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Review (English): Johan Samuelsson, Läroverken och progressivismen: Perspektiv på historieundervisningens praktik och policy 1920–1950, Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2021, 290pp.

Pollenanalyser har länge gjorts för att få en uppfattning om förflutna vegetationer. Men att återskapa olika miljöer med hjälp av pollen är svårt på grund av en rad olika faktorer. I Hemavan i norra Sverige har ett pollenprov tagits, vilket gör att det går att utforska möjligheterna huruvida det går att rekonstruera vegetationen där eller inte. För att försöka rekonstruera vegetationen kommer två metoder att användas, en kvalitativ beskrivande rekonstruktion samt en som är teoretiskt och baseras på Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA). Den kvalitativa beskrivande rekonstruktionen resulterade i fyra vegetationskartor under olika skeden från pollenprovet i Hemavan. Den teoretiska rekonstruktionen producerade inga konkreta resultat än hur en hypotetisk vegetationsrekonstruktion kan genomföras med LRA och geografiska informationssystem (GIS). Detta ledde till att det ansågs att den kvalitativa beskrivande rekonstruktionen var bättre lämpad för området i Hemavan, men även att det finns potential att utveckla den teoretiska LRA metoden. 

Climate variability, such as ambient temperature, is crucial for infants' vulnerability to infectious diseases. However, little is known about how climate variability affects infectious disease mortality among infants in high mortality settings. We investigate the association between ambient temperature, seasonality and cause-specific infant mortality. Parish register data from the Sundsvall region in Northern Sweden covering the period 1868-1892 were used in combination with daily temperature data from Härnösand. Mortality due to water- and food-born diseases, airborne infectious diseases, and other causes were modelled as a function of temperature exposure in the previous 14 days using time-series analysis. We found that airborne infectious disease mortality was not related to cold temperatures but rather to seasonality, and that the summer mortality peak due to water- and foodborne infections were associated with high temperatures and not with seasonality. 

Ce working paper examine le rôle historique des multinationales dans la mise en place d’une gouvernance environnementale internationale. En s'appuyant sur de nombreux fonds d’archives, en particulier ceux de la Chambre de Commerce Internationale (CCI), l'objectif de ce working paper est de montrer que les organisations patronales internationales, en particulier la CCI, ont joué un rôle déterminant dans la transformation de la gouvernance environnementale mondiale entre la Conférence des Nations Unies sur l'environnement humain à Stockholm en 1972 et le Sommet de la Terre à Rio en 1992. La CCI, qui avait été mise à l'écart lors des débats à Stockholm, a progressivement réussi à s'imposer comme un partenaire clé des Nations Unies et à introduire, voire imposer une vision libérale de l'environnement qui mettait l'accent sur la croissance économique, les forces du marché, le libre-échange et l'autorégulation des entreprises comme instruments de la gouvernance environnementale. Alors que le débat environnemental à l'époque de la conférence de Stockholm en 1972 était centré sur la notion de limites à la croissance, nous constatons que la CCI a activement contribué, durant les deux décennies suivantes, à la définition du concept de développement durable. Ce working paper permet non seulement d'expliquer le rôle des multinationales dans l’émergence de ce concept, mais aussi de comprendre pourquoi la notion de développement durable a été si largement acceptée par le monde des affaires. Cette conception du développement durable a certes rendu possible une progressive prise de conscience écologique des entreprises, mais elle n’a pas favorisé l’introduction des mesures visant à empêcher l'aggravation de la crise environnementale, notamment le changement climatique. This working paper examines the historical role of business interests in shaping structures for global environmental governance. Drawing on extensive historical evidence from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and other archives, the paper demonstrates that international business associations, in particular the ICC were instrumental to the transformation of international environmental governancebetween the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 and Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The ICC, which was sidelined in the debates on the environment in Stockholm in 1972, gradually managed to establish itself as a key partner for the United Nations and to introduce a liberal environmental vision that emphasized economic growth, market forces, free trade, and business self-regulation as a source of environmental governance. While environmental debate at the time for the Stockholm conference in 1972 was centered around the notion of Limits to Growth we find that the ICC actively contributed to the definition of the concept sustainable development. This paper not only helps to explain the role of business in constructing the concept of sustainable development but also why the concept became so widely accepted in the world business community. The problem was that this conception of sustainable development allowed for the incremental greening of corporations, which did not reflect the real need for measures to prevent the ongoing environmental crisis from worsening, including climate change.

Review: Christian Ydesen (ed.). The OECD’s historical rise in education: the formation of a global governing complex. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 308 pp.

