being Bror Gadelius, then chief physician at the mental hospital and his ambitions for a humanistic care of the mentally ill. The other reason is that this period has been forgotten in Swedish history of mental health care as it fell between the 18th and 19th century ‘surveillance and control’, and on the other hand a period of electrical treatments, lobotomies,and sterilisations to ‘treat’ mental illness and fix society during 1930-1950. In the paper, two theories are used to be able to discern tendencies and different attitudes from the doctors in the patient records. The first is the intersectional perspective with some main categories such as Gender, Class, Body, and Sexuality, but also smaller categories that I discovered during the research. These are somewhat abstract yet self-explanatory: Curable/Incurable, meaning whether the attitude in the records suggests that there was any chance for the patient to get well. Talking/Not talking, where the patient's ability or unwillingness to talk to the doctor changes how the patient is described, and finally Docile/Resistant, which means that the patient is described according to how they behave in accordance with the norms of the mental hospital. The second theory is about objective medicine, which developed with the natural sciences, and the need to be scientifically accurate and to be able to define what disease is, what it looks like and its dimensions. However, when objective medicine developed, it was based on a subjective basis, and therefore being ill meant being 'ugly' and not conforming to societal norms. The two theories work well together because they both highlight historically changing meanings within patients' categories and given identities. Although these are two major theories, the paper is still a micro-historical study, I wanted to get up close to the source material and thoroughly examine the different ways in which patients could be described in the mental hospital. And I believe that it is possible, even with a small study of ten patient records, to provide some nuances of how the doctors viewed the mentally ill patients in the early 20th century.

The main purpose of this thesis is to study and analyze how concepts of childhood and adolescence were constructed in scientific medicine during the period 1870 to 1930. The focus in the first part of the thesis is to study the sick girl as a stereotype in 1870–1900. In the late nineteenth-century, the poor health of girls was a popular topic in Swedish medical discourse. It was a well-established opinion that a substantial number of Swedish girls suffered from various diseases and ailments. Mass- and coeducation was under debate and physicians became interested in the impact of schools and schooling on children’s health. It is here shown that children, and in particularly adolescents, were de-fined as gendered creatures. The doctors emphasized the universal nature of adolescence and conceptualized pu-berty as a traumatic and risky stage of life and they also tended to focus on middle-class girls. Pubescent girls were seen as most vulnerable to external stress such as mental strain and physical demands. Physicians claimed that ill health inevitably followed when girls were educated in the same way as boys. However, boys and their health were discussed too. The most common ailments for both girls and boys were overstudy, anemia, headaches and disor-dered digestion. It was also shown in various studies, that poorer children were substantially inferior in weight as well as in height. Chlorosis was a common theme in late nineteenth-century medical discourse. Although it appeared mainly as a girls’ disease in medical books and in most sanitary journals, health studies for example, showed that chlorosis could also be a boys’ disease. However, sick boys were rarely spoken of. Medical opinions on overstudy, chlorosis and dress reform could be interpreted as a concern for unhealthy girls as future mothers of the nation. It is not my intention to advertise doctors as vicious oppressors, as opponents of female emancipation. In fact, the doctors often pointed out social factors and unequal circumstances of childhood and adolescence for girls and boys. In early twentieth-century, the scientific opinion of girls changed. Even though gendered notions of children and youths persisted all through the period studied, more and more some doctors, Karolina Widerström, for example, began to question them. The new girl was not weak and ill, but rather healthy and active. However, a dividing line between those who claimed the weakness of girls and those who emphasized the new, healthy girl became more evident after 1900. In this thesis, this disparity is discussed in terms of popular medical discourse and scientific medi-cal discourse. In the latter, girls were still described as more sensitive and more frail than boys and as unfit for higher education and strenuous schoolwork. Thus, the new girl – vivid, healthy and equal to the boy – was above all a con-struction in popular medicine. The uniform medical discourse on girls from the late nineteenth-century thus dissolved. A number of changes in the medical discourse on sickness and health of girls and boys during in this period occurred. First, concepts of sickness and health were modified over time and fewer schoolchildren were considered sick. Fi-nally, in the beginning of the period studied, girls were sicker than boys were, but in the end, in the 1930s, there was no obvious gender difference. Both sexes seemed equally sick (or healthy).