The major objective of this thesis is to study the processes of traditionalisation that are being enacted in relation to both the external and internal production of the play "The Power and the Glory" that has been performed in Alvastra Abbey ruin since 1988. During three weeks in July the ruins and their environs are transformed into a rehearsal area, and a live stage, with lay actors performing different roles, a supporting staff and an audience. The thesis asks questions about how the staging of the play is impacted by a politics of culture, why this particular site or topography can be read as a story about a nation, what mediating connections there are between the yearly productions and, finally, how the rehearsals activate and reproduce the accumulated memory of the play and the place. The thesis connects with discussions on how "space" is charged with symbolic and cultural meanings, the use of history and cultural heritage, and story-telling. These approaches are combined with analysis of how participants in interaction use multiple resources (talk, spatial organisation, gestures, gazes, movements and postures) to invokethe spatial aspects of the play as well as to put the story of the play in place. The methodological approach of the thesis combines fieldwork (personal observations, videotaping and audio-recordings) with analysis of written material, press cuttings, archival material, and books and illustrations about the area and its history. In conclusion, this dissertation makes visible how Alvastra Abbey is associated with imagined cultural, political and social entities such as a nation, a province, and a local community. "The Power and the Glory", it appears, constitutes one agent among others in a long term meaning making process. One point made in this book is that although the story of the play is legitimised through references to a past that already has become meaningful in earlier processes of traditionalisation, the work of the Association of Alvastra Chronicle Play and the rehearsal process also creates a traditionalisation process of its own.

Cette recherche interroge les pratiques discursives de domination et d’altérisation dans la production urbaine. Notre analyse prend le départ du questionnement de la globalisation dans la planification urbaine et de son articulation au niveau micro-local. Notre hypothèse est que les groupes dominants utilisent les pratiques populaires comme argument de délégitimation des populations pauvres dans les « visions » de la ville globalisée. Cette stigmatisation se nourrit des stéréotypes de la ville en retard et de l’immobilisme de ces « groupes subalternes », mais également des conflits entre les habitants du centre pour l’appropriation de l’espace au quotidien. La domination exercée résulte alors d’un enchevêtrement complexe entre des conditions sociales réelles et des discours stéréotypés. Cette recherche suit une démarche interdisciplinaire, qui croise les approches à la ville propres à l’architecture avec le regard sociologique. Le choix des terrains d’étude se porte sur deux métropoles, Le Caire (Égypte) et Naples (Italie). Malgré de profondes différences de contexte, les questions s’imbriquent : l’attractivité touristique qui passe par le changement de population, la patrimonialisation de l’architecture des centres, et un urbanisme hanté par le mythe d’une grandeur déchue. À travers l’étude des pratiques micro-locales d’occupation du logement et de l’espace urbain, ainsi que du processus de construction et de manipulation d’une condition de « subalternité métropolitaine », il apparaît que si d’un côté les aménageurs revendiquent le monopole de la prise de décision, de l’autre les habitants mettent en place une production de l’espace urbain « par le bas ». / This research examines the discursive practices of domination and othering in urban production. Our analysis opens with the questioning of globalization in urban planning and its relationship with the micro-local level. Our hypothesis is that dominant groups use popular practices as an argument of delegitimization of the poor in the "visions" of the globalized city. This stigma is fuelled by the stereotypes of the undeveloped city and the immobilism of these "subaltern groups", but also by the conflicts between the inhabitants of the centre for the appropriation of space in everyday life. Thus, the domination results as a complex tangle between real social conditions and stereotypical discourses. This research follows an interdisciplinary approach, which crosses the architecture-specific analysis of the city with a sociological perspective. We chose as our case studies two cities, Cairo (Egypt) and Naples (Italy). Despite the profound differences in context, many issues overlap: the touristic appeal depending on the exclusion of a part of the population, the politics of heritage of the city centres, and an urban planning haunted by the myth of fallen greatness. Through the study of micro-local practices of domestic and urban space, and the process of construction and manipulation of a condition of "metropolitan subalternity", it appears that if, on the one hand, developers claim the monopoly of decision making, on the other, inhabitants develop a production of urban space "from below".

Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att studera de roller bilder har i skapandet av dominerande föreställningar om en plats. Exemplen är hämtade från Visby, en stad med välkända medeltida lämningar på ön Gotland i Östersjön. Teoretiska verktyg kommer från kulturarvspolitik, som belyser kulturarv som konstruktioner med objekt värdeladdade av specifika aktörer i särskilda syften och från visuella kulturstudier som fokuserar hur vi betraktar vår omvärld. Bilder och berättelser skapar socialt konstruerade seenden och bortseenden. Dessa seenden, skapar i sin tur mindscapes tillsammans med upplevelser, drömmar, minnen, medierade budskap och ”före-bilder”. Det är Visbys mindscapes som fokuseras här. Med utgångspunkt i Visbys tio-i-topp-motiv diskuteras bilder hämtade från tre grupper av aktörer, kulturarvsbilder, konstbilder och turismbilder. Begrepp som autenticitet, tilltal och modus är viktiga i förståelsen av hur Visbys ikoner tillkommer bland annat genom upprepning av ett litet antal bildmotiv. Då medeltida lämningar och Visbys guldålder som Hansestad ofta ingår i människors mindscapes döljs och överskuggas andra tidsperioder, sociala kontexter och miljöer i Visby. Fotografier, målningar, teckningar, tryck och souvenirer är kraftfulla redskap i den processen. Detta resulterar i att 9/10 av Visby hamnar i skymundan genom stadens status som en medeltida ikon. Den historiska innerstaden har också fått anpassa sig efter föreställningarna om densamma. / This thesis deals with the roles pictures play when collective imaginations of a city are constructed. The examples comes from Visby, a city with famous medieval remains, on the island Gotland in the Baltic. Cultural heritage politics points out heritage as a mode of cultural production. Heritage is constructed when values are added to specific objects by specific actors for specific purposes. Visual cultural studies underline the practices of looking. We are always looking from specific positions. Images and narratives create socially constructed gazes. Gazes together with experiences, dreams, memories, mediated messages and “fore-sights” creates mindscapes. The urban mindscapes of Visby are at focus here. Starting in a Visby top-ten-image-list, images produced and frequently used within the three domains; heritage and tourist industries and the art world are discussed. The images characteristic marks are defined and discussed in terms of authenticity, emotive modes and ways of address. This study also deals with four socially emergent Visby icons and the consequences of the mono-thematic in Visby. When the medieval remains and Hanseatic traders are dominating people’s mindscapes, other periods, social contexts and Visby settings are hidden or overshadowed. The agency of display, a few repeated views in all sorts of media, produces gazes, ways of seeing and unseeing. Photographs, paintings, drawings, prints and souvenirs with Visby motifs are powerful tools in this process. The result is hierarchical orders hard to change. It has not only had the effect that 9/10 of the contemporary city of Visby is being shaded by its status as a medieval icon. The historical centre has also been adjusted in order to fit with the conceptions of the place.

Avhandlingen rymmer en ”stor” och en ”liten” berättelse. Den lilla berättelsen börjar omkring 1870 och handlar om Nordiska museet och dess grundläggare Artur Hazelius. Den stora berättelsen tar sin början i 1800-talets första decennier och förankrar det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets framväxt och formering i en mera vidsträckt och kronologiskt utsträckt historie- och museipolitisk kontext. 1800-talet har karaktäriserats som en period av stark statlig mobilisering på det musei- och historiepolitiska fältet. Avhandlingen visar att det var osäkert vilken roll staten skulle spela. Det var osäkert vilket slags offentlighet som museerna tillhörde, vilka syften museer fyllde och hur de skulle utformas. Det var omtvistat vem som ägde fornminnena. Två rörelser kan urskiljas. Den ena rörelsen ville åstadkomma ett långtgående statligt ansvar för historiebevarandet. Den andra rörelsen var framväxten av ett civilsamhälleligt associationsväsende på historiebevarandets område. Historie- och museipolitikens grunddrag kännetecknades av spänningarna mellan dessa rörelser. Den stora berättelsen överlappar den lilla berättelsen om Nordiska museet och Artur Hazelius. Avhandlingen belyser det spelrum som de övergripande osäkerheterna om historiebevarandets mål och organisering lämnade åt Artur Hazelius och hur Nordiska museets utveckling efter hand kom att ge återverkningar på hela det historie- och museipolitiska området. Den belyser också hur Nordiska museets stegvisa etablering som kulturhistoriskt centralmuseum påverkades av det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets professionalisering. I avhandlingen är det historiografiska perspektivet centralt. Ett utmärkande drag för den dubbla historia som avhandlingen berättar är den betydelse som historieskrivningen har haft, både för formeringen av det kulturhistoriska museiväsendet och för efterhandsförståelsen av detsamma. / This thesis traces and analyses important changes in cultural heritage and museum politics during the 19th century. It tells two overlapping narratives. One is about the museum founder Artur Hazelius and the creation and expansion of The Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet). The other concerns the indecisive construction of meaning and organisational forms for state responsibility for the cultural heritage. The latter story begins in 1810 and the former in 1872. The 19th century is commonly described as the breakthrough for a new era, a time when the cultural heritage became a matter of the state and a part of state promoted nationalism. This thesis instead sheds light on the uncertainties, hesitations and conflicts involved in the construction of national cultural heritage politics and practices. It emphasises the alternatives to state administration that were launched and the crucial role played by associations and voluntary organisation in the preservation of the cultural heritage. It observes the significance of histories and of counter-histories in the controversies over the ownership of and responsibility for the cultural heritage. The way different political positions grow out of conflicting stories of institutional origin is considered. The thesis also focuses on the gradual emergence of a museum profession and its implications for the development of the Nordic Museum and for museum politics in general.