Every third year a PISA study is conducted, through international measurements for member states of the OECD-organization. This aims to measure each country´s pupils by the ages of 15 years old. Its purpose is to examine how each member´s pupils perform in mathematics, reading comprehensions, sciences and problem solving. In this essay we intend to examine how the PISA studies were received as a creation of opinion and self-image.  This research follows up on selected actors in the media debate surrounding PISA as a tool of argument and means of discussion. The natural demarcation is made by actors; mostly from professional teachers, but also journalists, lectures, writers and school experts in the fields. Its purpose is to give a well-balanced and comprehensive picture of the PISA-debates. From a political standpoint the actors represent different positions of the spectrum. The study consists of a total of 10 actors. Between the years of 2004-2005 and 2016-2017 of the PISA 2003 and 2015. This paper will focus on the PISA studies that were done by the years of 2003 and 2015. By working with different PISA studies with a long span of time between them. This is done as a conscious strategy in favor of the comparative study. In this essay the conceptual changes between these two PISA studies will be examined and studied with a conceptual analysis.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Swedish right-wing party Allmänna valmansförbundet (AVF) made citizen into a key concept within their political vocabulary and practice. This thesis examines the distribution, meaning and function of the concept of citizen within the AVF between 1915 and 1936. By using theoretical and methodological perspectives from both the English (Skinner) and German (Koselleck) side of conceptual history vis-à-vis Begriffsgeschischte, this study illuminates how a discursive framework took place within the AVF and expanded throughout the organisation. The constitutional reforms 1918/1921 and the organisational strength from opposite parties, stressed the importance for the AVF to assemble the citizens around conservative value laden concepts: responsibility, ansvar, and public participation, offentlighet. This new situation in political and social life, pushed the AVF towards a reorganisation. The aim was to educate the masses, women and youth into conservative citizens. Citizen became the sole tool in (i) upholding the traditional heritage between folk–state, and (ii) enabling the AVF citizen discourse to spread throughout the society. This study shows the multiple meaning and functions of the citizen concept within the AVF.  It provides a new understanding of how collective concepts became an important part of the struggle for power during the democratization process in Swedish political history and must in that respect be seen as an antithesis to the collective concepts of the Social Democratic Party during this period.

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Ce mémoire offre une lecture des fondements épistémologiques de la modernité. Plus concrètement, il explore un dialogue entre Reinhart Koselleck et Jürgen Habermas. Ce dialogue a d’abord pour objet l’exposition d’une compréhension commune de ce que l’on appelle le moment épochal de la modernité : c’est-à-dire de l’espace historique à partir duquel les théoriciens ont conçu – et conçoivent encore aujourd’hui – la modernité. Pour révéler cet accord, nous offrons une analyse du concept de Neue Zeit, notamment dans son rapport à l’histoire prémoderne. Cependant, et malgré cette compréhension commune, nous soulignons que les auteurs diffèrent quant au rôle qu’occupe la Neue Zeit dans la formation de la modernité. Pour mettre en lumière ce désaccord, nous présentons le concept de modernité esthétique. Ce dialogue, présenté en deux temps, nous permet de révéler, dans un troisième, que si Koselleck fait de la temporalité un moteur de l’histoire, Habermas y voit là plutôt un effet du processus de rationalisation historique. La pertinence de cette recherche repose sur sa capacité à illustrer les différences substantielles quant aux justifications sollicitées par les deux auteurs lors du dialogue. Pour être plus précis, nous avançons que si un accord substantiel relie les deux auteurs quant à leur lecture de l’histoire prémoderne, que celui-ci est descriptif, et non théorique. Ce faisant, il est possible à notre recherche de spécifier pourquoi un accord relie les deux auteurs quant à leur théorisation de l’histoire prémoderne, mais non pas sur la modernité elle-même. / This research aims to circumscribe the epistemological foundations of modernity. It does so by an analysis of the crisis of modernity. To be more precise, we explore a dialogue between Reinhart Koselleck and Jürgen Habermas. The intent of this conversation is to show a common understanding of the epochal moment of modernity. That is, the theoretical boundaries in which the foundational moment of modernity was, and still is, theorized. To reveal this agreement, we analyze the concept of Neue Zeit in its relation to premodern history. In doing so, we show that both thinkers recognise the importance of a new time, understood as an open future. Moreover, both thinkers differ as to the role and position of the Neue Zeit in the foundation of modernity. To reveal this disagreement, we present the concept of aesthetical modernity. In doing so, our research shows that as Koselleck sees temporality as a driving historical force, Habermas disagrees and sees it rather as a result of a historical rationalisation process. Furthermore, our research reveals a substantial disagreement as to the reasons underlying this dialogue. Notably, we claim that the common ground that links both thinkers in their understanding of premodern history is descriptive, rather than theoretical. That is, it refers to the empirical content of history, and not to it’s underlying causes. With that claim in hand, we offer to explain why both thinkers agree on their understanding of premodern history, but not on modern history itself.

