This article addresses Marxism and its relationship to human rights in a contemporary context. Our main argument is that universal human rights, as formulated, e.g., in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), cannot be fully realised under capitalism, but that a politics defending and promoting such rights has the potential to contribute to the advancement of internationalist, working class politics furthering political emancipation within the current order, and even to contribute to a socialist critique of the capitalist mode of production aiming for human emancipation.

The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created, how it changes, and how it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness, tracing its creation, its changing formation, and its power to privilege and protect people who are perceived as white. Whiteness, author Martin Lund explains, is not one single idea but a shifting, overarching category, a flexible cluster of historically, culturally, and geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness, from white privilege to white fragility; the intersections of whiteness with race, class, and gender; whiteness in popular culture; and such ideas as “colorblindness” and “reverse racism,” which, he argues, actually uphold whiteness.

Lund shows why it is important to keep talking and thinking about whiteness. The word “whiteness,” he writes, doesn't describe; it conjures something into being. Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies and citing a range of examples (primarily from the United States and Sweden), Lund argues that whiteness is continually manufactured and sustained through language, laws, policies, science, and representations in media and popular culture. It is often positioned as normative, even universal. And despite its innocuous-seeming manifestations in sitcoms and superheroes, whiteness is always in the service of racial domination.

In just a little over 100 years, children's living conditions together with the very notion of childhood have changed dramatically in the Western world. Child labor has been banned and institutions for care and schooling have become the primary life world of children rather than the farm and the household. Children are today perceived as individuals in their own right, as maturing through various developmental stages, and as having certain undeniable social and legal rights in relation to both parents and society. This development can of course be thought of in terms of humanitarian progress. But alongside this development we can also observe an increase in the monitoring and governing of children's lives, to the point that childhood can be thought of as ‘the most intensely governed sector of personal existence’ (Rose, 1999: 123). Against the backdrop of humanistic development on the one hand and an increasing governing of childhood on the other, this chapter explores the historical transformations of childhood through the lens of a few overarching themes: industrialization and urbanization, children's path into public life and citizenship, changed notions of the child's nature and being, and the scientification of the child.

Antologin visar nyansrikedomen inom det ämne som i vid mening kallas historia. Avståndet mellan texterna kan tyckas vara stort, då det rör sig om skildringar av hur vikingar gestaltas på museum, den svenska adelns förändrade identitet under 1800-talet, hur unga flyktingar i Sverige idag formulerar sin historiska självförståelse i sociala medier och analys av socialdemokraters memoarer som historieskrivning. Vidare berörs materialförvaltares professionalisering inom elitishockey, kulturarv och reggaeturism i Jamaica samt volontärorganisationers förändring till politiska rörelser i flyktingmottagandet 2015. Det gemensamma temat för antologin är frågor om hur individer eller kollektiv formar sin identitet i relation till de temporala sammanhang som de skriver in sig själva i.

I antologin “Vi såg sammanbrottet” berättar en grupp svenska och danska forskare om sina erfarenheter från resor, studiebesök och fältarbete i Kaukasusområdet under Sovjetväldets sista decennium och sammanbrott. Kaukasus var, liksom Baltikum, ett utkantsområde i Sovjet­unionen, men just dessa två skulle få stor betydelse i den reformprocess som Gorbatjov påbörjade 1985 och som sex år senare resulterade i sovjetstatens upplösning.

I sina bidrag berättar författarna om de nya självständighetsrörelserna i Kaukasus och ökade spänningar med Moskva, om hur de sovjetiska strukturerna på olika nivåer bröts ned och nationella kulturer fick ökad betydelse. De skildrar hur förmoderna traditioner fortfarande spelar roll trots sovjetisk modernisering, beskriver kulturella särdrag och likheter och iakttar även fördjupade etniska motsättningar. Artiklarna är baserade på material insamlat under resor och fältarbeten i både södra och norra Kaukasus.

Medverkande är statsvetaren Ib Faurby, kulturgeografen Lars Funch Hansen, minoritets­forskaren Helen Krag, slavisten  Märta-Lisa Magnusson, historikern och iranologen Søren Theisen och lingvisten Karina Vamling.

