This dissertation examines two daily newspapers’ representations of eugenics from the incipient racial biological investigation 1919 until 1958, and the State Institute for Racial Biology is reorganized. The dissertation also aims to examine whether there are any distinct turning points where the newspapers distance themselves from the ideas and the research of eugenics. The analysis material is based on newspaper articles from two national dailies, i.e., Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The theoretical framework and method are based on Fairclough’s discourse theory and analysis to observe and elucidate how eugenics is represented over a longer period of time. The conclusion of the dissertation is that the newspapers continuously designate racial biology as something unique and being the salvation from degeneration until Herman Lundborg resigns as head of the institute. After Gunnar Dahlberg took over the managerial position the activities at the Institute changed course and the research undertaken there became engaged in medical genetics and social medicine instead of racial biology. The main argument for the establishment of the institute was that it would provide protection for the Swedish race. The norms and attitudes were more about the science and somewhat about nationalism, while what we now call racism did not seem to be included at all. The discourses about racial biology that have arisen have been maintained in society through the newspapers, as the recipients have been continuously fed with praiseworthy and warning words. This fits with Foucault’s reasoning and theory which he clarifies the fact that discourses are conditioned by how society discusses about something that over time has been an influence on how people are classified or treated by the newspapers that maintains it.

Narratives of extinction surrounding “primitive” peoples have long been a subject of historical study. There is however a gap with regards to researching the response of the so called “primitive” peoples themselves. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to examine the way in which the Sámi magazine Samefolkets egen tidning during the years 1918-1945 navigates the model of cultural hierarchy which defines the Sámi as a primitive people heading towards extinction. Drawing upon the theories of Johannes Fabian and Walter Mignolo the study finds that the magazine appropriates the model of cultural hierarchy by asserting the Sámi people not as a people of nature but as a people of culture capable of moving upwards in the hierarchy. The model of cultural hierarchy interacts with the strategies of the magazine in several ways. It is used to re-establish the coevalness of the Sámi as well as performatively developing Sámi identity through a self-proclaimed project of enlightenment. It also counters the narratives of extinction by stressing the unique cultural contribution of the Sámi to world history as well as using racial biology to scientifically disprove the supposed weakness of the Sámi. The use of racial biology is also a way of partaking in scientific language thus demonstrating the intellectual and cultural capabilities of the Sámi. The use of the model of cultural hierarchy also results in the magazine reproducing the idea of the primitive savage as well as adapting a paternalistic stance towards the “unenlightened” Sámi. In sum, the magazine tries to establish the Sámi as equals, politically and culturally, to the Swedes. Living together in the same place and, most importantly, in the same time. / Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning: Forskning om historiska diskussioner kring att naturfolk är dömda till undergång har länge gjorts på förtjänstfulla sätt. Det är dock ovanligt att studera hur de så kallade naturfolken uppfattar utsagorna om sin egen undergång. Ett av de folk som åsyftades av dessa utsagor var samerna. Syftet med denna uppsats är därför att undersöka hur Samefolkets egen tidning mellan 1918-1945 förhåller sig till dessa utsagor och till tanken om kulturella hierarkier överlag. Uppsatsen visar att tidningen inte väljer att utmana själva idén om kulturella hierarkier. Istället etablerar tidningen en egen tolkning av kulturell hierarki där alla världens folk har möjlighet att utvecklas och bidra till mänsklighetens kulturella utveckling. Denna övergripande förståelse används sedan för att förklara hur tidningen försöker bevisa att samer inte är ”frusna i tiden” utan att de är samtida och jämlika med svenskarna. Detta reflekteras också i att tidningen bedriver ett upplysningsarbete som ska bidra till samernas andliga fortskridande. Tidningen använder sig även av rasbiologi för att via den tidens vetenskap bevisa att samer inte är rasmässigt svaga. Detta tolkas också som ett sätt att använda ett vetenskapligt och legitimt språk vilket är tänkt att ge tidningens argument ökad tyngd för svenska öron. Allt detta innebär även att själva föreställningarna om primitiva och vilda naturfolk inte utmanas, dessa reproduceras av tidningen. Likaså vissa paternalistiska inställningar mot ”oupplysta samer”. Uppsatsen belyser således hur tidningen försöker etablera samerna som kulturellt och politiska jämlika svenskarna, som levandes på samma plats och i samma tid.

