Books by Erik Bodensten
Nordens historiker är en festskrift tillägnad Harald Gustafsson, professor i historia vid Lunds u... more Nordens historiker är en festskrift tillägnad Harald Gustafsson, professor i historia vid Lunds universitet. Boken samlar forskare från hela Norden och visar på förtjänsterna med att skriva historia utifrån ett gränsöverskridande nordiskt perspektiv. Detta arbetssätt har varit kännetecknande för Harald Gustafssons forskargärning och inspirerat de medverkande författarna att prova nya vägar.
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The Mainspring of Politics: Party Narratives and the Logic of Moral Politics in the Age of Libert... more The Mainspring of Politics: Party Narratives and the Logic of Moral Politics in the Age of Liberty
This thesis examines the moral conflict permeating the politics of Sweden’s Age of Liberty around 1740 – a conflict that also structured the politics of the time in relation to a particular political logic based on moral. This logic was based on the absolute and normatively immutable nature of the social order, but also on a number of deep pre-modern experiences and expectations of man as unable to overcome his corrupt nature. This logic structured the political polemics through a metanarrative of how the citizens, who had been entrusted to maintain and defend the fragile moral social order, over time came to be morally corrupted; resulting in them instead starting to tear down said order. The moral of the narrative was that those citizens still virtuous must identify, reintegrate and, if necessary, oust the immoral ones, before they themselves were corrupted and before the order was completely torn apart. This logic led to the politics of the time being characterized by mistrust, concerns regarding dissimulation and a high level of conflict.
The two party narratives studied in this thesis, using a method of narrative analysis, represent two versions of this metanarrative. In connection to Reinhart Koselleck, I argue that this political logic based on moral must be understood as distinctly pre-modern and fundamentally different from modern politics, which was instead structured in relation to various competing social visions. The analysis shows that the party narratives were periodized in a pre-modern, circular and past manner. The thesis is a contribution to three different fields of research studying the early modern period: citizenship and virtue; views on mankind and society, with a particular focus on Lutheran and republican notions; the party politics and politicization of the Age of Liberty. A variety of different kinds of materials (e.g., handwritten pamphlets, libels, parliamentary speeches, sermons, newspapers) are examined in the thesis.
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Articles and chapters by Erik Bodensten
Gender, Materiality, and Politics: Essays on the making of power, 2022
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Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 2021
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Scandinavian Journal of History, 2021
This article concerns the societal history of potato knowledge in early modern Sweden. Focusing o... more This article concerns the societal history of potato knowledge in early modern Sweden. Focusing on the communication process, it analyses when, how, why, and which type of knowledge of the potato was communicated and ultimately experienced a societal breakthrough in early modern Sweden. The article shows that knowledge of the potato was transformed as it crossed social, spatial, and media boundaries. The breakthrough––which only came in 1749–50––was not the result of a linear, cumulative diffusion process dating from the initial knowledge intervention in the 1650s; instead, it was the result of a particular knowledge network, long devoted to promoting the potato, finally gaining influence over important knowledge institutions, thus making mass communication possible. In the 1720s and 1730s, this network had redefined the potato in the context of agriculture and especially in relation to the phenomenon of famine and crop failure. In the subsequent period, this revised knowledge became increasingly relevant to Swedish society, as the elite became ever more concerned with food security, population policy, and agricultural and fiscal reforms. Finally, following a severe crop failure in the 1740s, political support for a broad knowledge intervention was secured.
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Subsidies, diplomacy, and state formation in Europe, 1494–1789: Economies of allegiance, eds. Svante Norrhem and Erik Thomson (Lund: Lund University Press, 2020), 2020
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Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge (eds. Johan Östling, Erling Sandmo, David Larsson Heidenblad, Anna Nilsson Hammar and Kari H. Nordberg), 2018
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Nordens historiker. En vänbok till Harald Gustafsson (red. Erik Bodensten, Kajsa Brilkman, David Larsson Heidenblad & Hanne Sanders), 2018
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Förmoderna offentligheter. Arenor och uttryck för politisk debatt 1550–1830 (red. Leif Runefelt & Oskar Sjöström), 2014
Historical research has described every-day life in the Early Modern period as being part of a ki... more Historical research has described every-day life in the Early Modern period as being part of a kind of permanent social public sphere in which honour and reputation were essential ingredients. The aim of this essay is to show how these concepts of honour and reputation constituted, not only social life, but also political life, through a public culture of honour. By studying the rich body of political literature of the early Age of Liberty through this lens, it becomes clear that this culture of honour played an important role for the overall transformation of the Swedish political public sphere at the time.