Although digitization has become a word that is almost synonymous with democratization and citizen participation, many museums and other cultural heritage institutions have found it difficult to live up to this political vision of inclusivity and access for all. In Sweden, political ambitions to digitize the cultural heritage sector are high. Yet, institutions still struggle to reconcile their previous practices with the new technologies and ethical guidelines for collecting and curating material. This presenation discuss, with a collection of Holocaust stories that has not been digitized as an example, some of the the current gaps that exists between cultural heritage practice and government policy on digitization, open access, and research ethics. In the presentation I will also discuss some suggestions on how these issues can be resolved by reimagining digitization as transformation.

In 2017, social scientists Ilker Ataç and Sara de Jong described the emergence of a new type of movement in Europe following the 2015 refugee crisis. According to the authors, these ‘new refugee aid movements’ are characterised by the way in which they combine humanitarian and political work with refugees. This combination sets them apart from conventional humanitarian NGOs (e.g. Caritas and the Red Cross) and social movements (e.g. the people’s campaign against nuclear power).

This study examines if two Swedish organisations, Refugees Welcome to Malmö and Kontrapunkt, can be understood as part of this European trend. It is based on a thematical reading (following Hunt, Benford and Snow’s theory of social movement identity) of previously conducted interviews with movement volunteers. The main result of this study is that the investigated organisations share several features with the new type of movement. These shared features include a flexible way of working with refugees and the belief in the need for a political solution to the humanitarian crisis. Still, smaller differences are also identified. Refugees Welcome to Malmö, for example, chose to co-operate with local authorities, setting them apart from the European trend where the new movements often pursue autonomy from public authorities. Ultimately, this study calls for further investigation into an important period of modern Swedish migration history.

Can walking trails be understood not only as routes to history and heritage, but also as heritage in and of themselves? The paper explores the articulation of trails as a distinct landscape and mobility heritage, bridging the nature-culture divide and building on physical and intellectual movements over time. The authors aim to contribute to a better understanding of the geography of trails and trailscapes by analysing the emergence of the Swedish-Norwegian trail Finnskogleden. The trail is situated in the border region spanning the former county of Hedmark in present-day Innlandet County, south-eastern Norway, and Värmland County in mid-western Sweden, a forested area where Finnish-speaking immigrants settled from the 16th century to the early 20th century. Archives, literature, interviews, and field visits were used to analyse the emergence and governance of the trail. The main finding is the importance of continuous articulation work by local and regional stakeholders, through texts, maps, maintenance, and mobility. In conclusion, the Finn forest trailscape and its mobility heritage can be seen as an articulation of territory over time, a multilayered process drawing on various environing technologies, making the trail a transformative part of a trans-border political geography.

This article examines the role of equipment managers in Swedish male elite ice hockey. This is in relation to a major shift in terms of professionalization and commercialization that has occured within elite ice hockey as a whole during the past 40-50 years. The article themes are identified through an investigation of how equipment managers are portraited in Swedish media.

Additionally, in order to deepen the historical perspective, the article also features an interview with Anders Weiderstål, a former eqipment manager for Team Sweden. Said interview is analysed according to theories of professionalization and it reveals how both the daily work and the role within the team has changed. From being "another team member", "equipment manager" has become a professional role with a certain working language and a position of power within the team. However, many equipment managers still manifest values that can be traced back to former, more amateur-oriented ideals, which give them a unique position among players and leaders in today's elite ice hockey.

This article describes and analyses by whom, in what ways and with what consequences migrant reception was performed in Malmö during the period 1945–1970 and how this changed over time. Inspired by Carol Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ (wpr) approach, the article analyses the shifting problematisations of migrant reception in Malmö, and argues that there were two decisive shifts in Malmö’s migrant reception policy. With the help of Robert Miles’ concept of racialisation, the article shows that different migrant groups were racialised in different ways, depending on how they were depicted by the Swedish society. We also identify a gendered racialisation as women and men were racialised differently.

When you think of comics, you probably think of New York, too. And that’s no accident. The city has often been the setting for writers and stories in this genre, in part because it was for so many decades a central node for segments of the industry.