The word Anthropocene has been used in academia in many cases in the last decade. Geologists and stratigraphers believe that man's influence intervents so much with nature that they propose to call by the term a whole new geological era. This would have far-reaching consequences for (social) science in terms of interdisciplinarity. Due to the topicality of the theme, the diploma thesis aims to monitor the intersection of the term Anthropocene using the conceptual theory of Reinhart Koselleck, and thus find out whether and how the word spreads to public sphere. The first theoretical part presents the sources, maps the reflection of the term in the literature of social sciences and puts the work into a theoretical and methodological framework from the perspective of the history of concepts. It introduces Koselleck's theory of transition phases and explanes its application to the research field using modified criteria. The methodological character of the work is a comparative case study, heuristically grasped by content (textual) analysis of a media text. The second practical part observes texts from two selected databases (Czech and British) and presents the results in order to find out the meanings the contexts around the term Anthropocene. The last part compares both geographical areas and...

Syftet med denna uppsats är att visa på hur historiebruk migrerar och transformeras över tid. I sin bok With His Pistol in His Hand – A Border Ballad and its Hero presenterar Américo Paredes sin bild av vad Corridon är, en särskild typ av mexikansk ballad vid som sjöngs i ett område mellan Mexiko och USA från mitten av 1830-talet och drygt hundra år framåt. Jag har försökt finna passager i Cormac McCarthys bok Övergången och Sam Peckinpahs film Det vilda gänget som kan förstås som influerade av Corridon. För att kunna tolka min empiri har jag tagit hjälp av framförallt Roland Barthes Mytologier och Reinhart Kosellecks Erfarenhet, tid och historia – Om historiska tiders semantik. I diskussionen argumenterar jag för att både moralsyn och tematik i de bägge verkan visar på ett släktskap med Corridon. Vidare har jag funnit likheter i hur de gestaltar tid och hur de arbetar med mytologiska tecken för att gestalta sina berättelser och därmed sin historieförmedling. En slutsats är att verken för en dialog med sina mottagare, de skapar ett utrymme för betraktaren eller läsaren att själva dra de logiska följderna av de frågor som verken ger upphov till. / The purpose of this paper is to show how the use of history migrates and transforms over time. In his book With His Pistol in His Hand - A Border Ballad and its Hero, Américo Paredes presents his characterization of the Corrido, a special type of Mexican ballad which was sung in the area between Mexico and the United States from the mid-1830s and more then hundred years ahead. I have tried to find passages in Cormac McCarthy's book The Crossing and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch which can be understood as influenced by the Corrido. In order to be able to interpret my empirical material, I have taken the help of Roland Barthes Mythologies and Reinhart Koselleck's Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. In the discussion, I argue that both moral views and themes in my empirical material correspond with Corridon. Furthermore, I have found similarities in how they portray time and how they work with mythological signs to portray their stories and their mediation of history. One conclusion is that the book and the movie start a dialogue with their recipients, they create a space for the viewer or the reader to draw the logical outcomes of the issues that the works give rise to.

