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From the mid-nineteenth century and onwards, debates on urban public services became an integral part of municipal politics in Nordic towns. The industrial revolution came late in Nordic countries and the problem of how to integrate immigrants and factory workers into existing networks became paramount at the end of the century. This paper will discuss how municipal bodies tackled the problem of making the city accessible to new groups in the urban landscape. New forms of infrastructure had been introduced by private initiative: water, gas, electricity, tramways etc. In city councils and popular press, proponents of equal access argued that such services should be controlled and provided by municipal bodies. Their adversaries claimed that business operations were better run by private companies, and that municipal takeovers would only mean a larger burden for the tax-payers. The debates on how to improve and extend the reach of public services articulated new notions of community. The daily lives of women, children and the urban poor became a contested issue, and a new field for political solutions. Eventually, a future-oriented discourse became dominant where the solutions for today were expected to solve the problems of tomorrow as well. Egenintresset och det gemensamma bästa

While researchers within Sámi archaeology have dealt with issues closely related to postcolonial theory and critique since the 1970s onwards, this has rarely been done with explicit mention or coherent use of this theoretical complex. This somewhat paradoxical situation was addressed in a session at the 14th conference of the Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group at Stockholm University in April 2014, an initiative that eventually resulted in the present collection of articles. In this introduction we briefly present the historiographical and discursive background for the debates that are outlined in the following contributions. Special Issue: Arctic Anthropology, ISSN 0066-6939, Vol. 52, Issue 2.

Ingick i sessionen: Refugees versus/and state sovereignty - a historical approach.

The aim of the CLARIN Research Infrastructure and SWE-CLARIN is to facilitate for scholars in the humanities and social sciences to access primary data in the form of natural language, and to provide tools for exploring, annotating and analysing these data. This paper gives an overview of the resources and tools developed at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University planned to be made available within the SWE-CLARIN project. The paper also outlines our collaborations with neighbouring areas in the humanities and social sciences where these resources and tools will be put to use.

How, and in what ways, could early modern state formation have promoted the development of modern democratic institutions? The research project Shifting Regimes: Representation, Administrative Reform and Institutional Change in Early Modern Sweden propose to answer this question by studying the interaction between the political and the administrative spheres during regime shifts in Sweden, c. 1527–1810. The wider purpose is to analyze the agency behind institutional change by comparing the actions of political leaders with those of major administrative bodies. To study how key decision-makers acted to influence the organization of the state the project will focus on several “critical junctures”, or periods when the Swedish state experienced substantial change in a relatively short time. This paper presents preliminary findings from one of the case studies in the larger project: the political regime shift and its consequences in 1765–1766. The case study applies the concept of ‘state capacity’ to give a theoretical explanation for the regime changes in Sweden in the mid 1760s. Shifting Regimes: Representation, administrative reform and institutional change in early modern Sweden

In this paper I endeavour to explain the fact that the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, emerged the realm’s most powerful institution in the 18th century – an accomplishment only equalled by the British Parliament. I trace the roots to the success to the Riksdag of the 17th century and argue that during this century a political culture of cooperation became strongly entrenched in the assembly; furthermore I make the claim that constitutionalist ideas took roots even outside the Nobility, among the three Commoner estates (the estates of Clergy, Burghers and Peasants). It is at the same time true that the Commoners as well as the Nobility often expressed strong support for the rulers’ bids for more power. The estates were thus surprisingly flexible both with respect to with whom they cooperated, and in ideological outlook. This explains why Sweden was characterized by strong state, strong national representation, and strong rule of law. I argue that the Clergy and the Burghers played a crucial political role in the Riksdag that thwarted both royal and noble bids for supremacy. Furthermore, I compare the Swedish development with Britain’s during the same period.

Studies of non-ferrous metallurgy in the Viking Age, predominantly from casting activities, have chiefly looked at specialised production contexts, while less specialised production has rarely been discussed in any detail. As a consequence, we know very little about the organisation and context of production outside larger pre-urban/trading sites. The purpose of this article is to discuss the evidence of non-ferrous craft production at a range of sites within the region the Mälaren valley. It highlights that non-ferrous metallurgy was a widespread phenomenon during the Viking Age, but shows clear differences in the extent and context of the production. Metalworking Crafts in Context