About the seminar: Museums, as well as the design discipline, developed in parallel with Western Modernity with its way of forming knowledge and shaping a world. During the second half of the 19th century, design museums were founded in the metropolis of the global North as a method of teaching the notion of quality to producers and consumers alike. Here, the foundation for collections and archives that still have a role in how design is understood, and its history is written. It is histories that still live in understandings of design, it is histories that through design practices create futures. To formulate other histories is to make other futures possible. We would like to invite you to a day where we ask the question how can (design) museum make other histories possible? During the daypractitioners and researchers who have been working with how we can re-learn and re-make museum practices will share insights into their approaches. Together we will then discuss how we can make diverse histories, and therefore diverse futures, possible. Or to put inthe words of the philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: how we can go awkward.

Women's and gender history has established itself as a prominent part of contemporary historical research. In this essay, the trajectory of women's history as an academic field of research is discussed, focusing on the expression "problematizing the situation of women", which, as it turns out, has been a recurring phrase in defining what counts as women's history. Nyström argues it points towards a continuity in women's history research, useful when questioning power relations and theorizing gender. Instead of presenting the historiography of women's history as a progressive narrative, which moves from the non-theoretical situation to the theoretical, he suggests that the ways in which women's history has been conducted mirror the contemporary societal context in which the researchers work. Even though certain theoretical advances can be acknowledged, it is also possible to understand women's history research as theorizing gender differently in different times. 

This chapter focuses on the emergence of user-centred and participatory Scandinavian design ideas and practices in 1970s Sweden. Many of the concepts and methods still highly present – supported as well as contested – in contemporary design stem from the turn towards collaborative designing through the late 1960s and early 1990s. However, in Nordic design history, these radical changes in design practice have been more or less invisible. This chapter argues that a shift in perspective is needed in design history in order to address this design historical gap, while also highlighting the historicity embedded in contemporary practices of design. Shifting the design historical outlook from products to practices calls other Scandinavian design histories than the usual to the fore, suggesting narratives attentive to how and why designing itself has been re-designed. The two examples of transitional design histories given here aim to open up conceptual spaces necessary for re-thinking what design’s histories could be, also in relation to what designing may be becoming. The first example highlights how ergonomic user-centred design methods expanded the role of designers and designing in relation to ideas of use and users, linked to Swedish disability legislation and research funding. The second example discusses how participatory design was called into being as challenges of designers’ and users’ co-development of computer-based work tools expanded ideas of what design was, how and with whom designing took place, and with what kinds of materials. These transitional design histories aim to expand the views of what is discerned as relevant histories of design, while simultaneously calling attention to the historicity embedded in contemporary and emerging design methods and ideas. Following the traces and trajectories of changing design practices, histories of designing contribute to unpacking concepts central to expanding understandings of what design has been, as well as of what it could become.

I denna magisteruppsats kommer strategiska lägen och boplatsers relation till gravar att studeras. Arbetet riktas in på Arnäs och Själevad socken i Örnsköldsvik kommun som ligger in Västernorrlands län. Mer specifikt så är det järnåldersboplatser i Skommarskatan, Gene, Vågnäs and Sörvåge som inkluderas i uppsatsen. Terrängmodellerings kartor, viewsheds, landhöjnings kartor och historiska kartor, litteratur samt fältinventering används för att komma fram till vilket sätt boplatser blev strategiskt belagda och vilken rumslig relation det finns mellan boplatser och gravar. Det visar sig att gravar verkar vara anlagda nära boplatser, men resultatet tyder på att man inte nödvändigtvis ser gravarna från boplatserna på boplatslokalerna. Resultaten visar att viewsheds inte alltid stämmer med det man ser i fält.Resultatet antyder på att terräng, relation till vatten, närhet till färskvatten, kommunikation möjligheter, handelsmöjligheter, resurstillgångar, huskonstruktion och på vilket sätt människorna livnärde sig på har en inverkan på vilket sätt boplatser anlades. Tidigare så har mycket fokus varit lagt på hur RAÄ 22:1 i Gene var strategiskt lagd inom arkeologisk forskning, men i den här uppsatsen har fokus legat på andra typer av boplatser och andra delar av landskapet med hänsyn till fler lokaler. Denna studie har demonstrerat att tidigare studier av järnåldersboplatser i Arnäs och Själevad socken har varit begränsad i sin syn att belysas boplatsers relation till landskapet. Tidigare forskning var fokuset på en lokal och det har visat sig vara en brist när man jämför med landskaps studiemetoder använda i denna studie. Nu har agrara, jägare-samlare och säljägare boplatser studerats och vidgat perspektivet på boplatser strategiska lägen inom studieområdet.

Review: Nell Musgrove and Deidre Michell. The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia: Just Like a Family? Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 314 pp.