By focusing on the oral character of the written sources, this essay analyses the political, defamatory and libellous pamphlets in the public sphere of the 1730´s and 40´s. Despite the fact that few anonymous authors were identified and convicted, the empirical results suggest that the political actors, who were the objects of the public assaults, were drawn into a public debate through a moral and social obligation to defy the allegations and defend their honour, effectively by responding in a similar offensive manner while at the same time accentuating their honour. Voluntarily or involuntarily, and regardless of whether the insults were aimed at men or women this made all involved actors conform to the normative rules of the public sphere, thereby following the patterns played out in the social sphere.
Although the political actors may have refused to accept the legitimacy of this political interaction, this essay shows that they were all in fact acting on a stage—ruled by honour—and that they could not ignore the fact that an illegitimate domestic—or a threatening foreign—public were taking an increasing interest in this interaction. Politics, and the public culture of honour that made up its epicentre, became a public concern that an increasing number of people identified themselves as being part of.
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Book reviews by Erik Bodensten
Scandia 87:1, 2021
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Scandia, 2020
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Scandia, 2011
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Papers by Erik Bodensten
This thesis examines the moral conflict permeating the politics of Sweden’s Age of Liberty around... more This thesis examines the moral conflict permeating the politics of Sweden’s Age of Liberty around 1740 – a conflict that also structured the politics of the time in relation to a particular political logic based on moral. This logic was based on the absolute and normatively immutable nature of the social order, but also on a number of deep pre-modern experiences and expectations of man as unable to overcome his corrupt nature. This logic structured the political polemics through a metanarrative of how the citizens, who had been entrusted to maintain and defend the fragile moral social order, over time came to be morally corrupted; resulting in them instead starting to tear down said order. The moral of the narrative was that those citizens still virtuous must identify, reintegrate and, if necessary, oust the immoral ones, before they themselves were corrupted and before the order was completely torn apart. This logic led to the politics of the time being characterized by mistrust, c...
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... Search within this text. Andreas Hellerstedt: Ödets teater: Ödesföreställningar i Sverige vid... more ... Search within this text. Andreas Hellerstedt: Ödets teater: Ödesföreställningar i Sverige vid 1700-talets början. By Av Kyrre Kverndokk. Log on. ... Av Kyrre Kverndokk. f. 1972, Ph.d. 2007, post.doc. ved Institutt for kulturstudier og orientalske språk, Universitetet i Oslo (UiO). ht/2010/ ...
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Books by Erik Bodensten
This thesis examines the moral conflict permeating the politics of Sweden’s Age of Liberty around 1740 – a conflict that also structured the politics of the time in relation to a particular political logic based on moral. This logic was based on the absolute and normatively immutable nature of the social order, but also on a number of deep pre-modern experiences and expectations of man as unable to overcome his corrupt nature. This logic structured the political polemics through a metanarrative of how the citizens, who had been entrusted to maintain and defend the fragile moral social order, over time came to be morally corrupted; resulting in them instead starting to tear down said order. The moral of the narrative was that those citizens still virtuous must identify, reintegrate and, if necessary, oust the immoral ones, before they themselves were corrupted and before the order was completely torn apart. This logic led to the politics of the time being characterized by mistrust, concerns regarding dissimulation and a high level of conflict.
