Politiskt aktörskap i en omvandlingstid : Sverige 1880–1930

Abstract

In the anthology Politiskt aktörskap i en omvandlingstid the reader meets ten people who in one way or another acted politically in the decades around the turn of the last century. Members of Parliament such as Nelly Thüring and Carl Lindhagen are studied alongside more or less free intellectuals such as Anton Nyström, Adrian Molin and Elin Wägner, professors such as Pontus Fahlbeck, and activists such as Martin Andersson, Karin Hollman-Adamsson and Nils Adamsson. The many-sided feminist Anna Bugge Wicksell also appears here, mainly as a diplomat. These people belonged to different political camps and fought for different ideals, but what they have in common is that they tried to make their mark in a complex and changing political world. The focus of the anthology is thus twofold: on the one hand, it focuses on change itself, by showing how the position and situation of these individuals changed, or how they reacted to and interpreted social change. On the other hand, there is also a focus on the agency itself, the type of action that the individuals took to try to turn the policy in the desired direction. With regard to agency, the anthology reveals how characteristic it was for politically active people during this period to move between different action positions and contexts, such as parliament, the media, universities, business, or organizations and communities at the grassroots level. Here the anthology takes as its starting point Jan-Werner Müller's concept of "in-between figures" and biography studies. Furthermore, the introduction and conclusion of the book include a discussion of the research tradition of political history, departing from texts by Max Weber and Susan Pedersen, and related to contemporary Swedish research.