The purpose of this thesis is to examine the experience of modernity, and how it related to the process of establishing and determining one’s individual identity. By studying the protocols from discussion seminars on contemporary topics attended by students at Swedish folk high school Wiks folkhögskola in the 1920s and 1930s, the study explores how the students defined themselves in relation to societal changes as well as how they evaluated what they considered to be modern versus traditional. The thesis approaches the subject through the theoretical lens of modernity, defined as the experience of living in an uncertain and changeable present, fundamentally different from what is perceived to be the past. This generates paradoxical feelings of both optimism for the future and nostalgic longing for the past. Alongside the concept of modernity, the thesis utilises theories of individualisation and historical research on the making of the modern self to explore how experiences of modernity related to processes of identity formation. The analysis is structured around three themes, urban and rural lifestyles, leisure as opportunity and threat, and changing gender norms, which were present both in the students’ discussions and in Swedish public discourse during the interwar years. Throughout, the experiences of modernity expressed by the students were much more complex and dynamic than what previous historical research on the modernisation of Sweden has suggested. The thesis therefore argues for a pluralistic and experience-based view of modernity. Furthermore, it questions the relevance of theories of modern individualisation, and to what extent the students’ identities were individual and emancipated from traditional hierarchies. Instead, it considers the role of school authorities, and concludes with the assertation that concepts such as modernity and identity should be approached through empirical studies of historical context and with a critical eye towards power dynamics, authorities, and dominant narratives.

Uppsatsen behandlar Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademins prisfrågor mellan 1761–1772, då specifikt de ställda med de Sparrerska medlen. Syftet med uppsatsen är belysa akademins syn på vetenskapens ekonomiska mål genom deras arbete med prisfrågorna. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån tankar om kunskapscirkulation för at tolka Vetenskapsakademin arbete. För att uppfylla syftet analyseras Vetenskapsakademins handskrivna mötesprotokoll, ett urval av svar på prisfrågorna samt prisfrågorna utifrån ämneskategorier samt svarens författare. Vetenskapsakademins koppling till Hattpartiet samt dess rötter i utilismen och merkantilismen redogörs för, då med huvudsakligt fokus på att belysa nyckelbegreppet nytta. Den första delen av undersökningen diskuterar mönstren inom de fyra kategorierna av prisfrågor, jord-och naturbruk, teknisk utveckling, medicin och Statsmaktens hushållning samt kontextualiserar dessa utifrån tidigare etablerad bakgrund. Vidare diskuteras vilka andra samhällsgrupper som nåddes av akademins arbete. Till exempel den stora delen kyrkliga ämbetsmän som utan personlig koppling till akademin ofta hade belönade svar. Undersökningens andra del behandlar genom svaren till två prisfrågor vilken form av kunskap och presentation akademin sökte samt fördjupar diskussion om dess arbetsprocess. Uppsatsen visar att akademins frågor ställdes för att på olika nivåer tillåta en maximering de tillgängliga resursernas nytta, samt hur deras mål med verksamheten ofta var i konflikt med deras arbetsprocess där diskussioner kunde dra ut på tid samt återupprättas när nya ledamöter kom med sina positioner. Slutligen visar uppsatsen hur akademin med prisfrågorna sökte cirkulation av kunskap snarare än innovation.

In this study I search for the real understanding of the Lauclanian concept of ”populism” from both the viewpoint of William Connollys essentially contested concepts and the conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck. My starting point for the analysis takes its inspiration from the more contemporary notion of ”constructing the social” but tries to focus on a result that can be free from the highly abstract discourse theory put forward by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The result is a peculiar paradox in which the concept of populism reconstructed by Laclau not only is contested but contested in such way that even the meaning of the word could lose its contextual use in place of another – the political. At the same time, the concepts favorability through a more common usage (or in Koselleckian terminology, its more democratized meaning) must be acknowledged, and in relation to the leftist political parties that uses this theoretic, strategic and analytical conceptual category it instead becomes much clearer why its usage is applied but also favoured by Laclau. It could be said that it is the most effective concept in determining the strategic discursive landscape and to shape it in favour of a future left-wing populist movement. At the same time, the concepts claim of being more democratic is not entirely as convincing in regard to the signifier that must be as empty as possible to fulfill the populistic demands of its political subjects. This means that its value entirely comes from the political subjects meaningful projection, and in one way only can be said to engage with these subjects through the channeling of the already expected dissent and disaffection of the people behind the discursive and overdetermined identities.