Dans le chapitre du Contrat social consacré à la mort du corps politique, Rousseau rappelle que cette mort est « la pente naturelle et inévitable des Gouvernements les mieux constitués ». En effet, poursuit-il, « si Sparte et Rome ont péri, quel État peut espérer de durer toujours ? Si nous voulons former un établissement durable, ne songeons donc point à le rendre éternel ». Malgré l’avertissement de Rousseau, la tendance à rendre l’ordre politique éternel semble être un phénomène constant, jusqu’à nos jours. En témoigne l’idée d’une « fin de l’histoire » résultant de l’alliance du capitalisme et de la démocratie libérale, ou d’un modèle occidental se comprenant comme la réalisation du seul but de l’histoire, à laquelle ne s’opposeraient que des puissances « retardatrices ». À travers ces phénomènes se manifeste une « politique du temps », un discours de légitimation de l’ordre politique donnant un sens politique à sa dimension temporelle.Compris de cette manière, le problème que pose la « politique du temps » ne peut être abordé par une critique limitée à ses derniers avatars, telle la thèse de la fin de l’histoire. Il est au contraire nécessaire de remonter à la racine du problème, c’est-à-dire à la place qu’occupe cette question au sein du rapport entre temps et politique. Si la politique du temps s’avère aussi tenace, c’est en effet parce qu’elle s’inscrit dans un questionnement intrinsèquement lié à l’ordre politique, confronté à la nécessité d’assurer son « être-dans-le-temps ». La politique du temps répond à cette nécessité par une politisation du temps et de l’histoire pouvant conduire, dans sa forme extrême, à une éternisation de l’ordre politique, qui prétend alors englober la totalité du temps, du passé au futur.Compte tenu de la persistance de cette conception temporelle de l’ordre politique, de même qu’il ne suffit pas de limiter la critique à ses avatars actuels, de même serait-il impropre de la diriger contre sa seule forme extrême, dans la mesure où ce sont précisément certains discours proclamant la fin des idéologies qui tendent à reproduire aujourd’hui les structures de la politique du temps. Par conséquent, ce n’est qu’en abordant dans son ensemble le problème formé par la atemporalisation du politique et la politisation du temps qu’il est possible d’attaquer à la racine ce type de discours de légitimation, sous toutes ses formes.Pour mener à bien ce projet, deux objectifs complémentaires, correspondant aux deux fils directeurs de l’analyse, sont traités en parallèle. D’une part, nous proposons de systématiser la question du temps politique afin de montrer les grands traits communs aux phénomènes qui s’y rattachent et quelles directions s’ouvrent à la critique. Le second axe de lecture met l’accent sur les œuvres d’Eric Voegelin et de Karl Löwith en tant qu’elles apportent une contribution décisive tant à la systématisation du problème que, surtout, à son dépassement.Notre hypothèse de départ est que Löwith et Voegelin eux-mêmes sont conscients de la relation problématique entre temps et politique et cherchent, par l’intermédiaire de la dimension temporelle, à aborder un problème politique dont l’importance s’explique non seulement par la situation historique à laquelle ils sont directement confrontés, mais aussi par sa valeur systématique intrinsèque, en tant qu’il représente une évolution de la conception du politique. Tous deux sont convaincus de la nécessité de surmonter le nihilisme et l’absence de toute fondation durable en tant que tels, c’est-à-dire de surmonter la temporalisation radicale de l’ordre politique, mais également les tentatives visant à l’éterniser. C’est dans ce cadre que prennent sens leurs projets, qui cherchent à dissocier le politique et le temps et, en repensant leur relation, à éviter que tout point de référence permanent ne soit dissout par le cours du temps sans toutefois produire une éternité artificielle et absolue. / In the chapter of the Social Contract on the death of the body politic, Rousseau emphasizes that its death is “the natural and inevitable propensity even of the best constituted governments”. Indeed, he continues, “if Sparta and Rome have perished, what state can hope to last for ever? If we want the constitution we have established to endure, let us not seek, therefore, to make it eternal”. Despite Rousseau’s warning, the tendency to make the political order eternal seems to be a pervasive phenomenon even in our time, as can be seen in the idea of an “end of history” that results from the combination of capitalism and liberal democracy, or in a Western model conceived as the realisation of the sole aim of history that only “delaying” powers would resist. These are examples of a “politics of time”, a concept that refers to a type of discourse contributing to the legitimization of the political order by giving a political meaning to its temporal dimension. Understood in this way, the problem of the “politics of time” cannot be addressed by focusing only on its recent developments, such as the “end of history” thesis, it is also crucial to understand these developments in the broader context of the relation between time and politics. Consequently, only a fundamental critique can put an end to the “politics of time”. The origin of the persistence of the “politics of time” has to be traced back to an essential problem that the political order is facing, namely the necessity to ensure its existence in time. The “politics of time” answers this problem by politicizing time and history, which can lead, in its most