In this Insiders event, you’ll learn more about this history, in conversation with Martin Lund, an historian at Malmö University in Sweden, whose research explores the representation of New York City in comics and the ‘special relationship’ between NYC and comics, so often suggested in fandom, pop culture, and scholarship.

 Beyond the depictions of New York City in classic comics, Lund will discuss more recent graphic novels such as Unterzakhn by Leela Corman, which tells the story of two immigrant sisters growing up in the Lower East Side in the early 1900s, 7 Miles a Second by artist David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, and Marguerite Van Cooke, which depicts the artist’s childhood living on the streets of Manhattan and adulthood living with AIDS, and I Am Alfonso Jones, which deals with the theme of police brutality and justice.

In this talk:

• Sample some of the many different ways New York City has been represented in comics.
• Explore how complex the deceptively simple-looking comics medium can be in its uses of the city.
• Learn what different representations of NYC in comics can say about how the city is perceived in different contexts.

How is an elite sports education introduced in a political context like 1970s Sweden, where egalitarian ideas about education and sport for all were the norm and anything hinting at special treatment for talented youths was potentially controversial? This article analyzes the history of how Sweden designed and implemented a nationwide system for elite sport education, and how different actors negotiated the balance between elite sport and education. The Swedish sport schools were initiated in 1972 to solve the issue with the growing importance of elite sport, in parallel with the increasing importance of upper-secondary education. One innovation in these schools was the introduction of a school subject called Special sport. Starting with two schools and 80 students in the early 1970s, there are now more than 50 schools and 1200 students. Since the very beginning, these schools have had a dual mission – produce more and better elite athletes and give sport talents a full education to fall back on should they not become professional athletes. The introduction of sport schools in 1970s Sweden was part of a broader sportification process and has in some sports become the only realistic path toward an elite career.

Superheroes are having a moment. It seems like they’re everywhere. Not just in our comics and our screens, but in the general, social and cultural, air we breathe. Social and political events and actors are often reframed with superheroic imagery, and social, cultural, economic, and political actors seem increasingly to call on images and tropes that connote superhero generic formations to stake their position on an issue or to claim how what they’re doing is right and good and just. This paper considers how the figure of the superhero can work to naturalize political positions and to make contingent values seem “natural” rather historical, and the effects this can have.

Artikeln ger en översikt av huvuddragen i den nya vågen av svensk arbetarlitteratur och hur denna behandlats i den litteraturvetenskapliga forskningen.

Var i Malmö träffades män för att ha sex med varandra på 1910-talet? Vad gjorde bögar och lesbiska för att skapa uppmärksamhet på Folkfesten i Pildammsparken under 1970-talet? Hur upplevdes ankomsten till Malmö för Sveriges första homosexuella anhöriginvandrare? Vilka var de hetaste queerpunkbanden på malmöscenen under det härjiga 2010-talet? 

Dessa och många andra frågor får sina svar i Queera historier från Malmö. Här samlas 20 berättelser om människor, organisationer och händelser som på olika sätt expanderar, utmanar och skriver om stadens historia. Det är en bok om det förflutna, sprungen ur samtiden som blandar akademiska skribenter med aktivister i dagens HBTQI-organisationer. Med avstamp i samtiden och den nära dåtiden söker sig texterna bakåt genom decennierna och århundradena, då HBTQI-liv var förbjudet, sjukdomsklassat och stigmatiserat. Fram tills nu har det saknats en historieskrivning om HBTQI-liv som geografiskt berör Malmö och södra Sverige, varför boken gör ett banbrytande arbete av synliggörande.

Det här är en bok som väljer det spretiga och motstridiga framför en enhetlig och konfliktdöljande historieskrivning, i fast förvissning att sådana berättelser förmår fånga mer och kanske också ge en mer sann bild av det förgångna. Det blir en bok som fångar Malmös vibrerande aktiva och mångfacetterade HBTQI-rörelser i all dess mångfald och brokighet.