The two party narratives studied in this thesis, using a method of narrative analysis, represent two versions of this metanarrative. In connection to Reinhart Koselleck, I argue that this political logic based on moral must be understood as distinctly pre-modern and fundamentally different from modern politics, which was instead structured in relation to various competing social visions. The analysis shows that the party narratives were periodized in a pre-modern, circular and past manner. The thesis is a contribution to three different fields of research studying the early modern period: citizenship and virtue; views on mankind and society, with a particular focus on Lutheran and republican notions; the party politics and politicization of the Age of Liberty. A variety of different kinds of materials (e.g., handwritten pamphlets, libels, parliamentary speeches, sermons, newspapers) are examined in the thesis.
Articles and chapters by Erik Bodensten
By focusing on the oral character of the written sources, this essay analyses the political, defamatory and libellous pamphlets in the public sphere of the 1730´s and 40´s. Despite the fact that few anonymous authors were identified and convicted, the empirical results suggest that the political actors, who were the objects of the public assaults, were drawn into a public debate through a moral and social obligation to defy the allegations and defend their honour, effectively by responding in a similar offensive manner while at the same time accentuating their honour. Voluntarily or involuntarily, and regardless of whether the insults were aimed at men or women this made all involved actors conform to the normative rules of the public sphere, thereby following the patterns played out in the social sphere.
Although the political actors may have refused to accept the legitimacy of this political interaction, this essay shows that they were all in fact acting on a stage—ruled by honour—and that they could not ignore the fact that an illegitimate domestic—or a threatening foreign—public were taking an increasing interest in this interaction. Politics, and the public culture of honour that made up its epicentre, became a public concern that an increasing number of people identified themselves as being part of.
Book reviews by Erik Bodensten
Papers by Erik Bodensten
This thesis examines the moral conflict permeating the politics of Sweden’s Age of Liberty around 1740 – a conflict that also structured the politics of the time in relation to a particular political logic based on moral. This logic was based on the absolute and normatively immutable nature of the social order, but also on a number of deep pre-modern experiences and expectations of man as unable to overcome his corrupt nature. This logic structured the political polemics through a metanarrative of how the citizens, who had been entrusted to maintain and defend the fragile moral social order, over time came to be morally corrupted; resulting in them instead starting to tear down said order. The moral of the narrative was that those citizens still virtuous must identify, reintegrate and, if necessary, oust the immoral ones, before they themselves were corrupted and before the order was completely torn apart. This logic led to the politics of the time being characterized by mistrust, concerns regarding dissimulation and a high level of conflict.
The two party narratives studied in this thesis, using a method of narrative analysis, represent two versions of this metanarrative. In connection to Reinhart Koselleck, I argue that this political logic based on moral must be understood as distinctly pre-modern and fundamentally different from modern politics, which was instead structured in relation to various competing social visions. The analysis shows that the party narratives were periodized in a pre-modern, circular and past manner. The thesis is a contribution to three different fields of research studying the early modern period: citizenship and virtue; views on mankind and society, with a particular focus on Lutheran and republican notions; the party politics and politicization of the Age of Liberty. A variety of different kinds of materials (e.g., handwritten pamphlets, libels, parliamentary speeches, sermons, newspapers) are examined in the thesis.
By focusing on the oral character of the written sources, this essay analyses the political, defamatory and libellous pamphlets in the public sphere of the 1730´s and 40´s. Despite the fact that few anonymous authors were identified and convicted, the empirical results suggest that the political actors, who were the objects of the public assaults, were drawn into a public debate through a moral and social obligation to defy the allegations and defend their honour, effectively by responding in a similar offensive manner while at the same time accentuating their honour. Voluntarily or involuntarily, and regardless of whether the insults were aimed at men or women this made all involved actors conform to the normative rules of the public sphere, thereby following the patterns played out in the social sphere.
Although the political actors may have refused to accept the legitimacy of this political interaction, this essay shows that they were all in fact acting on a stage—ruled by honour—and that they could not ignore the fact that an illegitimate domestic—or a threatening foreign—public were taking an increasing interest in this interaction. Politics, and the public culture of honour that made up its epicentre, became a public concern that an increasing number of people identified themselves as being part of.