extreme form, to an eternisation of the political order that pretends to last for all time.Considering that this temporal conception of the political order is still widely present in many contemporary discourses, it would be insufficient to limit the critique to contemporary phenomena or to the extreme forms of the politics of time in modern ideologies, since precisely some proclamations of the end of ideologies tend to repeat the structure of the politics of time. It is therefore necessary to tackle the problem of the temporalisation of politics and politicisation of time as a whole. This is the only way to question the different occurrences of this kind of legitimising discourse.To achieve this, this study has two parallel aims. First, I begin by reconstructing a systematic account of the question of political time in order to highlight the main characteristics of the phenomena that are related to it. My second aim is to analyse Eric Voegelin’s and Karl Löwith’s works regarding their contribution to the systematisation of the problem, but first and foremost insofar as they offer an answer to it.Central to this work is the claim that Löwith and Voegelin not only develop a theory of the problematic relation between time and politics, but also defend a solution to tackle this problem. This problem, as they see it, is not restricted to their particular historical situation but remains of interest as an evolution of the concept of the political itself. Both Löwith and Voegelin are convinced that nihilism and the lack of any durable foundation must be overcome as such or, in other words, that it is necessary to overcome not only the temporalisation of the political order but also the attempts to “eternalise” it. The meaning and significance of Löwith’s and Voegelin’s projects appear clearly in this framework, as they can be seen as two attempts to dissociate the political from the temporal and, by reworking this relation, to prevent the relativisation of any durable foundation in the flow of time without, however, creating an artificial and absolute eternity.

This dissertation analyzes the concept of democracy as it was used in the official rhetoric of the Swedish SocialDemocratic Party (SAP ) between 1919 and 1939. Theoretically, the dissertation relies on German Begriffsgeschichte, as put forward by Reinhart Koselleck, and Michael Freeden’s theory of ideologies. Together, by supplementing each other, these theories offer a perspective in which concepts are thought of as structures that are under contestation and change due to socio-political circumstances. However, the formulation of this change takes place in relation to the linguistic praxis of each time-period, and renegotiates the relative constraints of established relations between concepts in language. The analysis shows that the profound changes in society provided impetus for a continuous renegotiation of meanings, allowing concepts to retain their explanatory power under changing circumstances, at the same time the SAP needed new ways to express what kind of society the party strived to realize. The SAP had been one of the leading forces in the struggle for universal suffrage, and when the bill, giving universal suffrage to men andwomen, was passed in the Parliament 1919 this meant a temporary cessation to a long and intensive political debate. However, the SAP did not consider the introduction of suffrage reform as the end of full societal democratization. Rather than seeing the reform as a terminal point, the SAP saw it as the starting point for the struggle for full democracy. The SAP did not limit itself to only one concept of democracy but instead used a number of composite concepts, such as political democracy and economic democracy. The use of composite concepts can be understood as a changing temporalization of democracy. Since parliamentarism and suffrage were seen as central components in democracy, the realization of these institutions meant that the concept of democracy lost its future dimension. Thus, the usage of composite concepts should be seen as a re-temporalization of democracy. The composite concepts pointed forward in time, toward political goals that the SAP envisaged realizing in the future. Concepts should not be thought of as having cores but rather, as suggested by Freeden, ineliminable features. An ineliminable feature is not of logical nature but has a strong cultural adjacency. By analyzing the ineliminable components of the concepts of democracy that the SAP used, it is possible to discuss whether the composite concepts should be understood as subsets of a whole or as separate concepts. The analysis shows that the composite concepts that the SAP used during the first half of the 1920s shared a number of ineliminable features, but that the commonality of these features started to disintegrate during the latter half of the decade, leading to a rather diversive concept of democracy. During the 1930s the disintegration ceased as the party was faced with new circumstances, for example the growing threat of international war and national clashes between different social groups. There has always been a close relation between language and society. However, the relationship does not follow a simple and clear-cut logic but a complex mixture of various factors at different levels, both within language itself and of society. When society develops, language also has to change if the ongoing process is to be understood. As this study shows, new circumstances require new argumentsand thus revised concepts.