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<p>My goal with this thesis was to investigate how educational material in the subjects of history, geography and social studies relate to the fact that Sweden has a history marked by prejudice and racism.I have chosen to focus on four areas in the Swedish history that I think deserves some special attention, these four areas have been: the Swedish slave trade on the island of Saint Barthelemy in the eighteenth century, Swedish eugenics and oppression of the Sami people, forced sterilization services during the twentieth century and Sweden's aid and concessions to Nazi Germany during World War II. With these areas in focus I’ve studied three textbooks in the courses Geography A, Civics A and History A to se how they deal with prejudice and racism in the Swedish history.</p><p>The result I have come to is that none of the books addresses all four of the areas I’ve focused on. Even if the books are taken as a whole the image that they convey is not adequate. In the event that the four areas that I’ve focused on been mentioned the information have been scant and rarely, if ever, has Sweden been paired with phenomenons like racism, slavery, colonialism, eugenics, forced sterilization, etc. All these concepts (apart from racism) are treated in comparison to other countries and in some cases, even moral advice, or condemnations occurred in connection therewith. Racism as a phenomenon is not discussed in any of the books, creating a further gap in the history these books create. The consequence of this would be that the teaching teachers need to compensate for the shortcomings of these books to meet the guidelines and objectives governing documents set up. If such compensatory education does not take place there is a risk that the areas I have chosen to focus on will fall into oblivion and the lessons we can learn from history could be lost.</p>

My goal with this thesis was to investigate how educational material in the subjects of history, geography and social studies relate to the fact that Sweden has a history marked by prejudice and racism.I have chosen to focus on four areas in the Swedish history that I think deserves some special attention, these four areas have been: the Swedish slave trade on the island of Saint Barthelemy in the eighteenth century, Swedish eugenics and oppression of the Sami people, forced sterilization services during the twentieth century and Sweden's aid and concessions to Nazi Germany during World War II. With these areas in focus I’ve studied three textbooks in the courses Geography A, Civics A and History A to se how they deal with prejudice and racism in the Swedish history. The result I have come to is that none of the books addresses all four of the areas I’ve focused on. Even if the books are taken as a whole the image that they convey is not adequate. In the event that the four areas that I’ve focused on been mentioned the information have been scant and rarely, if ever, has Sweden been paired with phenomenons like racism, slavery, colonialism, eugenics, forced sterilization, etc. All these concepts (apart from racism) are treated in comparison to other countries and in some cases, even moral advice, or condemnations occurred in connection therewith. Racism as a phenomenon is not discussed in any of the books, creating a further gap in the history these books create. The consequence of this would be that the teaching teachers need to compensate for the shortcomings of these books to meet the guidelines and objectives governing documents set up. If such compensatory education does not take place there is a risk that the areas I have chosen to focus on will fall into oblivion and the lessons we can learn from history could be lost.

Stina Aronson (1892–1956) is a celebrated Swedish modernist who published twenty-five works during the first part of the 20th century. Her writings are considered to be progressive and ethical due to extensive feminist and eco-critical research. Aronson’s novel Hitom himlen(This Side of Heaven, 1946) captures the life in upper Northern Sweden, in the Torne Valley, during the beginning of 20th century. In this thesis, I examine the narrative by placing it in relation to the racial hierarchies permeating society during the initial decades of the 20th century. The Finnish-speaking minority living in the Torne Valley came to be considered racially different from the national majority, due to national and international race science – today understood as scientific racism– and anthropology. My analysis shows how the characters are racialized using such ideas as the Mongolian theory and the cephalic index. It is further made evident that the novel captures a perception claiming the so-called ‘Finns’ were of an inferior race. And further, the belief that a mixture of Swedish, Finnish and Sami blood had weakened the group genetically. The mixture of races was defined as a serious threat to the Swedish population, who was regarded as the whitest and purest population on earth. Aronson captures this belief of a future extinction by depicting the death and illness of the youngest generation in the novel. Furthermore, the main character, Emma Niskanpää, believes that she meets God during the church service at the yearly holiday Marie bebådelsedag. I argue though, that the man she encounters is a fictitious Herman Lundborg (1868–1943), the most prominent of the Swedish race biologists, who, in reality, repeatedly performed skull measurement during this celebration. Directly following on this encounter, the ”deaf-and-dumb” daughter of the family Renström is buried along with several others and Emma Niskanpää’s son falls ill with tuberculosis. In this way, the novel captures the racial surveys carried out on minority groups– surveys which are today considered a national trauma. In This Side of Heaven, Stina Aronson turns into literature a specific form of racism and a forgotten part of Swedish history as a pioneering country in the formulation of race hierarchies.