In the early 19th century the civilian market for maps expanded in Sweden. During previous centuries geographical maps had been confidential, accessible only to those in government office. Circulation of geographical knowledge among civilians was transmitted mainly through written parish descriptions. From 1797, when the first royal privilege for the production of maps was issued, the secrecy laws relaxed: private actors could now publish maps for civilian use. In order for the potential that the producers saw in the civilian map market to be realised, consumers had to want cartographic depictions of geographical information. The demand is evident through the expansion of the civilian market. However, the development raises questions of how and why cartographical depictions of information became prominent.  Through theories of circulation of knowledge, visual culture and consumer practices, this thesis shows in what ways the civilian map market was an arena for the circulation of knowledge. The market was supported by institutions subscribing to different ideals of how knowledge was transmitted, sought to further them by supporting the market. Trust for maps as a medium was built upon claims regarding the scientific methods used in their production, and producers sought to make maps understandable to consumers by adjusting the way cartographic information was presented, based on who the intended users were. Increasingly producers also adjusted to consumer demands, and took over the effort of making practical adjustments to the maps for use, of the kind that consumers previously had done themselves.

L’objectif de cette étude est de déterminer comment la pensée et l’imaginaire de la colère se façonnent en France au XVIIe siècle à partir d’un corpus large de littérature morale, comprenant des traités de médecine, de théologie, de philosophie, de morale et de civilité. La colère compte alors parmi les passions et se définit, conformément à la proposition aristotélicienne, comme un désir de vengeance qui fait suite à une marque de mépris et qui se manifeste dans le corps par un bouillonnement de sang autour du cœur. Elle est également une des quatre humeurs du système médical hippocratico-galénique : la bile jaune (cholè) menace les colériques de fièvres et autres inflammations. Associée à une folie et à un vice chez Sénèque, l’Ire figure enfin dans le septenaire des péchés capitaux, aux côtés de l’Orgueil et de l’Envie. Mais l’anthropologie chrétienne lui reconnaît également de bons usages, et tout l’effort des moralistes, médecins et théologiens de l’époque moderne est de déterminer comment concilier la dimension naturelle et physiologique de la passion avec l’aspiration à la vertu dans l’usage du monde. Ces auteurs encouragent au gouvernement des passions, à la fois dans une démarche charitable, et afin de favoriser leur usage rhétorique dans la mise en scène de soi sur la scène mondaine. Notre étude contribue à l’histoire des émotions de l’époque moderne par l’analyse des discours qui ont forgé les représentations et l’imaginaire de la colère. En déployant le modèle topique de la colère à partir de la littérature morale, considérée comme une formation discursive composée des différents champs du savoir, elle participe à l’anthropologie historique de l’affectivité. / This study aims to determine how the representations of anger were built in France in the 17th century from a broad collection of moral literature, including treatises on medicine, theology, philosophy, morals and civility. Anger was counted among the passions and defined, according to the Aristotelian proposal, as a desire for revenge caused by a perception of contempt, which manifests itself in the body with blood boiling around the heart. Anger (colère) was then correlated with choler, which is one of the four humors of the Hippocratic and galenic medicine (cholè): yellow bile causes fever and other kinds of inflammation. Considered as a form of madness and a vice by Seneca, the Ire finally appeared in the septenary scheme of the deadly sins, alongside Pride and Envy. But Christian anthropology also acknowledged its good uses, and the whole effort of the moralists, doctors and theologians of the early modern period was to determine how to reconcile the natural and physiological dimension of passion with the aspiration to virtue for the use of world. These authors encouraged the government of passions, both in a charitable perspective, and to promote their rhetorical use for self-staging in society.Our study contributes to the history of emotions in early modern France by analyzing the discourses that built the representations and the imagination of anger. By deploying the topical model of anger from a collection of moral literature considered as a discursive formation composed of different fields of knowledge, it participates in developing the historical anthropology of affectivity.

Swedish Reggio Emilia-inspired pedagogy has been decribed as a democratic paradigm shift for Swedish preschools. A grassroots movement based on the same resistance to traditional authoritarian pedagogy and political alignment that the Italien example entailed in the post-fascist Reggio Emilia. However, unlike the local and citizen-initiated birth in Italy, the Swedish implementation was sanctioned at a central political level and took place in close relation to leading academic institutions. Swedish Reggio Emilia thus belongs to a completely different historical context than the original educational and democratic movement. This essay tells the story of the pedagogical and organizational development of Swedish childcare from the preschool expansion in the 1970s up to the founding of the Swedish Reggio Emilia Institute in 1993. Based on a theory of path-dependent continuity and change, it analyzes how the conditions successively made it possible to implement the Reggio Emilia philosophy, with its socialist and cooperative origins, in Sweden at the time of a neoliberal and individual-centered change in political discourse during the early 1990s. The analysis describes the earliest influences in Sweden during the 1980s based on its function as exotic cargo: a rich aesthetic framework but with little theoretical content. The conveyed ideas and values mirrored already established counterparts in Sweden, but despite this, it managed to capture both fascination and interest among educators as well as politicians. Its pluralistic and decentralized ideals also came to relate to the neoliberal turn when the Swedish welfare state left its long tradition of collective democrazy.

