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Den nya definitionen på kön har hyllats som progressiv. Nu kan alla vara sig själva och leva ut sitt inre kön. Men är den så progressiv? Och är den så ny? Kajsa Ekis Ekman söker könets ideologi i historien och ser en återgång till reaktionära könsroller, med allvarliga konsekvenser. Angelägen läsning för alla som vill orientera sig i en av vår tids mest infekterade frågor

English summary

With soap, water, and diligence discusses attitudes and practices around cleanliness and health at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At this time, scientific findings on how diseases spread had rendered both the body and the home as particularly risky in terms of the health of an individual. However, the zeal for cleaning was more than just a health issue – it also contributed to societal change at large. This book aims at deepening our understanding of cleanliness in relation to social class, gender, work, consumption, and space, viewed from a Nordic perspective. The battle against dirt was fought on a broad front, and on different levels of society. The book at hands offers glimpses of the long and complex societal process which was required for the Nordic societies to grow cleaner over time. Behind the gradually increasing interest in soap and lather lay challenges, negotiations, and disagreements about the ways in which cleanliness should be advanced, and who would be the ones advancing it. To establish the supremacy of soap required a lot of hard work. The ten chapters shed light on the interaction between debaters, voluntary associations, institutions, and individuals. How was cleanliness promoted and what was the reception like? Who and what was to be cleaned, and on which terms? What did cleanliness mean in different contexts and for different individuals? The book makes both ideals and practices visible by exploring the ways in which the gospel of cleanliness was presented, propagated, understood, questioned and renewed, and also by showing that in some cases people's quest for cleanliness had motivations other than those intended by the promoters. The chapters have been written by economic historians, ethnologists, social historians, and historians of ideas from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The book is intended for students, scholars and the general reading audience interested in a social historical perspective on cleanliness.

"In discussions relating to their role during the Middle Ages, women are typically assumed to only have been "pawns in a political game dominated by men", or to have primarily acted as intermediaries of power. In this book, however, the varying expressions of power are studied by changing the focus from a political and economic exercise of power controlled by men, to an approach based on interaction and communication between the sexes. In this volume, gender is instead interpreted as a total social phenomenon comprising all spheres of medieval society. This approach provides new opportunities to investigate how power operated on different levels within a societal structure. Thus, power is neither seen as emanating from a centre nor as dominated by only one sex. Instead, it is regarded as an all-embracing societal web, woven through threads of mutual dependence between men and women.

In this book, scholars belonging to various disciplines, such as history, history of arts and literary history, discuss how cooperation between the sexes found expression in culture, judicial spheres and social organisation. The contributions do not only consider the Nordic countries, but also how gender constructions were affected by, and transformed through, the influence of contemporary cultural, juridical and ideological currents in Europe. - Vanliga uppfattningar i diskussioner om kvinnornas roll under medeltiden är att de utgjorde "brickor i männens politiska spel" eller att de i första hand verkade som förmedlare av makt. I denna antologi studeras dock maktens olika uttrycksformer genom att fokus förflyttas från politisk och ekonomisk maktutövning kontrollerad av män till ett interaktionistiskt synsätt baserat på samspelet och kommunikationen mellan könen. Genom att se på genus som ett totalt socialt fenomen omfattande det medeltida samhällets alla sfärer öppnas möjligheter att undersöka hur makten verkade på olika nivåer inom samhällsstrukturen. Makten betraktas därmed varken som utgående från ett centrum eller helt dominerad av ett kön. I boken diskuterar forskare tillhörande olika discipliner såsom historia, konstvetenskap och litteraturvetenskap hur samverkan mellan könen tog sig uttryck inom kulturen, rättssamhället och den sociala organisationen. Bidragen behandlar inte bara Norden utan även hur könskonstruktioner påverkades och förändrades genom inflytande från samtida kulturella, juridiska och ideologiska strömningar i Europa.
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