The use of encyclopedias has since their entry in Sweden, played a central role in communicating and defining knowledge to society. This essay examines the representation of peoples (race) in Africa, Asia and the Orient in encyclopedias between 1845-2020. The essay aims to explain and show how several selected concepts have changed in the encyclopedias’ descriptions over time in Sweden. The results show that the encyclopedias were highly influenced by racial biology and scientific racism the further back in time the encyclopedias were issued. People from Africa, Asia and the Orient were described with external characteristics and at times associated with different psychic characteristics. Through the representation of appearance, at times presented as different and foreign, one can see a construction between “we” and “the others”. The encyclopedias also made descriptions of people with generalizing derogatory concepts that were imbued by racism and dogmatic views on the different. Descriptions of peoples appearance and character traits were something that gradually disappeared over time.

This thesis examines the current methodological approaches to digital access and dissemination of eugenics archives. It looks in-depth at four institutions from around the world which provide some means of digital access to a specific eugenics collection that they control: the Wellcome Collection within the Wellcome Library in London, the Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement founded in part by the Cold Springs Laboratory in New York, the Canadian Eugenics Archive, and the State Institute for Race Biology at the Uppsala University Library Special Collections in Sweden. The complexity of archival methodology and thought has evolved over the course of the past few decades, with more and more institutions recognizing the historical bias of their collections and many working towards combating these biases to bridge knowledge gaps and provide more detailed and nuanced understanding of their materials. With the development of the internet, and the pressure for heritage institutions to turn towards more digital methods of dissemination of their collections, there has been fierce debate as to good practices towards implementing these digital means of access and dissemination. Collections which contain historically problematic materials, such as eugenics collections, can make digitization and digital methodologies particularly difficult. This thesis serves as a groundwork for the development of good institutional methodologies in terms of digitization of eugenics-related materials by comparing the available methodologies employed by four institutions holding materials which were particularly significant during the period of legally applied eugenics on their respective populations.

Participation as Pedagogy – Imagined Race and the Exhibit of Swedish Peoples-Types. This essay will analyse and give a deeper picture of the ”The Exhibit of Swedish People-Types” by focusing on the pedagogical ideals that formed the exhibit as an participatory media. The exhibit was led by the famous race-biologist Herman Lundborg and toured Sweden in 1919 displaying the racial constitution of the Swedish population using material gathered by the public itself. The exhibit has been described as an important tool in popularising eugenics in Swedish society during the early 20th century with the ambition of gaining funds to create the first race-biological institute and to influence policy-making. Nevertheless there has not been a single study which has focused solely on the exhibit and how the pedagogical ideals that permeated it affected the relation between the public and the media itself nor the political implications of this relation. I will show that the interactive participation enacted through the exhibit both defined a hierarchical relation between public and race-biological expertise, as well as it articulated a new “imagined community”, i.e., an “imagined race”. This participatory relation was not only key in creating the exhibit but also had implications on how the public should position itself and act in relation to society at large regarding eugenic matters. This gives me an opportunity to deepen our historical knowledge of the eugenics-movement and main-line racebiological networks in early 20 h century Swedish society. This essay also contribute to the history of participatory media and the popularisation of science.