This thesis is an exploration of the humanimal entanglements between humans and pigeons in the urban setting. It traces human-pigeon histories from pigeons’ domestication forward to the contemporary conceptions of pigeons as a pest animal. Pigeons are made visible in all of their cultural, socio-political, and symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, exposing their deep entanglements with humans across space and time. Using a combination of multi-species ethnography through ‘flaneur’ walks in Uppsala, Sweden and conceptual frameworks drawn from post-humanism, philosophy, and animal studies, pigeon-human relationships are problematized. The pigeon's ability to interrogate dualistic paradigms of nature/culture, wild/domestic, and human/animal are explored. It is argued that pigeons are active in the co-constitution of the urban space alongside humans, and are participating in reciprocal humanimal relations - they are not simply objects to be acted upon but have their own agency. From pigeons we can learn valuable stories about ourselves, and the more-than-human world.

Abstract: From Harlem to Central Asia: Langston Hughes exploration of Class, Race and Gender under the Soviet Union. This essay explores Langston Hughes journey to Soviet Central Asia, where he aimed to gain insights into the lives of people of “color” under the Soviet Union. Focusing on a book by Hughes this essay analyzes his portrayal of both colonial and post-revolutionary Central Asia.Through the lens of postcolonial theory and an intersectional approach, the study draws connections between African American and Central Asian societies during times of transition. It delves into the intricate dynamics of ethnicity, class, gender, and politics that surface in Hughes depiction of the region. Ultimately, the study seeks to deepen our understanding of the complex intersections between race, gender, ethnicity, and politics in Central Asia during and pre the Soviet era, while highlighting the long-term effects of colonialism on post-slavery African American society and post-colonial Central Asia.

På senare tid har det funnits ett ökat fokus på att studera känslornas historia, även om detta inte alltid har varit fallet för historiker. Idén till uppsatsen formades under arbetet som kommunal arkivarie när jag stötte på en sällsynt upptäckt i arkiven - en samling av omkring två hundra kärleksbrev som utväxlats mellan Artur och Margit, ett ungt par, före och under andra världskriget. I sina brev uttryckte paret sina känslor för varandra, inklusive kärlek, svartsjuka och oro, samt deras aspirationer för framtiden och drömmar om att bygga ett liv tillsammans. Genom att använda kärleksbrev som en historisk resurs kan vi få värdefulla insikter i hur människor upplevde känslor under olika historiska perioder. Brev, speciellt de som skrivits mellan romantiska partners, ger ett unikt perspektiv på hur individer uttryckte sina känslor. Dessutom ger studiet av kärleksbrev en djupare förståelse för det känslomässiga landskapet i det förflutna och hur det påverkade relationer mellan människor. / In recent times, there has been an increased focus on studying the history of emotions, although this has not always been the case for historians. The idea for this essay was formed during my work as a municipal archivist when I stumbled upon a rare find in the archives - a collection of approximately two hundred love letters exchanged between Artur and Margit, a young couple, before and during World War II. In their letters, the couple expressed their feelings towards each other, including love, jealousy, and worry, as well as their aspirations for the future and their dreams of building a life together. By utilizing love letters as a historical resource, we can gain valuable insight into how people experienced emotions during various historical periods. These letters, specifically those written between romantic partners, offer a unique perspective on how individuals expressed their emotions. Moreover, studying love letters provides a deeper understanding of the emotional landscape of the past and how it impacted relationships between people.

[pt] A presente tese tem por objetivo estudar o pensamento conservador na contemporaneidade, dando enfoque, assim, ao século XX e ao início do século XXI. Nosso trabalho envolve uma pesquisa qualitativa, a qual aborda diferentes campos do conhecimento, indo desde uma história das ideias até o campo da antropologia política. Apresentaremos uma gama de textos de pensadores conservadores nacionais e internacionais e utilizaremos um amplo aporte teórico para analisá-los. As conclusões encontradas apontam que há elementos recorrentes, mesmo em meio à polissemia do conceito de conservadorismo, em que existe uma relação entre o presente e o passado da tradição. / [en] This thesis aims to study conservative thinking in contemporary times, thus focusing on the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Our work involves qualitative research, which encompasses different fields of knowledge, ranging from political anthropology to the field of history of ideas. We will present a wide range of texts by national and international conservative thinkers. And we will use a broad theoretical framework to analyze them. There are common elements, even in the midst of the polysemy of the concept of conservatism, where there is a relationship between the present and the past of tradition.