On 29 June 1958, Sweden played Brazil in the World Cup final in men’s football in Stockholm. Even though the Swedish team lost 5–2 the players were celebrated as heroes. However, the Swedish Football Association (SvFF) argued that players in Swedish clubs needed to train more and differently. What followed was a process of professionalization and scientization of Swedish coaching, a process that had begun a decade earlier in endurance sports. Soon, physiologists were involved with testing, evaluating and monitoring athletes, designing training setups, and even team selection. They used the latest scientific theories, technologies, and tests to make training and coaching less about experience and more about comparability and evidentiality. This ‘scientific turn’ in Swedish sports from the 1950s onwards was part of a larger rationalization of Swedish society in which science in general, particularly physiology, played a major role. It co-evolved with a growing participation by women and a reinterpretation of gender roles. We argue that, while traditionally based on experiential knowledge and personal experience, Swedish coaching went through a sportification process that made it more specialized, rationalized, and professionalized. In the end, it became an ideal to listen to what science says.

Vilka uttryck tog sig modernitetens födelse i Sverige? Hur ser förbindelsen ut mellan folkmord och kultur? Och hur återskapar historikern förlorade historiska erfarenheter?

I Moderniteten som framgång och tragedi undersöker tjugosex forskare ett motsägelsefullt och dynamiskt 1900-tal. Utifrån skilda perspektiv behandlar antologins författare ämnen som kulturhistoria, judaistik, minnesforskning och historieskrivandet som konst och metod.

Med det svenska folkhemmets skenbara idyll och det stormiga Europas komplexa verklighet i fokus besvarar den här antologin frågor om vad moderniteten inneburit för människan som individ och samhällsvarelse. Och vad det betyder att vara modern.

Ett lokalt drama och en tragedi som genast fortplantades, och blev en konfliktfylld nationell vridningspunkt i en händelsekedja som skulle förändra villkoren på svensk arbetsmarknad och kasta om dittillsvarande politiska mönster och lojaliteter i svensk inrikespolitik. Händelsen gav eko, levde vidare, också utanför landets gränser, och ställde viktiga frågor: om maktens anspråk och gränser för att upprätthålla ordning, om vems ordning och på vems villkor, om medborgarnas förtroende och om statens och myndigheternas neutralitet i sociala konflikter. Dessa är fundamentala och principiella frågor för ett samhälle att ställa och har ständigt återkommit i debatter, skapat spänningar och laddade konflikter inför öppen ridå. Ådalen är en dåvarande, en närvarande och en ständigt aktuell historia.

The research output in the field of sport and environment have increased dramatically over the last decade, from something pursued only by a few enthusiasts, to an integral part of both research and education in sport science and sport management. Now, Brian Wilson and Brad Millington contribute with a new anthology as part of Emerald Publishing’s Research in the Sociology of Sport book series: Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures. The second part of the title is important as it indicates what sets this book apart from many earlier publications on the topic. 

This article explores, through group-interviews and in terms of peer-culture, the ways in which pupils negotiate experiences from school-excursions to three heritage sites, Vadstena Castle, a former Royal Castle connected to the royal dynasty of Vasa; Witches’ forest, the place for interrogation by torture and executions of nine women, accused of witchcraft in 1617, and Linköping Cathedral Ages at the visitor programs “Middle Ages in the Cathedral”. The article, which is part of a larger project on learning processes and historical sites, investigates how pupils collectively load the heritage site with values reflected in immersion by affections, and what significance immersion of affections can have on the pupils’ process of stock of knowledge. The following research questions are asked: What kind of affections are evoked? Which situations and circumstances during the visit at the heritage site, mould impressions and immersion in the collective recalling?

By drawing on affection, peer culture and critical heritage studies’ verb “heritaging”, we have studied how the pupils collectively load the heritage sites with values reflected in immersion by affections, and what significance immersion of affections have on the pupils’ process of historical understanding. To understand how the heritage site in terms of a material and physical place loaded with narratives of the past affects the children, the analysis aimed to explore under what circumstances the immersion took place.

The article localize three situations that led to surprise and thereby friction between the expected (the stock of knowledge) and what was experienced at the site (the immediate experience), namely conflicts caused by expectations and experiences at the site, conflict caused by replicas in relation to originals, and finally conflict between lived experiences and insights at the site.

