Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,
This call for papers is on behalf of Mary Hilson (University College London).
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CALL FOR PAPERS - "The Image of Sweden - comparisons over time and space"
Session to European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, 27 Feb to 1 March 2008.
Paper proposals are invited for a session for the ESSHC 2008 (www.iisg.nl/esshc). Please submit abstracts of no more than 500 words, in English, to Mary Hilson (m.hilson@ucl.ac.uk) or Jenny Andersson (jenny.andersson@sh.se) no later than 23 March 2007 (the deadline for submitting the proposal to the ESSHC is 1 April).
THE IMAGE OF SWEDEN - COMPARISONS OVER TIME AND SPACE
The Nordic countries, and particularly Sweden, have functioned as a role model and trope in political discourse in Europe and elsewhere. The 'Model', characterised foremost by its coupling of economic efficiency and social welfare, has been a source of influence for various political discourses, mainly on the Left, from Marquis Childs' well-known characterisation of Sweden as the 'middle way' during the 1930s to contemporary interest among politicians such as Gordon Brown and Ségolène Royal. As the Polish historian Kazimierz Musial has argued, the Nordic countries have been seen to embody a particular version of modernity, a modernity defined by a specific political socio-economic rationality, a pragmatic social engineering, a democratic consensus culture, and a modernist logic of embracing economic and technological change.
In this manner, the idea of the Nordic model has often acted as a utopia, a place where one looks for influence and inspiration for the construction of societies on the European continent and elsewhere. Correspondingly, for discourses mainly of the Anglo-Saxon or American right, Sweden has been a dystopia, a quasi-totalitarian system associated with control, melancholy and suicide. A utopia, in Reinhart Kosellecks' term, is a place to which dreams and aspirations not judged possible in the immediate time horizon or within the specific spatial context are relocated, for instance, the dream of equality.
Importantly, utopia is not only the sphere of the desirable but also the sphere of what is deemed near impossible in the present, or in the specific political space. The projection of political dreams onto a utopia in the form of the small countries in the north of Europe can thus reveal something not only about the aspirations of those political discourses which have been inspired by the north, but also about the limits of these discourses and their perceptions of the cultural, social, economic and strategic problems in domestic political struggles. The gaze on Sweden is thus a reflection - projection, deflection - of various European political and cultural struggles. Similarly, the European gaze on Norden has a constructive role in the interior construction of Norden. In periods of praise, it leads to self-images of grandeur. In periods of crisis and critique, such as in the 1990s, it adds to the erosion of self-esteem and casts doubt on the specificity and validity of the Model and the related question of who we are.
The aim of this session is to examine the dynamics of this omplicated interplay between images and self-images in the cultural, social and economic construction of Norden, from a multitude of perspectives and settings. We are interested in the motivations and rationales for interest in the Nordic model from other political contexts at different points in time during the 20th century, and in how these displays of interest interact with self-images within Norden. Our emphasis is thus on the reflective logic in this as a complicated process of cultural and political interaction over time, that, from the 1930s to the late 1990s and 2000s, displays also ongoing reinterpretation and rereading of what Norden is in line with changes in European politics. We also hope to shed light on aspects of Norden that are little understood, such as the influence of Norden in extreme left and right wing discourses. We invite proposals for papers around these themes.
Session organisers:
Jenny Andersson, Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University
College, Stockholm, jenny.andersson@sh.se
Mary Hilson, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, m.hilson@ucl.ac.uk
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Best,
Nick Aylott.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap
Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested. To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@sh.se). If you want to send something to the list, or if you don't want to receive these occasional messages, just let me know. See also www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/scandinavia/
