Alison Mackinnon

Bengt Sandin

Harvey J. Graff

Ian Winchester

In this detailed study of the history of universal literacy in Sweden, a group of renowned scholars review and explore the possibilities for the wider circulation and broader application of central dimensions of the early literacy studies, expounding upon the work of the Swedish Lutheran pastor and pioneering social historian Egil Johansson. Working initially with parish registers, especially examination registers from northern Sweden, Johansson discovered the extraordinary usefulness of these documents to determine how literacy in Sweden occurred well before any other European nation, despite the fact that Sweden was industrialized about 100 years later than the European norm. Egil Johansson also developed imaginative data-analysis techniques that help historians around the world to better picture the complete human cast of the past. With the help of numerous contributors Johansson founded a giant database of church records and other information, which now can help the understanding of preindustrial society. Johansson's work spans over many aspects of literacy and social history and their respective relation to religion and gender.

Socio-Cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson

Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Contexts

Maija Runcis

This look into the transformation of the Swedish welfare state in the 20th century through changes in the structure and content of Swedish educational broadcasting provides new insights into how media education fostered political and social change and reflected the changes of government policies as well as the fundamental cultural transformation of the Swedish society. The political authorities formulated general ambitions for broadcast media's role in society as a public service system that could affect the views and construe the understanding of citizenship, equality, childcare, children's role in society, environmental issues, democracy, and everyday politics. This study explores how educational broadcasting was negotiated between parties with varying agendas to become both a voice for progressive change and for established interests.

Educational Broadcasting in Sweden 1930-2000

Neither Fish nor Fowl

In this book the emergence of schools in urban Sweden between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century provides the framework for a history of children and of childhood. It is a study through the lens of the changes in early modern education, spatial aspect of the life of children and systems of governance in the early modern Swedish state. Educational systems defined the spatial aspects of childhood—where children were supposed to grow up, in the home, the school, the streets and alleys, or the place of work—over a period of about two hundred years. Schools and education represent both a mental and a physical space; an abstract place for children as well as a local and concrete place for them, which stood out against the alternative spatial aspects of the life of children. It is also a study of how different cultural systems influence the definitions of childhood and schools, in the context of church and home instruction, poor relief, policing, surveillance, and the question of why children went to schools. It examines the role of the school as childcare and as a provider of food, shelter and welfare, and as governance.

Schooling and State Formation in Early Modern Sweden

Johanna Sjöberg

Anna Sparrman

How do children understand issues of work, marketing, money and scarcity? In Situating Child Consumption the contributors offer a provocative stance rethinking values and notions of children, childhood and consumption. The authors investigate and exemplify how consumption is situated in practices of everyday life, politics, history and the markets. They address the complexities and contradictions in the ways consumption negotiates values in social relations, laws and state intervention as well as material culture. The articles examine topics such as childrens use of money, advertising, tweens, sexuality, violent toys, amusement parks and historical documents. The anthology includes established scholars and a young cohort of researchers, combining consumer studies with perspectives from childhood sociology and the history of childhood. Situating Child Consumption makes indispensable reading for anyone interested in child studies and consumption.

Rethinking Values and Notions of Children, Childhood and Consumption

Situating Child Consumption

Educational media has been a contested arena in the creation and communication of the Swedish welfare system - it was an important instrument of modernization. In Neither Fish nor Fowl historians Bengt Sandin and Maija Runcis have a close look on how the educational broadcasting was negotiated between government agencies, public inquiries, political and professional interests. The state authorities, civil society organizations, educators and journalists had strong opinions about the role of educational broadcast media that reflected a desire to form the future. Educational programmes were also part of a public service system which increasingly emphasized its independence from state control. But was broadcast education to be a part of public service, a government agency or something else - a red herring? This study provides insights into the struggle over the role of educational media and the political communication in the welfare state.

Bengt Sandin

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