Den här avhandlingen utgår från följande problemställning. Hur kunde adeln, en grupp i sådan hög grad påverkad av det äldre samhällets värld avprivilegier, börd och ståndsuppdelning, fortsätta att existera även under ochefter 1800- och 1900-talets moderna genombrott? Detta nya, framväxandesamhälles vägledande principer utgjordes ju snarare av sådant som jämlikhet, personlig förtjänst och tanken om medborgarskap, i mångt och mycket motsatsen till de ideal som tidigare varit förhärskande. I avhandlingenanläggs ett kulturhistoriskt perspektiv för att studera detta historiska problem, med utgångspunkten att det förflutna var av avgörande betydelse för att denadliga identiteten kunde upprätthållas efter ståndssamhällets upplösning. Dess syfte är att undersöka hur den svenska adelns kollektiva identitetupprätthölls och förändrades under perioden från det första adelsmötet, år 1869, till Riddarhusets 350-årsjubileeum, år 1976, genom att analysera denadliga minneskulturen. Källmaterialet som analyseras är huvudsakligenhämtat från adelns kollektiva verksamhet, i form av protokoll från periodensadelsmöten och medlemstidningen Arte et Marte. Avhandlingens teoretiska utgångspunkter är hämtade från memory studies-fältet. Avhandlingen består av tre delar, som studerar varsin aspektav den adliga minneskulturen: den performativa, den kommunikativa,respektive minneskulturens fixpunkter. Genom att analysera en rad olikafenomen relaterade till adeln, under mer än 100 år: statyer, historieböcker, jubileumsfester, privilegier, namnskyddslagar, herrgården och utdöendet avadliga ätter, undersöks gruppens minneskultur och den föränderliga adliga kollektiva identiteten

In the spring of 1826, the young Danish naval officer Carl Irminger and two of his friends sailed with a cargo ship from Copenhagen to Iceland to stay there during the summer. This article is based on Irminger's unpublished travel diary. Irminger and his friends blended in with the local elite, which provided them with equipment and contacts to travel. Their journeys out from Reykjavik were adventurous and depended on local guides and the hospitality of residents along the way. The tales of hardships during the travels, combined with contacts established during the trip, became important credentials in Irminger's future career. He was hired as an adjutant to the Danish prince, and the narrative of his summer in Iceland ignited a royal expedition there in 1834, of which Irminger was to be the trip leader. Irminger's diary reflects a broader shift from Enlightenment exploration reporting into Romantic travel writing, with more emotional and aesthetic emphasis. His journey was a forerunner of the nature tourism that eventually was to sprout in Iceland.

This chapter examines the Jewish public discourse on the Holocaust and the survivors in Sweden during the first decade after the war. The author concludes that there was no silence surrounding the Holocaust in the Swedish-Jewish press. On the contrary, the press became an important arena for various discussions about the Holocaust. However, the author also identifies silences, or rather the absence of coherent narratives concerning Swedish-Jewish heroes and heroines, or actions taken by the Swedish-Jewish community on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Europe as well as concerning Jewish survivors in Sweden, especially women, who were not commonly present in the two main Swedish-Jewish publications. This is surprising, considering that most of the survivors in Sweden were indeed women.

This article aims to analyse the changes in migration regimes in Sweden over the period 1739–1982. We have chosen to divide this into four periods where each is characterized as a specific regime: the pre-industrial period (1739–1860), the laissez faire period (1860–1932), the rising ambitions period (1932–1951) and the Rehn-Meidner period (1951–1982). These four periods reveal different approaches held by the state regarding labour migration and housing. During the pre-industrial period, rules and regulations hindered mobility and aimed to keep the labour force in agriculture. During the laissez faire period, migration increased, but construction and housing was largely left to the market. During the rising ambitions period, a laissez faire approach was maintained towards migration, but both the government and non-profit organizations became increasingly involved in housing. During the Rehn-Meidner period, internal migration was stimulated, and in the course of ten years, one million homes were built with government support. The differences between the periods are not clear-cut. There were dual and contradictory ideas and policies during each period. This duality provides an important theoretical starting point for this study. Other significant starting points are the long-term perspective taken and the idea that these periods can be analysed as regimes. 

Women still do the lion's share of raising children and cleaning the house. It's time for that to change. Review of Sally Howard's The Home Stretch (2020) and Helen McCarthy's Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (2020)